Cancel culture never really goes away. The Left just adapts it in new ways. Case in point, the city of Piedmont, California. I'm not sure why the San Francisco Chronicle decided to devote an entire article to one man's effort to cancel the city of Piedmont, but that's what it did.
As Jesse Rosemoore handed out “CANCEL PIEDMONT” stickers at Lake Merritt during a sunny late-July evening, a young jogger smiled, offered her support — “Piedmont shouldn’t be its own city!” — and continued on her light run around the green-tinged waters...
Well over a century after this wealthy suburban enclave spurned annexation by Oakland to preserve its distinct identity, Piedmont remains one of the Bay Area’s most controversial cities. To its roughly 11,000 residents, this 1.7-square-mile swath of towering oak trees, ivy-covered mansions and top-ranked schools represents the zenith of the American Dream. Yet, to its critics, Piedmont is a prime symbol of the economic and racial divides that continue to plague the Bay Area.
“It really is ridiculous that a place like Piedmont even exists,” said Rosemoore, a 44-year-old Oakland resident with a graying beard and punk-rock aesthetic. “I felt like someone needed to bring even more attention to it, because what’s going on there says a lot about our society as a whole.”
Piedmont is a pretty strange location if you look at it on a map. It's less than two square miles and everything around it is part of the city of Oakland. Some people call it the "donut hole" for that reason. Here's a map of the area.
It's always funny to me looking at Piedmont on a map.
— Matt Castillo (@BayAreaREMatt) November 12, 2024
Are there any other cities in the US that are smack in the middle of another city completely surrounded? pic.twitter.com/NuS4OMlVgM
Jesse Rosemoore's problem with Piedmont isn't geographic, it's about race and class. Residents of Piedmont tend to be white and wealthy.
The median price of homes in Piedmont is almost $2.6 million, which is more than three-and-a-half times that of Oakland’s.
Census data cited by the outlet shows Piedmont is roughly 70% white and around 1% black, while about one in five Oakland residents is black.
Piedmont, like everywhere else in California, jumped on the social justice bandwagon in 2020. The city has apologized for some of its history.
Stressing that these actions are but the first steps in “examining and owning” the racist aspects of their city’s history, the Piedmont City Council on Monday approved a formal repudiation of racism, embracing what they see as an ongoing journey toward a more inclusive and equitable city.
Monday night’s resolution (see at bottom) also calls for the Black Lives Matter flag to fly at City Hall – in place of the City of Piedmont flag – for the month of August, starting as soon as possible. In the longer term, the resolution also calls for a review of city policies, procedures, ordinances, values, goals and missions as viewed “through an anti-racism lens.”
But of course signs of weakness only invite further challenge. And that's what it seems Piedmont's shift toward an "anti-racism lens" has done. Now you have this guy walking around handing out "cancel Piedmont" stickers and a major newspaper writing about his efforts. There are plenty of other wealthy enclaves in the Bay Area but they aren't getting the full cancel culture treatment yet.
“The problems Piedmont is grappling with really aren’t unique,” said Richard Rothstein, a Bay Area-based policy researcher. “What’s unique is the amount of backlash it’s getting for them.”
In a sense, Piedmont is just an East Bay version of Atherton, where a long history of exclusionary zoning helped shape that city’s current racial makeup — it’s about 67% white and around 1% Black — and state housing mandates are a perpetual source of frustration. But as Piedmont Mayor Betsy Smegal Andersen recently noted with an air of incredulity, “We seem to be the only Bay Area town with a campaign to have us canceled.”
I was curious how Piedmont wound up as the lone holdout in the center of Oakland and it turns out there's an answer that goes back more than 100 years.
In the late 1800s, Oakland incorporated, going from ranch land and small settlement clusters to becoming an official city. Almost immediately, it started to grow.
“Oakland leaders were under a very ambitious program to enlarge the city’s boundaries and increase the population,” said Oakland librarian Steve Lavoie, who curated an exhibit on Piedmont.
This program to expand Oakland’s boundaries was called the Greater Oakland Movement. City leaders wanted to add more land and more residents.
Oakland gradually gobbled up a bunch of smaller towns but some said no. Berkeley was one of the ones that said no. Piedmont probably would have been added to the city except that there was a delay holding a vote which gave time to a group seeking to maintain the city to incorporate.
During the delay in Oakland’s vote, some Piedmont residents, a mix of bohemian artists and business people, filed a petition to hold their own election to become a city. They hoped Piedmont would remain rural and undeveloped if they could beat Oakland to the punch. They saw how densely populated Oakland was, and they didn’t want any part of it.
The city voted to incorporate with the yes side winning by 18 votes. As for the boundaries they drew, that story is pretty funny.
Piedmont stayed a separate city, but its edges weave in and out of Oakland. This is because, in their haste to file paperwork to incorporate Piedmont, proponents grabbed the only map they had on hand to define the boundaries — a map of the sewer lines that snaked underneath the houses in Piedmont.
In any case, incorporation meant Piedmont couldn't become part of Oakland unless there was also a vote to disincorporate. But the rules said disincorporation would need a 2/3 vote to pass. A vote was held and a majority supported becoming part of Oakland but they couldn't get past the 2/3 requirement so Piedmont remained a separate city.
Again, I'm not sure why this one man crusade to cancel Piedmont is worth a story. Plenty of people have weird hobbies. They don't all end up becoming lengthy stories in major papers.
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