Dallas City Council member who pushed for Cesar Chavez street now open to renaming it

Former council member Steve Salazar says new allegations against Cesar Chavez warrant reconsidering the road he once championed.

By Devyani Chhetri
Dallas Morning News
https://www.dallasnews.com/

More than a decade after helping rename a downtown street for Cesar Chavez, former Dallas City Council member Steve Salazar says the city should be open to undoing it as sexual abuse allegations emerge against the late labor leader.

“We didn’t know this at the time,” said Salazar, who served on the council between 1995 to 2011. “You feel for people that maybe have been holding something back for many years.”

Salazar, a leading voice behind renaming part of South Central Expressway near the Dallas Farmers Market, said he backs efforts supporting “individuals who certainly may have been harmed in the past.”

The renewed scrutiny stems from allegations, including those raised by fellow labor leader Dolores Huerta, accusing Chavez of sexually abusing women and girls decades ago.

That has prompted officials in Dallas and across the country to reconsider public honors bearing his name. Fort Worth on Thursday removed Chavez-named street toppers along 28th Street, a major thoroughfare on the city’s north side.

In Dallas, the effort to create Cesar Chavez Boulevard, a less-than-two-mile stretch cutting through downtown, was years in the making. Community leaders had long pushed for Dallas to recognize the farmworker movement and figures such as Chavez.

Between 2008 and 2010, community members and the City Council wrangled online polls and renaming campaigns.

Latino leaders led efforts to rename Industrial Boulevard, but the City Council ultimately settled on Riverfront Boulevard in lieu of tying it up with the Trinity River Corridor Project. A second push centered on changing Ross Avenue but those efforts didn’t go the distance either.

Salazar, an attorney, said the community now is “finding out new things about ourselves and people from the past,” and “we have to be open” to changes.

“Once everything has settled down, they should take whatever measures are necessary to reflect what the community wants,” he said, even if that meant renaming the road.

“I hope they’ll make the right decision and definitely honor [Huerta] as well as many other [farm workers] who struggled throughout those years,” Salazar said.

Council member Adam Bazaldua said Wednesday the city should rethink its recognition of Cesar Chavez Day on March 31 and Labor Day.

He was joined by council members Jaime Resendez, Laura Cadena, Paula Blackmon and Gay Donnell Willis in a push to designate April 10 as “Dolores Huerta Day” and discuss whether to rename Cesar Chavez Boulevard.

“As a governing body, we have a responsibility to ensure that the individuals we formally recognize reflect the values and standards we uphold as a community,” the council members said in their joint memo.

By Devyani Chhetri

Before joining the Dallas Morning News, Devyani Chhetri covered South Carolina politics and presidential primaries at the Greenville News. She went to Boston University for graduate school.

This story, originally published in The Dallas Morning News, is reprinted as part of a collaborative partnership between The Dallas Morning News and Texas Metro News. The partnership seeks to boost coverage of Dallas’ communities of color, particularly in southern Dallas.