Google Tech Bus protests:
There was one, this morning, outside Arizmendi bakery, organized chiefly by Erin McElroy—aka “The Woman at the Heart of San Francisco’s Anti-Tech Gentrification Protests.” Looks like two tech buses using a Muni stop at 24th and Valencia were delayed by protesters with banners and bullhorns.
Some of you might think the narrative of protesting the private shuttles that cart their workers to tech offices has gotten stale. (We’re reading @eviltomthai’s tweet that way.)
Well! You have not looked at your calendar!! If you had, you’d have realized that this particular protest of Google tech buses coincides with the launch of a pilot program by SFMTA that charges tech shuttles $2.50/per Muni stop use. As CBS reports, it’s an “18-month transportation experiment that has Silicon Valley corporations paying for the privilege to use Muni stops.”
Read more about tech shuttle stops here
McElroy told Mission Local that today’s demonstration had a goal: to not allow the shuttle buses to use Muni stops.
She billed it as an issue about the displacement of seniors and people with disabilities, adding that this group was severely impacted by Ellis Act evictions, most of which she said happen in close proximity to shuttle stops.
We have read that real estate values improve the closer to these tech shuttle stops you are. (You can read that, too, over at SFGate.com, where it is said that “San Francisco sellers can now add proximity to a tech shuttle stop as yet another amenity.”)
Mira Ingram, a wheelchair-bound Tenderloin resident who supported the protest, said the tech buses elbow the Muni buses out further into the street, away from bus shelters and from the disabled people who ride public transportation. “I’m hoping that the city and tech companies understand that it’s more than people not wanting them here,” she said.
Ingram, who was evicted from 22nd and Guerrero during the first dotcom boom, added that she feels seniors and disabled people have been “cut out,” and that “we’re not able to take part in our community.”
More protests as they develop…
Laura Wenus contributed to the reporting of this article.
Maybe the corporate shuttles can help out the evicted, by offering them free transportation to Modesto, on the weekend, when they are not being used productively anyway? A win / win!
“Wheechair-bound”? Fo’ real? Yo, 1955 called. It wants its lingo back. Mira “uses a wheelchair”.
Not sure if you are being sarcastic but what they wrote makes sense. I would rather read 1955 lingo than Fo’ and Yo. Are we hanging out in the projects with bums?
Not sure if you are being sarcastic. But talking dumb isn’t cool.
Mark, both terms have common currency. PC euphemisms can be over-done.
I guess we should be grateful you didn’t offer up “differently abled” or “alternatively mobile”.
If the rent don’t fit, you must evict.
$2.50 per stop? Wow–Mission local’s scooped every paper with that per-stop price reduction:
Huffington Post Headline:
“Google And Facebook Will Now Pay At Least $3.55 Each Time They Use A SF Bus Stop”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/01/google-bus-pay-facebook_n_5642945.html
And as far as I know, the charge applies to all private shuttles, including college and medical center shuttles–not just tech.
Lately I’ve only been reading Mission Local for it’s comic value. It’s credibility is fast approaching that of weeklyworldnews.com (at least you can ASSUME that WWN’s stories have no accuracy). If no one else is going to do it, I guess I’ll have to fact-check you guys myself. Caveat reader!
Love it.
If not for this type of rebellion and dissent, America wouldn’t exist.
America was born on the desire to limit the extent of government influence and advance self determination. These protests want the very opposite of what made America America.
Sure it would.
Considering America was founded on rebellion and dissent, no it wouldn’t.
Operating term: “this type of”. Agrees with pete
So trying to stop your neighbors going to work on a bus is like heroically resisting the occupation of a foreign colonial power?
Is that it?
haha, russo you got so owned. try again next time.
If you’re going to claim that she has a trust fund, back it up with some proof (which you don’t have).
She looks like Anthony Weiner in drag.
Michael (or perhaps, Erin?), I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you are the only person in SF who doesn’t know that Erin’s parents are wealthy and have bestowed largesse upon her to the point where she doesn’t need to work and can conduct mischief full-time.
But here is an exercize for you. Google her name and “trustfund” and let me know if you get zero search results. I get 804 results but I’m sure you’re right anyway. Or not.
All I get are links to snarky comments like yours claiming she’s a trust fund baby. Show me a link that proves she has a trust fund and/or rich parents.
Michael, you do not have to look even beyond ML’s archives to find the proof you claim you cannot find:
Erin McElroy’s dirty little secret isn’t that she’s from Wilmington, it’s that her daddy is a prosperous BIOTECH ENTREPRENEUR.
http://www.jenrindiscovery.com/management.html
Oh, the irony… I’d like very much to hear John McElroy’s take on her Oedipal antics.
No proof that is her father, but even if he is it doesn’t mean he supports her or gives her a trust fund.
The familiar tu quoque cum strawman fallacy (“ooh, she’s a trustie”) reveals “Sam” to be none other than our familiar pompous property-pimping/poverty-promoting windbag, John.
a. you have no proof she’s a trustie
b. even if she is(which you haven’t proven), so what?
Sam (or perhaps John?): to use one of your favorite retorts, is there something wrong with (in this case) a trust-fund “elitist”? (You’re a proud elitist yourself, so why wield the charge as a weapon?)
At least the woman is monkey-wrenching, doing some righteous mischief. Dissent or, at the minimum, opposition to corporate hegemony is sadly lacking in the current wave of newly arrived corporate sycophants. It’s why they aren’t actually hipsters and or even San Franciscans in the countercultural sense.
Keli, you do not have to explain twice who that appalling McElvoy trust-fund elitist is. let alone once. We all know.
And do you think tech mega-corps can tolerate one shuttle protest every three months? Ya think?
Tempest in a teacup. Nothing to see here. The issue has been resolved via the SFMTA agreement.
listen you racist spindoctor, I know Erin and she is the furthest away from trust fund that I can think of. She’s one of the hardest working people both in her activism and everyday life, and living on not very much and she is doing this because of her connection to everyday people.
You should change your name to Wikipedia Brown. Go take your reality doctoring and lies to some other neighborhood or city. At the very least she has the decency to be known in public, unlike your cowardly anonymous rantings.