By Sean Cruz
There was little sign of Cesar Chavez in the Council chambers, even when the “Yes” panels were speaking. None had thought to bring a photograph to the hearing….
No one among those in the first panel up in support of renaming 39th Avenue identified himself/herself as a member of the mostly-secret Chavez Boulevard Committee, although until recently, Portland School Board member Martin Gonzalez’ picture was prominently displayed on the Committee’s website, indicating actual membership….
Former Mayor Tom Potter led off for the Yesses…God bless him, God love him, there is no doubt as to Tom Potter’s sincere wish to rename a Portland street for Cesar Chavez….
The fatal flaw from the beginning was the bad advice he received, which was maximized by way too much stubbornness into this street renaming obsession….
I recognize the former mayor’s sincere wish; my sincere wish is that rather than locking in on renaming a street, he had chosen instead to pour his energy into educating and mobilizing Portland to make a difference, somehow and somewhere, in the lives of actual farmworkers….
Having done that first, a fitting tribute to Cesar Chavez would likely have emerged organically and from the community itself….
…and I wish Tom would stop referring to Cesar Chavez solely as a “Latino” or “American”…neither label was what got Chavez arrested or prompted his activism…it was his Mexican face, and his life as a Mexican-American migrant farmworker, let’s be clear about that….
The former mayor’s closing restated his erroneous assumption that there is “a” community, and that we must all be alike….
“…ask you to give something back to a community, a community that has given us an American hero, a civil rights leader, a labor leader, an American of humble origins. Give us all a street named Cesar E Chavez Boulevard. Thank you.”
Zero points, Tom. We could have gotten something done that made a difference. You should have asked the question: “How are the children? How are the farmworkers’ children?”
Next up was Portland School Board Member Martin Gonzalez, stating that he was not a Boulevard Committee member, but not explaining why his photo was on their website for much of the past two years….
Mr. Gonzalez explained that a Latino presence in what is now the US goes back to Spanish settlement in the 16th Century….
Most Americans believe that history began on these continents with the arrival of the Europeans early in the 16th Century….
The spread of the Spanish language into North America certainly is the result of Spanish settlement, but in Mexico alone more than fifty indigenous languages are still in common use today…and if Oregon had become a state only ten years sooner, it’s southern border would have been with the Republic of Mexico and its northernmost state, Alta California….
The Portland School Board member earned an “F” for scholarship, and then quoted a passage from Martin Luther King, Jr’s Letter from the Birmingham Jail instead of quoting any words from Cesar Chavez himself….
Mr. Gonzalez did not identify himself as a Mexican American, but a Latino…maybe you have to do that to get elected in this town, but the point is that this first panel did not include a single Mexican American…you’d think you would want to have one or two of those, if you are going to honor a Mexican American with the stature of Cesar Chavez….
Third up was Portland Development Commissioner Berta Ferran, probably a principle source of the bad advice the former mayor has been getting, speaking as a private citizen, as a Cuban refugee…now it starts to get complicated….
Ms Ferran: “Cesar Chavez is not just a Latino leader, he is an American hero.”
As Treasurer and a Board member of the Hispanic Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, Ms Ferran had to parse her words carefully….
http://www.hmccoregon.com/about/board/
Although Cesar Chavez has been often described as a Hispanic or Hispanic American, the Hispanic Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and its 618 member businesses have stayed completely away from the street renaming debate, indicating that the Chavez Boulevard Committee is on its own, as far as Hispanics are concerned, and that none of its member businesses desire to be located on a street named Chavez….
http://www.hmccoregon.com/membership/list.php
This would have been an important clarifying question to raise, may have settled for some the confusion between Latino and Hispanic communities….
Ms Ferran described Cesar Chavez: “He is a man who is a labor leader who fought for better wages and better conditions for the workers of America,” indicating that she really does not know too much specifically about Chavez, farm workers or the history of labor in America….
The first “Yes” panel wrapped up with Jeanna Frazzini, Executive Director of Basic Rights Oregon, who described BRO as “champions of equality and justice.”
Ms Frazzini stated: “We must face those in our community who marginalize immigrants, deprive them of due process and deny them equal opportunity.”
Note that Ms Frazzini and BRO have not participated in any actual campaign to address the unjust living and working conditions of Oregon farmworkers, and have not spoken in defense of farmworkers at any point in the firestorm of invective targeting mostly Mexican immigrants….
Each of these speakers apparently feels that he or she understands the plight of Oregon farmworkers and the obstacles to achieving justice well enough that they can smugly roll the dice regarding farmworkers’ futures with renaming a street….
The fact is that farmworkers will need support from the very same people that this street renaming effort is alienating.
Since none of the Chavez Boulevard Committee or their supporters are actively working to achieve justice for farmworkers, their rhetoric is a little stale and even condescending, but the real issue is how much damage they are willing to cause efforts to improve the living and working conditions of farmworkers in Oregon.
I’m still searching…more comments on the "Yes" panels coming soon....
Link to the City Council hearing video archive:
http://www.portlandonline.com/index.cfm?c=49508
Sean Cruz writes BlogoliticalSean at http://www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Searching for Cesar Chavez in Portland, pt 3, "Observations and reflections on the City Council hearing"
By Sean Cruz
Prior to hearing the invited and public testimony on the proposed ordnance renaming 39th Avenue, the Council heard comments from City staff members and various parties with their fingerprints on the “process”, and voted on accepting the report of the Planning Commission (which did no actual planning and no research on its own).
There was a consistent thread through these “process” comments that suggested the inevitability of renaming a street—just about any street—was a foregone conclusion…it was a matter of honing down three streets chosen at random to determine the actual “winner”.
Highlights from this portion of the agenda included:
A panel of mutually-congratulatory white folks describing their contributions to the “process” of selecting a street to sacrifice on the Altar of Empty Gestures….
Among them a project manager, blissfully unaware of how badly managed this project has been, enthusiastically offered up a slide show of empty patches of asphalt along 39th Avenue…you had to be there….
A consultant hired to mediate who appears to have spent far more time on assembling her self-congratulatory remarks than on any actual mediation….
A Historian Panel that lacked a single real historian, focused on the history of Portland street naming and renaming, completely overlooked the history of the man being “honored”….
A Planning Commission that did no actual planning throughout the entire process presented a report to City Council that summed Cesar Chavez up in a single word: “Latino.”
Note to the Planning Commission: “Latino” refers to people whose Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking ancestors began arriving in the Americas in the 16th Century, murdering and enslaving its inhabitants throughout the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico and across two continents, including the area that is now known as the American Southwest. It is not a pretty story…you should try reading a book now and then….
2nd Note to the Planning Commission: There is a presumption that renaming 39th Avenue will increase pedestrian and vehicular traffic along the street, but having conducted no traffic impact study (see project manager comment above), no one in the neighborhoods knows what to expect or how issues of safety, noise and air quality will be mitigated….
The months-long work of City staff, conducted completely within a Portland bubble, the clueless project manager, the Historian Panel Without Historians, the mediator who did not mediate and the Planning Commission that did not plan, produced two documents for the Council’s consideration, but not a single photograph of Cesar Chavez or farmworkers was in evidence…even the Committee Once Bent on Renaming Interstate failed to bring a photograph of Cesar Chavez to the hearing….
What could possibly be wrong with a process and an outcome like this?
The City’s process has stirred up a storm of anger directed at immigrants and farmworkers in general, and against Mexican and Mexican American people in particular, and yet the Office of Human Relations and the Human Rights Commission has let it all flow unchallenged and unanswered….
For Oregon farmworkers, perhaps the most important City staff failure was the absence of any input or activity from the Office of Human Relations or the Human Rights Commission to counter the racist rhetoric, and the fact that this Portland obsession drained the life out of any hope for meaningful reforms that would improve their living and working conditions within the next two years.
While the Director of the Office of Human Relations, Maria Lisa Johnson, was seen skulking in the Council Chamber recesses and in and out of various Commissioners’ offices prior to and during the hearing, she had nothing to say about the bigoted and racist comments the street-renaming obsession has generated.
The fact that she has been in the bag for renaming a street, beginning with Interstate Avenue, from the beginning, and was as quick as anyone else to accuse opponents of renaming Interstate as bigots, prior to her appointment to “lead” the City’s Office of Human Relations, points directly to the problem with this office.
If nothing else, you have to credit the City’s street-renaming “process” with being consistent: consistently ad hoc, consistently contrived, consistently faulty and consistently driven by City Hall insiders, insiders who are completely consistent in their desires to remain anonymous, at least until the street-renaming parade takes place along 39th Avenue….
More comments on the Council hearing coming soon….
