By Rodel Rodis
San Francisco Chronicle’s Ken Garcia devoted his Aug. 11 column to slamming the Board of Supervisors’ resolution to rename Phelan Avenue to Marasigan Avenue.
In his article (“Supervisors replay the name game, PC board members need a history lesson”), Garcia blasted the resolution’s “self-absorbed” new sponsors, Supervisors Gerardo Sandoval and Chris Daly. He denounced their resolution as a “repeat of a legislative burp uttered by former board member Leslie Katz shortly before her departure.”
Garcia is irate because these supervisors “decided the street name honoring a onetime U.S. senator and former San Francisco mayor needed to be changed because at one time Phelan advocated policies back when such misguided thinking was commonplace.”
What was Phelan’s “misguided thinking”?
In an interview published in the Boston Sunday Herald on June 16, 1907, Phelan called for the exclusion of all Japanese from America because “they are non-assimilable; they are a permanently foreign element; they do not bring up families; they do not support churches, schools nor theatres.”
“California is a white man’s country,” Phelan asserted, “and the two races cannot live side by side in peace, and inasmuch as we discovered the country first and occupied it, we propose to hold it against either a peaceful or a warlike invasion.” Phelan campaigned for the California Senate in 1913 on a slogan of “Keep California White.” He is “credited” with securing passage of the Asian Exclusion Act of 1926.
Garcia accused the “two novice supervisors sponsoring the myopic legislation” of not discussing it with Phelan Avenue residents, such as Liz Ryan “who has lived on Phelan Avenue for 41 years, considerably longer than Daly and Sandoval have been alive.” Ryan informed Garcia that “these people are trying to change things they don’t know anything about.”
Do Garcia and Ryan know the resolution they so virulently oppose calls for the name change on just one block of Phelan Avenue from Ocean to Judson? The only “Phelan Avenue resident” that would be affected by the name change is City College of San Francisco. It should be noted that 44 percent of “Phelan” campus’s 37,500 students are Asian Pacific Islander American. Moreover, the Board of Trustees of City College unanimously voted at its last November meeting to support the name change.
Unfortunately, in the face of Garcia’s unrelenting attacks, Supervisor Sandoval waved the white flag. Unable to withstand the heat from Garcia, Sandoval announced “the proposal is going to be withdrawn.”
Garcia simply could not resist throwing a childish jab at yours truly, a Philippine News columnist: “I’m taking Sandoval at his word at this point because he is smart enough to know a dead horse when he sees one, especially when there’s a columnist mounted on top.”
Garcia, however, was not content to accept Sandoval’s meek surrender. He went on to contend that San Francisco could not name a street after Violeta Marasigan because she was a “poor Filipina activist” who “was a resident of Daly City” at the time of her death. “The last time I checked,” Garcia asserted, “only nonnatives like a Sacamenna Kid named Caen and others who made huge contributions to the city were eligible to have a street named after them.”
Did Garcia check his facts about four recently renamed streets in San Francisco?
The portion of Polk Street in front of City Hall was renamed Dr. Carlton Goodlett Place to honor the Sun Reporter founder and publisher. Goodlett was not a native San Franciscan and he was living in Iowa at the time of his death.
Army Street was renamed Cesar Chavez Street after the United Farm Workers Union (UFW) founder who was born in Yuma, Arizona, which is also where he died in 1993.
Lech Walesa Street near City Hall is named after the founder of the Solidarity Union who later became president of Poland. Alice B. Toklas Street is named after the famous lesbian writer who lived in New York and who was the domestic partner of Gertrude Stein.
Neither Walesa nor Toklas made any “huge contributions to the city” unlike Marasigan who organized the APIA tenants of the International Hotel in 1969, led the successful campaign to reopen the Filipino Education Center in 1992, and was a founder of the Filipino Veterans Equity Center in 1998.
As his final point, Garcia states his belief that Phelan Avenue was actually named after James Phelan Sr., the father of the anti-Asian bigot. According to a high school teacher whom Garcia quotes, Phelan Sr.’s “holdings were worth nearly $12 million at the turn of the century, which at that point, made him a considerably rich and powerful man.”
According to Garcia’s brave old world, rich and powerful men, the “unabashed white supremacists,” deserve to have streets named after them. Not a “poor Filipina activist” named Violeta Marasigan.
Rodel E. Rodis is a regular columnist of the Philippine News, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this week.
