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Indybay Feature
An Open Letter to Google Apologists
To all the yuppies who defend the Bay area tech industry after every googlebus protest:
Just for starters, STFU about googlebuses being good for the environment. By making commuting more comfortable and more productive they merely encourage employees to live further from their jobs than they otherwise would. If Google really wanted to make a dent in global warming they would do two things - allow their employees to work from home (the one perk they refuse to provide), and restrict the commuter buses to the immediate Mountain View area. This would help unclog rush hour traffic in Oakland and SF and greatly reduce the length of bus trips. Googledrones who insisted on living an hour or more from campus would find themselves having to leave earlier in the morning or stay later at night to make up for the lost production they previously accomplished on wifi-equipped buses. A few months of that would convince most of them to move the fuck out of Oakland.
Speaking of which, convincing yuppies to move the fuck out of Oakland is the whole point of the protests. Getting rid of the yuppies is the only way to bring rents down to where poor people can afford them. When you complain that protesters "haven't thought things through" or are being "counterproductive" you expose your ignorance. The guy who told KQED that he couldn't "like, get on the bus and feel safe about it" said it like it was a bad thing. It's not. The less safe you feel the more likely you are to leave.
Oh, and one last thing. NOBODY believes that Silicon Valley is going to come up with some magical technocratic solution that will miraculously cure the Bay area's real estate insanity. Y'all have been citing Tim Draper's wingnut idea to divide California into six different states as evidence that the tech industry is finally thinking about gentrification. SRSLY??? If that's what y'all come up with when you're thinking about the problem then PLEASE go back to ignoring it.
And to all y'all bus smashers, mad props and one small suggestion. Those rechargeable fire extinguishers filled with paint could come in real handy if aimed at a bus windshield. Especially if you use oil based paint for added resistance to washer fluid...
Speaking of which, convincing yuppies to move the fuck out of Oakland is the whole point of the protests. Getting rid of the yuppies is the only way to bring rents down to where poor people can afford them. When you complain that protesters "haven't thought things through" or are being "counterproductive" you expose your ignorance. The guy who told KQED that he couldn't "like, get on the bus and feel safe about it" said it like it was a bad thing. It's not. The less safe you feel the more likely you are to leave.
Oh, and one last thing. NOBODY believes that Silicon Valley is going to come up with some magical technocratic solution that will miraculously cure the Bay area's real estate insanity. Y'all have been citing Tim Draper's wingnut idea to divide California into six different states as evidence that the tech industry is finally thinking about gentrification. SRSLY??? If that's what y'all come up with when you're thinking about the problem then PLEASE go back to ignoring it.
And to all y'all bus smashers, mad props and one small suggestion. Those rechargeable fire extinguishers filled with paint could come in real handy if aimed at a bus windshield. Especially if you use oil based paint for added resistance to washer fluid...
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What more can I say.
Google funds ALEC and other far right wing and climate change denier groups.
Puts the lie to their "Don't be evil" slogan.
Switch to duckduckgo.com and startpage.com.
Search "how to avoid google".
Move the tent cities to google-land...? See how they like being invaded.
Puts the lie to their "Don't be evil" slogan.
Switch to duckduckgo.com and startpage.com.
Search "how to avoid google".
Move the tent cities to google-land...? See how they like being invaded.
Starting with a STFU is very juvenile. People have a right to live where they want, you don’t get to decide that, or would you prefer someone else chose where you reside? There are a lot of people that have to commute from Concord, Hayward, Fremont, and places further out spending an hour or two each way. And they aren’t in any tech fields.
In regards to housing people can charge what they want for rent or to sell. If the neighborhoods clean up the values go up. You know when people aren’t stealing things off your porch, breaking into cars, firing off guns, or setting people on fire on the bus for fun. Gentrification isn’t a dirty thing. It’s what happens when people actually care for an area and do something to improve it.
If you don’t like it here why don’t you leave? Stop apologizing for the ghetto thugs and crack heads and blaming your woes on people who come in for the jobs that are available. There aren’t the shipyards anymore so there aren’t those zero education jobs that people flooded here for from the south.
In regards to housing people can charge what they want for rent or to sell. If the neighborhoods clean up the values go up. You know when people aren’t stealing things off your porch, breaking into cars, firing off guns, or setting people on fire on the bus for fun. Gentrification isn’t a dirty thing. It’s what happens when people actually care for an area and do something to improve it.
If you don’t like it here why don’t you leave? Stop apologizing for the ghetto thugs and crack heads and blaming your woes on people who come in for the jobs that are available. There aren’t the shipyards anymore so there aren’t those zero education jobs that people flooded here for from the south.
