Title
Cesar Chavez Ceremonial Street Signage
Description
Request City Council approval to install ceremonial street name signage recognizing Cesar Chavez along Baseline Road at signalized intersections across City of Phoenix limits.
THIS ITEM IS FOR DISCUSSION AND POSSIBLE ACTION.
Report
Summary
In celebration and remembrance of Cesar Chavez, the Street Transportation Department received a request to install Ceremonial Street Name signs in his honor along Baseline Road from 75th Avenue to 48th Street.
Biographical Information
Cesar Chavez was a Mexican-American labor leader and civil rights activist who dedicated his life’s work to what he called "la causa" (the cause): the struggle of farm workers in the United States to improve their working and living conditions through organizing and negotiating contracts with their employers. Committed to the tactics of nonviolent resistance that were also practiced by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., Chavez founded the National Farm Workers Association (later the United Farm Workers of America) and won important victories to improve working conditions and raise pay for farm workers in the late 1960s and 1970s.
Cesario Estrada Chavez was born on March 31, 1927, in Yuma, Ariz. In the late 1930s, after losing their homestead to foreclosure, he and his family joined more than 300,000 people who moved to California during the Great Depression and became migrant farm workers. Before he was able to enter high school, Cesar began working in the fields full time. This experience laid the foundation for his work to support farm workers. In 1946, Chavez joined the U.S. Navy and served in a segregated unit for two years. After his service, he returned to farm work.
In 1952, Chavez was working in a lumberyard when he became the grassroots organizer for the Community Service Organization (CSO), a Latino civil rights group. Over the next decade, Chavez worked to register new voters and fight racial and economic discrimination, rising to become the CSO's National Director. Chavez resigned from the CSO in 1962 after other members refused to support his efforts to form a labor union for farm workers. That same year, he used his life's savings to found the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA). Using non-violent strikes and boycotts, Chavez fought for better wages and working conditions.
In September 1965, the NFWA launched a strike against California’s grape growers alongside the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), a Filipino-American labor group. The strike lasted five years and expanded into a nationwide boycott of California grapes. The boycott drew widespread support, thanks to the highly visible campaign headed by Chavez, who led a 340-mile march from Delano to Sacramento in 1966 and undertook a well-publicized 25-day hunger strike in 1968. The grape strike and boycott ended in 1970, with the farm workers reaching a collective bargaining agreement with major grape growers that increased the workers’ pay and gave them the right to unionize. The NFWA and AWOC merged in 1966 to form the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, which in 1971 became the United Farm Workers (UFW).
Throughout the 1970s, Chavez continued leading the union’s efforts to win labor contracts for farm workers across the agricultural industry, employing the same nonviolent techniques of strikes and boycotts. In 1972, he went on a second hunger strike to protest an Arizona law banning farm workers from organizing and protesting. That year, a group of Arizona union farm workers marched to the state capitol to protest a law enacted to prohibit migrant workers from boycotting, striking, and collective bargaining. Chavez joined the rally and made Santa Rita Hall near 11th Street and Hadley Street his base of operations. It was there that he spent 24 days fasting in protest. Today, Santa Rita Hall is owned by Chicanos Por La Causa and is used for special community events as well as during the month of March to celebrate Chavez' birthday. Thanks to the UFW’s efforts, California passed the landmark Agricultural Labor Relations Act in 1975, giving all farm workers the right to unionize and negotiate for better wages and working conditions. In the mid-1980s, Chavez focused the UFW’s efforts on a campaign to highlight the dangers of pesticides for farm workers and their children. In 1988, at the age of 61, he underwent his third hunger strike, which lasted for 36 days.
Chavez died in his sleep on April 23, 1993, at the age of 66. The following year, President Bill Clinton awarded him a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
This biographical information was based on a compilation of sources, including the Cesar Chavez Foundation, Barriozona Magazine, and Cesar Chavez biographies.
The blue ceremonial signs will read "Cesar Chavez Boulevard" (Attachment A) and will be placed on the mast arms at the following 23 intersections along Baseline Road:
- 67th, 59th, 57th, 55th, 51st, 47th, 43rd, 41st, 39th, 35th, 27th, 19th, 7th and Central Avenues;
- Jesse Owens Parkway; and
- 7th, 16th, 20th, 24th, 32nd, 40th, 46th and 48th Streets.
Financial Impact
The cost per intersection is approximately $800 (including fabrication and installation). The total estimated cost for the signs at all 23 intersections is $17,200. The fabrication and installation of the ceremonial signs will be completed by Street Transportation Sign Shop staff, and the internal City costs of the ceremonial signs and funding is available in the District 7 Council Office budget.
Location
Baseline Road from 75th Avenue to 48th Street
Council Districts: 6, 7 and 8
Department
Responsible Department
This item is submitted by Deputy City Manager Mario Paniagua and the Street Transportation Department.