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Portland city councilors appeared eager May 26 to rename Northeast and Southeast César E. Chávez Boulevard to Campesinos Boulevard.
Councilor Loretta Smith brought an ordinance forward late last week proposing that the street be renamed after campesinos, or farmworkers, in light of a New York Times investigation published in March that found Chávez, a co-founder of the United Farm Workers union, had sexually abused multiple young girls and women throughout his career. Smith told WW on May 22 she’d engaged with a number of important stakeholders while developing the ordinance, and said Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste, or PCUN, was central to the name selection.
“The name ‘Campesinos Boulevard’ centers the farmworkers themselves,” Smith said at the hearing, “the people whose labor feeds our communities, who organized [to] shape this movement, and whose contributions deserve to be honored collectively, not through one individual alone.”
Constituents at the hearing spoke overwhelmingly in support of the name change—a striking contrast to online calls to change the boulevard back to 39th Avenue.
Said Marta Guembes, a Por La Causa Committee co-chair who also helped lead the effort to rename 39th to César E. Chávez: “The ordinance before you today is about telling a fuller truth and choosing values larger than any one symbolic individual.”
A few residents opposed the resolution because it waives certain city ordinances. The Public Works Committee sent the resolution to the full council with a unanimous recommendation to pass.