Ald. Thomas Allen (38th) has put aside a proposal to bestow a stretch of West Monroe Street with the honorific name “Chairman Fred Hampton Way.” We won’t wade into the political debate or the probity of honoring former Black Panther Hampton, though as the flaps over honorifics for Hugh Hefner, Seoul (the Korean city) and other honorees have proven, there are few bodies less qualified to debate 20th century cultural history than the Chicago City Council.
Locking the bill in committee and waiting for it to fade from consciousness is at some level an acknowledgement that the council doesn’t have the stomach for another of these debates. We wish, however, that aldermen would go one step further and acknowledge that these signs are a terrible idea, meaningless urban clutter born of a marketing-age ethos bent on sticking easy labels on every available surface.
Either people are worthy of having streets named after them, or they are not. Yes, there are only a limited number of streets available to bear the names of those we want to honor, and the process of changing a street name is costly and cumbersome. That’s as it should be. Naming a street after someone is a big deal. Did Pope John Paul II deserve it? Hugh Hefner, Irv Kupcinet, King Sargon II? Maybe, maybe not. But the names of the vast majority of those honored on the small brown signs would never have been considered for posting on the larger green ones people actually pay attention to. The difficulty of real street naming makes for a nice winnowing process, and with the time aldermen save on these debates, they can start paying attention to hiring at city hall, the awarding of city contracts and signs that actually point to something important.