When Los Angeles officials were considering renaming a major Eastside thoroughfare to honor labor rights icon César Chávez in 1993, one 20-year-old resident said she appreciated what he’d done for Latinos — but she hoped the city would find a memorial somewhere else.
“Brooklyn Avenue is Boyle Heights,” Zorina Castanon told the LA Times at the time. “You just can’t change that.”
The city and LA County did go on to rename Brooklyn Avenue, as well as stretches of Macy Street and Sunset Boulevard that ran from downtown Los Angeles through Boyle Heights to East LA, to Cesar E. Chavez Avenue. Today, businesses along the commercial corridor in Boyle Heights bear Chávez’s name, and murals honor his legacy as an emblematic figure of the Chicano Movement.
But for some locals and advocates, the name never sat right. They pointed to Brooklyn Avenue’s place in their family memories, its association with the area’s Jewish history and Chávez’s complicated legacy. Then came Wednesday’s explosive New York Times investigation, in which farmworker leader Dolores Huerta and other women accused Chávez of sexually assaulting them in the 1970s.
Now, the calls to revert to Brooklyn Avenue or “La Brooklyn,” or give the street another name entirely, are only growing. Among those calling for a name change are LA County Supervisor Hilda Solis, who said in a statement she will be introducing a motion directing “an exploration of renaming parks, streets, County facilities, real property, monuments, and other County programs that bear the name of Cesar Chavez.”
LA City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado also issued a statement on Wednesday, calling for the “renaming of all public locations and events that bear his name, as we prioritize accountability and stand with those who have been harmed.”
For years, residents like Vivian Escalante have been advocating to change the name back, not only to preserve the street’s history and its significance in Boyle Heights but also to give credit to the Filipino farmworkers who initiated the historic 1965 Delano grape strike for which the United Farm Workers and Chávez are widely known.
Escalante is the CEO of Boyle Heights Community Partners, the local historical society, and treasurer for the Boyle Heights Neighborhood Council. A Boyle Heights native, Escalante told Boyle Heights Beat that she recalls the opposition from residents when Brooklyn Avenue was to be renamed following Chávez’s death in 1993. Residents felt that the name change erased the era when Boyle Heights was known for its large Jewish population.
“Many people on Brooklyn Avenue that have been here for decades want Brooklyn Avenue to come back,” Escalante said.
For years, Escalante has worked to advocate for the name to be reverted back and for others to learn the true history of the farm worker strikes. In 2024, Boyle Heights Community Partners went door-to-door to businesses and residents along Cesar E. Chavez Avenue from Cummings Street to Forest Avenue and surveyed 75 residents, who mostly agreed with reverting it back, she said.
Chávez “was not the leader of the farm workers, but took credit for it,” she said, referring to organizer Larry Itliong’s success in getting Filipino farm workers in Delano to strike before bringing in Chávez and Mexican workers. “Therefore, why would we change the name to Cesar Chavez, instead of honoring the Filipino gentleman that actually started the whole farm worker strike?” she said.
After finding out about the abuse allegations against Chávez on Wednesday, Escalante said she will reignite the organization’s calls to change the name back and honor the community’s cultural history by forming a committee dedicated to “bringing back Brooklyn Avenue”.
Others are suggesting the iconic avenue be renamed after Huerta, who co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (which later became the United Farm Workers) alongside Chavéz in 1962 and became one of the most prominent labor rights leaders of the 20th century.
Leaders with California Rising held a press conference on Wednesday, calling for the street to be named Dolores Huerta Avenue. Meanwhile, artist Susana Sanchez created an illustration depicting a construction worker in an LA Dodgers cap, hoisted above a streetlight, replacing Cesar E. Chavez signage with a Dolores C. Huerta placard.
“I am heartbroken,” Sanchez said in her caption. “I stand with Dolores Huerta and every single woman who has had to carry their trauma all this time in silence.
“It’s heavy. Please do not ask why she didn’t speak up sooner. I hope all cities replace his name with hers,” she wrote.
Huerta herself made clear she’d prefer a different name on the streets in an excerpt of an interview with Latino USA released Wednesday.
“Everything should be named for the martyrs of the Farm Workers Movement,” Huerta said. “Every street should be named after them.”
Amid these calls, Caroline Luce, a director of the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, pointed to public records showing that changing the street name was not simply about Chávez’s contributions, but about the broader Chicano and farm worker movements.
Long before Chávez’s death, Boyle Heights and East LA served as the epicenter of the Chicano civil rights movement with the student walkouts, the anti-war movement in the ‘70s, “and the energy coming from the farmworker struggle,” Luce said.
“The guiding sentiment … was to honor that heritage as much as it was to honor the man himself,” Luce said.
Brooklyn Avenue officially became Cesar E. Chavez Avenue on March 31, 1994, Chávez’s birthday. The dedication ceremony took place at the well-known five-point intersection of East Cesar E. Chavez Avenue and Lorena and Indiana Streets, where Boyle Heights and East LA meet.
Championed by then-County Supervisor Gloria Molina shortly after Chávez’s death in April 1993, the change was approved by the Board of Supervisors in October 1993, followed by a unanimous vote in the LA city council one day later.
Leading up to the name change, hundreds expressed strong opposition to it, saying that choosing to rename Brooklyn Avenue in Boyle Heights “would be wiping away the memories of the many Jews who lived there years ago and of the many Latinos who connect with the busy commercial strip today,” according to the LA Times.
“It’s important that we recognize a leader like Cesar Chavez, who preached nonviolence and raised the whole nation’s conscience dealing with farm workers,” said Robert Alaniz, Molina’s spokesman in the LA Times article. “Change is never easy and some people don’t cope well with change.”