Sean Cruz writes BlogoliticalSean at http://www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com
Prior to hearing the invited and public testimony on the proposed ordnance renaming 39th Avenue, the Council heard comments from City staff members and various parties with their fingerprints on the “process”, and voted on accepting the report of the Planning Commission (which did no actual planning and no research on its own).
There was a consistent thread through these “process” comments that suggested the inevitability of renaming a street—just about any street—was a foregone conclusion…it was a matter of honing down three streets chosen at random to determine the actual “winner”.
Highlights from this portion of the agenda included:
A panel of mutually-congratulatory white folks describing their contributions to the “process” of selecting a street to sacrifice on the Altar of Empty Gestures….
Among them a project manager, blissfully unaware of how badly managed this project has been, enthusiastically offered up a slide show of empty patches of asphalt along 39th Avenue…you had to be there….
A consultant hired to mediate who appears to have spent far more time on assembling her self-congratulatory remarks than on any actual mediation….
A Historian Panel that lacked a single real historian, focused on the history of Portland street naming and renaming, completely overlooked the history of the man being “honored”….
A Planning Commission that did no actual planning throughout the entire process presented a report to City Council that summed Cesar Chavez up in a single word: “Latino.”
Note to the Planning Commission: “Latino” refers to people whose Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking ancestors began arriving in the Americas in the 16th Century, murdering and enslaving its inhabitants throughout the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico and across two continents, including the area that is now known as the American Southwest. It is not a pretty story…you should try reading a book now and then….
2nd Note to the Planning Commission: There is a presumption that renaming 39th Avenue will increase pedestrian and vehicular traffic along the street, but having conducted no traffic impact study (see project manager comment above), no one in the neighborhoods knows what to expect or how issues of safety, noise and air quality will be mitigated….
The months-long work of City staff, conducted completely within a Portland bubble, the clueless project manager, the Historian Panel Without Historians, the mediator who did not mediate and the Planning Commission that did not plan, produced two documents for the Council’s consideration, but not a single photograph of Cesar Chavez or farmworkers was in evidence…even the Committee Once Bent on Renaming Interstate failed to bring a photograph of Cesar Chavez to the hearing….
What could possibly be wrong with a process and an outcome like this?
The City’s process has stirred up a storm of anger directed at immigrants and farmworkers in general, and against Mexican and Mexican American people in particular, and yet the Office of Human Relations and the Human Rights Commission has let it all flow unchallenged and unanswered….
For Oregon farmworkers, perhaps the most important City staff failure was the absence of any input or activity from the Office of Human Relations or the Human Rights Commission to counter the racist rhetoric, and the fact that this Portland obsession drained the life out of any hope for meaningful reforms that would improve their living and working conditions within the next two years.
While the Director of the Office of Human Relations, Maria Lisa Johnson, was seen skulking in the Council Chamber recesses and in and out of various Commissioners’ offices prior to and during the hearing, she had nothing to say about the bigoted and racist comments the street-renaming obsession has generated.
The fact that she has been in the bag for renaming a street, beginning with Interstate Avenue, from the beginning, and was as quick as anyone else to accuse opponents of renaming Interstate as bigots, prior to her appointment to “lead” the City’s Office of Human Relations, points directly to the problem with this office.
If nothing else, you have to credit the City’s street-renaming “process” with being consistent: consistently ad hoc, consistently contrived, consistently faulty and consistently driven by City Hall insiders, insiders who are completely consistent in their desires to remain anonymous, at least until the street-renaming parade takes place along 39th Avenue….
More comments on the Council hearing coming soon….
Sean Cruz writes BlogoliticalSean at http://www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Searching for Cesar Chavez in Portland, pt 2
By Sean Cruz
I was invited to speak before the Portland City Council last night, who were conducting their own search for Cesar Chavez….
I want to thank Mayor Adams and the Council for providing the opportunity, very sincerely.
I provided written testimony to the Council, but decided to speak without referring to notes.
Unfortunately, I ran out of speaking time before the call to action part….
The sad fact of the evening was that the discussion was so frozen into the question of renaming a street, that no one would have heard the call, not even in the People’s Republic of Multnomah.
Supporters of renaming a street dream of cruising up and down 39th Avenue….
It will make them feel good about themselves, feel like they are actually doing something to benefit farmworkers they will never meet and causes they will never join….
…cruise to the North, cruise to the South…
…convenient shopping either way…
--------------
Searching for Cesar, pt 3 “Reflections on the City Council hearing” coming soon
The search continues….
Testimony for Portland City CouncilJune 23, 2009
My name is Sean Cruz; I am a resident of NE Portland.
Like Cesar Chavez, I am the son and grandson of Mexican farm workers; like Cesar Chavez, I am a Mexican American, a US citizen with Mexican roots; like Cesar Chavez, I am a Chicano. I found my own Chicano identity through Cesar Chavez, through the National Chicano Movement in California in the 1960’s.
Throughout this long Portland argument, Cesar Chavez has been variously described as a "Latino", as a "Hispanic", as a "not Hispanic, but an American", as an "American" and as a "Latino American", but never as a Mexican American or a Chicano.
None of these terms are synonyms, yet in Portland they are used interchangeably to describe very different—even profoundly different—cultures. Where is the honor in that?
In 1954, in Brown vs Board of Education, the school desegregation case, African
Americans gained protection under the 14th Amendment.
Mexican Americans did not gain the same protection until 1970, in Cisneros vs Corpus Christi School District, where Mexican Americans were finally recognized in US courts as a unique, distinct ethnicity, as a People.
Is it any wonder that our children, our families suffer the highest high school dropout rates?
Portland, overwhelmingly white, is just about 40 years behind.... Mexicans, Mexican Americans have not yet gained recognition here in Portland as a People.
For all of the talk in respect to diversity, throughout the many pages of the documents before you in items 860-1 and 860-2 there is but a single reference to Cesar Chavez’ race, culture and ethnicity, and that is the word “Latino.” Where is the honor in that?
I recognize that two years ago, Mayor Potter and the Council very sincerely wanted to express respect for the life and achievements of Cesar Chavez in a significant, permanent public way, but frankly the Council was in receipt of some very bad advice, which brings us to where we are this evening.
With all due respect, where is the honor in accepting these document from five well-meaning-but-poorly-informed white people who cannot tell us apart?
I hope that you, Mayor Adams and members of the Council, will use this time to obtain a far better understanding of precisely who you are talking about when the subject is “Cesar Chavez” or “farmworkers” or “Cesar Chavez’ people” and why it is far too early to celebrate, not while farmworkers across the entire USA continue to suffer unjust and even inhumane living and working conditions.
This street-renaming obsession, focused entirely within the City of Portland, where there is little actual farm work, has cost farmworker advocates working to remove the injustices written into Oregon state law the entire past two years.
Had this street-renaming effort been focused on making a difference in real lives, we might have accomplished something real and we might have had something real to celebrate tonight….
The only wage earners in Oregon who have no right to overtime pay for working beyond 40 hours a week are our farmworkers, our mostly-Mexican farmworkers.
Oregon’s mostly-Mexican farmworkers won the right to meal and rest breaks during the workday only five years ago, the only population in the state denied that fundamental right.
Farm labor in the USA is not a “Latino” experience, or a “Hispanic” experience and not necessarily an “immigrant” experience.
Historically and to the present day, farm labor is by a wide margin a Mexican experience, a Mexican-American experience, and in California, where Cesar Chavez family and my family worked the fields, a Chicano experience, and it is 100% an experience of deep, abject poverty and injustice, conditions that continue to exist today.
“Hispanic” and “Latino” refer to cultures that originated in Europe and mixed here one way or another, beginning in the 16th century.
Before there was an Oregon, before there was a USA, before there was a Mexico, before there were continents named after a Portuguese sailor, our ancestors were here and we were a People. We were many Peoples.
Chicanos, like Cesar Chavez, identify with our aboriginal roots rather than the European. Our ancestors did not cross the Atlantic ocean to come to America.
All Chicanos are Mexican Americans, but not all Mexican Americans are Chicanos. You cannot tell us apart by looking at us.
These facts explain in part why the Portland Hispanic Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce has been completely silent on the street-renaming issue over the entire past two years. There are no Chicanos over there, and no farmworkers either.
The problems
The first problem, going back to the beginning of this mess, was the failure to recognize that there is no monolithic Hispanic or Latino community. Racially and ethnically, culturally and by nationality, we are the most diverse people on earth, and we are each equally proud of who we are.
The second major problem is that this discussion ended as soon as it began, focused from the start on street-renaming as the only permissible way to honor Hispanic Latino American Cesar Chavez in the City of Portland, with every other idea frozen out.