I doubt that anyone working at Google today could build a ship. It's a skilled trade.
?
Wow.
?
Wow.
Anyone who lives in OAK and has to endure a bus ride to Mtn View every day is hardly "living the dream". That sounds like the essence of "suck" to me. And now you just made their day worse... "yay".
Ever think they are living in OAK because they can't afford the Peninsula? Plenty of Googlers have ZERO stock options and are far from wealthy. And to compare them to "scabs" just shows how totally clueless today's East Bay anarchos are of class struggle, labor history, etc. Read a book, clueless ones...
Ever think they are living in OAK because they can't afford the Peninsula? Plenty of Googlers have ZERO stock options and are far from wealthy. And to compare them to "scabs" just shows how totally clueless today's East Bay anarchos are of class struggle, labor history, etc. Read a book, clueless ones...
I found the perfect solution - all S.F. and Oakland Techies are now to wear a yellow David's star with the letters TECH. They are to live in specially designated ghettos in the Mountain View area. There businesses, busses, etc., should be defaced with graffiti stating "Achtung, Techie", or, "Don't buy Techie". Techies should live in constant terror, a thread of violence is now a perfectly accepted "tactic".
Sounds familiar? The tactics of the Oakland "protestors" - none of whom is actually being affected by gentrification - are in no way different than those of the SA in Nazi Germany. Just go away.
Sounds familiar? The tactics of the Oakland "protestors" - none of whom is actually being affected by gentrification - are in no way different than those of the SA in Nazi Germany. Just go away.
When I hung posters 15 years ago in SF's Mission District calling for working people who were threatened by gentrification to vandalize yuppie cars, the a-historical, self-pitying bourgeois narcissist clowns who were colonizing and wrecking our neighborhood had the repugnant temerity to compare high-end vehicle vandalism to the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany -- and now we see it again!
Bourgeois conformist buck-chasing vulgarians never stop -- the cosmos revolves around them, and to hell with the rest of the world and everyone else in it. People like the individual who posted the persecution mania comment above are too disgusting to be worth lampooning. The Google bus actions are an excellent effort, a big step in the right direction, and I hope they keep happening.
Bourgeois conformist buck-chasing vulgarians never stop -- the cosmos revolves around them, and to hell with the rest of the world and everyone else in it. People like the individual who posted the persecution mania comment above are too disgusting to be worth lampooning. The Google bus actions are an excellent effort, a big step in the right direction, and I hope they keep happening.
"The guy who told KQED that he couldn't "like, get on the bus and feel safe about it" said it like it was a bad thing. It's not. The less safe you feel the more likely you are to leave. "'
-Really, Keating? This is the exact quote from the original post of this story. Making people feel unsafe= intimidation and bullying. That is the essence of fascist and Nazi behavior. And, guess what, it won't work. There are not enough of you and the Google folks will have the cops on their sides. Going after people who are taking long bus rides to work because they can't afford to live near work will NEVER win anyone over to your cause.
-Really, Keating? This is the exact quote from the original post of this story. Making people feel unsafe= intimidation and bullying. That is the essence of fascist and Nazi behavior. And, guess what, it won't work. There are not enough of you and the Google folks will have the cops on their sides. Going after people who are taking long bus rides to work because they can't afford to live near work will NEVER win anyone over to your cause.
I love how you complain about intimidation and bullying and then brag about having the cops in your side. Wake me up when anti-gentrification protesters hold a guy face down on a railway platform and shoot him in the back of the head, m'kay?
" Making people feel unsafe= intimidation and bullying. That is the essence of fascist (sic) and Nazi (sic) behavior. And, guess what, it won't work. There are not enough of you and the Google folks will have the cops on their sides."
Who else has done stuff like this in the past; the real IWW of a hundred years ago, the Spanish anarchists, and virtually everyone else who has every used direct action in the class struggle. It worked for them and given your piteous wailing response an infinitely more benign form of this appears to be doing the trick now. What do you propose instead -- lighting votive candles?
Who else has done stuff like this in the past; the real IWW of a hundred years ago, the Spanish anarchists, and virtually everyone else who has every used direct action in the class struggle. It worked for them and given your piteous wailing response an infinitely more benign form of this appears to be doing the trick now. What do you propose instead -- lighting votive candles?
