East Berkeley

While Takoma Park residents may associate their community with Roscoe the Rooster, Takoma Park’s national claim to fame is their high level of activism. During the Civil Rights era, future Takoma Park mayor Sam Abbott led a campaign to stop federal highway construction through the community’s historic north Takoma neighborhood. In 1983, Takoma Park became the first municipality in the U.S. to become a nuclear-free zone, meaning they don’t do business with any company that makes nuclear weapons. Newspapers around the country have written about Takoma Parks’s activism, calling it “The People’s Republic of Takoma Park” and “The Berkeley of the East.”