The third problem was the failure to educate the public as to the life and achievements of Cesar Chavez, and as to the living and working conditions of farmworkers both then and now, which is related to the fourth problem.
The fourth problem (and I’m not referring to the specifics of the City’s legion of process problems) was the fact that the City’s process opened the door to the anti-Mexican and anti-immigrant insults and bigotry, and then stood aside and let the inflammatory rhetoric flow.
The City’s own Office of Human Relations and Human Rights Commission simply vanished.
The fifth problem is that if the same amount of energy had been expended on educating the public to the living and working conditions of Cesar Chavez’s people in the present day we might have had an opportunity to make meaningful change in the 2009 legislative session.
The Oregon legislature is about to end its 2009 session without addressing the issue, which means that Oregon farmworkers cannot possibly win the right to overtime pay for overtime work until the 2011 session.
That is a lot of hours of unpaid overtime, but here’s a nice stretch of asphalt, and a whole big pile of animosity to help you forget your troubles….
The sixth problem now facing Oregon farmworker advocates is how to develop forward momentum in the face of an almost totally white legislature that lacks any champions for farmworkers.
It was Cesar’s Mexican face that got him arrested for refusing to sit in the balcony, in the Mexican section of a movie theater, this U.S. Navy veteran.
In a town and in an era where signs saying “No Mexicans allowed” were commonplace, where the US farm labor force was mostly made up of Mexican men, women and children, whole families, grandparents, even pregnant women, enduring grinding poverty and hard labor, Cesar Chavez, Mexican American Chicano Cesar Chavez, short hoe in hand, began to organize the farmworkers, in fields like these….
Cesar Chavez’s struggle and his campaigns were defined by his life experience as a brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking, Mexican-American migrant farmworker, a person who far too many Americans would categorize even today as a wetback, and they do….
We’ve all seen and heard the bigoted comments that this street-renaming fiasco has generated.
The only persons that those insults are directed towards are Mexican people, Mexican-American people, like Cesar Chavez, like me. Papers or no papers, people can be very specific about who they do not like.
One would think that the City would have charged its own Office of Human Relations or its Human Rights Commission to mediate the conflict, to follow its own mission statement, to work to reduce the expression of bigotry and anti-Mexican discrimination that the City’s own highly-dysfunctional and mostly ad hoc street-renaming process set in motion, but that did not happen.
Our Mexican American experience is unique to us, and Cesar Chavez brought that experience out of the shadows, brought us out of the shadows, Mexican people, Mexican Americans, Chicanos.
There is no honor in being told “you people all look alike.”
Oregon’s mostly-Mexican farmworkers remain in the shadows.
Oregon’s mostly-Mexican farmworkers remain the state’s only population that is prohibited by law from the right to overtime pay for working more than 40 hours a week.
As we meet today, the New York State Senate (is preparing to) vote on a bill that would remove from state statute the race-based exclusionary laws that deny farmworkers the right to a day off from work, that deny farmworkers and no other workers the right to overtime pay for working more than 40 hours a week.
The state of New York is home to a large duck liver pate industry, where farm workers are required to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, force-feeding ducks.
Worse, a characteristic of the duck liver industry is that each worker is assigned the same several hundred ducks to force-feed three times a day each for 22 consecutive days. They cannot have another worker substitute so someone can get a day off “because it upsets the ducks.”
I ask you today to choose to make more than a symbolic gesture, to make instead a real difference in the lives of farmworkers, sending a message of support to the farm workers of New York state.
I ask the Portland City Council to honor the courage of Cesar Chavez by calling for a City-wide boycott of duck liver products until the laws excluding farmworkers from the rights and protections that all other workers enjoy are removed from statute.
I ask the Portland City Council to honor the sacrifice of Cesar Chavez by calling on the Oregon Legislature to remove the provisions in Oregon statute that exclude farmworkers from the right to overtime pay for overtime work.
Thank you.
Sean Cruz
June 23, 2009
Testimony for Portland City Council
I was invited to speak before the Portland City Council last night, who were conducting their own search for Cesar Chavez….
I want to thank Mayor Adams and the Council for providing the opportunity, very sincerely.
I provided written testimony to the Council, but decided to speak without referring to notes.
Unfortunately, I ran out of speaking time before the call to action part….
The sad fact of the evening was that the discussion was so frozen into the question of renaming a street, that no one would have heard the call, not even in the People’s Republic of Multnomah.
Supporters of renaming a street dream of cruising up and down 39th Avenue….
It will make them feel good about themselves, feel like they are actually doing something to benefit farmworkers they will never meet and causes they will never join….
…cruise to the North, cruise to the South…
…convenient shopping either way…
--------------
Searching for Cesar, pt 3 “Reflections on the City Council hearing” coming soon
The search continues….
Testimony for Portland City CouncilJune 23, 2009
My name is Sean Cruz; I am a resident of NE Portland.
Like Cesar Chavez, I am the son and grandson of Mexican farm workers; like Cesar Chavez, I am a Mexican American, a US citizen with Mexican roots; like Cesar Chavez, I am a Chicano. I found my own Chicano identity through Cesar Chavez, through the National Chicano Movement in California in the 1960’s.
Throughout this long Portland argument, Cesar Chavez has been variously described as a "Latino", as a "Hispanic", as a "not Hispanic, but an American", as an "American" and as a "Latino American", but never as a Mexican American or a Chicano.
None of these terms are synonyms, yet in Portland they are used interchangeably to describe very different—even profoundly different—cultures. Where is the honor in that?
In 1954, in Brown vs Board of Education, the school desegregation case, African
Americans gained protection under the 14th Amendment.
Mexican Americans did not gain the same protection until 1970, in Cisneros vs Corpus Christi School District, where Mexican Americans were finally recognized in US courts as a unique, distinct ethnicity, as a People.
Is it any wonder that our children, our families suffer the highest high school dropout rates?
Portland, overwhelmingly white, is just about 40 years behind.... Mexicans, Mexican Americans have not yet gained recognition here in Portland as a People.
For all of the talk in respect to diversity, throughout the many pages of the documents before you in items 860-1 and 860-2 there is but a single reference to Cesar Chavez’ race, culture and ethnicity, and that is the word “Latino.” Where is the honor in that?
I recognize that two years ago, Mayor Potter and the Council very sincerely wanted to express respect for the life and achievements of Cesar Chavez in a significant, permanent public way, but frankly the Council was in receipt of some very bad advice, which brings us to where we are this evening.
With all due respect, where is the honor in accepting these document from five well-meaning-but-poorly-informed white people who cannot tell us apart?
I hope that you, Mayor Adams and members of the Council, will use this time to obtain a far better understanding of precisely who you are talking about when the subject is “Cesar Chavez” or “farmworkers” or “Cesar Chavez’ people” and why it is far too early to celebrate, not while farmworkers across the entire USA continue to suffer unjust and even inhumane living and working conditions.
This street-renaming obsession, focused entirely within the City of Portland, where there is little actual farm work, has cost farmworker advocates working to remove the injustices written into Oregon state law the entire past two years.
Had this street-renaming effort been focused on making a difference in real lives, we might have accomplished something real and we might have had something real to celebrate tonight….
The only wage earners in Oregon who have no right to overtime pay for working beyond 40 hours a week are our farmworkers, our mostly-Mexican farmworkers.
Oregon’s mostly-Mexican farmworkers won the right to meal and rest breaks during the workday only five years ago, the only population in the state denied that fundamental right.
Farm labor in the USA is not a “Latino” experience, or a “Hispanic” experience and not necessarily an “immigrant” experience.
Historically and to the present day, farm labor is by a wide margin a Mexican experience, a Mexican-American experience, and in California, where Cesar Chavez family and my family worked the fields, a Chicano experience, and it is 100% an experience of deep, abject poverty and injustice, conditions that continue to exist today.
“Hispanic” and “Latino” refer to cultures that originated in Europe and mixed here one way or another, beginning in the 16th century.
Before there was an Oregon, before there was a USA, before there was a Mexico, before there were continents named after a Portuguese sailor, our ancestors were here and we were a People. We were many Peoples.
Chicanos, like Cesar Chavez, identify with our aboriginal roots rather than the European. Our ancestors did not cross the Atlantic ocean to come to America.
All Chicanos are Mexican Americans, but not all Mexican Americans are Chicanos. You cannot tell us apart by looking at us.
These facts explain in part why the Portland Hispanic Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce has been completely silent on the street-renaming issue over the entire past two years. There are no Chicanos over there, and no farmworkers either.
The problems
The first problem, going back to the beginning of this mess, was the failure to recognize that there is no monolithic Hispanic or Latino community. Racially and ethnically, culturally and by nationality, we are the most diverse people on earth, and we are each equally proud of who we are.
