Activists that want to ‘cancel’ Piedmont should – Latest News
A metropolis is below fire for the unforgivable crime of really working.
This tiny city of 11,000 inhabitants is caught like a cussed raisin actually inside the geographic boundaries of Oakland. Piedmont has spent literal generations doing the stuff people throughout America declare they want from authorities: robust faculties, clean streets, protected parks, working cops and neighbors who show up to conferences as an alternative of simply yelling on social media.
Naturally, activists simply exterior Piedmont’s metropolis restrict have determined this insupportable. “It must be stopped,” they protest.
The newest campaign comes courtesy of Oakland’s Jesse Rosemoore. He’s a skilled transit planner who’s been hawking “CANCEL PIEDMONT” stickers and $10 T-shirts for over a yr like some form of vengeful avenue vendor.
His huge thought? Piedmont is just too profitable, too orderly, too affluent, and — horror of horrors — too unbiased.
Attractive houses, high property values, concerned mother and father and faculties that don’t make mother and father weep? Clearly that is a disaster that calls for the nuclear option.
Piedmont has been a constitution metropolis since 1923. That’s native democracy, of us: Residents elect their own leaders, vote on their own taxes and maintain their own officers accountable. Residents of Piedmont have the identical proper to self-determination as residents of Oakland, Berkeley, San Francisco or another California metropolis.
But to the cancel crowd, democracy solely counts when the voters decide the “correct” end result. Outsiders know higher, apparently.
Why let the people of Piedmont stay their cozy lives when you possibly can simply declare the entire place illegitimate from the armchairs of a neighboring metropolis with its own set of challenges?
Let’s be clear: Piedmont didn’t get this manner by magic or secret hedge-trimming cabals. Families, lecturers, taxpayers and volunteers put within the time and money. The faculties carry out. The streets keep clean and protected. People listen.
High home costs? That’s what occurs when demand builds for a place that works.
Same story in Atherton, Hillsborough and Beverly Hills. Success is contagious.
Rosemoore & Co. admit that Oakland has zero life like shot at annexing the place. That would require Piedmont voters to agree to it. So the entire “cancel” routine is pure theater — stickers, slogans and ethical superiority with out the messy business of precise governance.
Piedmont already has to meet California’s housing targets (587 items this cycle, together with lower-income ones). Judge it on whether or not it follows the law, not on whether or not its existence offends the sensitivity of people preferring tearing down to building up.
The cancel marketing campaign confuses resentment with reform. A metropolis that delivers outcomes isn’t a drawback to be erased. It’s proof that native democracy can nonetheless produce one thing higher than Oakland’s chaos and excuses.
Piedmont isn’t good. It simply works higher than the choice the stickers are promoting.
So arms off. Let the people who stay there keep operating their city. And perhaps, simply perhaps, take a few notes as an alternative of making an attempt to burn the model.
Richie Greenberg is a political commentator based mostly on San Francisco.
