As you know, the effort to rename a Portland street after Cesar Chavez has come up again.
The City of Portland, hoping to “stick it to the racists,” as Sam Adams said during the last go round, has changed the rules to presumably make it easier to change names in the future. At least that’s what we think has happened. The city didn’t follow its own name change rules in the first place so we figure why would they make it even more difficult to ignore the rules, but I digress. An effort to get the full rule change information is so far unavailable and hasn’t been taken up by council.
We do know that the city plans to spend $150K in tax dollars to hire a consultant to sell you on the idea that changing the name of a street to honor Chavez is a good idea. They’re also setting up a three person commission to oversee all name changes. And *BONUS* requiring proponents of name changes to get approval of 75% of the abutting home owners OR 2500 signatures of people who live in Portland and are “legal residents” (no idea what means). In other words, want a name change? No problem. Just ask the folks on the other side of town.
Now, the reason I bring up this subject again (not so much on the blog but on the show) is that I take great umbrage at having the supporters of this plan dismiss as racists opponents of the previous effort to honor Chavez with a street.
It’s never been about race. It’s been about the city ignoring its own rules, acting with arrogance, and blind siding the folks on Interstate Avenue with a fait accompli. Of course the other, more obvious, question is why name a street for Chavez in the first place?
Cesar Chavez was an American patriot who served his country in the military and was an outspoken organizer of farm workers. He led the table grape boycott. But Cesar Chavez, to the best of my knowledge, never even set foot in Portland. He went as far as Mt. Angel, had a school named after him (now defunct), but didn’t hang out in P-Town. Probably just not that many farm workers to organize, I guess. In a column today, the Zero columnist, S Renee Mitchell says Chavez visited Portland “once or twice.” She doesn’t elaborate and I’ve never seen any report or proof that he has. If anyone knows and can direct me to info that he ever was here, please send it along.
Still we all know the reason why the city is bothering to do this: it’s tokenism, identity politics and all the pandering that goes with it.
If you’re opposed you get nuked by being called a “racist.”