
Protesters block Google bus in S.F. Mission - slapshot
http://blog.sfgate.com/stew/2013/12/09/protesters-block-google-bus-in-s-f-mission/
======
xanderstrike
I don't get it. The buses are cutting down on personal driving (a universally
acknowledged evil), and paying for permits to use the stops (generating
revenue for the city). Would these people rather the Google employees all
drive personal vehicles, increasing wear and tear on the roads, congestion,
pollution, etc., costing the city money?

Also, is it really the companies fault that the value of housing in the area
is going up because they exist? Can you really expect them to get up and
leave?

I don't really see what the companies are getting out of this in the first
place. They don't have to shuttle their employees in to work, could save a
whole lot of money by not renting/buying buses, but they do and it does
nothing but positive things for the employees, the city, and the environment.

~~~
ebiester
No. At least the ones I've heard from, they want employees of companies in the
South Bay and Peninsula to live outside of San Francisco. They believe that
the mass influx of money is driving long time residents out, and that building
more housing is the wrong solution. I remember reading one article that
suggested there should be a wait list to get to live in the city.

~~~
Cookingboy
Right, and that simply does not work in a free country. These people moved to
SF a while back, but they still displaced the local culture that was before
them, and now they are settled in and they think they rightfully own the
place. The draconian zoning laws and anti-development sentiment is only gonna
hurt these people more, since the cost of living is being driven up
artificially and the people they are trying to ward off are gonna move in no
matter what.

~~~
malandrew
Reminds me of this story posted by moxie[0] a while back:

There's an old wobbly story: A wobbly was riding a freight train across the
midwest one summer, in between jobs. The train sided out in the middle of
nowhere, and it was scorching hot, so the wobbly got off the train and started
walking down a dirt road.

After a couple of miles, the road passed by an apple orchard. The wobbly
hopped over the fence, and sat down to rest under the shade of a big apple
tree.

The wobbly sat there enjoying the shade for 20 minutes, until a farmer came
across him. "You can't be here!" exclaimed the farmer, "This is my land!"

The wobbly looked up at the farmer and asked "Really? What makes it your
land?"

"What are you talking about you dirty tramp, I inherited it from my father!"
replied the farmer, almost bewildered at such an indignant question.

"Hmm, and what made it _his_ land?" asked the wobbly.

"Why, he inherited it from _his_ father!" replied the farmer, now really
angry. "It's been in my family for three generations!"

"And what made it your grandfather's land?" asked the wobbly.

The farmer, now barely able to contain himself, yelled proudly "Why! My
grandpappy _fought the indians_ for it!"

The wobbly nodded, stood up, pulled back his sleeves, and replied "Uh huh.
Then I'll fight you for it, _right now._ "

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5222540](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5222540)
(Moxie's original post with comments)

------
dannyr
From
[http://www.sfbg.com/googleshoutdown](http://www.sfbg.com/googleshoutdown):

UPDATE 12:32pm: Various tips have streamed in that this shout-out was staged.
Protest organizer Leslie Dreyer talked to us on the phone and verified that
this person's identity was Max Bell Alper, a union organizer from Oakland.
This person was not a Google employee, and Dreyer was not able to verify if
Alper was there in the morning with the group of 20-30 protesters. The
Guardian is attempting to contact Alper for comment. Dreyer said she, as an
organizer, was unaware that the "performance" had been planned. We are
following this as it develops.

~~~
stephencanon
The article linked here doesn’t mention the “faux Googler” at all. Not sure
why you’re posting this comment on this particular article.

~~~
adventured
It elaborates on the nature of the protest that was occurring.

~~~
stephencanon
It elaborates on the actions of one individual, who may or may not have had
anything to do with the rest of the protesters, and distracts from the actual
complaints (valid or not) those protesters have.

------
seanconaty
This op-ed does a better job at explaining how some non-tech residents of San
Francisco feel about the buses.

    
    
      When your experience of a big city is a seamless parade of hip restaurants
      and privately funded transportation, it's easy to overlook the things that
      cities need, like filled potholes and a reliable transit system. San Franciscans
      feel resentful about the technology industry's lack of civic and community
      engagement, and the Google bus is our daily reminder.
    

[http://www.sfgate.com/living/article/Why-we-re-invisible-
to-...](http://www.sfgate.com/living/article/Why-we-re-invisible-to-Google-
bus-riders-4467574.php)

~~~
seanconaty
I personally think it has to do with wealthier people doing what they want
regardless of what the community wants.

Similar outrage flared after the Sean Parker wedding. Regardless of what he
actually did at the site, regardless that he paid a fine after the fact,
regardless that it created jobs (I know a guy who worked for the lighting
company) he pulled the ask-for-forgiveness-rather-than-permission stunt and
did what he wanted to do, community & regulations be damned. He got what he
wanted: a magical wedding in a beautiful, protected area of Big Sur.

