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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsOakland: Blockade of Facebook Bus at Macarthur BART Station
Source: Indybay
A Facebook shuttle bus had its morning commute disrupted.
Around 9:20 AM on Monday, March 16th, a Facebook bus pulled up outside the MacArthur BART station for its regular morning stop. This white bus looks just like the Google bus, except for the letters MPK in the window, designating Menlo Park as its ultimate destination. It was the final morning pickup for the hundreds of highly-paid Facebook employees whose recent arrival is driving up rents, evictions, and police violence against long-time Oakland residents. While this bus was waiting for the remaining employees to board for the hour-long commute, around 10 people surrounded the bus with banners. One of them read YOUR FRIEND REQUEST HAS BEEN DENIED and the other read simply #FUCKZUCK, in reference to Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder and CEO of Facebook.
Fliers were handed out to passersby, the full text of which is transcribed below. The dozens of people who went by the blockade expressed their support (aside from one person who tried to cause a scene). Multiple passing cars also honked their support and gave the thumbs up. At some point during the 15 minute disruption, someone ran up to the back tires of the Facebook bus and quickly slashed them (although it is doubtful all four of the back tires were deflated), and then ran away.
After 15 minutes, over 10 OPD and BART police swarmed the bus and detained some of the people involved. One of them is now being charged with misdemeanor vandalism, but this charge will not stick. This person was snitched out by a newly unionized Facebook bus driver. This driver pointed out a random person and said they slashed the tires, despite the fact this was not true.
In total, the Facebook bus was delayed over 30 minutes. It is hoped that more people take actions like this to spread hostility against the tech industry and discourage the further gentrification of Oakland.
Read more: https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2015/03/16/18770026.php
virgogal
(10,178 posts)What is wrong with the tech industry?
Everyone seems to use it and enjoy it.
I don't know anyone that is tech-free.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)A company creates hundreds of well-paid jobs and is considerate enough of the environment and the impact on traffic that it provides buses for its employees, and what is the reaction? "Fuck Zuck" and slashed tires. Sheer, unmitigated douchebaggery at its worst.
SickOfTheOnePct
(7,290 posts)brooklynite
(94,851 posts)Cities are dynamic; they can't be locked into place and unchangeable. If you want to see a city that's not gentrifying, visit Detroit, Camden, NJ or East St. Louis. The neighborhood I live in in NYC was middle class in the 19th century, a working class slum in the early 20th century, and upper class today. Those changes are driven by supply and demand. If people want Oakland to remain affordable to the working class, that responsibility lies not with Facebook or with it's employees, but with the Oakland City Government (who, quite honestly, might need the property tax revenue that upper class residents can pay).
Adrahil
(13,340 posts)The 1% are succeeding at getting the rest of us to fight over the scraps.
Matariki
(18,775 posts)Rents really are a problem where there's a concentration of tech companies. But I agree, the anger isn't really hitting the right targets.
Matariki
(18,775 posts)Joy.
hunter
(38,339 posts)My parents are artists, and to be truthful, they acquired some comfortable wealth, equivalent to their pensions and social security, "homesteading" in sketchy neighborhoods, all for the simple reason those sketchy neighborhoods were the only places they could afford to live as artists.
My family curse is that we always move away long before a thousand dollar property turns into a million dollar property, all because we don't like the new neighbors, and they don't like us.
One of my great grandfather's owned some fairly substantial chunks of San Francisco and Los Angeles, but he bet it all, and lost it all, on the aircraft and movie industries, before the stock market crash, before World War II. He simply didn't live long enough to see his visions of the future come true. His wife was a more conservative sort. Her favorite house has been torn down and is now the parking lot of a strip mall. Her Los Angeles house is gone too. For many years it was across the street from a strip club, but that neighborhood is now gentrified and the strip club is gone. Rents for a small apartment there exceed $2100. Great grandma's house in San Francisco, long sold, has been subdivided into very small apartments. My grandma's childhood bedroom is now an apartment with an entire Middle Eastern family living in it.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)but is usually a worthwhile thing to do.
hunter
(38,339 posts)I wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire.
Money changes everything, and not for the better.
Throd
(7,208 posts)Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)were actually honking in support.
cwydro
(51,308 posts)I bet everyone involved is on Facebook and probably posted to social media of their involvement.
Wow, what a country we've become.