I'm no fan of renaming a street after Cesar Chavez, the late United Farm Workers union leader, who had nothing to do with Portland or transportation. Our prominent highways are named after buildings (the Stadium Freeway), geography (Canyon Road, Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway, Interstate Avenue), pioneers (Powell Boulevard), and transportation people (Baldock Freeway, Banfield Freeway, Barbur Boulevard).
It did occur to me that our area should recognize a union leader, but one with some connection to our city's history. The west coast offers a perfect candidate in the person of Harry Bridges (1901-1990), an Australian immigrant who became the first president of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, and was active in union affairs in ports up and down the west coast. I heard him speak here in the 1970s to a hall filled with rambunctiously reverential union members.
Eventually we'll build a new span across the Columbia between Portland and Vancouver. It will doubtless be named after a politician or highway engineer, no telling who. If the old spans are allowed to remain in place to serve local traffic, and I hope that they are, they could easily be renamed the Harry Bridges, a fitting way to remember a leader of the waterfront.