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Protesters Block Apple and Google Buses In California
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Business Insider reports that protesters have stopped a bus filled with Apple employees in San Francisco and a Google bus in Oakland. Tech companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook provide free buses that take their employees from San Francisco to their headquarters in the suburbs. Protesters are mad at the tech companies because the wealthy tech employees have driven up the price of housing in San Francisco, which is pricing out some people. The buses also use public transit stops, and some protesters think that's wrong. Between 70 and 100 protesters gathered for the blockade of Apple private tech shuttle to protest evictions in the city of San Francisco. The activists in San Francisco were from Eviction Free San Francisco, Our Mission No Eviction, Causa Justa /Just Cause. Protesters stood in front of a white shuttle bus holding banners and signs. Some peeked through cardboard signs fashioned in the shape of place markers on Google maps, with "Evicted" written across the front. Meanwhile violence occurred in Oakland, according to reports from IndyBay, as protesters unfurled two giant banners reading "TECHIES: Your World Is Not Welcome Here" and "Fuck off Google" and "a person appeared from behind the bus and quickly smashed the whole of the rear window, making glass rain down on the street. Cold air blew inside the bus and the blockaders with their banners departed." Two weeks ago, protesters stopped a Google bus."
This just in: The homeless and unemployed mobbed a bus full of people perceived to be rich, perhaps unaware of the 60-80 hour work weeks endured by software engineers, that once you take that into consideration, many in the industry make at, or less, than minimum wage.
-_- Guys... if you're gonna have a protest against the rich, go pitch a tent on the CEO's lawn, not in the middle of the street where a bunch of people only doing slightly better than you are take the bus to work every day. Not only will you win an Irony award from me, but you'll get arrested for obstructing traffic too -- and rightfully so. Time and place. First two things you learn in activism. Time. Place. Learn it.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
The tech industry is not responsible for driving up housing prices. The greed of people who set housing prices is responsible for driving up housing prices. However, it is much harder to visibly protest the upscale equivalent of a slumlord (I guess still a slumlord), especially when such highly visible symptoms as environmentally friendly commuter buses are within easy reach.
I don't agree with the protesters, but their argument is that by providing these busses, Apple and Google are encouraging their employees to live in the area the busses service.
Previously the employees would have chosen to live somewhere convenient, but more expensive, due to the need to drive themselves. Now the Apple and Google employees can buy up places near the bus routes, causing a mini-housing shortage and driving up prices, thus pricing locals out of the housing market
Exactly what is wrong with "gentrification"? One commenter on the linked article on IndyBay points out the City of Detroit as an example of what happens when the middle class leaves. Is that what they want for Oakland?
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
We are starting to see the social unrest caused by the wealth disparity in the US - a disparity of Third World proportions. You have people being left begind in the economic prosperity and to add insult to injury, they are then told it's because of their character: unwillingness to work hard, poor money skills, getting the wrong education or degree. (It's funny, back in the 90s, all those tech people were saying "follow you passions! That's how you make it big!" and "We only hire people who are passionate about what they do!")
The techies were just the first targets. Don't worry, the CEOs will come next - if they can get through shareholder paid for armed security. Security for big shots is a BOOMING business, btw.
This is what happens when people feel like there's no hope for them to better their lives. They see that "work hard" means nothing when you have assholes who know the right people become billionaires with little or no effort - they just had the contacts to folks who knew how to set it up to sucker investors with an IPO.
It's starting to happen folks! Social issues like this were solved in the 30s but we went BACKWARDs in the last couple of decades.
We need 1950s income tax rates back; which was the most prosperous times in US history. Back then working hard and having "good" character got you some where.
"I'd rather have to give half away than have all if it taken away!"
-Joseph P. Kennedy.
In most parts of the country, cities lament that people LIVE in the suburbs, and only WORK in the city, robbing them of the property taxes they need to support the crumbling social and economic infrastructure, causing a collapse in property values (Detroit is a perfect example, but other large cities have the same issues).
In California, when people make an effort to LIVE in the city, paying all those higher taxes and propping up all that social and economic infrastructure, they're protested for harming the poor by keeping the property values from collapsing.
Face facts, people - you can't have it both ways. If you don't want those middle-income people keeping your neighborhoods from turning into crack houses, you shouldn't complain when the landlords don't have to put up with any deadbeat who feels like squatting in their buildings.
with modest jobs (think service sector, utility technician, etc.) until recently. The cost of living in SF is rising quite rapidly, correlated with the increase in value of firms like Facebook, Twitter and others. Especially correlated with such companies' appearances on the public stock exchanges, which gives their employees a lot of purchasing power, which escalates the prices of housing, property tax rates, rents and so forth.
"Ordinary" jobs (jobs with compensation not de facto indexed to the rise of technology company valuations) don't keep up with increases in local costs of living in areas like SF or San Jose. This hits pretty hard on somebody, for example, like a service tech at a sewage processing plant. That's a moderately skilled job, one that provides real value to the community. Somebody who has filled that job well for 20 years, and who has been able to live in SF on their earnings, quite suddenly finds themselves being priced out of their community. How? Escalating property taxes (based on escalating home prices driven by demand from ISO-enriched techies); increased rents (same reason + others), increased prices of goods and services, etc. After 20 years, they find they can't keep up. Suddenly, living in SF is a "luxury".
All they did was do a good, useful job, maybe raise a family, contribute to making a good community - in short, all the stuff we'd like Americans to do - and they're priced out through no fault of theirs. It's a problem for them, and it's a problem for all of us. It doesn't seem like a problem to those who are on the techie compensation skyrocket, but it is. They just won't notice the damage as soon as others around them.
Dear Google and Apple,
I saw on the news that local residents hate you now and are preventing your workers from arriving to work on time. Please move your operations to our state and we will show how much we appreciate all your paid employees spending their money in our neighborhoods.
Sincerely,
The 49 other saner states.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Disparity and poverty are very different. The US has quite high disparity, but the average wealth is quite high, so the poor in the US are in general not nearly as poor as the poor in 3rd world countries.
Disparity and poverty are both bad and both cause very serious problems, but they are different.