Oakland: Blockade of Facebook Bus at Macarthur BART Station

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.

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Text of the Leaflet

F*** the Zuck Bus

This bus brings Facebook employees from where they live to where they work and back again. Though this may seem harmless on the surface, shuttles like this one and the others used by Google, Apple, and other tech corporations are an insidious driving force behind gentrification in Bay Area neighborhoods. A free, easy ride to work—something none of the rest of us get—is an incentive for mostly white, mostly male high-income tech works to move into "up-and-coming" Oakland neighborhoods.

To make way for the new neighbors, landlords raise rents and evict vulnerable low-income residents whenever possible, especially the elderly and poor black and brown people. Decades-old community support networks have been destroyed throughout the city thanks to displacement spurred on by techie egomania.

The story is similar in cities throughout the United States where urban living is becoming increasingly popular for white middle and upper class people who have flooded the places white populations fled in the 60s and 70s. This new urban wealth has driven up the cost of living. Police departments, in collusion with local business and political elites, have made policing the growing gentrified areas a priority, harassing, arresting, and even murdering "undesirables" for petty crimes like selling cigarettes (Eric Garner in NYC), shop-lifting (Yuvette Henderson in Emeryville and Mike Brown in Ferguson), trying to get your own stuff back from a thief (Amilcar Perez-Lopez in the Mission), and relaxing while brown (Alex Nieto). It seems that wherever condos go up, so does police violence against poor people and people of color. Facebook, through its gentrification-spreading employee shuttle bus, is directly complicit in all of this.

[On the reverse:]
"They are building a society based on surveillance and control. We are building a resistance based on freedom and joy."