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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."
I hate to make it sound like I'm pissing on the protesters, but how is it the fault of techies that house pricing is going up?
Goodbye Slashdot. You've changed.
I have lived in the SF Bay Area almost my entire life. In this area, every single time anyone tries to build new urban housing, the left shows up and protests. Are you trying to build a new condo building? PROTEST. Trying to build new apartments? PROTEST. The political left has fought, tooth and nail, for decades, to restrict severely, or even to reduce the supply of housing in the SF Bay Area, and ESPECIALLY urban housing like high-rise apartment buildings. Then, the consequences of their actions occurred: the price of real estate went up, especially for renters.
When the price of real estate started going up, because of absolutely restricted supply, the left started rebelling against the consequences of its own actions. They started protesting again--not against themselves who actually caused the phenomenon, but against Google, who had nothing to do with it. Now the left has people holding banners saying "FUCK GOOGLE" and "Techies not welcome here".
Of course, if the protestors really succeeded in "fucking Google" etc, and tech companies were really not welcome here, then silicon valley would have to move somewhere else. Then the tech industry which supports this entire area (like GM used to support Detroit) would vacate, and the tax base would implode, and San Francisco would increasingly resemble Detroit--not at first, of course, but gradually over decades. Then the left would protest the consequences of their own actions, once again. "FUCK GOOGLE FOR LEAVING", "FUCK TAX RECEIPTS FOR GOING DOWN" and so on. Perhaps they would demand that tech companies and workers continue to pay local taxes despite not working or living here anymore.
I find it ironic that one of the protesting organizations is called "just cause". Because "just cause" is what was already happening. People are getting what they DESERVE--unaffordable real estate--which is what they caused by their own actions. That is what "just" means, or used to mean.
Frankly, I think it should be easier to evict renters. If they do not allow the construction of new housing units, and they have never bought a house, then they should have nowhere to live. They have only themselves to blame.