The second major problem is that this discussion ended as soon as it began, focused from the start on street-renaming as the only permissible way to honor Hispanic Latino American Cesar Chavez in the City of Portland, with every other idea frozen out.
The third problem was the failure to educate the public as to the life and achievements of Cesar Chavez, and as to the living and working conditions of farmworkers both then and now, which is related to the fourth problem.
The fourth problem (and I’m not referring to the specifics of the City’s legion of process problems) was the fact that the City’s process opened the door to the anti-Mexican and anti-immigrant insults and bigotry, and then stood aside and let the inflammatory rhetoric flow.
The City’s own Office of Human Relations and Human Rights Commission simply vanished.
The fifth problem is that if the same amount of energy had been expended on educating the public to the living and working conditions of Cesar Chavez’s people in the present day we might have had an opportunity to make meaningful change in the 2009 legislative session.
The Oregon legislature is about to end its 2009 session without addressing the issue, which means that Oregon farmworkers cannot possibly win the right to overtime pay for overtime work until the 2011 session.
That is a lot of hours of unpaid overtime, but here’s a nice stretch of asphalt, and a whole big pile of animosity to help you forget your troubles….
The sixth problem now facing Oregon farmworker advocates is how to develop forward momentum in the face of an almost totally white legislature that lacks any champions for farmworkers.
It was Cesar’s Mexican face that got him arrested for refusing to sit in the balcony, in the Mexican section of a movie theater, this U.S. Navy veteran.
In a town and in an era where signs saying “No Mexicans allowed” were commonplace, where the US farm labor force was mostly made up of Mexican men, women and children, whole families, grandparents, even pregnant women, enduring grinding poverty and hard labor, Cesar Chavez, Mexican American Chicano Cesar Chavez, short hoe in hand, began to organize the farmworkers, in fields like these….
Cesar Chavez’s struggle and his campaigns were defined by his life experience as a brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking, Mexican-American migrant farmworker, a person who far too many Americans would categorize even today as a wetback, and they do….
We’ve all seen and heard the bigoted comments that this street-renaming fiasco has generated.
The only persons that those insults are directed towards are Mexican people, Mexican-American people, like Cesar Chavez, like me. Papers or no papers, people can be very specific about who they do not like.
One would think that the City would have charged its own Office of Human Relations or its Human Rights Commission to mediate the conflict, to follow its own mission statement, to work to reduce the expression of bigotry and anti-Mexican discrimination that the City’s own highly-dysfunctional and mostly ad hoc street-renaming process set in motion, but that did not happen.
Our Mexican American experience is unique to us, and Cesar Chavez brought that experience out of the shadows, brought us out of the shadows, Mexican people, Mexican Americans, Chicanos.
There is no honor in being told “you people all look alike.”
Oregon’s mostly-Mexican farmworkers remain in the shadows.
Oregon’s mostly-Mexican farmworkers remain the state’s only population that is prohibited by law from the right to overtime pay for working more than 40 hours a week.
As we meet today, the New York State Senate (is preparing to) vote on a bill that would remove from state statute the race-based exclusionary laws that deny farmworkers the right to a day off from work, that deny farmworkers and no other workers the right to overtime pay for working more than 40 hours a week.
The state of New York is home to a large duck liver pate industry, where farm workers are required to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, force-feeding ducks.
Worse, a characteristic of the duck liver industry is that each worker is assigned the same several hundred ducks to force-feed three times a day each for 22 consecutive days. They cannot have another worker substitute so someone can get a day off “because it upsets the ducks.”
I ask you today to choose to make more than a symbolic gesture, to make instead a real difference in the lives of farmworkers, sending a message of support to the farm workers of New York state.
I ask the Portland City Council to honor the courage of Cesar Chavez by calling for a City-wide boycott of duck liver products until the laws excluding farmworkers from the rights and protections that all other workers enjoy are removed from statute.
I ask the Portland City Council to honor the sacrifice of Cesar Chavez by calling on the Oregon Legislature to remove the provisions in Oregon statute that exclude farmworkers from the right to overtime pay for overtime work.
Thank you.
Sean Cruz
June 23, 2009
Testimony for Portland City Council
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Searching for Cesar Chavez in Portland, Oregon
By Sean Cruz
I am searching for Cesar Chavez in Portland, Oregon.
Cesar Chavez was a Mexican American farm worker, son and grandson of Mexican farm workers, and a Chicano, like myself.
Cesar Chavez, the spirit of Cesar Chavez, ought to be easy to find…if you know what you are looking for…I found my own Chicano identity, you see, through Cesar Chavez, through the Chicano Movement in California in the 1960’s.
The Cesar Chavez they are talking about renaming a street for in Portland must be a different person than the one I know.
In this long Portland discussion, Cesar Chavez has been described as a "Latino", as a "Hispanic", as a "not Hispanic, but an American", as an "American" and as a "Latino American", but never as a Mexican American or a Chicano, not even by the people who claim to own the Chavez-honoring franchise.
It was his Mexican face that got him arrested for refusing to sit in the theater balcony, in the Mexican section, and nothing else.
Cesar Chavez’s struggle and his campaigns were defined by his life experience as a brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking, Mexican-American migrant farmworker, a person who far too many Americans would categorize even today as a wetback, and they do….
We’ve all seen and heard the bigoted comments that this street-renaming fiasco has generated.
The only persons that those bigoted comments are directed towards are Mexican people, Mexican-American people, like Cesar Chavez, like me.
Portland State University has a Department of Chicano and Latino Studies, where “Emphasis is on the experience of the Chicano and other Latinos as residents and citizens in the United States…Graduates with a certificate in Chicano/Latino studies will have…gained important insight into a very different culture within U.S. borders.”
This fact explains in part why the Portland Hispanic Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce has been completely silent on the street-renaming issue over the entire past two years. There are no Chicanos over there, and no farmworkers either.
In two years of kicking the street-renaming can-of-worms through town, what insights have been gained?
Most Portlanders in this street-renaming fiasco, completely ignorant of the fact that Hispanic and Latino cultures are not all the same, use these terms interchangeably to describe significantly different cultures, as if they are synonyms. There is no honor in that.
Chicanos are the warrior class. Not everyone likes to hear that. Cesar Chavez was a Chicano.
Farm labor in the USA is not a “Latino” experience, or a “Hispanic” experience and not necessarily an “immigrant” experience.
Historically and to the present day, farm labor is by a wide margin a Mexican experience, a Mexican-American experience, and in California, where Cesar Chavez family and my family worked the fields, a Chicano experience, and it is 100% an experience of deep, abject poverty and injustice, conditions that continue to exist today.
There is no honor in being told “you people all look alike.”
Our experience is unique to us, and Cesar Chavez brought that experience out of the shadows, brought us out of the shadows, Mexican people, Mexican Americans, Chicanos.
In Portland, Oregon’s mostly-Mexican farmworkers remain in the shadows, and the City Council and the Boulevard Renaming Committee have done nothing to bring about change where it matters.
Oregon’s mostly-Mexican farmworkers remain the state’s only population that is prohibited by law from the right to overtime pay for working more than 40 hours a week.
Oregon’s mostly-Mexican farmworkers won the right to meal and rest breaks during the workday only five years ago, the only population in the state denied that fundamental right.
When the City Council meets on Tuesday, there may be farmworkers in the audience. What will they have gained at the end of the day? The right to overtime pay? Protection for the sexual harassment that these mostly-Mexican women farmworkers suffer in the fields and orchards? Any meaningful change to their living and working conditions?
The City of Portland offers them a stretch of asphalt instead, a victory only for the handful of City Hall insiders who are keeping their heads down until after the Council makes its decision.
Important note: The Boulevard Renaming Committee recently took down all of the photos from its website that might identify who its members are, all those City Hall insiders failing in the courage department, too.
Renaming a street against the will of the people who live there while failing to address the living and working conditions of farmworkers with anything more than rhetoric conveys no honor to Cesar Chavez.
Renaming a street without a single Mexican business or architectural feature, and with no Mexican food along its entire length is no way to honor Cesar Chavez.
It's not much better than the Boulevard Committee's boneheaded choice of Interstate Avenue for "honoring" Cesar Chavez, where the only sources of Mexican food was Taco Bell and Taco Time, two corporate franchises.
Until recently, Taco Bell was the subject of a lengthy, bitter boycott because of it's opposition to a 1-cent pay increase for farmworkers. That information never made it into the Portland "honoring" discussion.
The Chavez Boulevard Committee, which mostly consists of City Hall insiders and people without a drop of Mexican blood flowing in their veins, demanded that Interstate Avenue be renamed, which would have been fine for Taco Bell, but an insult to Mexican people.