~~~
judk
[http://m.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/06/sean-
par...](http://m.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/06/sean-parker-
responds-to-redwoods-wedding-criticism-and-his-defense-is-actually-pretty-
convincing/276553/)

How dare he donate millions of dollars to conserve and restore Big Sur.

------
Patrick_Devine
I get the rationale of targeting Google's private bus fleet. There's nothing
like a giant bus billboard rolling through your neighborhood to remind you of
gentrification and the exorbitant rent prices. I do, however, find it pretty
difficult to sympathize with the protesters. Would these people have preferred
everyone on the bus to have driven their cars instead?

I suppose you could argue that the buses themselves are enabling
gentrification, because if they weren't there, more people might stay in the
valley instead of living in the city. That's a pretty tenuous connection
though because you could argue that it would have happened anyway (I did the
commute over ten years ago between Potrero and Palo Alto).

If Google wanted to alleviate some of the vitriol, they could offer to allow
non-Googlers to use the bus (like Stanford's Marguerite system) either for
free or some kind of nominal charge. I realize that's a headache, but instead
of getting bad publicity, they turn it on its head and the "two tier" comments
ring pretty hollow.

~~~
judk
SFans don't want to ride the buses. The protestors complaint is that SF should
be for people who work in SF.

~~~
Patrick_Devine
Auslander raus!

------
ma2xd
It's a fake. The guy is an activist and is named Max Bell Alper.

[http://www.makingchangemedia.org/about-the-
team/](http://www.makingchangemedia.org/about-the-team/)

[http://www.gettyimages.no/detail/news-photo/occupy-wall-
stre...](http://www.gettyimages.no/detail/news-photo/occupy-wall-street-west-
protestor-max-bell-alper-of-news-photo/137422522)

~~~
stephencanon
As my sibling poster pointed out, this article doesn’t mention “the guy” at
all.

------
ChuckMcM
It is entirely unclear what they are protesting, other than 'not working at
Google.'

The alleged trespass of using 'public infrastructure for private profit' is
unsupported. People pick up and drop off people at the sidewalk (required, no
stopping in the middle of the street).

The staged appearance of a guy who is a union organizer (reported elsewhere)
added a bit of melodrama.

Looking at the action critically, what is to be gained by calling attention to
Google, Facebook, and others providing their own bus fleets?

~~~
erikpukinskis
My guess is that the protests are targeted more generally at gentrification.
People of privilege moving to the Mission, mostly ignoring the culture of the
neighborhood and it's long-time residents, fueling out of control rent
increases, slowly destroying a cultural landmark.

I suspect the damage has more to do with CA property tax and SF's NIMBy zoning
laws than silicon valley bussing, but they do have a point that it's a real
problem. Not sure what the solution is. This protest doesn't seem to be it,
but I applaud them for taking a MVP stab at it. Time to iterate now,
protesters!

~~~
xster
But then again, to push the conservatism to the extreme, not much of the
actual original SF Ohlone native culture is still remaining.

~~~
prodigal_erik
This. The Mission is a giant game of musical chairs, and it's weird how anyone
thinks the people who have only been there since the 1950s deserve to have it
forever.

------
arnoldwh
Hopefully, people can work together to what I think could be 2-3 good outcomes
that help alleviate some of these very real problems:

1\. Public Transportation: both inter & intra-city transportation is very
poor. It's extremely hard to travel between neighborhoods in San Francisco,
and it's a huge reason people rely so much on Lyft and other providers in the
city. Also, it's really difficult to travel between SF and Oakland (as well as
other cities). Creating better / more infrastructure that connects these two
should help ease supply constraints that cause these price spikes in the first
place. Not sure how feasible this is...especially looking at other cities
experience in public transportation (example: bay bridge).

2\. More supply. One of the effects of previous legislation to keep the SF
"neighborhood feel" was that it constrained new supply coming into the market.
Unfortunately, it takes a few years for new units to come into the market, and
it's obvious it's not keeping pace with demand. There of course needs to be a
balance vs. keeping SF's historic appeal, but maybe the previous compromise
leaned too heavily against putting up new units.

3\. Government subsidies / rent control to help ease rapid price hikes. I'm
not as big of a fan of these, but largely because I don't quite understand all
the economic/social effects.

------
xster
I just moved to the area and have little context, wondering what solution are
the local residents fighting for? I'd imagine going back to an idyllic
agrarian past is probably not viable. Is the proposal for companies to pay a
special municipal tax for zoning special loading curb areas (which I'd imagine
UPS and taxis and the likes will have to pay as well for using public
infrastructure)? Is it for higher income or newer residents to pay a special
tax to give to lower income or older residents which can be used to fund
affordable housing projects? What is the proposed solution that can be put
into a legislation?

------
zxcvvcxz
Anyone find it lame how people are tweeting about an incident instead of
communicating with each other when they're like 10 feet away?

Don't expect to reason with protesters if you're not even willing to talk to
them. Way to be the uptight sheltered techies you're being made out to be.
That being said, I don't think it's legal to block a vehicle, and protesters
would probably be better served doing something productive rather than
complaining immaturely in this matter.

