8 to Receive Latino Leadership Awards

Eight west county residents will be honored by El Concilio del Condado de Ventura at its 10th annual Latino Leadership Awards banquet this month.

Honorees will be recognized for leadership contributions in community service, education, labor, youth, cultural arts, business and health.

Two special awards will be given for lifetime achievement.

Ventura resident Alice McGrath will receive this year’s award for community service. McGrath, 81, was a member of the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee in 1942 and defended a group of young Latinos who were wrongfully convicted of murder.

“I feel the alternative to being active is being passive, which doesn’t appeal to me at all,” said McGrath, whose activism has reached into communities in Latin America.

Her dedication to social justice continues locally through the pro bono program of the Ventura Bar Assn. that she developed and managed, and in her current role as volunteer coordinator for the Ventura County Consolidated Courts.

Artist Xavier Montes, a lifelong resident of Santa Paula, will receive the award for cultural arts leadership. Montes, 46, has worked on many murals in Ventura County, including the 500-foot-long Tortilla Flats mural on Figueroa Street in Ventura that illustrates the neighborhood and residents displaced in the 1950s by the Ventura Freeway.

The awards dinner celebration will take place Jan. 30 at the Embassy Suites Mandalay Beach Resort in Oxnard. Tickets are $60 per person, and reservations are required. Seating is limited. For reservations, call 486-9777, Ext. 225. Proceeds will support El Concilio’s youth violence prevention programs.

El Concilio del Condado de Ventura is a nonprofit advocacy organization serving Ventura County’s Latino community.