Industrial Blvd. needs to be renamed after Cesar Chavez

I have three good reasons why Industrial Boulevard should be named after Cesar Chavez and all three in one way or another are connected to the recent poll seeking citizen input on what the new name should be.

First, I voted for Cesar Chavez in the poll. I voted for it for a number of reasons but mainly because it was the best option of the six that were listed. Riverfront Boulevard, which will probably be the choice of the lackeys on the Dallas City Council, is a joke. It suggests that the Trinity is actually a river. It isn't. It's a stream or a creek, but it is definitely not a river. To qualify as a river, the body of flowing water in question must be one that someone would have to be in reasonably good shape to be able to swim across. You should not be able to walk across it, or hop over it, like you can the Trinity. It also suggests that the newly named road runs alongside this stream. It doesn't. The proposed tollway will run alongside it, but this road won't; that is, unless they are going to change the location of the current Industrial Boulevard. Trinity Lakes, another option, is just as laughable because it suggests those artificial ponds that will be placed out there are actually lakes. In order for a man-made body of water to qualify as a lake, there has to be a dam somewhere in the equation. The same holds true with such misnomers as Trinityview and Waterfront boulevards. All these make as much sense as renaming the McCommas Bluff Landfill something like Rose Garden Landfill.

The second reason Industrial should be named after Cesar Chavez is because it was the clear choice of those who participated in the poll. Now, the City Council, stunned at the results of the voting, are already backtracking and coming up with excuses to thwart the will of the people. But in any election in which there are six options and one of them gets over 50 percent of the vote, that's pretty clearcut to me. I will make this prediction: The city of Dallas will never have a primary election with six candidates running for mayor (assuming all six are two-legged) and have one of them pull 52 percent of the vote.

But the third and final reason is because of the comments posted to this item about the poll on the Dallas Morning News' City Hall blog. I recently had a heated discussion with my son on the subject of racism in Dallas. I maintained it was rampant and when you got to the heart of most major policy decisions made in this city, race would be the ultimate deciding factor. I am still stunned by the fact that it wasn't that long ago that Cinemark was prohibited from locating what would have been then its first movie theater in Dallas because of racial animosity (but I was also somewhat gratified that Cinemark sued the City of Dallas over this and won a huge settlement.) All one has to do is read the comments that were posted to this blog entry to realize that blatant racism is alive and well here in Dallas, Texas. Admittedly, I did not read all the comments because the first 50 or so made me so sick to my stomach I couldn't continue.

I always thought the term "ignorant racist" was inherently redundant until I read these comments. Most of them have absolutely no idea who Cesar Chavez was. Far too many of these commenters (none of whom have the courage to use their real names) didn't even know Chavez was an American, born and raised in Arizona. Too many of them wondered why we would honor someone with no connections to Texas without realizing his direct impact on the fruit workers of Starr County in the mid-'60s. I'd bet all of these idiots would be shocked to learn that the Labor Day Holiday in Dallas is officially designated as Labor Day/Cesar Chavez Day, that the state of Texas officially recognizes his birthday on March 31, that there is a statue of him on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin and that in 2003 the United States Postal Service honored him with a postage stamp.

Of course these same jerks compound their ignorant status by arguing the city should select a name that isn't even one of the options and, in the ultimate admittance of their ignorance, many of them proclaimed "I didn't even know there was a poll going on."

So a large part of me simply wants to stick it to these lamebrains and renaming Industrial Cesar Chavez Boulevard would do just that. But I have more honorable reasons as well. It seems to be the will of the people of Dallas and it's the least we can do to honor a true American hero.

Of course, do I expect our Dallas City Council to have the courage to do the right thing? It's more likely they will come across like Big Brown at Belmont.

UPDATE: The City Council committee was even more cowardly than I thought it would be, voting to delay making a decision until the first week in August when any actions will be obscured by the city manager's budget recommendations. That's when the council, in a hallucinatory state unseen since the heyday of Timothy Leary will recommend changing the name to Riverfront Boulevard. Give me a break!