Barack Obama Boulevard is dedicated in San Jose
I was amazed that Barack Obama Boulevard went from idea to reality in just four years. Alex Shoor was surprised it took so long.
After Shoor proposed the idea in an August 2017 guest essay in the Metro weekly, people rallied around the cause of renaming a significant San Jose street after the country’s first Black president.
People like Hellen Sims, an NAACP Silicon Valley vice president who showed up to meet with Shoor about the idea at Crema, a coffee shop on The Alameda where community organizing happens over cappuccino. Milan Balinton, executive director of San Jose’s African American Community Services Agency, was next, and the trio formed the nucleus of a committee that quickly gained steam.
But Shoor knew they were onto something that would work when Jim Cunneen, the onetime Republican Assembly member and former San Jose Chamber of Commerce president, told him it was a good idea.
“We always felt like it was going to happen because there was bipartisan support,” Shoor said. “San Jose is a progressive, open-minded city. Most of us want to grow up in a country where any one of our children can reach their dreams and ascend to the highest office in the land.”
Over the next couple years, the committee made presentations to neighborhood groups, narrowed down potential locations, reached out to state and national elected officials and raised more than $11,000 to pay for changing the signs themselves. In September 2019, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo threw his support behind the effort and assigned two staff members to help shepherd the project through the city bureaucracy. In January 2021, the San Jose City Council unanimously approved renaming a stretch of what was mostly Autumn Street to Barack Obama Boulevard.
And Saturday morning, about 150 people — led by Shoor, former San Jose City Councilman Forrest Williams and Stanford University sophomore Jaden Morgan — marched down Barack Obama Boulevard to SAP Center, where the official dedication ceremonies were held.
In front of the Shark Tank, the group was enthralled by singer Victoria McDowell, who sang “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” and “America the Beautiful.” They heard from speakers including U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, Liccardo, Vice Mayor Chappie Jones, State Sen. Dave Cortese, former State Sen. Jim Beall — the Barack Obama Boulevard Committee’s honorary chair — and NAACP Silicon Valley’s Sims.
“Today, San Jose has stepped up and created the change we can believe in: Barack Obama Boulevard,” Sims told the crowd. “This didn’t happen overnight and it didn’t happen because of one or two people. It happened by truly a team effort.”
More than a dozen communities around the country have named roadways for President Obama, but San Jose’s is the first to take hold in the Bay Area, after Milpitas shelved plans for a Barack Obama Boulevard it had approved in 2019.
Barack Obama Boulevard crosses Santa Clara Street — San Jose’s main artery — in front of the Shark Tank, where the street signs will no doubt be featured on countless TV broadcasts for years to come. The street also runs through Google’s massive Downtown West development, meaning it’ll be part of the future of San Jose’s street life and not a forgotten avenue in a neglected part of town. And when plans for Diridon Station’s expansion come to fruition, thousands of people will potentially be disembarking every day from BART trains, Caltrain, high-speed rail and VTA buses and light-rail trains steps away from Obama Boulevard.
Vice Mayor Jones said the committee insisted on not having just any street. “They wanted a major street, a street befitting a president,” he said. “This boulevard will serve to revitalize our downtown area and welcome visitors to our city.”
Former President Obama wasn’t at Saturday’s dedication, and he may not even know it happened. But he should visit one day soon. I think he would appreciate his tribute here in San Jose, a city built on immigrant hopes and silicon dreams, looking to the future while building on its history.
LOOKING FOR SPACE >>
Last year at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Darlene Tenes began organizing donation drives for farmworkers in the Salinas valley, bringing them personal protective equipment, hand sanitizer, food and other essentials. While it hasn’t made headlines regularly, she’s continued the effort for more than a year — but now she’s come up against a big obstacle for what she expects to be the final caravan trip.
Bishop Oscar Cantu of the Diocese of San Jose is planning to join the Farmworker Caravan — partnered with Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County — on its Oct. 2 trek from San Jose to Monterey County. Following a donation dropoff last year, the group had lunch at the San Juan Bautista Mission Gardens, and many were hoping to repeat the experience. But this year, the missions and churches in the area are booked with several weddings, anniversaries and quinceañeras that had been put on hold during the pandemic.
Tenes says they already have a lunch provider lined up and are just looking for an outdoor garden location somewhere near the town of Seaside that could host the luncheon for the caravanners. If you know of a lead, email info@farmworkercaravan.org.
JUST ASKING >>
Shouldn’t we all be a little more concerned about Elon Musk announcing a plan at Tesla’s AI day to make humanoid robots? Sure, people are taking it as seriously as they did the Cybertruck announcement, but didn’t some of us laugh when Musk starting talking about going to space? We’ve all seen this movie and know that it ends with Arnold Schwarzenegger coming back in time to stop the human resistance to the computer takeover.
Even Musk himself joked that he hopes it “doesn’t feature in a dystopian sci-fi movie.” That goes for the rest of us, too.