Assemblymember Joe Coto will receive the Legislator of the Year Award at the NAACP’s Freedom and Friendship Awards Gala. This will be the first time in the San Jose/Silicon Valley NAACP’s 55 year history that an individual has been recognized in two of the top award categories. These prestigious awards are given to those who have been nominated and selected for demonstrating a superior commitment to the community by continuously advocating for equal rights, educational equality, human rights, workers rights, social justice, economic equality or have shown they support conversations and ideas about how to improve race relations for people of color in the community.

In 2002 prior to retiring from the East Side Union High School District, Assemblymember Joe Coto was awarded with the Lifetime Educational Achievement Award for his long held demonstration that educators must serve as advocates for youth and belief that every student is capable of achieving high standards. During the course of his tenure as superintendent he initiated a number of efforts aimed at ensuring that all students graduate with the knowledge and skills needed to be successful in college and in the competitive global job market.

Assemblymember Coto is now being awarded with the NAACP Legislator of the Year Award due to his robust social justice and civil rights agenda in 2006.  His legislation included: allowing children’s groups and teachers to continue enrolling children in public health insurance, providing additional protection to Native American burial sites by ensuring the preservation of sacred burial grounds, providing $20 million for a three year study of 25,000 California students to document best practices in English Learner education and passing legislation that established a Legislative Task Force on Diabetes and Obesity, to study the factors contributing to the high rates of diabetes and obesity especially among Latinos, African-Americans, Asian Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans in this country and recommend ways to address the problem.

Rick Callender, President of the San Jose/Silicon Valley NAACP said, “Assemblymember Coto is truly committed to equality, fairness, social justice and civil rights.  The civil rights movement is far from finished but Assemblymember Coto has clearly demonstrated that he understands that wide disparities still exist, and realizes until we address those disparities we will not have not achieved the perfect union that our forefathers had intended.”

The awards banquet will be held Saturday, April 14, 2007 at Parkside Hall, 180 Park Ave., San Jose, California.