National Council Of La Raza

A national Latino civil rights organization said it is pulling its 2009 convention from Kansas City because a member of a group opposed to illegal immigration was appointed to the city's parks board. The National Council of La Raza said its board came to the decision unanimously after being unable to reach an agreement with Mayor Mark Funkhouser over his appointment in June of Frances B. Semler, a member of the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps.

One of the nation's largest Latino advocacy and civil rights organizations plans to meet in Los Angeles this weekend to instruct people how to mobilize and vote out those who fail to back generous new immigration laws. The National Council of La Raza will highlight immigration at its annual conference beginning today, featuring a bipartisan lineup of such high-profile speakers as former President Clinton, Republican presidential political strategist Karl Rove, Gov.

On a crowded Los Angeles Convention Center floor Sunday, Gloria Ramirez winced as a medical technician poked her finger and pressed out blood into a hand-held device to measure sugar levels. The digital machine quickly showed the score: 129, close to borderline levels for diabetes. The news, she said, wasn't surprising. Her doctor had told her a year ago to lay off tortillas, red meat and her favorite food, Mexican breads, to avoid diabetes.

White House political strategist Karl Rove touted "shared values" of faith and family and reiterated President Bush's support of broad immigration reform in a Los Angeles address Tuesday to one of the nation's largest Latino civil rights organizations.

Janet Murguia grew up on bologna and powdered milk, sleeping five to a room in a tiny Kansas City, Kan., home with mismatched furniture and plastic curtains. Her parents, one a Mexican immigrant and the other the son of one, never managed to advance beyond seventh grade. But they knew the value of education enough to pinch pennies for a set of encyclopedias. Her church provided a spiritual compass and close-knit community of mostly Mexican immigrants and their children.

Antonio Banderas, John Leguizamo, Freddy Fender and Ricky Martin received special honors Saturday night at the National Council of La Raza's 2002 ALMA Awards. "Pinero" was named best movie, and "Amores Perros" took foreign language film honors in festivities at the Shrine Auditorium. Among other American Latino Media Arts Awards, Robert Rodriguez was named best director for "Spy Kids."

The National Council of La Raza, the largest Latino advocacy group in the nation, presented its 2001 American Latino Media Arts Awards on Sunday in Pasadena, honoring excellence in TV and film. Among this year's winners was "Traffic," the critically acclaimed film that bears down on the U.S. demand for narcotics and the Mexican drug trade. The council chose it as the year's best feature film.

The National Hispanic Media Coalition, which launched a boycott against the Walt Disney Co. and Disney-owned ABC last April for what it called discriminatory hiring practices against Latinos, is blasting a Latino civil rights organization for going into partnership with the television network.

The debate over Social Security's future intensified Monday as two major civil rights groups expressed deep skepticism about proposals to give workers some of their payroll taxes back to invest in private retirement accounts. Groups favoring privatization are "descendants of the same groups that opposed Social Security and civil rights," Julian Bond, chairman of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, told a news conference.

Lisa Navarrete stood outside an overcrowded ballroom on the third floor of San Francisco's downtown Holiday Inn and proudly proclaimed the weekend's independent Latino producers' conference a rousing success. Never mind the fact it hadn't started yet. "Just the fact that everyone's here is a success," said Navarrete, deputy vice president of the National Council of La Raza, the nation's largest constituency-based Latino organization and one of six groups that convened the convention.