First of all, nice way to assume that "I'm on the cops side". I only said that the cops will be on the side of those being threatened. I think that's obvious, and an observation that could have just as easily been made by one of the action's SUPPORTERS. I'm pointing out that if you are concerned about poverty in Oakland, then you are not going about things in such a way that will fix such problems.
Second, you are NOT targetting people with any ability to fix what you see as the problem. You aren't blocking Thiel, Zuckerburg, Page, Brin, Pincus, the big venture capital firms. You are messing with fellow workers... just trying to get to work and support their families.
Third, it cracks me up to see these "anti-gentrification" rants from the VERY PEOPLE that I have also seen BLAMED by African-American Indybay posters for gentrification! How many posts have there been on this site about "anarchists of color privilege ruining Oakland with their fixie bikes and skinny jeans, moving in and forcing out African-Americans because they see Oakland as a cheaper place to live their DIY/anti-conformist yet still bourgeois lifestyle". I've read as many of those on this site as I have "anti-Google" posts.
Is this your psychological method of displacing your own guilt and self-hatred for making Oakland neighborhoods "hip"? Because you are attacked for "homogenizing" formerly all-black neighborhoods, you are now projecting that same hatred and disdain onto easy targets: middle-class techs riding a bus to work.
Have I hit a nerve here? LOL.
Second, you are NOT targetting people with any ability to fix what you see as the problem. You aren't blocking Thiel, Zuckerburg, Page, Brin, Pincus, the big venture capital firms. You are messing with fellow workers... just trying to get to work and support their families.
Third, it cracks me up to see these "anti-gentrification" rants from the VERY PEOPLE that I have also seen BLAMED by African-American Indybay posters for gentrification! How many posts have there been on this site about "anarchists of color privilege ruining Oakland with their fixie bikes and skinny jeans, moving in and forcing out African-Americans because they see Oakland as a cheaper place to live their DIY/anti-conformist yet still bourgeois lifestyle". I've read as many of those on this site as I have "anti-Google" posts.
Is this your psychological method of displacing your own guilt and self-hatred for making Oakland neighborhoods "hip"? Because you are attacked for "homogenizing" formerly all-black neighborhoods, you are now projecting that same hatred and disdain onto easy targets: middle-class techs riding a bus to work.
Have I hit a nerve here? LOL.
Really? Name me an incident where Spanish anarchists or IWW threatened fellow workers simply for trying to get to work, not as part of a strike/scab situation. Sorry, I haven't heard about the current Google strike. Oops, I didn't realize these google buses were crossing striking Google workers picket lines. My bad.
Guys like this always have a College Marxist excuse for doing nothing. "Tho' cowards flinch and traitors sneer, we'll keep the red flag flying here..." Now, where did I leave those custard pies?
...googledrones aren't fellow workers. They're not working class by any economic measure, and the vast majority have no sense of working class solidarity. They get free rides to work, free food, free laundry, paid vacations, paid health insurance and very generous salaries. That puts them well into the middle class, even without stock options. Plenty of people manage to live in Mountain View on way less than the average googledrone makes. Googledrones only want to live in Oakland because 1. They save a little (for them) money on rent. 2. It's close enough to SF they can party there on weekends. 3. It doesn't matter how far it is from work because they get free rides. And they could very easily fix gentrification by (all together now!) moving the fuck out of Oakland.
And you might not have admitted it, but if you weren't on the side of the cops you wouldn't be trying to help them do their job. OPD would like nothing better than for radicals to adopt a touchy-feely I'm-OK-you're-OK strategy that automatically assumes any confrontation is bad and all problems can be solved through dialog. Liberals may say they don't condone police violence, but they seldom say it very loudly. Compare that to the outcry they raise when a Fortune 500 company gets one of its windows broken and it's obvious who they really support.
And you might not have admitted it, but if you weren't on the side of the cops you wouldn't be trying to help them do their job. OPD would like nothing better than for radicals to adopt a touchy-feely I'm-OK-you're-OK strategy that automatically assumes any confrontation is bad and all problems can be solved through dialog. Liberals may say they don't condone police violence, but they seldom say it very loudly. Compare that to the outcry they raise when a Fortune 500 company gets one of its windows broken and it's obvious who they really support.
I bet you feel just as clever using the word "googledrones" as Glenn Beck does when he uses the word "sheeple".
The anti-google bus actions are a fine thing, the first real efforts in the SF Bay Area to respond to the gentrification wave of the second dot-com bubble. The people doing this should keep at it, and ignore the fuck out of the assholes who diss their efforts. The fact that these efforts have draw such a frantic response is a small sign that the bus actions are on target.
by all means continue to resist gentrification, but by the time you realize you need to resist gentrification, like when the evictions come, you are almost out of time.
because your natural supporters, those getting evicted, will soon be gone.
to be replaced by those who oppose you, the gentry.
because your natural supporters, those getting evicted, will soon be gone.
to be replaced by those who oppose you, the gentry.
