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A sign at the West Berkeley park formerly named for Cesar Chavez is seen shortly after his name and images of him were removed in March. Credit: Tracey Taylor\/Berkeleyside<\/p>\nA sign at the West Berkeley park formerly named for Cesar Chavez is seen shortly after his name and images of him were removed in March. Credit: Tracey Taylor\/Berkeleyside<\/p>\n
Update, Oct. 28: The Berkeley City Council signed off Tuesday night on a plan to rename the former Cesar Chavez Park as S\u00ed Se Puede Park \u2014 though the new name isn\u2019t set in stone just yet.<\/p>\n
Berkeley officials are now seeking approval to use the slogan from the United Farm Workers, which has trademarked the phrase<\/a>. School Board Director Beatriz Leyva-Cutler, one of the members of a working group that chose the motto for the park\u2019s new name, told the council that Berkeley has received \u201cprovisional approval\u201d from the union. But Mayor Adena Ishii said that if those discussions break down the question of what to name the park would come back to the council for more discussion.<\/p>\n The union did not respond to an inquiry from Berkeleyside about the park name this week.\u00a0<\/p>\n Dolores Huerta<\/a>, the UFW co-founder who coined the phrase \u201cs\u00ed se puede\u201d and after whom Berkeley officials considered renaming the park, died Wednesday.<\/p>\n Original story, Oct. 20: The waterfront Berkeley park once named for Cesar Chavez could soon be rechristened with the slogan of the farmworker movement the disgraced labor icon led.\u00a0<\/p>\n Get ready to fly a kite, watch a sunset or spot burrowing owls at S\u00ed Se Puede Park.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the recommendation of a working group assembled by Berkeley\u2019s Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission, after city leaders in March voted to rename the open space<\/a> in the wake of reports that Chavez sexually assaulted women and girls. His name was swiftly covered or removed<\/a> from signs at the park, which sits atop a former landfill and was named in his honor in the 1990s.<\/p>\n Cities across the country have moved to rename streets<\/a>, schools, parks and events that lionized Chavez in the months since The New York Times revealed<\/a> the assault allegations. Many of those efforts are still underway: San Francisco officials announced Tuesday that they plan to replace Chavez\u2019s name on a major thoroughfare through the Mission District with Las Campesinas, using the feminine form of the Spanish word for farmworker, according to Mission Local<\/a>. At UC Berkeley, where Chavez\u2019s name was removed from a student center<\/a> in April, spokesperson Dan Mogulof said this week that the university is not working to rename the facility.<\/p>\n The Berkeley City Council is slated to approve<\/a> the new park name at a meeting Oct. 27. The proposal appears on the meeting\u2019s consent agenda, a batch of typically non-controversial items the council can pass with a single vote.<\/p>\n S\u00ed Se Puede Park was the \u201cstrong consensus\u201d of a 21-member working group made up of representatives from local government and community organizations, according to a report from the panel<\/a>. It included former mayor and state Sen. Jesse Arregu\u00edn, former Berkeley Unified School Board Director Ana Vasudeo and Beatriz Leyva-Cutler, a current school board director and founder of Latinos Unidos de Berkeley, plus representatives from organizations such as the Multicultural Institute and UC Berkeley. The group\u2019s process was based on one Berkeley Unified used to rename two<\/a> elementary schools<\/a> over the past decade.<\/p>\n The phrase<\/a> the working group chose is the motto for the United Farm Workers Association, coined in 1972 by Dolores Huerta, the union\u2019s co-founder and one of the women who said Chavez assaulted them. It translates literally to \u201cyes, you can\u201d or \u201cyes, it can be done\u201d; Barack Obama used a version of the saying, \u201cyes we can,\u201d as the slogan for his 2008 presidential campaign.<\/p>\n \u201cS\u00ed Se Puede connects directly to the history of the Farmworker Movement and conveys a celebratory sense that \u2018we can do it,\u2019 which is uplifting and engaging,\u201d members of the working group wrote in a report on their choice. \u201cIt is a beautiful express\u00edon of what Berkeley is all about.\u201d<\/p>\n Two-thirds of the group\u2019s members picked the name as their first choice in votes, saying the phrase honors farmworkers, labor organizing and Latino heritage, paying tribute to Huerta and the movement without being tied to a single person. In a nod to the painful process that has followed the allegations<\/a> about the once-revered Chavez, they wrote a name like S\u00ed Se Puede park will \u201cendure.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere is not likely to be any controversy over this saying,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n Not everyone is cheering the new name, however.\u00a0<\/p>\n Martin Nicolaus, CEO of the nonprofit Chavez Park Conservancy, which has vowed to change its name<\/a>, wrote in a recent blog post<\/a> that \u201cS\u00ed Se Puede\u201d is a \u201cterrific political slogan.\u201d But Nicolaus, who was part of the working group, questioned whether it \u201cis a good name for a park today,\u201d noting the phrase doesn\u2019t specifically reference the farmworker movement.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPeople who remember who coined \u2018S\u00ed Se Puede\u2019 and what it signifies form a graying and fading niche of the many thousands who visit the park each year,\u201d Nicolaus wrote.<\/p>\n He pushed for the working group to pick the name Campesino Park, which Nicolaus wrote \u201chonors the real heroes, the men and women who work the fields and orchards that keep the rest of us alive.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n That suggestion finished third in the working group\u2019s voting. The runner-up was Esperanza Park, with members writing that the Spanish word for hope \u201cis not necessarily as strong a word as a movement that requires action and change.\u201d<\/p>\n Members of the public also wrote to the parks commission with their own suggestions. They ranged from generic names such as Bay Park and North Waterfront Park to more creative ones, such as Jard\u00edn De Los P\u00e1jaros, or \u201cgarden of birds,\u201d or Isle of Dogs, a reference to a Wes Anderson film and the peninsular park\u2019s popularity as a dog-walking spot<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n