
Google Bus Protesters’ Manifesto: ‘Get Out of Oakland’ - detcader
http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/2013/12/20/google-bus-protesters-manifesto-get-o/
======
jchung
I'd like to share a message specifically for the Googlers on HN.

I am a poverty fighter. I run a nonprofit that helps kids in high-poverty
communities. I just want to say that I know that there are tons of googlers
who care deeply about helping fight the persistent causes of and horrible
effects of being forced to struggle with poverty. I see it every time a
googler volunteers to help a school, donates a dollar to a charity, or builds
something that could help people in need. And because volunteers are a primary
part of our program, I see Googlers giving a lot. I just want to say thank
you. I think you can guess why these protesters have decided to pick you to
focus on. I just hope that you keep in mind that their opinion does not
represent those in the greatest need. Please continue working to make the
world a better place for those who are struggling to break out of a cycle
that's incredibly hard to beat. Even if they protest, please keep
volunteering. Please keep donating. Please keep building. Please don't stop
keeping the poor in your thoughts.

Thanks.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
All right. GiveDirectly refused to process my debit card. Where do I donate?

~~~
jchung
If you want to find poverty, there are a few ways to go. The obvious ones are
to support education (helping kids break out of poverty), to support what we
call "survival" which includes things like soup kitchens and shelters (which
are designed to help people cope with poverty), or healthcare in countries
which don't have free healthcare like the US (which help prevent late-in-life
entrance into poverty due to unexpected health problems). My nonprofit
organization CareerVillage.org helps kids get career advice
[https://careervillage.org/about/#make-a-
donation](https://careervillage.org/about/#make-a-donation)

~~~
eli_gottlieb
40x18 ($720), donation completed.

~~~
jchung
Wow that's a lot of Chai!!! Thank you so much _eli_gottlieb_ we'll put it to
very good use helping kids in low-income communities. I'll send you an email
separately with more.

------
eli_gottlieb
Gosh, wouldn't the world be such a nicer place if society solved its housing
problems by _building more housing with a higher density_ instead of having
these pointless zero-sum dominance contests?

But of course, that would defeat the whole purpose. The point is not to build
more housing, it's to have a zero-sum dominance contest and come out on top!

</extreme cynicism>

~~~
sliverstorm
The point is not dominance contests, the point is people want to keep their
low density housing even as housing costs rise in their city.

Imagine if you lived in Hawaii, and the island was just starting to become
popular because it is so nice. Everyone was moving there, and rents were going
through the roof because there is nowhere to expand. What you want isn't
Manhattan sky-rises on your little island; you want cheap, pre-discovery
Hawaii with its thatch huts and casual atmosphere back.

~~~
27182818284
>The point is not dominance contests, the point is people want to keep their
low density housing even as housing costs rise in their city.

I was told by an SF native that the problem was also one of wanting to keep
older housing rather—some historic styling reasons.

Does anyone know more about that aspect? I mean every city / town has
historically designated homes, is there a more aggressive form of general
legislation like that preventing new housing?

~~~
WalterSear
FWIW, the unhip parts of San Francisco have had relatively stable rent and
housing costs. It's just the 'cool' parts that took off, and then the 'cool'
parts of Oakland.

The last time I looked, it was only slightly pricier where I live in SF,
compared to even 10 years ago, when I moved here.

------
chrislgrigg
Already seeing the responses about how their worldview is simplistic, how the
protestors are acting out against people who are there to help them... but
does anyone want to comment on the actual complaint that the influx of tech
money is increasing the cost of living for those not working in the industry?
It seems equally simplistic to just dismiss their complaints when they seem to
have a very valid problem.

This is always the downside of gentrification. It's not like their claims
haven't been heard before, but I don't know if it's ever happened so quickly.
Does anyone living in the bay area want to comment on whether their claims are
actually valid and, if so, what can be done to help it?

~~~
adamnemecek
If nothing else, they are implying that they are entitled to living there
indefinitely.

~~~
sophacles
Um, that is exactly the same claim the counter arguments are making: "we're
entitled to move in wherever we want"

I know I'd be pissed if my community - not the place I happen to live, but the
actively built relationships I have with people in my neighborhood (years of
freindship, acquaintance, understanding and so on) - were disrupted because a
bunch of new people showed up and forced that community to be scattered by
mechanisms such as "we can't afford the rent anymore".

There is a lot of value that is destroyed. It isn't monetary, but it is a form
of wealth. That is a real problem.