As stupid as this is, hyper gentrified neighborhoods are not safer neighborhoods. Chicago has been in an endless cycle of social programming for a century and it's the most violent city the United States. Chicago is not a safe city even if people on the north side might percieve it to be. Driving marginilized groups of people into being further alienated from their homes, places they've been for generations doesn't make your city safer it just creates a bubble of privilege while exacerbating some peoples very valid if misdirected anger. That being said, why don't you start an Oakland Solidarity movement like they have up in Portland and Seattle instead of threatening people on a bus. Or at least stop threatening people.
I'm sincerely sorry to have been so condemning on another thread, but this is being handled incredibly narcissistically. I'm not opposed to protesting Googles presence in the Bay, but not like this. If you're going to engage in direct action you have to be ethical about it. You have to be able to express why people who perceive themselves to be rightly or wrongly mere bystanders are being asked to feel accountable. You can't just threaten their bus and whether you're conscious of it or not in essence their being and safety and then tell people to s.t.f.u. I'm not pacifist but that's not cool.
I'm sincerely sorry to have been so condemning on another thread, but this is being handled incredibly narcissistically. I'm not opposed to protesting Googles presence in the Bay, but not like this. If you're going to engage in direct action you have to be ethical about it. You have to be able to express why people who perceive themselves to be rightly or wrongly mere bystanders are being asked to feel accountable. You can't just threaten their bus and whether you're conscious of it or not in essence their being and safety and then tell people to s.t.f.u. I'm not pacifist but that's not cool.
Are they supposed to be offered a catered buffet, too? Marco's response is incoherent and weak -- next contestant...
gentrification will force some of the displaced people into homelessness, a class of folk who tend to die at a higher rate than you or i. making gentrification an indirect source of class murder.
somehow vandalism doesn't seem quite as evil, comparatively speaking.
and the victims aren't just the evicted. anyone who rents must pay more nowadays for the same rental unit. property is the theft that keeps on stealing.
somehow vandalism doesn't seem quite as evil, comparatively speaking.
and the victims aren't just the evicted. anyone who rents must pay more nowadays for the same rental unit. property is the theft that keeps on stealing.
' They get free rides to work, free food, free laundry, paid vacations, paid health insurance and very generous salaries. That puts them well into the middle class, even without stock options"
-So your war is on the "middle class"? Good luck with that! Going after all Americans with paid vacations? Also, in case you haven't figured it out, tech companies don't give out "Free Food" to be nice, they do it to keep their workers at work longer, thus undermining the notion of the 40 hour week. It is also why they focus on young workers, who are more likely to get sucked in by free food, video games, beer parties, etc. than older workers who have to go home and see their families.
Your targets are so off it is laughable. You are like the new Weather Underground, a pack of elitists who pretend to "know what the people want", even though you really have no clue.
-So your war is on the "middle class"? Good luck with that! Going after all Americans with paid vacations? Also, in case you haven't figured it out, tech companies don't give out "Free Food" to be nice, they do it to keep their workers at work longer, thus undermining the notion of the 40 hour week. It is also why they focus on young workers, who are more likely to get sucked in by free food, video games, beer parties, etc. than older workers who have to go home and see their families.
Your targets are so off it is laughable. You are like the new Weather Underground, a pack of elitists who pretend to "know what the people want", even though you really have no clue.
I'd like to quote the CEO of AngelHack.com, Greg Gopman.
"The difference is in other cosmopolitan cities, the lower part of society keep to themselves. They sell small trinkets, beg coyly, stay quiet, and generally stay out of your way. They realize it's a privilege to be in the civilized part of town and view themselves as guests"
please remember this before you label people defending their neighborhood as Nazis.
"The difference is in other cosmopolitan cities, the lower part of society keep to themselves. They sell small trinkets, beg coyly, stay quiet, and generally stay out of your way. They realize it's a privilege to be in the civilized part of town and view themselves as guests"
please remember this before you label people defending their neighborhood as Nazis.
...because heaven forbid we offend the middle class. Never mind that their chief political purpose is to protect the ruling class from revolution. Never mind that as a group they've been a reactionary force for centuries. Never mind that "middle class" or not, they're still better off than the vast majority of the world's population. The 1% is part of the 99% too, you know...
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