A group, cochaired City Assessor-Recorder Joaquin Torres, worked to rebrand the street that cuts downhill from Diamond Heights through Noe Valley and the Mission to the waterfront. Torres said the members sought names that would reflect the labor history and pay homage to women\u2019s contributions, while also considering practical concerns like the length and complexity.<\/p>\n
\u201cLatino history and heritage is San Francisco heritage,\u201d Torres said. \u201cWomen\u2019s voices are San Francisco heritage.\u201d<\/p>\n
The group whittled its list of contenders to S\u00ed Se Puede, Las Campesinas, Esperanza, and Dahlia, before pushing forward Las Campesinas and S\u00ed Se Puede, which is Spanish for \u201cYes we can.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Rev. Miguel Bustos of Grace Cathedral, who grew up in the Mission District and lives about three blocks from the street, sees the process as part of a larger reckoning.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s part of the whole healing and reconciliation process,\u201d said Bustos, who added that the allegations had been painful for people who once admired Chavez. \u201cIt\u2019s always hard when one of your heroes turns out to not be as grand as you think they were.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s kind of cool to name it after a group of women workers who hardly get any attention,\u201d Bustos added.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1792688051_892_-S3840x2560-FPNG.png\"\/)
San Francisco has a rule that after a renaming, the street\u2019s old name must be included on signs for five years. | Source: Benjamin Fanjoy\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Before it was renamed for Cesar Chavez in 1995, the east-west corridor was Army Street. Restoring it to that name was considered but didn\u2019t meet the criteria, Torres said.<\/p>\n
The name change will force business owners and residents to update their addresses. Sharky Laguana, who has run the van rental operation Bandago for more than 20 years on Cesar Chavez Street, shrugged at the inconvenience.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou change the name on your address, and then you move on,\u201d he said. Picking a street name that didn\u2019t focus on an individual seemed like a shrewd move, he noted.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou never really know what you\u2019re in for\u201d when naming something after an individual. Las Campesinas will \u201crestore some of the karmic order\u201d and \u201cfeels very California.\u201d<\/p>\n
Celia Sack, who owns Omnivore Books on Cesar Chavez Street at Church Street, welcomes the prospect of removing that name from the address even though new signage will be costly for her shop.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s worth it to get rid of the name of a rapist on our address,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Vanessa Lambright, who lives in Noe Valley, thinks the proposed name might be difficult to spell and pronounce.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019d be nice if it was something short and easy to say,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Simon Harrison, who works at Army Street Mini Storage on Cesar Chavez Street, takes a more diffident approach to the proposed change. \u201cThe street is a geometric waypoint to get from one place to another, and everybody already knows what street this is,\u201d Harrison said, leery about using infrastructure for representational purposes. \u201cIt just feels like, why are we doing this? I understand we\u2019ve learned Chavez did some bad things, but if you want to support female farmworkers, maybe start a festival day or put up a mural.\u201d<\/p>\n
The next step in the renaming process is for the Department of Public Works to notify residents, businesses, and city departments before issuing a report. Then, the board would have to vote again on renaming legislation. According to Fielder\u2019s office, the bill will likely include an exemption from a rule requiring that a street\u2019s former name be included on signs for five years. Fielder\u2019s team said they are committed to keeping Chavez\u2019s name off signs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNo matter what you do, it\u2019s always going to be somebody that feels like it could be better,\u201d Laguana said.\u00a0 \u201cEverybody will adapt. It\u2019ll be fine.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"San Francisco is proposing to rename Cesar Chavez Street as Las Campesinas to distance the city from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":504410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[6702,16847,13133,101,103,102,104,106,105,37511],"class_list":["post-504409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-board-of-supervisors","tag-cesar-chavez","tag-jackie-fielder","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-sf-reality-check"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504409","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=504409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}