I get that a lot of people don't give a shit about interpersonal things, and
think the notion of community is pointless. But a lot of us do care. Basic
decency should suggest paying attention to this sort of thing. Just because
you have more money than someone, doesn't mean you get to kick apart their
world.

Building a new community for oneself, a deep one anyway, is not easy, and gets
harder when you have to keep doing it - you start to say "what's the point - I
don't have enough money and time to do this again the next time the better off
need a new playground".

~~~
tene
If that's such an important value to you, why do you live somewhere with such
a large proportion of renters who do not own their homes? If you really want
to build long-term stable relationships with neighbors, wouldn't the best way
to prevent people leaving due to rent changes be to live somewhere where you
own your home, and so do most of your neighbors?

I feel like I'm missing something significant here. Renting an apartment is a
conscious choice to me, a trade-off between a temporarily-convenient location
and long-term stability, or at least that's how I've always approached it in
my personal life. It's baffling to me that people will sign a rental agreement
for a limited term, and then be so upset at the conditions of that agreement
not being guaranteed beyond that term. Perhaps I'm confused about the nature
of the complaints? Do you object to rental housing entirely?

~~~
sophacles
For a lot of people (you aren't one of them, by your statements, that doesn't
mean you represent the majority, or even that there isn't a significant
minority!) renting makes as much sense, or more, as owning. Further, in my
neighborhood, the prices have been relatively stable (roughly tracking
inflation) for a long time. It isn't trendy place. Whatever. Whatever the case
is - there are a lot of long-term renters. People come and go, sure, but it is
a slow replacement, and there are many people who've been here as long or
longer than me (6+ years for me at this location which I own, 9 in the
neighborhood). I like it here. I like the people here. There's a nice
community and it's partly due to the stability. Whether or not it was a the
best long-term plan to make friends with these folks, to build those ties,
it's what happened, and it works pretty well.

So now you're saying that should that get disrupted by things outside of my
control, and the control of my neighbors, it's our fault? Isn't that kind of
ridiculous?

~~~
walls
You just spent a paragraph explaining how it was within your control, but
because of some nonsense reasoning, you chose to do it anyway.

It's a very simple concept. If you are renting, you have relinquished any
guarantee of stability.

~~~
sophacles
No - I made choices based on the best I could. However other people can make
choices that undo my best efforts, and that would piss me off. It seems you
think that somehow I am the centralized control for everything, which is
awesome but unfortunately un-true.

Even if I could minimize the impact of people coming in and disrupting the
community, say causing them to put in a bunch of high cost living stuff a few
blocks away, it still drastically affects all sorts of other factors. Property
values go up anyway - taxes go up. Prices of things go up locally. Net impact
- same shit.

I'm not saying that it should stop. You seem to think I'm against progress.
I'm not - I'm just for sensible community preservation as well.

It's an even simpler concept: it isn't progress if it fucks up a bunch of
people's lives for no good reason.

What do you have against letting people be happy with their lives - seriously
it may take a little more effort to respect people, but it still seems decent
to do so.

------
sethrin
I was hoping to find a statement of some sort of achievable goal or solution.
I did not expect to find one. This is mere sound and fury, of no significance.

The influence of this influx of wealth can be likened to a rising tide, and as
Canute demonstrated, it is not terribly accomodating: the flow of dollars does
not hear this outcry. I'm amenable to a discussion on whether markets are the
most appropriate solution to the allocation of housing, but I doubt many
others would be, and that is not the argument being made. If these people are
angry about serving coffee, they should learn programming -- I taught myself,
in the poverty of a third world country no less. If they are less able to
learn programming than, e.g. the children of the Chicago Public Schools, then
I would consider it reasonable to charge a far greater rate for the services
that they do provide. If their services being provided are not of sufficient
value to afford them a new apartment (rent controls already being in place, as
far as I am aware) then 'Qu'ils mangent de la brioche'.

I'm no Horatio Alger character; I probably can't afford to live in the Bay
Area even now -- so I don't. You want to talk about grinding poverty, let's
bloody well talk. You want to talk about the evils of capitalism, you will
find no more willing audience. If you merely want to rage and riot, and not
stir a finger to help yourself otherwise, well...I'm not going to resort to
invective, but you may have to live elsewhere, Canute.

