Thanks to Will Crow of the St. Johns Sentinel, the Oregonian’s S. Renee Mitchell wrote a column today admitting that she was wrong to lambast North Portland neighbors who she says “cheered at a reference to the name Union Avenue still being favored over Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard,” at a meeting over the Interstate rename.

Crow was at the meeting—Mitchell was not—and sent her a recording of it. “Turns out, a recording of the contentious neighborhood meeting over the proposed renaming of Interstate Avenue to Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard shows that the loudest cheering followed a different comment,” Mitchell wrote today.

She followed up her mea culpa with a call for the Mayor to also admit his mistakes, and go along with the new rename process resolution that Commissioners Randy Leonard and Sam Adams have put forward. A vote on it is scheduled for Thursday afternoon.

More from Mitchell:

Approving the resolution also publicly acknowledges some mistakes were made. Potter’s jam-it-‘til-they-swallow process, for one, was wrong. The street renaming committee, which believed that the mayor’s support was all that was necessary, is wrong.

The way some North Portland residents have layered their comments with racial undertones is wrong. Our city’s lack of acknowledgement of Latino heroes — through the naming of streets, schools or parks — is wrong.

And yet, all those wrongs don’t necessarily make renaming Interstate as Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard the right thing to do. But at least Thursday’s resolution acknowledges that the right intent can produce the wrong impact, if the process is not handled respectfully.

It infuses some integrity back into this street renaming discussion. And it lets folks, all folks, have their say before any deal is done.

In other Interstate news, yesterday Sean Cruz—candidate for the Oregon State Senate—came out in favor of mending the “seriously flawed process.” Though he doesn’t mention Leonard and Adams’ resolution, he does call for more process, and urges the César E. Chávez Boulevard Committee to realize the effort has…

…already won its victory, a point that appears to be lost in the brouhaha about renaming Interstate.

Try looking at it this way:

Three committee members walked into the Council Chamber of a major American city and convinced the Mayor and the City Council to vote unanimously in support of their concept, to honor their hero in a significant, permanent way.

That is a huge victory, and the list of people who have failed to achieve noble objectives like this is very long.

This Committee won the hearts and minds of five public officials to rename a major public thoroughfare after their hero, Cesar Chavez.

This alone is a remarkable accomplishment, and this is where the focus should be now as a next step, opening the stage for an open public process.

Unfortunately, it sounds like Cruz has gotten some blowback for earlier criticisms of the process (and he’s personally in favor of renaming Killingsworth for Chávez)—”some are angry with me….Interstate or nothing, cabron“—and notes that “the question of renaming Interstate has become a litmus test for some, as to whether you are a good person or a bad person, loyal or disloyal, respectful or disrespectful, bigoted or not.”