The Boulevard Committee made the claim that failing to rename a Portland street would be an insult to Latinos and Hispanics, and the City Council bought it
Most people are simply indifferent to the living and working conditions of farmworkers.
Cesar Chavez recognized that in order to overcome that indifference, that American indifference, he had to educate the public.
So far, I’m not seeing much in Portland that gives a clue to Cesar Chavez, but I’m going to keep searching….
I am searching for Cesar Chavez in Portland, Oregon.
Cesar Chavez was a Mexican American farm worker, son and grandson of Mexican farm workers, and a Chicano, like myself.
Cesar Chavez, the spirit of Cesar Chavez, ought to be easy to find…if you know what you are looking for…I found my own Chicano identity, you see, through Cesar Chavez, through the Chicano Movement in California in the 1960’s.
The Cesar Chavez they are talking about renaming a street for in Portland must be a different person than the one I know.
In this long Portland discussion, Cesar Chavez has been described as a "Latino", as a "Hispanic", as a "not Hispanic, but an American", as an "American" and as a "Latino American", but never as a Mexican American or a Chicano, not even by the people who claim to own the Chavez-honoring franchise.
It was his Mexican face that got him arrested for refusing to sit in the theater balcony, in the Mexican section, and nothing else.
Cesar Chavez’s struggle and his campaigns were defined by his life experience as a brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking, Mexican-American migrant farmworker, a person who far too many Americans would categorize even today as a wetback, and they do….
We’ve all seen and heard the bigoted comments that this street-renaming fiasco has generated.
The only persons that those bigoted comments are directed towards are Mexican people, Mexican-American people, like Cesar Chavez, like me.
Portland State University has a Department of Chicano and Latino Studies, where “Emphasis is on the experience of the Chicano and other Latinos as residents and citizens in the United States…Graduates with a certificate in Chicano/Latino studies will have…gained important insight into a very different culture within U.S. borders.”
This fact explains in part why the Portland Hispanic Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce has been completely silent on the street-renaming issue over the entire past two years. There are no Chicanos over there, and no farmworkers either.
In two years of kicking the street-renaming can-of-worms through town, what insights have been gained?
Most Portlanders in this street-renaming fiasco, completely ignorant of the fact that Hispanic and Latino cultures are not all the same, use these terms interchangeably to describe significantly different cultures, as if they are synonyms. There is no honor in that.
Chicanos are the warrior class. Not everyone likes to hear that. Cesar Chavez was a Chicano.
Farm labor in the USA is not a “Latino” experience, or a “Hispanic” experience and not necessarily an “immigrant” experience.
Historically and to the present day, farm labor is by a wide margin a Mexican experience, a Mexican-American experience, and in California, where Cesar Chavez family and my family worked the fields, a Chicano experience, and it is 100% an experience of deep, abject poverty and injustice, conditions that continue to exist today.
There is no honor in being told “you people all look alike.”
Our experience is unique to us, and Cesar Chavez brought that experience out of the shadows, brought us out of the shadows, Mexican people, Mexican Americans, Chicanos.
In Portland, Oregon’s mostly-Mexican farmworkers remain in the shadows, and the City Council and the Boulevard Renaming Committee have done nothing to bring about change where it matters.
Oregon’s mostly-Mexican farmworkers remain the state’s only population that is prohibited by law from the right to overtime pay for working more than 40 hours a week.
Oregon’s mostly-Mexican farmworkers won the right to meal and rest breaks during the workday only five years ago, the only population in the state denied that fundamental right.
When the City Council meets on Tuesday, there may be farmworkers in the audience. What will they have gained at the end of the day? The right to overtime pay? Protection for the sexual harassment that these mostly-Mexican women farmworkers suffer in the fields and orchards? Any meaningful change to their living and working conditions?
The City of Portland offers them a stretch of asphalt instead, a victory only for the handful of City Hall insiders who are keeping their heads down until after the Council makes its decision.
Important note: The Boulevard Renaming Committee recently took down all of the photos from its website that might identify who its members are, all those City Hall insiders failing in the courage department, too.
Renaming a street against the will of the people who live there while failing to address the living and working conditions of farmworkers with anything more than rhetoric conveys no honor to Cesar Chavez.
Renaming a street without a single Mexican business or architectural feature, and with no Mexican food along its entire length is no way to honor Cesar Chavez.
It's not much better than the Boulevard Committee's boneheaded choice of Interstate Avenue for "honoring" Cesar Chavez, where the only sources of Mexican food was Taco Bell and Taco Time, two corporate franchises.
Until recently, Taco Bell was the subject of a lengthy, bitter boycott because of it's opposition to a 1-cent pay increase for farmworkers. That information never made it into the Portland "honoring" discussion.
The Chavez Boulevard Committee, which mostly consists of City Hall insiders and people without a drop of Mexican blood flowing in their veins, demanded that Interstate Avenue be renamed, which would have been fine for Taco Bell, but an insult to Mexican people.
The Boulevard Committee made the claim that failing to rename a Portland street would be an insult to Latinos and Hispanics, and the City Council bought it
Most people are simply indifferent to the living and working conditions of farmworkers.
Cesar Chavez recognized that in order to overcome that indifference, that American indifference, he had to educate the public.
So far, I’m not seeing much in Portland that gives a clue to Cesar Chavez, but I’m going to keep searching….
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Portland Cesar Chavez honoring effort does not need to be a dead end
By Sean Cruz
Portland, Oregon—The Oregonian’s Multnomah County columnist Anna Griffin wrote “Chavez Boulevard? Dead end street is more likely”, here:
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/anna_griffin/index.ssf/2009/03/chavez_boulevard_dead_end_stre.html#comments
…prompting my Mexican-American, Chicano comments, here:
March 21, 2009
The Committee-Once-Bent-on-Renaming-Interstate-Avenue has never asked the City or the County or the State to put other possible public property naming options on the table, and Portland remains stuck in the mire largely because the White Folks in Charge at all levels of Oregon government have been so fearful of alienating a potential voting bloc.
The street-focused effort will win no awards for creativity or imagination, in part because there is no major street in Portland that is a natural fit for a Mexican American hero.
Nothing underscores this point more than the fact that the Committee is equally good with Broadway, 39th, Grand or Interstate Avenue, so far….
The Committee’s failure to describe Chavez accurately or to acknowledge that he was of Mexican ancestry, or that his achievements stemmed from his great courage and his experiences in a Mexican migrant farm worker family, working in the USA, has made the honoring process more complicated than it has ever needed to be.
The best they have done is to state that he was an American civil rights leader.
That falls far short of honoring Chavez’ legacy, and points to the core failure of the Committee co-chairs and its unknown membership, apart from the pig-headed arrogance and clumsiness: education.
While there have been plenty of racist comments opposing the recognition of Cesar Chavez with a street renaming or in any other way, it is clear that even the supporters of the effort have little understanding of who he was, what he accomplished or why it is important to remember him.
Cesar Chavez softened opposition by raising public awareness of the suffering of America’s mostly Mexican migrant agricultural workforce, not by making blanket accusations and staying stuck in a rut….
The boycott of table grapes was part of a strategy to get the attention of the American public on farmworker issues, educate them and then gain their support.
The grapes themselves were not the issue. The issue was the appalling living and working conditions, including the use of the 12-inch short hoe, el cortito, that millions of families were enduring, had endured since the USA established itself in what was until the 1840s the northern part of the Republic of Mexico.
The boycott did not extend to wine grapes, but only table grapes….
Few Americans were going to stand for a bunch of Mexican farm workers messing with their wine, but it was a fairly easy sacrifice for supporters to forego table grapes during the boycott, once they were educated to the issue….
The table grapes were an economic pressure point.
I’d like the people bent on renaming a Portland street to work on describing Cesar Chavez more accurately, using words like Mexican-American, migrant and Chicano once in a while; focus more on educating the community, less on making demands of other people’s time and money; more on the honoring part, less on the self-righteous part…remember that you do not own the franchise except in your own minds.
That important fact has been lost on the white politicians, salsa-dancing around the issue, just as poorly informed now as when they started kicking the can of worms through town….
It would be no insult to name a school, a library, a park, a farmers’ market, a bridge for Cesar Chavez, no insult to Mexican-Americans or Chicanos at all.
One wonders where we would be now if only the Chavez Committee members had thought to engage the broader community in a discussion, asking the question: What are some appropriate ways to remember Cesar Chavez in Portland?, and working from there….
My guess is that we would have gotten it done a year ago, and it would be beautiful….
--------------------------
Additional comment, posted later:
By Sean Cruz
Anna Griffin’s column has provoked some comments regarding the phrase “you people”, opening the door to another Teachable Moment in the City of Portland:
Prior to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling in Hernandez vs State of Texas, Mexican Americans had no standing as a people under U.S. law, and no protection under the 14th Amendment.