------
dkl
This is the wrong fight. Protester vs. Googler is a distraction. There are
other, root causes of the problem that make the protesters angry, and doing
this might relieve some frustration for them, but it does no good, and
arguably does harm to their cause and gets us no closer to real solutions.

Back in the 70's, Berkeley, a close neighbor, decided that rent control was
the answer. It turns out that it helped, but it had too many unintended
consequences (people living in $200 nice apartments for decades when they made
really good money, thus completely defeating the purpose of rent control).

So, rent control didn't work, at least not in the way it was done in Berkeley.
Did it work in SF? Doesn't seem to have. NYC? I hear nightmare stores of their
issues.

It's the dialog of the greater problems we need to have, not these stupid
little fights.

~~~
sliverstorm
Abolishing rent control might be the big-picture answer, but in the micro-
scheme, the protestors will never rally for that.

They really don't have a winning play that I can think of; the spat is
basically just them lashing out at the only thing they can think to lash out
at. They are in the unenviable position of living at low cost in low density
housing in a locality that is shooting up in value, and all they can do is
attempt to forestall the inevitable.

~~~
waps
Or they can get elected and introduce more rent control.

~~~
sliverstorm
More rent control doesn't help them. Rent control for everybody means the
wealthy pay less on rent too. Rent control for only the poor doesn't work, and
Section 8 is too unpopular for them to roll out a widespread program like that
for everybody who doesn't work for Google.

------
walls
> ... see the violence and degradation out there? This is the world that you
> have created ...

No, that is the world that the current tenants have created. These are the
people here to turn it around.

~~~
mathattack
If I were trying to encourage folks to not invest in local real estate, I
would try to scare Googlers and Facebookers out of town.

If I wanted to destroy the tax base supporting my school, I would try to scare
Googlers and Facebookers out of town.

If I wanted to drive my coffeshop or cheeseburger stand out of business I
would try to scare Googlers and Facebookers out of town.

If I wanted my theater to be empty, I would try to scare Googlers and
Facebookers out of town.

~~~
potatolicious
I agree with the gist of what you're trying to say, but:

> _" If I wanted to drive my coffeshop or cheeseburger stand out of business I
> would try to scare Googlers and Facebookers out of town."_

Yes, you really would. One of the chief problems with gentrification (where
"problem" is highly subjective) is that the incoming population sometimes
doesn't want the businesses you already have.

Your local cup-o-joe place is going to shut down in favor of organic, fair-
trade coffee that comes with a brochure (and 5x the price). Your local
cheeseburger stand is going to shut down in favor of a quinoa kale salad stand
(and 5x the price).

Edit: The oxymoron of Bay Area gentrification on the other hand is that the
protesters don't really want the old hood back, they want first-wave-
gentrification-hood back. Nobody really misses the cheapass coffee stand,
nobody really misses the cheapass taco stand. They miss that little temporary
state where the artisanal coffee shop opened and the organic grocery got
started but before the real rush came in search of it.

~~~
owenjones
Anecdotal story time:

I lived in a rough neighborhood in Philly probably at the beginning of the
first wave of gentrification in that area. Our house was a recent rehab, there
were several houses next door that were completely vacant. We would frequent a
terrible, dirty, cheap hoagie (or sub for you non-Philadelphians) shop owned
by an immigrant family. I was always worried that they would get displaced by
the incoming 2nd generation of gentrifiers.

Instead they rehabbed their business and now serve expensive sandwiches made
with organic ingredients and have a large selection of pricey craft beers.
It's still owned by the same family.

Now I'm not saying that the gentrification process isn't destructive to a
neighborhoods culture, but I don't think it has to be this way.

~~~
mathattack
Wealthier patrons are good for business. Most are happy up selling.

------
davevil
My favourite part is line "But look around, see the violence and degradation
out there? This is the world that you have created, and you are clearly on the
wrong side."

Umm...Really? If one side is full of violence and degradation, and the other
side has catered lunches and free massages, I'm going to choose the catered
lunch side 10 times out of 10.

~~~
waps
Did you miss the point about getting kicked out and getting forced to leave
with nowhere to go ?

That "might" be the violence and degradation they're talking about.

Just saying.

------
sremani
Playing victim while infringing other people's rights and intimidating people
with violence in the name of "revolution". Talk about Irony.

------
owenjones
Yes, that developer earning a relatively modest, yet maybe comparatively high,
six figure salary is the root of all that is wrong in the world.

Also I assume the author is implying their gentrification of Oakland is cool
and acceptable but Google employees gentrification is so not.

