It’s time to recognize we are a union town

By Fabrizio Sasso
Executive Director, Sacramento CLC

Names matter.

They tell the world whose stories we choose to remember. They carry our values and the history that made us who we are. So when the City of Sacramento set out to rename Cesar Chavez Park, it opened a chance to say out loud what this city has always been: a union town.

This city has never been about the accomplishments of any one person, or even any one union. It’s about something bigger than any single name on a banner. Sacramento was built by working people, plural, across every trade and every generation. That’s why the Sacramento Central Labor Council is asking the public to back one name: Union Plaza.

The City has put out a survey available on its website asking what the park should be called next. The Sacramento Central Labor Council and our more than 100 affiliate unions are urging everyone to fill it out and write down the one name that honors the working people of this city.

Organized labor has been part of Sacramento’s identity for nearly a century and a half. Our Labor Council traces its roots to 1879, which makes it one of the oldest institutions in the region. Before Sacramento was the seat of state government, it was a city built by working hands, people organizing trades, laying track, and setting the foundation we still stand on.

In the 1800s, Sacramento became a hub of commerce and transportation because workers forged the steel, laid the rails, and powered California’s growth. In the 1900s, we organized in the building trades, the public sector, manufacturing, transportation, and health care, and we won protections that improved life for millions of Californians. And in this century, Sacramento is still a center of worker activism. Teachers, grocery clerks, state and federal employees, nurses, janitors, casino workers, and so many others keep organizing, keep bargaining strong contracts, and keep standing up for working families. Today our Labor Council represents roughly 200,000 union members across six counties.

Other cities already understand this. New York’s Union Square hosted the nation’s first Labor Day parade in 1882 and is now a National Historic Landmark because of the role it played in labor history. Chicago’s Union Park, ringed by union halls, has been a gathering place for working people and social movements for generations.

So here’s the obvious question: Why shouldn’t Sacramento have a place of its own that honors the people who built it?

Union Plaza would belong to everyone. It would credit the generations of workers who too often go unnamed and uncredited for the success and energy of this city. It would tell a simple truth: Sacramento’s prosperity has always rested on working people.

We name streets, buildings, and monuments after presidents, business titans, and historical figures. Working people have earned a place in that landscape too.

Sacramento’s labor movement has been writing this city’s story since before 1879, and we are still writing it today. Our city deserves a public square that says so plainly.

Union Plaza.

Because a name matters. And a city with a labor history as rich as ours deserves a square that proudly carries it.