Tuesday, April 28, 2009

A solution to the Cesar Chavez problem

What a mess! After completely botching the process to rename Interstate Avenue "Cesar Chavez Blvd." a couple years ago, the city council is back at it again. Now they want to rename 39th Street after the labor leader.

Which is just bringing out a different group of people who don't want their street name to change. It promises to be every bit as divisive this go-round.

Last night I heard a great solution to the problem, a way to honor Cesar Chavez for the leader he was. The gentleman who came up with the idea deserves a lot of credit, but he humbly requests anonymity.


The idea? Instead of renaming a street, which causes all sorts of private individuals and businesses to spend their own money and time to change their address listing, letterhead, etc, why not re-name a public institution? That way no private people have to bear any of the cost.


Why not rename Portland State University to "Cesar Chavez College of Portland?"


If you are an advocate for honoring Chavez, wouldn't it be better to have an instution like a college named after him rather than some non-descript street on the east side of Portland?



Of course!



Plus, think of the warm up jerseys for their basketball team:





6 comments:

Sabokat said...

Just like I always thought that all those ex-Reagan appointees should form their own Institute - the Reagan Institute for Conservative Officials - or RICO

Roadrunner said...

Yep, he tried to make life better for poor people, so obviously he was a communist.

Sorta like Jesus.

Anonymous said...

Senor Chavez worked to make himself rich at the expense of poor people. He has zero connection to Portland - other then embracing the same political philosophy - and should rightly be ignored.

And the idea that private people don't pay for Portland State is an interesting misstatement.

Walt said...

Good idea about the college. But how about this?

We build a new bridge to replace the old Sellwood bridge, and name it the Chavez Bridge -- after it gets built. We need a new bridge, and they wanna name something after Chavez. I think we have a community of interest here and every one wins.

Anonymous said...

Nice job roadrunner? Never met a point you couldn't miss!

Sabokat said...

Anon 8:24 -

Worked to make himself rich at the expense for the poor? Really, do you have a source for that?

Well.. he does have a connection to Oregon, especially Mount Angel, so naming a street, bridge, etc... would not be entirely unreasonable.

But, if we're going to go for purity, we should starting changing everything that was named after people who never set foot in either Portland, or Oregon. We can start with Mt. Hood and Gladstone. Washington and Jefferson streets are gonna have to go too.