This vitriol really needs some perspective, although I'm pretty convinced this
has to be a troll.

~~~
callahad
In 2011, a $100,000 salary gave you a higher individual income than 93.4% of
all working-age Americans. It seems strange to describe an individual income
in the top 6% as "relatively modest."

Cite:
[http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstables/032011/perinc/new01...](http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstables/032011/perinc/new01_001.htm)

~~~
owenjones
Regardless the point I was trying to make is that if the author wishes to rail
against inequality, they picked a poor target in their new neighbors.

By relatively modest, I was referring to the salaries earned by people in
actual places of power.

If the author wanted to bring up the extreme disparity between the really-
wealthy and the rest of us, I am all ears, instead they've focused on the harm
done to them by the new gentrify-ing population; yet I assume at one point the
author was a gentrifier of the same neighborhood they now wish to protect.

People were upset when the hippies moved in to SF too.

~~~
waps
Googlers, by far more left than most of the country, cannot fathom that they
are part of "the rich" most of them rail against. Some of these people are
getting kicked out of their apartment, can't find a new place that's anywhere
near their job, so they're getting kicked out, forced to move away, forced to
quit their job and sent packing to nowhere with no job, no roof over their
heads and no money. Plenty of these will be homeless for a while to come.

My opinion is : stop fighting this discussion. You can't win. There are no
words anywhere that will make people accept being forced into homelessness
without fighting. Just shut up, go to church sunday and pay a few hundred
bucks on collection, because that will actually help them for a while. Lots of
churches help people relocate because they've got lots of locations, and this
is (part of) what they do.

TLDR: These protesters are right. Google, or googlers, techies in general, are
forcing the lower rungs on the social ladder into homelessness.

Sorry to say, but you're lucky you're in America. In Europe, I cannot imagine
these protests would have remained peaceful. A few tires and one window does
not count as violence. Visit the poor parts of Brussels once with what a
techie normally walks around with in San Francisco and you'll know what
violence is.

Of course the reason this doesn't happen in Sanfran is that this is just the
n-th time the poorest are being forced out.

------
philsnow
Thesis: If the bay area had a viable transit structure, the current housing
crisis would be less problematic.

People either need to work near their jobs or be able to commute to them.
Housing density is low in most places, so "working-class" people get pushed
out of "nice" areas, so they need to commute. Commuting is bad because transit
is bad: there isn't an interconnected, pervasive mesh of transit with
capillaries reaching into neighborhoods and arteries connecting cities. We've
got Bart and Caltrain, but they're each for the most part single corridors,
and the local transit doesn't link up well with it. So, taking public transit
costs lots of time and money. The alternative that people have is to drive,
but there are too many cars on the road, so driving takes lots of time and
money. The result is that people feel like they don't have anywhere to go.

I'm not sympathetic to the argument "I've lived here for NN years so I should
be allowed to stay living here as long as I want, realities of economics
aside".

I wonder if it would help if there were a governing body between county and
state that comprised "the bay area". Individual cities and counties have to
strike deals between each other to link transit, with all the usual crappiness
that politics entails. If a few counties (or cities that aren't in the same
county) have a disagreement, do they have any place to air their arguments
aside from the state level? People in LA don't care about the bay area's
transit problems. People outside the major metro areas (central valley, far-
northern california) don't care about the bay area's transit problems.

Part of the problem is that low density begets low density: all those cars
need a place to be parked all day while their drivers work, so we have ~40-50%
of the space in cities devoted to roads and parking. Further, low density
makes mass transit economically infeasible.

I don't have a solution to offer. I can't see a way from where we are to the
bay area I dream of, given the state of the economy and the politics involved.

Conclusion: we should collapse the bay area into a point mass. Then everybody
gets to live in the nicest digs in town!

------
mindcrime
These people aren't doing much to generate sympathy for their cause with
poorly informed rants like this. So the people who work for Google are to
blame? And not the politicians who legislate policies that inhibit the
construction of additional housing, thereby exacerbating the affordability
problem? Or maybe these folks want something that they aren't entitled to: a
world where everything is, and remains, exactly the way they want it - and
where the normal economic supply/demand mechanism doesn't apply.

Either way, if these protesters care about generating more interest in helping
them, I think they should consider a different tack.

------
gaius
Wow. I'm not surprised that a lot of Googler's drink coffee but I didn't
realize so many visited prostitutes.

