Our Mission

Our Vision: Goals and Objectives

Awakening the Sleeping Giant: The Crucial Need for the California Latino Center

Our Mission

The mission of the California Latino Center is to develop a Latino agenda that promotes public policy to protect civil rights and ensure equal participation in the economic, educational and social mainstream and to stimulate appreciation of the contributions of the Latino community.

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Our Vision

The California Latino Center has five major objectives:

To be a focal point in helping to represent and protect the human and civil rights of the Latino community.

To be the repository of vital past, present and future Latino community information that captures the rich history and contributions of our Latino people and its leaders.

To be the nucleus where public policy issues affecting the Latino community can be discussed and channeled to legislative and corporate leaders in a manner that brings about synergies and positive outcomes for the Latino people throughout the state and nation.

To become the communications link between the “powers that be” and the Latino community.

To establish virtual offices for all member organizations wishing to have a presence in California’s capitol and to provide conference space for symposiums, meetings and other events.

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Awakening the Sleeping Giant

Today, the Latino community can be characterized as a “sleeping giant” in the political and economic arena. A primary focus of the California Latino Center (CLC) is to empower the Latino community to assert itself in the public sphere, thus reclaiming its due influence and awakening the sleeping giant.

Politicians, business entities, and government in general have historically assumed that the vote of the Latino community is locked in and a foregone conclusion. For far too long, this community has allowed itself to be taken advantage of and neglected in all areas of health, housing, employment, education, economic development, transportation, child care, consumer rights, and immigration. This neglect is even more pervasive in rural communities, which lack basic infrastructure. It is the intent of the CLC to provide a physical site for any Latino organization wishing to have a presence at the State Capitol. Conference and meeting facilities will also be available.

The CLC, through its conference center, will bring together experts to focus on critical issues facing Latinos, such as inequities in health care and educational opportunities, insufficient child care, lack of housing and employment opportunities, and the continuation of the digital divide.

The CLC will examine how our complex system and bureaucratic structure has failed to focus on issues facing our community. This system has not been responsive to the needs of the Latino community nor have our leaders been held accountable for its failure.

The Latino community has a tremendous buying power. And, although corporate America eagerly sells to us, it does not reinvest in our communities. The CLC will work with others to make corporate America responsive to the needs of our communities. We must use our purchasing power to demand a return of investment to our schools and the infrastructure of our towns, with the goal that all adults have the opportunity to become self-sufficient through good jobs, home ownership, and the ability to participate in the economic and social mainstream.

One of the most important issues for the Latino community is that of immigration. Every year, thousands of undocumented workers pay withholding and other taxes, knowing that they will never receive any benefits. If the government is willing to withhold their earnings, it should recognize that they were here to earn it in an honest effort to participate in the freedom and bounty of this nation. Similarly, when a young Latino serves this country in the military, he or she should be recognized for his/her courage and awarded citizenship without having to die to receive that honor.

One of the most important privileges we have in this country is our right to vote. We have the right to confront our elected officials and require them to be accountable to us as an electorate. One of the goals of the CLC is to provide an avenue of communication for the Latino community to address our elected officials. And equally important, we must provide an opportunity for the community to assess those same officials during election campaigns. We must recognize the power of the vote and utilize the strength of our community to hold politicians accountable.

The power of the CLC will be in our ability to assemble leaders from all sectors of the public sphere to produce synergies and solutions to the problems that face our communities. It is easy to list the problems, it is more difficult to find solutions, and it is Herculean to make those solutions work through the existing complex systems to become a reality.

The California Latino Center is ready to face that challenge.

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