Resolved…

Organizers of the 3rd Annual National Latino Congreso say that this year’s event will aim to translate ideas into action, with an eye on figuring out how to implement many of the resolutions passed by participants during the prior two gatherings.

The three-day event is set to kick-off on July 18 at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel on the 400 block of S. Figueroa Street. Events for the following two days will be held at the Downtown Sheraton at 7th and Hope streets.

Steven Ochoa, vice president of policy and research for the William C. Velasquez Institute, one of several organizations listed as conveners of the event, said there will be no new resolutions at this year’s edition. Ochoa said the gathering will instead match authors of resolutions passed during the 2006 and 2007 gatherings with various elected officials and other influential participants in hopes of “turning resolutions into reality.”

There will be no shortage of work there. A total of 168 resolutions were passed during the first two editions of the Congreso, with a mix of broadly focused and more specific calls for various changes or new programs on education reform, immigrants’ rights, healthcare, environmental and other policies at the local, state and national levels.

“In 2008, we will build on this by dialoguing with policy makers, raising funds, and gaining media attention as part of the process of translating the Congreso resolutions into reality,” according to organizers.

The session for the third day of the event is expected to include some new business in the form of a discussion on relations between the Latino/American and African/American communities. The meeting appears likely to proceed as a general discussion rather than a forum that would produce resolutions on the subject, with a call for a “Black-Latino Summit” sometime in the future expected to cap the session.

The new focus on attempts to see proposals implemented rather than generating a raft of new resolutions follows a drop-off in attendance at last year’s Congreso, when participation fell significantly from the crowd of more than 2,000 for the inaugural run in 2006. Organizers have also trimmed the length of this year’s edition, down from a five-day event last year.

Organizers say they will have some political star power for this year’s event, though, with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa scheduled to deliver a speech to a dinner crowd during the opening session. Villaraigosa has recently stepped up his efforts on the campaign trail for Barack Obama, the Democratic Party’s presumed nominee for president. The mayor recently traveled to Washington, D.C., to introduce Obama to a gathering of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a group that also serves as a co-sponsor of the Congreso. Obama and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson have been invited to the dinner, but their attendance had not been confirmed as of presstime,

The opening day will also feature a luncheon for which presumed Republican presidential nominee John McCain and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger have been listed as invited guests. Their attendance had not been confirmed—and no featured speaker had been listed for the luncheon—as of presstime.

Both the dinner and luncheon on opening day will also serve as fundraisers for the various organizations signed on a conveners of the event, a roster that reads like a who’s who of Latino/American advocacy groups, including the Hispanic Federation, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, the National Hispanic Environmental Council, the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA), and the William C. Velasquez Institute. Also supporting the event is Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana, the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, and the Latino Issues Forum, among others.

The event also enjoys a roster of corporations and non-profit organizations as sponsors, including: Southwest Airlines, American Income Life, Hydrogen Energy, Jim Gonzalez and Associates, PhRMA, Resource Law Group, the Drug Policy Alliance, Latino Public Broadcasting, and the California Endowment.