~~~
samstave
Hah, yeah I thought that was a weird addition.

We are those that service you, even your loins!! for your money! You bastards!

WTF.

The sad part is that public transportation is so horrible in the Bay Area that
companies are spending MILLIONs per year to have private bus lines.

The Transport services at Facebook were amazing. But when I left and then was
working in Mountian view and had to take bart+caltrain it took me 2.5 hours
each way!

After riding the trains and transport in Hong Kong recently, just how bad BART
is was really driven home.

Bart is so abysmally poor y comparison to the HK train system, it makes me
angry that I am punished by having to use BART.

It would be great if the rage that these protesters had were re-directed at
the piss-poor management of public services and infrastructure.

Google and FB wouldnt have to spend millions on busses if the bay area were an
actual urban planned region with real transportation services.

The fact that CalTrain and BART can't even sync schedule in the ___ONE_
__single location where they intersect is atrocious.

------
billyjobob
This class warfare is ridiculously mistargeted. Google employees may be well
paid but they are still members of the proletariat, the class of wage slaves
who exchange their labour for money, the same class as the protesters. It's
the banksters, politicians, privileged guilds and company owners whom they
should both should be rallying against.

------
adamnemecek
Having such a simplistic worldview must be relieving.

------
gbelote
How is blaming Google employees any more righteous than blaming gays for
wanting to live in Oakland and driving up prices? How is bullying in general a
better strategy than attacking the root of the problem – conservative zoning
policy?

It seems clear that the issue here is that more people want to live in Oakland
than places to live and this drives rent up. If you want to bring prices down
you need to build more housing, specifically denser housing.

Some people oppose this because it changes the character of the neighborhood,
and that's a valid criticism. But the consequence of that stance is
constrained supply which drives prices up, gentrifying the poor. Doesn't it
make more sense to blame those who oppose high-density zoning?

Unless you want everything - strong local economy, low density, low prices –
then I don't know what to say, that seems pretty naive.

------
fourstar
Says the guy who prints it out using a computer (and some sort of word-
processor).

~~~
sliverstorm
Google doesn't really make computers, printers, or word-processors.

~~~
fourstar
Actually, they do (Google Docs, Chromebook?), but you're totally missing the
point.

~~~
sliverstorm
Ok, you're right on Docs, but they don't make Chromebooks.

Not missing the point, just thinking the point is not very strong.

~~~
nawitus
A lot of "makers of things" don't really make their things, they just sell
their brand.

~~~
sliverstorm
Either way, is an HP Chromebook something Google has "produced"?

~~~
dkuntz2
Google most likely collaborated with HP to create it. Provided they did
(because they might not have) I would argue they helped produce it.

Discarding the HP Chromebook, the Moto X and Moto G are arguably Google
produced, as are the entire Nexus line of phones.

------
nawitus
How can increased housing prices create foreclosures for the people who have
been living in the area? If housing prices double overnight, the mortgages
don't change a cent. The only way Google can create foreclosures is that they
create unemployment. That doesn't seem likely. Getting more wealthy engineers
to an area will likely increase jobs.

------
StavrosK
Can someone enlighten me as to what a Google bus is? Googling it doesn't shed
any light...

~~~
adamnemecek
It's a bus shuttle service for Google employees which takes them to work. It
has become some sort of symbol of the socio-economic divide between tech
employees and the rest of society in the Bay area.

~~~
fennecfoxen
It's also a symbol that the area's public-transit infrastructure is only
marginally useful.

On a related note, I'm off to catch the R train. [/nyc]

------
brownbat
I know economists talk about people choosing places to live in terms of
"amenities," and businesses want to headquarter where people want to live. At
what point is it cheaper to import amenities to, I dunno, Wyoming than to keep
fighting the rising costs and politics of the metropolis?

I guess the answer is basically never? I wonder how much it would cost to keep
the museums and clubs running with a lower population, just a whole planned
city of entertainment...

(Maybe because businesses also benefit from sharing a tradeable talent pool
with other similar businesses...)

------
stevewilhelm
I think it makes Googlers uncomfortable to be lumped in with the 1% by the 99%
they drive away from in private buses every day.

------
davidbates
I am sure the original has a #ThroughGlass hash tag ;)

------
acchow
> You, your employers, and the housing speculators are to blame for this new
> crisis, so much more awful than the last one.

This is harmful to the fight against fraud and speculation in finance. Thanks.

