Texas Judge Blocks Naming Street For Cesar Chavez Amid Fears Of The ‘Minority Becoming A Majority’
Yesterday a Texas judge blocked the city of San Antonio from renaming a street after Cesar Chavez, the late labor activist who fought for higher wages and better working conditions for migrant farm workers. The restraining order came just days after the City Council voted to rename Durango Street, one of San Antonio’s main thoroughfares. Chavez was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor, for his work on civil rights and is a hero to many in the city, which is 61 percent Hispanic. Yet a state district judge sided with groups that protest that naming the street after Chavez somehow interferes with “maintain
the integrity of our history.”
“It is very important that we protect the integrity of our history, and that includes objecting to changing street names,” said Bill Oliver, who represents the San Antonio Conservation Society, which sued to oppose the name change.
But Jaime Martinez, a longtime San Antonio labor leader and a former associate of Chavez, who died in 1993, disagreed.
“We’ve been waiting for fifteen years to get the renaming of a street, a major street, for Cesar Chavez,” Martinez said. “There are over 200 streets in the last 10 years that had their names changed, and there was no problem.”
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http://thinkprogress.org/2011/05/24/texas-cesar-chavez-street/