Where to place blame for Carson's years-long name game? It may have started with Kay Calas’ bridge in 2003, when she was on the city council. Supporters argued it was her project, she guided and funded it—even though the entire council actually did. (She recused herself.) The council named the bridge on the nominal grounds that it was state, not city, property and therefore didn’t violate a city standard against naming property after living persons. That perhaps set a precedent for naming just about anything in Carson, California, after anybody, anytime.
Carson’s mayor, Jim Dear, isn’t the only member of his family who thinks emblazoning his name on public property he administers is acceptable. North of Jim Dear Boulevard there’s a public building with Donald L. Dear’s name on it. Jim’s big brother chairs the West Basin Municipal Water District that meets in the Donald L. Dear building. Don’s a former mayor of Gardena, California, and he explains the district put his name on the building after Gardena refused to put his name on a park.
During the two-year battle over the naming of Jim Dear Boulevard, one peculiar fact is how Filipino-American council member Elito Santarina didn’t move to name the street after Filipino national hero Jose Rizal. This is significant because several years earlier, Santarina got it in his head he wanted to rename a Carson avenue after Rizal.
There was so much opposition to renaming historical Moneta Avenue, Santarina backed off, explaining he’d name a new street after Rizal instead. Then he made no move to put Rizal’s name on what became Dear’s street.
There’s further evidence Carson often confuses civic pride with civic ego. The Carson community center was renamed (awkwardly) the Congresswoman Juanita Millender-McDonald Community Center after her death in 2007. She was once a Carson council member. During her life a local pumping station was named in her honor, too.
Need more? A portion of a local high school bears her name, and the story behind that may be the most unseemly of all, dividing Carson’s blacks and Hispanics over a dead man.
The council’s action concerning naming a new high school in 2008 was about naked political capital. Randall Simmons, a Los Angeles Police Department officer who served on the Special Weapons And Tactics team, was killed in the line of duty.
Simmons wasn’t a Carson resident, but he ministered part-time at a local church. That and being shot while SWAT (and black) was enough for one political faction to parade the man’s grieving relatives before the council, tearfully pleading to name the new high school after him.
As for honoring fallen police officers, 203 other members of the LAPD have been killed in the line of duty but Carson’s council has not acted to name anything after any of them. Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department serves Carson, and ninety-four deputies have been killed in the line of duty. The council hasn’t voted to name anything after any of them.
The council actually has nothing to do with naming schools, and nothing complied with Los Angeles Unified School District policy. The school district chose the name Rancho Dominguez Preparatory School but Simmons’ name was placed on one of its four academies. The other three were named after Millender-McDonald, the late Assembly member Jenny Oropeza, and Janelle H. Munn, a late school district employee.
Julie Ruiz-Raber and Harold Williams, council members at the time, complained they felt pressured. Raber had hoped to name the school after Hispanic labor leader Cesar Chavez.
“They tried to railroad the name,” she said. “That was a political ploy and that’s a shame.”
Williams charged the issue was driving a wedge between blacks and Hispanics and, “It had more to do with political ambition and self-interest by a couple of my colleagues.”