The case arose out of the fact that no Mexican American or Spanish-surnamed citizen had served on a jury across 70 Texas counties in 25 years.
“Chief Justice Earl Warren and the rest of the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of Hernandez, and required he be retried with a jury composed of his peers. The Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment protects those beyond the racial classes of white or Negro, and extends to other racial groups, such as Mexican American in this case.” –source: Wikipedia, here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hernandez_v._Texas
The first paragraph of the 14th Amendment stated these key, fundamental rights:
“Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Prior to Hernandez, no Mexican American defendant could even hope for a jury of his peers in Texas and other places.
Mexican Americans were subject to the same poll taxes as African Americans, worked in those same cotton fields, were usually forced to live in neighborhoods with the most poorly-equipped schools, could not get a foothold in any union job, but—unlike any other racial or ethnic group—could be held in custody at any moment, swept up and deported, often in error, sorry about that, you sure looked illegal to me….
Prior to Hernandez, Mexican Americans were regarded as “white” for purposes of the 14th Amendment, and therefore could not suffer discrimination by other whites….
Prior to Hernandez, restaurant owners could and did post signs reading “No Mexicans, Indians or dogs” and would be guilty of discrimination only in spirit, only in their own shrunken souls….
Navy veteran Cesar Chavez was arrested for refusing to sit in the colored-only balcony of a California movie theater…you could get put in jail for not knowing your Mexican place in the USA, not that long ago….
Mexican Americans are still finding out where their Mexican places are in the USA…people didn’t complain so much when the Mexicans worked mostly in the fields, with the crops, out of sight and out of mind….
Now they are turning up in the building trades, in construction, factories and places where brown faces have historically been rarely seen in the USA, in the non-farm workplaces….
The Supreme Court ordered a new trial for Hernandez, this time with a jury that included “you people….”
They found him guilty, too, but that wasn’t the point….
-----------------------------
Sean Cruz writes:
Blogolitical Sean, political commentary here:
www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com
Today, March 21, is/was/would-have-been my late son Aaron’s birthday.
I’m spending the day getting my vegetable garden ready for planting, thinking about my son, about how happy he was to be home here with me for those few precious months in 2003….
Turning the soil, making some new raised beds, carrots on my mind….
Aaron was the most willing of my four children to work in the garden with me, and I have dozens of photos of Aaron at different ages, in a succession of gardens, the seasons changing, so clearly happy to be working with me in the earth, with the water, caring for the growing corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers….
Like my father and I, like my father and his, extending as far back beyond memory as life itself: the corn, the tomatoes, the cactus, jalapenos, tortillas fresh with the dawn…frijoles…all the way back to the beginning…before the Spanish came ashore…there were the vegetable gardens….
Each of my four children were/are beautiful in their own unique ways, four original personalities, overflowing with enthusiasm, life did not get better than this…I have the photographs, the videotape, to prove it….
The kidnapping changed all of that….
Aaron was like a growing stalk of corn, promise in every kernel, yanked out of the open soil, crammed into a pot way too small, force-fed the Mormon Kool-Aid….
More on this later….
---------------
Sean Cruz writes:
Blogolitical Sean, political commentary here:
www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com
Aaron’s Law, regarding child abduction prevention and resolution here:
www.aaronslaw.blogspot.com
Jim Pepper House, dedicated to the legacy of the late, great Jim Pepper here:
www.jimpepperhouse.blogspot.com
Portland’s #1 Predatory Towing Horror Story, regarding predatory patrol towing practices here:
www.patroltowing.blogspot.com
Chicano Hero Cesar Chavez, dedicated to the Mexican-American giant, here.
http://chicanoherocesarchavez.blogspot.com/
Portland, Oregon—The Oregonian’s Multnomah County columnist Anna Griffin wrote “Chavez Boulevard? Dead end street is more likely”, here:
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/anna_griffin/index.ssf/2009/03/chavez_boulevard_dead_end_stre.html#comments
…prompting my Mexican-American, Chicano comments, here:
March 21, 2009
The Committee-Once-Bent-on-Renaming-Interstate-Avenue has never asked the City or the County or the State to put other possible public property naming options on the table, and Portland remains stuck in the mire largely because the White Folks in Charge at all levels of Oregon government have been so fearful of alienating a potential voting bloc.
The street-focused effort will win no awards for creativity or imagination, in part because there is no major street in Portland that is a natural fit for a Mexican American hero.
Nothing underscores this point more than the fact that the Committee is equally good with Broadway, 39th, Grand or Interstate Avenue, so far….
The Committee’s failure to describe Chavez accurately or to acknowledge that he was of Mexican ancestry, or that his achievements stemmed from his great courage and his experiences in a Mexican migrant farm worker family, working in the USA, has made the honoring process more complicated than it has ever needed to be.
The best they have done is to state that he was an American civil rights leader.
That falls far short of honoring Chavez’ legacy, and points to the core failure of the Committee co-chairs and its unknown membership, apart from the pig-headed arrogance and clumsiness: education.
While there have been plenty of racist comments opposing the recognition of Cesar Chavez with a street renaming or in any other way, it is clear that even the supporters of the effort have little understanding of who he was, what he accomplished or why it is important to remember him.
Cesar Chavez softened opposition by raising public awareness of the suffering of America’s mostly Mexican migrant agricultural workforce, not by making blanket accusations and staying stuck in a rut….
The boycott of table grapes was part of a strategy to get the attention of the American public on farmworker issues, educate them and then gain their support.
The grapes themselves were not the issue. The issue was the appalling living and working conditions, including the use of the 12-inch short hoe, el cortito, that millions of families were enduring, had endured since the USA established itself in what was until the 1840s the northern part of the Republic of Mexico.
The boycott did not extend to wine grapes, but only table grapes….
Few Americans were going to stand for a bunch of Mexican farm workers messing with their wine, but it was a fairly easy sacrifice for supporters to forego table grapes during the boycott, once they were educated to the issue….
The table grapes were an economic pressure point.
I’d like the people bent on renaming a Portland street to work on describing Cesar Chavez more accurately, using words like Mexican-American, migrant and Chicano once in a while; focus more on educating the community, less on making demands of other people’s time and money; more on the honoring part, less on the self-righteous part…remember that you do not own the franchise except in your own minds.
That important fact has been lost on the white politicians, salsa-dancing around the issue, just as poorly informed now as when they started kicking the can of worms through town….
It would be no insult to name a school, a library, a park, a farmers’ market, a bridge for Cesar Chavez, no insult to Mexican-Americans or Chicanos at all.
One wonders where we would be now if only the Chavez Committee members had thought to engage the broader community in a discussion, asking the question: What are some appropriate ways to remember Cesar Chavez in Portland?, and working from there….
My guess is that we would have gotten it done a year ago, and it would be beautiful….
--------------------------
Additional comment, posted later:
By Sean Cruz
Anna Griffin’s column has provoked some comments regarding the phrase “you people”, opening the door to another Teachable Moment in the City of Portland:
Prior to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling in Hernandez vs State of Texas, Mexican Americans had no standing as a people under U.S. law, and no protection under the 14th Amendment.
The case arose out of the fact that no Mexican American or Spanish-surnamed citizen had served on a jury across 70 Texas counties in 25 years.
“Chief Justice Earl Warren and the rest of the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of Hernandez, and required he be retried with a jury composed of his peers. The Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment protects those beyond the racial classes of white or Negro, and extends to other racial groups, such as Mexican American in this case.” –source: Wikipedia, here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hernandez_v._Texas
The first paragraph of the 14th Amendment stated these key, fundamental rights:
“Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Prior to Hernandez, no Mexican American defendant could even hope for a jury of his peers in Texas and other places.
Mexican Americans were subject to the same poll taxes as African Americans, worked in those same cotton fields, were usually forced to live in neighborhoods with the most poorly-equipped schools, could not get a foothold in any union job, but—unlike any other racial or ethnic group—could be held in custody at any moment, swept up and deported, often in error, sorry about that, you sure looked illegal to me….
Prior to Hernandez, Mexican Americans were regarded as “white” for purposes of the 14th Amendment, and therefore could not suffer discrimination by other whites….
Prior to Hernandez, restaurant owners could and did post signs reading “No Mexicans, Indians or dogs” and would be guilty of discrimination only in spirit, only in their own shrunken souls….
Navy veteran Cesar Chavez was arrested for refusing to sit in the colored-only balcony of a California movie theater…you could get put in jail for not knowing your Mexican place in the USA, not that long ago….
