Does Chavez legacy gain from multiple streets?

Down in Dallas, officials are fighting about which local street will have to take the “honor” of being named for United Farm Workers founder Cesar Chavez, while officials in Portland managed to pick a street over the objections of the local residents.

In all, Chavez has about 25 municipalities across the United States that have chosen to pay tribute to his memory by naming a street in his honor, similar to the hundreds of towns that have Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevards, or streets, or whatever.

BUT THERE ARE times I wonder if by reducing the name Chavez to that of a road, if we are actually lessening the public’s awareness of the man behind the name.

Could we be creating a future generation of people who will see those “Chavez Street” signs up on the post, think it just another part of the landscape, and care less to find out who he actually was?

Think about it.

How many streets in your respective home community bear a name of someone that you honestly don’t have a clue who that person was? Does it really do much good to stick up a street sign and do nothing more to pay tribute to a person?

I HAVE ALWAYS been of the belief that municipal governments ought to be trying to reduce the number of names they have on their streets (and not just because numbered streets are more simple to follow).

Too many places get tied up in political concerns about who they choose to honor, then they run out of streets when someone who truly is worth honoring comes along. We could get to the point where someone doesn’t get the street named after him, but gets the street post instead.

Think of it. Chavez Pole on 39th Street. It sounds totally ridiculous.

But it’s not any more ridiculous than the infighting that takes place whenever municipalities try to pay tribute to their growing Latino populations, but can’t think of anyone other than Cesar Chavez for whom to name a street.

IT WINDS UP creating a lot of resentment from locals who wind up taking it as a moral crusade of sorts to fight against naming anything for Chavez.

That is what appears to have happened in Dallas, where last year officials wanted to come up with a new name for Industrial Boulevard. They didn’t anticipate a local poll that would show great support for the name “Chavez Boulevard.”

They didn’t go along with it, and now all the people who hated that idea are fighting any attempt to find an alternative.

Perhaps it is fitting that Chavez was controversial in life as a union organizer, so perhaps he should remain as an outspoken presence even now, 16 years after his death.

BUT THE CONTINUING infighting in Dallas is merely making that city look ridiculous, as are the opponents in Portland, which this week renamed 39th Avenue for Chavez.

The locals who live along the street are arguing the usual arguments about how expensive it will be to change their street addresses on all their legal correspondence. There is a slight truth to that.

But it literally has people engaging in a battle to keep as pedestrian a name as 39th Avenue. And I wonder how much it keeps us from truly understanding what Chavez was about?

My other concern is to wonder if Portland now thinks it has done all that is necessary to recognize the fact that the Latino portion is on the rise in that northwestern U.S. city.

READING THE NEWS coverage of the street name change, I get that impression. Reports cite the fact that Chavez joins King, Rosa Parks and Bill Naito (a local business executive of Japanese ethnic descent) in having Portland streets named for them.

Will some people be inclined to think Latinos now got their share, and don’t need to be thought of much more? I’d hope that does not turn out to be the case.

If some people seriously think the Chavez name can be slapped onto a lamppost, then ignored, I’d argue they don’t really understand what the man was about. For Chavez in life was someone who refused to be ignored – even though he represented migrant farm workers whom society at the time preferred not to think about at all.

My bottom line?

STREET SIGNS ARE a cheap tribute, and people interested in paying serious respect to someone’s memory ought to be doing much more than paying for the making of a few rectangular signs.

Otherwise, we might see the day when people will read all those “Chavez Boulevard” signs in Portland and other cities, and figure someone felt a need to pay respect to Julio Cesar Chavez – the great Mexican boxer.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Local residents will continue to gripe about the Cesar Chavez (http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2009/07/no_way_to_honor_cesar_chavez.html) name change, even after it has become official.

This is NOT the honoree (http://www.juliocesarchavez.net/) of all those “Chavez Boulevard” signs that will crop up around the country.