The city’s richest and whitest district wants to secede
More and more Americans are desperate to redraw their country. In California and Texas, campaigners want their states to secede. In the Pacific Northwest, farming communities in Oregon’s rural, red counties want to split and form part of a reconfigured state called “Greater Idaho”. One recent poll found that 40% of Biden voters and 50% of Trump voters would rather blue and red states break apart and go it alone.
And nowhere does this sort of reconfiguration stand a better chance of success than in Atlanta, where an organised and well-funded group of residents is pushing for Buckhead, the city’s wealthiest neighbourhood, to break away from the de facto capital of the South and form a municipality of its own. But while ‘Buckxit’ may be a local campaign to create a city of just 80,000 residents, it also goes to the heart of the challenges facing cities — and the Democrats who run them — across America.