Mexican Americans are still finding out where their Mexican places are in the USA…people didn’t complain so much when the Mexicans worked mostly in the fields, with the crops, out of sight and out of mind….
Now they are turning up in the building trades, in construction, factories and places where brown faces have historically been rarely seen in the USA, in the non-farm workplaces….
The Supreme Court ordered a new trial for Hernandez, this time with a jury that included “you people….”
They found him guilty, too, but that wasn’t the point….
-----------------------------
Sean Cruz writes:
Blogolitical Sean, political commentary here:
www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com
Today, March 21, is/was/would-have-been my late son Aaron’s birthday.
I’m spending the day getting my vegetable garden ready for planting, thinking about my son, about how happy he was to be home here with me for those few precious months in 2003….
Turning the soil, making some new raised beds, carrots on my mind….
Aaron was the most willing of my four children to work in the garden with me, and I have dozens of photos of Aaron at different ages, in a succession of gardens, the seasons changing, so clearly happy to be working with me in the earth, with the water, caring for the growing corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers….
Like my father and I, like my father and his, extending as far back beyond memory as life itself: the corn, the tomatoes, the cactus, jalapenos, tortillas fresh with the dawn…frijoles…all the way back to the beginning…before the Spanish came ashore…there were the vegetable gardens….
Each of my four children were/are beautiful in their own unique ways, four original personalities, overflowing with enthusiasm, life did not get better than this…I have the photographs, the videotape, to prove it….
The kidnapping changed all of that….
Aaron was like a growing stalk of corn, promise in every kernel, yanked out of the open soil, crammed into a pot way too small, force-fed the Mormon Kool-Aid….
---------------
Sean Cruz writes:
Blogolitical Sean, political commentary here:
www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com
Aaron’s Law, regarding child abduction prevention and resolution here:
www.aaronslaw.blogspot.com
Jim Pepper House, dedicated to the legacy of the late, great Jim Pepper here:
www.jimpepperhouse.blogspot.com
Portland’s #1 Predatory Towing Horror Story, regarding predatory patrol towing practices here:
www.patroltowing.blogspot.com
Chicano Hero Cesar Chavez, dedicated to the Mexican-American giant, here.
http://chicanoherocesarchavez.blogspot.com/
Thursday, March 5, 2009
The Oregonian makes the Oregon-Cesar Chavez connection!
by Sean Cruz
Portland, Oregonian--The Oregonian recently printed author Randy Shaw's comments describing Cesar Chavez’ activities in Oregon on behalf of farm workers, settling the issue (one would hope) as to whether the Mexican-American civil rights leader ever had a direct relationship with state politics.
This short piece is all the more welcome because it reveals more information about who Cesar Chavez was than the Committee-Formerly-Bent-On-Renaming-Interstate Avenue has managed to do in the entire past two years (see link to post, below).
I look forward to reading the book.
The 4 comments posted online do well to illustrate the same combination of ignorance, selfishness and racism that framed the farmworkers’ struggle, still alive, still vile.
The miserable living and working conditions that mostly Mexican farmworkers and their families endured for generations were the outward manifestations of these attitudes.
The short hoe in the hands of a stooped-over Mexican disturbed few of the millions of Americans who ate the lettuce…the USA blinked its indifference.
Didn’t we all munch his broccoli while his children played in the chemical dust? You betcha!
All was in its rightful place in America; for sure, the Mexicans were, nearly invisible, following the crops, welcome to the USA, greaser….
Then came Cesar Chavez, son of Mexican migrants, the American Gandhi, the Chicano Great Soul, both humble and fierce….
Cesar inspired and led a coalition that you can read about in Mr. Shaw’s book.
Like Cesar Chavez, I’m the son and grandson of Mexican farmworkers, a Mexican-American, a Chicano.
I’d like the people bent on renaming a Portland street to work on describing Cesar more accurately, using words like Mexican-American, migrant and Chicano once in a while; focus more on educating the community, less on making demands of other people’s time and money; more on the honoring part, less on the self-righteous part…remember that you do not own the franchise except in your own minds.
That important fact has been lost on the white politicians, salsa-dancing around the issue, just as poorly informed as when they started kicking the can of worms through town….
It would be no insult to name a school, a library, a park, a farmers’ market, a bridge for Cesar Chavez, no insult to Mexican-Americans or Chicanos at all.
Try to get the name right, if little else….
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2009/03/cesar_chavezs_mark_on_oregon_h.html
Portland, Oregonian--The Oregonian recently printed author Randy Shaw's comments describing Cesar Chavez’ activities in Oregon on behalf of farm workers, settling the issue (one would hope) as to whether the Mexican-American civil rights leader ever had a direct relationship with state politics.
This short piece is all the more welcome because it reveals more information about who Cesar Chavez was than the Committee-Formerly-Bent-On-Renaming-Interstate Avenue has managed to do in the entire past two years (see link to post, below).
I look forward to reading the book.
The 4 comments posted online do well to illustrate the same combination of ignorance, selfishness and racism that framed the farmworkers’ struggle, still alive, still vile.
The miserable living and working conditions that mostly Mexican farmworkers and their families endured for generations were the outward manifestations of these attitudes.
The short hoe in the hands of a stooped-over Mexican disturbed few of the millions of Americans who ate the lettuce…the USA blinked its indifference.
Didn’t we all munch his broccoli while his children played in the chemical dust? You betcha!
All was in its rightful place in America; for sure, the Mexicans were, nearly invisible, following the crops, welcome to the USA, greaser….
Then came Cesar Chavez, son of Mexican migrants, the American Gandhi, the Chicano Great Soul, both humble and fierce….
Cesar inspired and led a coalition that you can read about in Mr. Shaw’s book.
Like Cesar Chavez, I’m the son and grandson of Mexican farmworkers, a Mexican-American, a Chicano.
I’d like the people bent on renaming a Portland street to work on describing Cesar more accurately, using words like Mexican-American, migrant and Chicano once in a while; focus more on educating the community, less on making demands of other people’s time and money; more on the honoring part, less on the self-righteous part…remember that you do not own the franchise except in your own minds.
That important fact has been lost on the white politicians, salsa-dancing around the issue, just as poorly informed as when they started kicking the can of worms through town….
It would be no insult to name a school, a library, a park, a farmers’ market, a bridge for Cesar Chavez, no insult to Mexican-Americans or Chicanos at all.
Try to get the name right, if little else….
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2009/03/cesar_chavezs_mark_on_oregon_h.html
Monday, February 16, 2009
Cesar Chavez and the crisis of nonnegotiable demands
By Sean Cruz
Portland, Oregon--I have long supported recognizing the achievements and the inspiration of Cesar Chavez in a permanent, physical way in Portland.
Like Cesar Chavez, I am the son and grandson of Mexican farm workers.
Like Cesar Chavez, I am a first-generation Mexican-American, born in the USA.
Like Cesar Chavez, I am ethnically, culturally and politically a Chicano, with ties to the Chicano Movement of the 1970s.
Like Cesar Chavez, I am unafraid to speak truth to power and I do not hide my identity behind anonymity.
More than a decade ago, as a member of the KBOO Board of Directors, it was my motion, passed on a unanimous vote, to declare Cesar Chavez’ birthday a national holiday. That same year, Texas declared his birthday a state holiday.
In 2003, I staffed Senator Avel Gordly as she and Bureau of Labor and Industries Commissioner Dan Gardner overturned one of the last of the state’s shameful race-based laws, the statute that denied Oregon farm workers the right to meal and rest breaks during the workday. That work was done intentionally in the spirit of Cesar Chavez.
In 2005, Senator Gordly sponsored legislation at my request that would urge Congress and require the state to consider family connections in immigration law, prioritizing family unification ahead of job status. Our current laws serve to break families apart, mostly Mexican families. These bills were not heard during the session.
Also in 2005, I was on the floor when the Oregon Senate passed SR1, encouraging Oregonians to undertake a day of voluntary service to honor Cesar Chavez…and I continue to wear my Cesar Chavez 37-cent US postage stamp lapel pin on my jacket.
There are many ways to honor a person, and I strongly support recognizing Cesar Chavez in a permanent, physical way.
However, I am troubled by the efforts of the handful of generally well-meaning activists ever since they presented the City of Portland with an agenda of nonnegotiable demands centered on their proposal to rename Interstate Avenue, and here is why:
Right from the beginning, they claimed to represent Portland’s Latino communities, and that is simply not the case. There has been no community process to put the Chavez Committee in charge, and many Latinos wouldn’t follow them out of a burning building….
Even the Hispanic Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce has had nothing to say about the effort.
The Avenistas’ antics and accusations in front of City Council and at Ockley Green Middle School were an embarrassment to many of us….
