Op-ed: Let’s honor Larry Itliong without erasing Ernesto Galarza

We appreciate Joyce Chu’s Oct. 5. article, San Jose path could be renamed for Filipino labor leader, spotlighting the efforts and extraordinary contributions of Larry Itliong. Filipino labor organizers like Itliong played a pivotal, and too often overlooked, role in California’s labor history. Honoring his legacy is long overdue.

But the proposed location — the Paseo de San Antonio — is already home to a dedicated public art monument honoring another pioneering farmworker labor leader: Ernesto Galarza (1905–1984). To rename this walkway would unintentionally displace the memory of a figure whose scholarship and activism helped lay the groundwork for the very labor struggles Larry Itliong would later lead.

The Paseo’s existing artwork, “A Man of Fire” by Kim Yasuda, was dedicated on Sept.