If you had the opportunity to stop by the Atrium Training Room in the Erwin Meier Center downtown on Tuesday, March 25, at noon, you saw Yolo County hosting a reception commemorating Cesar Chavez Day and unveiling a “Land and Labor” Exhibit.

I got an opportunity to look at the exhibit, and it’s great. It features photographs, posters, artwork, and narratives to raise awareness about the history and culture of those Latino workers and others who have made Yolo County so diverse. The exhibit has been open since March 19 and is scheduled to shut down at the close of business day on Wednesday, March 26. So, you had better hurry.

But if you miss the county’s event, make sure you attend the 5:30 p.m., Thursday, March 27, annual César Chávez Celebration at the Woodland Community & Senior Center.

César Chávez should serve as a legacy to us all in his advocacy for minority rights. His words and actions are inspirational and have resonated with many generations of Latinos and others — like myself. I put him in the same category as Martin Luther King Jr.

My worry is that we’re rapidly running out of individuals who personally knew Chávez, walked with him and worked with him.

I think Woodland and Yolo County have to start looking for a younger generation of Latino leaders who can carry on the teachings of Chávez while expressing the challenges faced by Latinos today. Some of those potential speakers are right here in the county.

The Sacramento Bee’s Equity Lab has over the years identified “Latino Change Makers,” or as the newspaper put it: “individuals who are leading change in Sacramento and neighboring communities.”

My choices for future speakers would be Elyse Doyle Martinez, who helped arrange the “Land and Labor” exhibit and is a heck of an artist. There’s also Art Pimentel, now president of Folsom Lake College, who is also a former president of Woodland Community College and member of the Woodland City Council. Oscar Villegas, Yolo County’s first Latino supervisor, was elected in 2014. He grew up in the streets of Byrte and is the grandson of former braceros.

Other speakers might include Elodia Ortega-Lampkin, superintendent of the Woodland Unified School District, who is the daughter of immigrants, a former farmworker and product of migrant education. There’s also Antonio De Loera-Brust, who is director of communications for the United Farm Workers, and Armando Salud-Ambriz, deputy of Elections for Yolo County, who grew up in Arbuckle.

Others who are not local but who are no less interesting include Ana Bolaños, assistant deputy director of the California Department of Public Health’s Office of Health Equity. Richard Falcon, who in 2006, founded Teatro Nagual, a theater arts company, and uses theater to tackle complex issues such as immigration, environmental justice and water rights.

There’s also Alex Rodrigo, senior vice president with the Sacramento Kings and General Manager of Golden 1 Center. He manages the execution of all sports and entertainment operations of the arena.

Maybe, some people such as Pimentel, Villegas and Ortega-Lampkin haven’t been considered because they are so well known and we hear from them often. But for the most part they are representative of a new generation of Latino “change makers,” as are the others I’ve mentioned. Their stories, too, are important and might resonate with a new generation anxious to bring about further change.

Jim Smith is the former editor of The Daily Democrat, retiring in 2021 after a 27-year career at the paper.