The Chavez Committee has also never identified who its members are, apart from the two co-chairs, not even on their website. Anonymous committees cannot possibly represent a community, and carry no weight with me.
The Committee claimed that any cost associated with renaming a street was inconsequential, and that any opposition to their demands was racially motivated, and neither statement is true. The costs are insignificant only if Other People pay the price….
The Chavez Committee claims that recognizing Cesar Chavez with any memorial other than a major street renaming is an insult to Latinos, and that also is plainly untrue. Communities across the nation have found many other tangible ways to honor Cesar Chavez, including parks and libraries and schools….
The Committee has never asked the City or the County or the State to put other possible public property naming options on the table, and Portland remains stuck in the mire largely because the White Folks in Charge at all levels of Oregon government have been so fearful of alienating a potential voting bloc.
This street-focused effort will win no awards for creativity or imagination, in part because there is no major street in Portland that is a natural fit for a Mexican American hero. Nothing underscores this point more than the fact that the Committee is equally good with Broadway, 39th, Grand or Interstate Avenue, so far….
The Committee claims it wants to honor Cesar Chavez, but nowhere do they acknowledge the fact that he was of Mexican ancestry, or that his achievements stemmed from his great courage and his experiences in a Mexican migrant farm worker family, working in the USA.
The best they can do is to state that he was an American civil rights leader.
That falls far short of honoring his legacy, and points to the core failure of the Committee co-chairs and its unknown membership, apart from the arrogance and clumsiness: education.
While there have been plenty of racist comments opposing the recognition of Cesar Chavez with a street renaming or in any other way, it is clear that even the supporters of the effort have little understanding of who he was, what he accomplished or why it is important to remember him.
Cesar Chavez softened opposition by raising public awareness of the suffering of America’s mostly Mexican migrant agricultural workforce, not by making blanket accusations and staying stuck in a rut….
The boycott of table grapes was part of a strategy to get the attention of the American public on farmworker issues, educate them and then gain their support.
The grapes themselves were not the issue. The issue was the appalling living and working conditions, including the use of the 12-inch short hoe, el cortito, that millions of families were enduring, had endured since the USA established itself in what was until the 1840s the northern part of the Republic of Mexico.
The boycott did not extend to wine grapes, but only table grapes….
Few Americans were going to stand for a bunch of Mexican farm workers messing with their wine, but it was a fairly easy sacrifice for supporters to forego table grapes during the boycott, once they were educated to the issue….
The table grapes were an economic pressure point.
One wonders where we would be now if only the Chavez Committee members had thought to engage the broader community in a discussion, asking the question: What are some appropriate ways to remember Cesar Chavez in Portland?, and working from there….
My guess is that we would have gotten it done a year ago, and it would be beautiful….
-----------------------------
Sean Cruz writes:
Blogolitical Sean, political commentary here:
www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com
Aaron’s Law, regarding child abduction prevention and resolution here:
www.aaronslaw.blogspot.com
Jim Pepper House, dedicated to the legacy of the late, great Jim Pepper here:
www.jimpepperhouse.blogspot.com
Portland’s #1 Predatory Towing Horror Story, regarding predatory patrol towing practices here:
www.patroltowing.blogspot.com
Chicano Hero Cesar Chavez, dedicated to the Mexican-American giant, here.
http://chicanoherocesarchavez.blogspot.com/
Portland, Oregon--I have long supported recognizing the achievements and the inspiration of Cesar Chavez in a permanent, physical way in Portland.
Like Cesar Chavez, I am the son and grandson of Mexican farm workers.
Like Cesar Chavez, I am a first-generation Mexican-American, born in the USA.
Like Cesar Chavez, I am ethnically, culturally and politically a Chicano, with ties to the Chicano Movement of the 1970s.
Like Cesar Chavez, I am unafraid to speak truth to power and I do not hide my identity behind anonymity.
More than a decade ago, as a member of the KBOO Board of Directors, it was my motion, passed on a unanimous vote, to declare Cesar Chavez’ birthday a national holiday. That same year, Texas declared his birthday a state holiday.
In 2003, I staffed Senator Avel Gordly as she and Bureau of Labor and Industries Commissioner Dan Gardner overturned one of the last of the state’s shameful race-based laws, the statute that denied Oregon farm workers the right to meal and rest breaks during the workday. That work was done intentionally in the spirit of Cesar Chavez.
In 2005, Senator Gordly sponsored legislation at my request that would urge Congress and require the state to consider family connections in immigration law, prioritizing family unification ahead of job status. Our current laws serve to break families apart, mostly Mexican families. These bills were not heard during the session.
Also in 2005, I was on the floor when the Oregon Senate passed SR1, encouraging Oregonians to undertake a day of voluntary service to honor Cesar Chavez…and I continue to wear my Cesar Chavez 37-cent US postage stamp lapel pin on my jacket.
There are many ways to honor a person, and I strongly support recognizing Cesar Chavez in a permanent, physical way.
However, I am troubled by the efforts of the handful of generally well-meaning activists ever since they presented the City of Portland with an agenda of nonnegotiable demands centered on their proposal to rename Interstate Avenue, and here is why:
Right from the beginning, they claimed to represent Portland’s Latino communities, and that is simply not the case. There has been no community process to put the Chavez Committee in charge, and many Latinos wouldn’t follow them out of a burning building….
Even the Hispanic Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce has had nothing to say about the effort.
The Avenistas’ antics and accusations in front of City Council and at Ockley Green Middle School were an embarrassment to many of us….
The Chavez Committee has also never identified who its members are, apart from the two co-chairs, not even on their website. Anonymous committees cannot possibly represent a community, and carry no weight with me.
The Committee claimed that any cost associated with renaming a street was inconsequential, and that any opposition to their demands was racially motivated, and neither statement is true. The costs are insignificant only if Other People pay the price….
The Chavez Committee claims that recognizing Cesar Chavez with any memorial other than a major street renaming is an insult to Latinos, and that also is plainly untrue. Communities across the nation have found many other tangible ways to honor Cesar Chavez, including parks and libraries and schools….
The Committee has never asked the City or the County or the State to put other possible public property naming options on the table, and Portland remains stuck in the mire largely because the White Folks in Charge at all levels of Oregon government have been so fearful of alienating a potential voting bloc.
This street-focused effort will win no awards for creativity or imagination, in part because there is no major street in Portland that is a natural fit for a Mexican American hero. Nothing underscores this point more than the fact that the Committee is equally good with Broadway, 39th, Grand or Interstate Avenue, so far….
The Committee claims it wants to honor Cesar Chavez, but nowhere do they acknowledge the fact that he was of Mexican ancestry, or that his achievements stemmed from his great courage and his experiences in a Mexican migrant farm worker family, working in the USA.
The best they can do is to state that he was an American civil rights leader.
That falls far short of honoring his legacy, and points to the core failure of the Committee co-chairs and its unknown membership, apart from the arrogance and clumsiness: education.
While there have been plenty of racist comments opposing the recognition of Cesar Chavez with a street renaming or in any other way, it is clear that even the supporters of the effort have little understanding of who he was, what he accomplished or why it is important to remember him.
Cesar Chavez softened opposition by raising public awareness of the suffering of America’s mostly Mexican migrant agricultural workforce, not by making blanket accusations and staying stuck in a rut….
The boycott of table grapes was part of a strategy to get the attention of the American public on farmworker issues, educate them and then gain their support.
The grapes themselves were not the issue. The issue was the appalling living and working conditions, including the use of the 12-inch short hoe, el cortito, that millions of families were enduring, had endured since the USA established itself in what was until the 1840s the northern part of the Republic of Mexico.
The boycott did not extend to wine grapes, but only table grapes….
Few Americans were going to stand for a bunch of Mexican farm workers messing with their wine, but it was a fairly easy sacrifice for supporters to forego table grapes during the boycott, once they were educated to the issue….
The table grapes were an economic pressure point.
One wonders where we would be now if only the Chavez Committee members had thought to engage the broader community in a discussion, asking the question: What are some appropriate ways to remember Cesar Chavez in Portland?, and working from there….
My guess is that we would have gotten it done a year ago, and it would be beautiful….
-----------------------------
Sean Cruz writes:
Blogolitical Sean, political commentary here:
www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com
Aaron’s Law, regarding child abduction prevention and resolution here:
www.aaronslaw.blogspot.com
Jim Pepper House, dedicated to the legacy of the late, great Jim Pepper here:
www.jimpepperhouse.blogspot.com
Portland’s #1 Predatory Towing Horror Story, regarding predatory patrol towing practices here:
www.patroltowing.blogspot.com
Chicano Hero Cesar Chavez, dedicated to the Mexican-American giant, here.
http://chicanoherocesarchavez.blogspot.com/
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