Shame on everyone!

~~~
cynicalkane
I am not obligated to "reason" with anyone who stops me, illegally, and
demands my attention. I don't see why it's different for the average Google
employee.

~~~
tedivm
They blocked in a bus that was illegally parked. No one forced you to get on
the bus that was violating city codes.

What these people are complaining about is a two tiered system, where one set
of laws apply to the people who live in the city and another set apply to
corporations like Google. Why should that bus get to do something that common
citizens are not allowed to, simply because it's owned by a company instead of
a person?

~~~
cynicalkane
That's not what I said.

What I said is that I'm not obligated to "reason" with someone that illegally
demands my attention. Maybe abortion doctors should be obligated to "reason"
with pro-life protestors, to open a conversation? Hey, a lot of time those
guys aren't even breaking the law.

What the OP calls being an "uptight techie" I call being an ordinary human
being in an allegedly civilized country.

~~~
ryguytilidie
You seemed to miss the guys point. If you park somewhere illegally and someone
blocks you in, getting upset that they are doing something illegal while
ignoring the fact that you are doing something similarly illegal everyday is
pretty weird imo...

~~~
xster
It's a pretty generic 'taking the law in your own hand' argument though. If
you illegally double park and as consequence, I illegally shoot you and your
whole family, debating what I did is besides the point since the real debate
should be about why you double parked.

~~~
jpwright
That analogy is just a _tiny_ bit more extreme then what actually happened.

~~~
xster
Ya, it's a ridiculous example but I'm just pointing out the difficulty of
codifying vigilantism into law. If illegally killing people who double park is
not appropriate, is stealing their TV appropriate? Is hacking their email
account appropriate? Who can appropriately be a vigilante? Is it appropriate
for a victim who suffered physical injuries? Is it appropriate for a victim
who felt offended? Is it appropriate for an eye witness? Is it appropriate for
someone who saw it online?

~~~
jpwright
This was a peaceful protest, not vigilante justice. Some people were unable to
get to work on time. Where's the outrage about union workers not being able to
get to work during a picketed protest?

------
EarthLaunch
> “Public $$$$, Private Gains,”

That's true, and the right solution is to remove public funding from
transportation. Then there's no downside to private gains.

~~~
zwieback
private highways?

~~~
theorique
sure, why not?

~~~
InvisibleCities
You know, we actually tried that for a while (search for Turnpike System or
Turnpike Trusts on wikipedia), and it was an unmitigated disaster. Because
turnpike operators had what were effectively local monopolies, they collected
absurdly high fees and often spent as little as possible on routine
maintenance, resulting in high cost / low quality roads. This was a major
impediment to free trade, as it drove shipping costs to prohibitively high
levels. The socialization of roads that took place during the Victorian era,
along with the growth of the railroad industry, helped usher in the period of
great economic and industrial expansion that lead to the Gilded Age.

~~~
baddox
The Turnpike trusts were just government organizations that attempted to fund
government roads with a per-use toll. They were a far cry from private road
systems.

------
mahyarm
They should be protesting city hall and public unions for their anti-
development behavior.

~~~
stefan_kendall
Agreed. San Francisco has an artificial cap on supply as demand continues to
rise.

It doesn't take more than the first 40 seconds of an economics class to figure
out what's going to happen to the price.

You can either decrease demand or increase supply. And good luck kicking
people out of San Francisco.

(As a side note, if I worked for google I'd live as close as possible in
Mountain View. But I'm not the nightlife type.)

------
chaz
Does anyone know what the sign "Fine $271; Total Fine (2011-2013) $1 Billion"
refers to?
[https://twitter.com/maxbatt/status/410097083081695233/photo/...](https://twitter.com/maxbatt/status/410097083081695233/photo/1/large)

~~~
tedivm
I'm not sure about the $1billion, but the $271 fine is what we as regular
citizens would get if we tried to pick people up from the bus stop. The
complaint is that the two tiered system- one where normal citizens have to
follow the rules, while corporations can do whatever they please- and the fine
is simply one example of that.

~~~
WalterBright
> The bus operators — private companies like Google, Facebook, Apple and
> Genentech — would pay for permits to use the Muni stops

Looks like that issue is being taken care of.

~~~
tedivm
Yeah, it's nice to know that if I break the rules I can get the city to
retroactively change them for me, assuming I have enough money.

~~~
chaz
Curious: if you disagree with a permitting process for the private buses, what
would you prefer the outcome to be?

~~~
ryguytilidie
That seems like a mighty straw man. He never said he disagreed with the permit
process. He simply disagrees with the idea that these companies have been able
to park illegally with no consequence for years and instead of just writing
them tickets, as the city would do for a normal person, they decide to give
them permits to prevent them from having to break the law hundreds of times a
day.

------
muglug
I applaud them for creating a mini-Twitter firestorm in the process. It's a
shame the local media misidentified one of the actors (one of them playing an
angry Googler)

------
codex
Xenophobia is a natural reaction to competition for scarce resources.

