As accusations of racism volleyed around city hall, the
media, and in North Portland over a proposal to rename Interstate
Avenue for César E. Chávez, three city commissioners have
stepped in to negotiate a peaceful end to the standoff.
“Our responsibility is to interject ourselves and moderate that
discussion,” said Randy Leonard, at his office late last week. He and
two other commissioners—Sam Adams and Erik Sten—have grown
increasingly frustrated with the widespread perception that renaming
Interstate was a “done deal.”
“This is a process that appears to be sending the message that a
decision has been made, and we’ll keep having meetings until [the
residents] all agree,” Leonard explained. “And we don’t like that.”
Additionally, the accusations of racism have bothered Leonard.
“There’s a message being sent that it’s Interstate, and if it’s not
[renamed], you’re a racist. There’s a tremendous sense of unfairness,
to be dismissed as racist because you disagree. [That] if you disagree
with us, there’s something going on with you,” he says.
Leonard says he and Adams have discussed the Interstate situation
for the past few weeks, and had originally planned to let the current
process ride out until a council vote. But “comments from some staffers
in the mayor’s office that any opposition must be tied to overt or
subconscious racism” pushed them to take immediate action.
The two spoke with Sten, and—since Mayor Tom Potter, who has
been very vocal in supporting the rename, has said he’s not leading the
process—stepped in to reframe the debate.
Pointing out that almost everyone commenting wants to honor
Chávez, and the council has signaled unanimous intent to rename
a street, Leonard now hopes for an open public process to determine
which street is the best place to honor him—and Interstate
wouldn’t be off the table. “We’re going to back up and start again.
Let’s have a community process,” he said, adding, “That’s what we
should have done in the first place.”
To that end, Adams met with the Chávez committee on Friday
evening, October 5, to break the news that a majority of the council
was seeking a new process. To date, the committee has made it clear
that they refuse to compromise on Interstate, and the meeting with
Adams—which was reportedly “intense”—didn’t change their
position.
“We are firm, and we are not looking for choices other than
Interstate,” says committee co-chair Marta Guembes. “I cannot put
flowers or hearts around it to say it another way, because we’re very
firm.”
Moreover, she adds, when the committee first went to the city
commissioners, they explained “why we chose Interstate,” and outlined
the support they had for that change. “We said, tell us please what we
can do,” she says, recalling their meeting with Leonard. “The proposal
has been very clear, and we’ve been doing what we’ve been told.
“We’re going for it. We have done a lot of work,” she adds. She
plans to follow the process through to the end, “until we have to go
back and get their votes.”
Leonard acknowledges that he misled the Chávez committee when
he originally told them he supported their proposal. “What I probably
should have said is I’m committed to naming a street.”
That said, he points out committee already has a victory: Their
original goal was to rename a street in Portland for Chávez, and
that’s going to happen. Determining which street, however, is “not
their decision to make.”
Sten, however, is less adamant. “I had told Randy last week that I’m
definitely interested and open to starting the process over, but I
wanted to meet with the committee first,” Sten says. “I’m searching for
a middle ground.” That means he’s going to work with Leonard and Adams
to craft a proposal to bring to the committee.
“I told the committee I think it would be in their and the city’s
best interest to have a little more process,” Sten explains, adding
that he asked them to “work with me and keep an open mind and look at
it, and see whether we could come up with something that—if not
what they wanted—is acceptable to them. As opposed to we’re just
going to take a vote, or we’re starting over.”
Overall, however, Sten stresses that any additional process “should
either affirm Interstate as the best street, or it should come up with
a better one.”