From an outsider’s perspective, it’s clear that Piedmont is a racist city. In the past few years, hate crimes against our Muslim community have gone unprosecuted, lawn jockeys have remained on display in multiple peoples’ front yards, and a previously-homeless black couple were continually harassed by their new neighbors and had the police called on them many times when they moved into piedmont. The present racist state of Piedmont is not new. Piedmont was initially a resort community for the wealthy who lived nearby. Anyone who’s been to Piedmont Park and read the various signs would know about this point in history. Piedmont became a city after the San Francisco earthquake in 1906 which caused many poor people and many people of color to enter Oakland (and Piedmont) looking for a new place to live. The wealthy whites living in Piedmont voted to become a separate city from Oakland, wanting to preserve their wealth and wanting to keep their neighborhood white. What we don’t have signs for in Piedmont Park is the history of people of color in Piedmont nor are we taught this bloody history in our schools.

    The first black family in Piedmont was the Dearing family. The family of four moved into Piedmont in 1924 at 67 Wildwood Avenue. The police chief, Burton Becker who also was the leader of the local Ku Klux Klan chapter, refused to protect the Dearing Family and the police stood by as the Dearing Family’s home was firebombed three times by a mob of over 500 white-supremacist-piedmont-citizens (no doubt the mob included police members). Area descriptions from this time state that Piedmont didn’t allow “negros, undesirables, and foreign-born people” from purchasing a home in Piedmont. The only people permitted were “executives, professionals, and white-collar workers” who made between 6,000 and 100,000 yearly (about 100,000 to 1.5 million yearly in today’s dollar). Unfortunately, the attempt of many of the racist and classist people who were making decisions then are lasting. The average income in Piedmont is within the bounds set up in 1922 (adjusted for inflation), while Oaklands is ⅓ of that number. Piedmont was only 1.3% black in the 2010 census.

    Any student of color will tell you that they’ve faced racial discrimination while attending Piedmont schools. Obviously, racism isn’t just a Piedmont issue, but the community here certainly fosters racism. Personally, I’ve been called many names that I won’t repeat here, and I’ve experienced many instances of racism without directly being called a slur. When I walk into Piedmont I immediately notice that there aren’t any homeless people around, that nearly every face I see is white. The experience is truly unsettling especially because the second you re-enter Oakland, you see homeless encampments left and right instead of multi-million dollar mansions with shiny new Teslas parked in front and an army of non-white immigrants working away at some shrubbery.

     But again, how do we break down the barriers created by the wealthy of Piedmont in the 1920s, the barriers that are continually held up by the wealthy of Piedmont today? I believe the solution is to work towards pushing Oakland and Piedmont back together. Piedmont’s existence as a separate entity from Oakland only promotes the awful things most white rich Piedmont Liberals claim to be against. Nowadays, much of the bigotry that happens in Piedmont isn’t violently enforced (it sometimes is though), instead, it gets enforced by acts of racism going unpunished, by the community and the city constantly turning a blind eye to injustice, by modern-day redlining, and it is enforced by the hundred-year-old barrier between Oakland and Piedmont.

    With the recent launch of llander.org, we stand at a crossroad as to the future of this website. I think that The Piedmont LowLander should also serve as an aggregator of student submitted literature: poems, fiction, translations, etc.

    I think that the inclusion of student literature should be considered is that, as to my knowledge, there exist no such place for student submitted literature in Piedmont High School, and that it might be beneficial to foster a literary environment.

    However, my thoughts and opinions would amount to nothing, if no writers nor students were interested in submitting literature, for this reason this article calls for all writers and students to submit literature to llander.org[1]

End Notes:

1. As of time of writing there was is no method of submitting or contacting due to the early nature of the website.

     On July 22nd an Instagram account named “piedmontprotectors” was created to post “anonymous reports of assaulters, attackers, harassers, abusers and r*pists on piedmont campuses” (Instagram.com). The piedmontprotectors account is a spin-off of other similar accounts that have recently been popping up at high schools nationwide. The Piedmont account’s first three posts clarify the purpose of the account and the guidelines for participating. The following 68 posts (as of July 26), all consist of a trigger warning and a typed description of a survivor’s account, often taken directly from Instagram’s direct messaging system. Initially, the account received submissions through a Google Form but this was quickly removed as many people submitted things not relevant to the account to subvert the submission process, while shielded by the anonymity provided by Google Forms.

     The drama began when a story was posted of a description of an account of sexual harassment involving two Piedmont Highschool boys (We will refer to them as “John” and “Stephen”, not to protect the boys but to protect this publication from threats). This post included photos of John and Stephen’s Instagram accounts and the comments were quickly swarmed with angered students calling for Piedmont High to take action against the assaulters. This post was soon taken down and replaced with one that did not include photos of the two boys’ Instagram accounts, piedmontprotectors cited being “threatened with legal action” as the reason for reposting. This second post still included the real names of the boys and was replaced with a third post which whited out the two names. Another survivor's account was soon posted, describing actions taken by these two boys on the same night as the previously described assault. The survivor writes of a horrific experience that involved multiple illegal, indecent, and despicable actions taken by the two boys as they coerced two girls to come over to one of their houses, continually harassing and physically assaulting the girls throughout the night.

     In response to these posts, one of the parents of the two boys confronted the admins of the piedmontprotectors account and “threatened legal action for slander and defamation” (piedmontprotectors) while also citing cyberbullying as an issue with the account. Both online slander and defamation are real things a person can be sued for, however, according to harvard.org, this attack falls flat if the defendant can either prove that what they said was true or if what they said was simply their opinion. According to the government agency of “Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Planning and Evaluation”, legally consent is something that must be acquired from any parties involved in a sexual act. Thus, if these families were to sue the accuser(s), the accuser(s) would simply have to point out that they did not give consent, leaving the burden of proof resting on the two boys (cornell.edu). While this threat is empty, it speaks to the immense amount of privilege many members of the Piedmont community hold. These wealthy families were willing to further terrify sexual assault survivors and possibly take them to court simply to preserve their high standing in the community and to protect their children from their own detestable actions.

     On the 26th of July, an account by the name of “phsmaleprotectors” was created with the purpose of “stopping the false rape and harassment allegations against men by telling their sides of the story". Their first post is an image taken from a change.org petition asking for “justice for Izu”, a man who reportedly killed himself over a rape allegation. Currently, the post has 5 likes and 461 comments, the majority of which are highschoolers expressing their disgust with the account. Unprogressive accounts and sentiments like this will not cause the students of Piedmont to forget the incident involving John and Stephen, nor will it cause anyone to forget any of the other accounts that are uploaded daily to the piedmontprotectors Instagram page. This is not an anomaly and the wealthy of Piedmont will continue to abuse their power until their misdeeds are made public and they are forced to pay for all the damage they have done.

You can find the piedmontprotectors account here

Stay safe and hold abusers accountable whenever possible.