Frank Lara is the PSL candidate for U.S. Congress, 12th Congressional District (San Francisco). This article is based on a talk given at a PSL branch meeting.
Since the economic crash of 2008, hundreds of San Franciscans have lost their homes due to foreclosures. Even more have lost their rental units because they lost their jobs or were evicted through the Ellis Act, a state law that allows landlords to evict whole buildings in order to convert to a large home or condominium. Local businesses left communities in which they had been for decades and a massive wave of gentrification overtook the last bastions of working class neighborhoods in the city. Many of the new arrivals to San Francisco were high-income workers for companies such as Google and Facebook, which have home offices in the suburbs of Silicon Valley. The tech companies have established a network of white double-decker buses that pick up tech workers from neighborhoods that are becoming too expensive for low-income people to remain in, fueling anger against gentrification.
For the past six months, non-profits, grass-roots organizations, activist and labor groups have been fighting against the growing tide of Ellis Act evictions. Through community meetings, marches, vigils and protest in front of realtors’ offices and evicted homes, the coalition, Eviction-Free San Francisco, has been able to connect the major issues around income inequality in order to use a variety of fight-back tactics.
On Dec. 9, there was an explosion of public outcry against the Google buses as a group of community activists and organizations stopped and protested a Google bus. While receiving local and national media attention, the protesters declared:
“Today we are the San Francisco Displacement and Neighborhood Impact Agency, and we’re stopping the injustice in the city’s two-tier system where the public pays and the private corporations gain. Rents and evictions are on the rise. Tech-fueled real estate speculation is the culprit. We say: Enough is Enough! The local government, especially Mayor Lee, has given tech the keys to shape the city to their fancy without the public having any say in it. We say, lets take them back! Tech Industry private shuttles use over 200 SF MUNI stops approximately 7,100 times in total each day (M-F) without permission or contributing funds to support this public infrastructure. No vehicles other than MUNI are allowed to use these stops. If the tech industry was fined for each illegal use for the past 2 years, they would owe an estimated $1 billion to the city.”
This action in San Francisco was followed by another action in Oakland.
Combined, these protests brought to the forefront the massive inequality felt by thousands of lower income city residents. It also exposed the complete collaboration, even servitude, of the local government towards the needs of corporations and the wealthy. Along with the mouthpieces in the Mayor’s office, the San Francisco Chronicle and the S.F. Examiner each published pieces seeking to dismiss the anger as being petty, irresponsible and unproductive.
The Chronicle wrote: “Is it over yet, San Francisco? Will you stop complaining about the Google buses, already?”
On Jan. 21, the San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency held a public meeting in the middle of the workday thereby preventing many workers from attending. The purpose of the meeting was to hear arguments for and against a pilot program proposed by Mayor Ed Lee to charge the tech companies $1 per stop. Instead of ending tax breaks for the huge tech companies and treating the corporations as they treat people who receive $260 tickets whenever they stop at a bus stop, Ed Lee gives the tech company buses a $1 fee.
Google sent an internal memo to its employees. As mentioned in the Silicon Valley Business journal, a leaked memo allegedly from Google Inc.’s transportation team, offered up phrases its bus commuters could touch on during the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Board meeting, such as “My shuttle empowers my colleagues and me to reduce our carbon emissions by removing cars from the road.” Google is thus seeking to divide liberals from the anti-gentrification struggle by appealing to the environmental politic in order to mask the class nature of this struggle.
At the meeting, PSL member Richard Becker said, “Four years ago the Supreme Court ruled in the Citizens United case that corporations are people. This is a ludicrous ruling, but it happened and it stated that they are persons and I am a person. A few years back, I got stopped in a bus stop and got a $280 ticket. Now, you are proposing Google buses pay only $1 so that makes them a very special kind of person. Regardless of how much money they pay, it doesn’t matter. What this exposes is that this is a system that is out of control and one in which the corporations rule. There is absolutely no planning and the system doesn’t work. The problem is capitalism. And I know you are not listening and don’t care so all I am going to say is that what is needed is more public anger, a public uprising where Google Buses are stopped everywhere.”
The PSL is running a local campaign for Congress in which we will raise the slogan: “Stop the Evictions—SF for the People, Not the Corporations and Developers!” This writer is running on a platform that seeks to amplify the demands of the struggles being carried out in the street. We also want to use the Lara 4 Congress campaign as a way of presenting a political program that unifies the working class instead of dividing it amongst false lines. We say that the problem is capitalism, a system meant to serve the needs and interest of the rich and powerful. It is a chaotic system that profits from the oppression and misery of the vast majority of our people.
