FRESNO, Calif. (FOX26) \u2014 The city of Fresno is reconsidering the name of Cesar Chavez Boulevard following recent sexual assault allegations against the late labor leader and civil rights activist.<\/p>\n
City leaders are now discussing whether to revert the street back to its original name, Ventura Boulevard. Fresno had previously renamed a 10-mile stretch of road in honor of Chavez, installing approximately 280 new street signs.<\/p>\n
The city confirmed it retained all of the original Ventura Boulevard signs, meaning a reversal could be completed with minimal additional cost.<\/p>\n
Fresno City Councilmember Miguel Arias, who initially pushed for the renaming, is now reversing course in light of the allegations.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe fought and advocated for our parents and ourselves, who are farm workers,\u201d Arias said. \u201cBut that type of character should not be on our city streets.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some local business owners support the potential change.<\/p>\n
\u201cI 100% agree that we shouldn’t idolize somebody who we didn’t even know 100% of,\u201d said Catalina Tapia, manager at Tijuana Tacos y Mariscos.<\/p>\n
Others say the name has been tied to negative experiences in the community. David Sarabian of Holy Trinity Armenian Apostolic Church recalled past tensions associated with farmworker protests.<\/p>\n
\u201cBack when I was growing up, my father was a farmer and workers were protesting growers,\u201d Sarabian said. \u201cThey knocked over our boxes and knocked my father down. It was something violent that I\u2019ll never forget.\u201d<\/p>\n
The city previously spent more than $140,000 replacing the signs during the initial renaming. However, officials say reverting the name would be significantly less expensive since the original signage has been preserved.<\/p>\n
Fresno city leaders announced they will hold a special meeting at 3 p.m. Thursday to discuss the possible name change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FRESNO, Calif. (FOX26) \u2014 The city of Fresno is reconsidering the name of Cesar Chavez Boulevard following recent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":["post-226326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}