The Interstate Debacle

I’ve been watching with interest for the last month or so as the City of Portland’s proposal to rename Interstate Avenue became a political boondoggle. Although I have strong feelings on the matter, I’ve stayed out of commenting on it, largely because I am not a citizen of fair PDX, and since I don’t brook outsiders telling me what to do, I felt it only fair to practice what I preach. But the notion of rewriting history is such an anathema to me that I just can’t keep my mouth shut. It’s a pretty typical failing of mine.

For those who haven’t followed along, in September of this year, the City of Portland proposed renaming Interstate Avenue for the labor activist Cesar Chavez. Chavez is best known for having begun a unionization of farm laborers, and is considered a heroic figure by many in the Mexican and Latino communities. If the renaming takes place, Chavez would join Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King as the third non-Portlander to have a street renamed for them in recent memory. After having… questionably… rushed through the renaming of Portland Boulevard to Rosa Parks Way in 2006, this renaming struck home with many on Interstate as highly inappropriate. For one, the neighborhoods had recently emerged with a new and positive identity hinged on the Interstate name, thanks largely to the opening of a light rail line down the avenue in 2003. Dubbed “Interstate MAX”, it helped to cement the identity as a positive moniker at long last. But more recently, the city began considering an up-zoning program that would replace large swaths of single and dual story housing and commercial space with 4-and-higher story condominiums and apartments. Already agitated by this dramatic proposed change, the city stepped in to suggest a street renaming to go along with it.

Apparently, someone turned the water up too fast on the frog, and the frog jumped.

Angry residents have now crowded at least two public meetings to voice opposition. Lined up against them are activists from the Mexican and Latino community who believe that Chavez deserves an honored place in Portland, despite having no direct personal connection to the city. While some got ugly and uttered harsh words regarding the place of the Mexican community within the city, there is a much less harsh truth behind the rhetoric; whether or not you agree Chavez ought to be honored, there is no connection in any way between Chavez and the neighborhoods along Interstate. The black, Polish, German, or Scandanavian heritages are or were all important to this street, but no Latin cultures have ever had a strong presence here. There is no relevance between Chavez and Insterstate, unlike, say, Rosa parks or MLK and the streets that their names were applied to.

In the end, though, any renaming is something that should be undertaken with care. To add to the history of a city is one thing, but to rewrite it is another. It is said that those who forget their past are doomed to repeat it; a casual attitude about history is foolishness. Renaming Interstate to Cesar Chavez Boulevard isn’t a bad idea because Interstate is a distinctive name, or because Chavez doesn’t deserve honoring, but because of the process such a renaming reflects; it’s a process of systemic history editing. (For more excellent coverage of the history of Interstate, as well as the name change controversy, see this post at Dan Haneckow’s excellent blog, Cafe Unknown.)

Sadly, it seems a human penchant to rewrite our past in an attempt to make a more expedient present. How often we bow to the force of PC — during WW1, it was fashionable to bash Germans, and many a Schmidt became a Smith, and you stuck Liberty Cabbage on your hot-dog, instead of Saurkraut on your Bratwurst. How the Hamburger survived with it’s name intact is only to be guessed. I am also reminded of a peculiarly suburban plague, the “named subdivision”. I can’t count how many times that a plaque on a pile of bricks at the corner of the latest cracker-box subdivision gets accepted by new residents as if it is a neighborhood identity rather than a simple real-estate branding that a developer installed. “I live in the Arbor Arms neighborhood”. The what? A new one opened up at the rate of about one a week during the 1990s, and none of them had any relation to history. Thankfully, when TriMet extended light rail to Washington County, they resurrected station names from the old Oregon Electric interurban whose right-of-way it used, not only preserving but rediscovering the history of the area.

It seems to me that the City of Portland didn’t anticipate the kind of reaction it would get with this renaming proposal. Some Commissioners — notably the crotchety Randy Leonard — are already triangulating their way into an escape route that lets them out of renaming Interstate without giving up on the idea of naming a street for Chavez. Perhaps he remembers, as does a historian friend of mine, the potential third rail that can be uncovered when you threaten a neighborhood in Portland with drastic change; the Mount Hood Freeway proposal of the 1970s lead to the “neighborhood association revolution” that catapulted Neil Goldschmidt into power and swept away the stodgy status-quo Portland government of the era. The only surprise to me is, how long until mayoral wannabe Sam Adams rides Randy’s triangulating coat-tails on this one?