Wednesday, February 18, 2009

We're Going To Talk About Cesar Chavez Blvd. Just Accept It.

Sean Cruz, writing at Blogolitical Sean:

There are many ways to honor a person, and I strongly support recognizing Cesar Chavez in a permanent, physical way.

However,
I am troubled by the efforts of the handful of generally well-meaning activists ever since they presented the City of Portland with an agenda of nonnegotiable demands centered on their proposal to rename Interstate Avenue, and here is why:


Right from the beginning, they claimed to represent Portland’s Latino communities, and that is simply not the case. There has been no community process to put the Chavez Committee in charge, and many Latinos wouldn’t follow them out of a burning building….

Even the Hispanic Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce has had nothing to say about the effort.

The Avenistas’ antics and accusations in front of City Council and at Ockley Green Middle School were an embarrassment to many of us….

The Chavez Committee has also never identified who its members are, apart from the two co-chairs, not even on their website. Anonymous committees cannot possibly represent a community, and carry no weight with me.

The Committee claimed that any cost associated with renaming a street was inconsequential, and that any opposition to their demands was racially motivated, and neither statement is true. The costs are insignificant only if Other People pay the price….

Read the entire post. Sean thinks deeply and honestly about it and writes and speaks plainly about it.

Cesar Chavez was a brave man to do what he did. He probably made it into more than one governmental file as a subversive, here in the Land of the Free. The Cesar Chavez Committee and the whole three-ring circus about having a Cesar Chavez Blvd (note that we now must have a street named after him) has made a complete dog's breakfast about it, and have essentially poisoned the well; anyone who objects seems to get characterized as a possible racist.

If one thinks it racism, consider this: the deal began when a lame-duck mayor, completing a lacklustre term that held a great deal of promise, agreed to fast-track a gift for a pressure group that was assumed to represent the whole, in a bid have some sort of legacy.

A back-room deal–that quinessentially White thing. It could have been a smoke-filled room I suppose, except that we don't allow smoking within 10 feet of a public building.

Recalling the previous day's lead editorial in The Oregonian, we are reminded that the Chavez Committee gets to propose not one, but three streets (two more than anyone else would): Grand Avenue, Broadway, and Thirty-Ninth Avenue. The O also give a solid call on which one will likely get the tag, and we agree: of all the choices available, changing Grand Avenue to Cesar Chavez Blvd would certainly be the less-worse option. Broadway is a very historically-significant street in Portland, and having an E. 39th Avenue is crucial to navigating the east side, both to locals and to visitors.

Having a Cesar Chavez Blvd as a one-way couplet with Martin Luther King Jr Blvd has this sort of appeal.

But at the end of the editorial, the question that nobody wants to answer (but Sean Cruz kind of did) is asked:

To be clear, we're delighted to see the council at least trying to
follow its own rules this time around. That's a welcome change. Yet, in
its new fixation on following the rules, the council may fail to
address questions the rules can't capture, such as:

Why does the name of a street have to be changed at all? Why
wouldn't it be more fitting to name a bridge or a park or farmers
market or something else altogether for Chavez?

My position is that we should rename no streets after anyone else ever again. We have become althogether jaundiced about the whole thing.

2 comments:

  1. You called this one exactly right, Chinuk. There's nothing inherently wrong with naming bridges, parks, farmer's markets, or various other types of infrastructure after celebrated persons, providing that said infrastructure doesn't already bear a celebrated person's name.

    Cesar Chavez Interstate Bridge would work just fine; Cesar Chavez Blvd., as a replacement name for Grand Ave. or Broadway, not so much. Named streets that are steeped in long tradition are best left unchanged.

    That leaves only numbered streets as fair game for name changes. I think that Cesar Chavez 82nd Avenue (name and number combined) is particularly apt, but what are the odds?

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  2. phil:

    You called this one exactly right, Chinuk. There's nothing inherently wrong with naming bridges, parks, farmer's markets, or various other types of infrastructure after celebrated persons, providing that said infrastructure doesn't already bear a celebrated person's name.


    Thanks, phil. The problem is, the gift of a street name has gone from something that could happen to something the Chavez Committee has coming. It's been incorporated inot the structure of the thing.

    They're getting it whether we want it or not.

    Cesar Chavez Interstate Bridge would work just fine; Cesar Chavez Blvd., as a replacement name for Grand Ave. or Broadway, not so much. Named streets that are steeped in long tradition are best left unchanged. That leaves only numbered streets as fair game for name changes. I think that Cesar Chavez 82nd Avenue (name and number combined) is particularly apt, but what are the odds?

    I think we're going to have to partially agree to disagree here. I think "Grand" avenue is sufficiently generic, given the choices we have. I am addicted to the count of numbered avenues. I do like the idea of having a southbound MLK and a northbound Chavez, though. It has an appeal to me.

    If, OTOH, all were equal, I think a numbered street could be renamed for CC.

    This has all been at sixes and sevens for so long that I don't think I can actually have a striaght thought on it anymore.

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