Prop O is a 'dyslexic's nightmare'

There has never been a better indictment of the abysmal state of American politics this side of the Nixon debacle than San Francisco's Proposition O.

Pick a street corner anywhere in the city. Any one. Bright orange placards read "NO ON O." Must be a dyslexic's nightmare.

Here's the deal: for 145 years, the three miles of pavement that span from the 101 freeway to Noe Valley was called Army Street. Then, the SF Board of Supervisors, wont to show their purported "cultural sensitivity," officially changed the name of the pavement to Cesar Chavez Street.

Symbolic? Yes. Does it mean anything? No.

Now, Prop. O would reverse the name change. And it seems to have become the most heated battle in the whole election.

Symbolic? Yes. Does it mean anything? No.

Cesar Chavez was a great man who was hated for doing great things by the same type of people who now give pavement his namesake. But he's dead. He doesn't pose much of a threat to the establishment any more. That makes him a perfect political symbol.

Symbols don't hold rallies. Symbols don't smash windows. Symbols don't pressure anyone to do anything. They're ornaments, accouterments, window dressing; bright, shiny things that sway the attention from the rotting underbelly that surround it.

Cesar(my) Chavez Street, no matter what it's called, will still run through the most grossly under funded, woefully neglected and roundly ignored area of San Francisco: Hunter's Point. Ask the people who live in the Potrero Hill projects what they think about the name change and I think you'll get the real point of this whole debate: it just doesn't matter.

Or, take a drive on Oakland's Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, stop anywhere around, say, 34th Street and ask anyone there if MLK Jr. Drive has imbued them with a staggering sense of cultural pride as they stand in line for food stamps.

The Supervisors, insidious as they are, are no fools. Changing the name of the pavement gives minorities the illusion the city cares about them without actually having to do anything to improve their lives. They're lying to you, again. They don't care about you now and they never have.

Even if Chavez were alive, does anyone honestly think he would give a shit if a bunch of white people named a street after him? Was this what his life's work was about?

And let's just not loose sight of what we're talking about here: it's pavement. Once, it was dirt. Now it's pavement. You drive on it. And for many people, driving on that particular pavement means driving fast to get away from that "undesirable" area and into cozy, safe, white Noe Valley. No name is going to change that.

But what's most interesting about the whole Prop. O debate is what it says about SF politics. If the state of politics in this once feisty city have plunged to such depths that the only thing that can raise the ire of its citizens is the name of pavement, something has gone desperately awry.

Stay home. Don't vote. There is obviously nothing worth voting for. Prop. O only proves that there is nothing that will quantitatively change anything, for anyone. Republican, Democrat, Independent, Martyr -- what is it really going to matter?

[ Golden Gater Online November 7, 1995 ]

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