An Open Letter To Dennis Towne & The Tech Bros I Will Clean Up After Ed Wong Follow Jan 9 · 7 min read

Photo by Eilis Garvey on Unsplash

If you live in Pittsburgh — you may have seen an article circulate the rounds of your own little social media vacuum. It was written by a soon to-be former Pittsburgh resident, and his offense to Pittsburgh’s toxic atmosphere, and the city’s miserable and fledgling infrastructure. This article I am being precious about was published very recently on Pittsburgh’s Public Source, and it is a personal letter from a local Pittsburgh Google transplant, named Dennis Towne.

In our deeply stratified society, we have come to expect a diversity of opinions from Google workers. On one hand — the tech workforce is one of the most constant sources for gentrification in most modern US cities, and it’s not just Google. It is advertised to us as the last true booming industry in our country. But booming for who? People are drafted from across the country into the world of tech. Some do contract work for small start ups, and some serve data mining empires. But they don’t all come from the same place, or reach same conclusion.

Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash

Here in Pittsburgh 80 Google workers voted to enter United Steelworkers Union in late September, and they are not alone. Google offices across the country are organizing from cafeteria workers to a walkout with over 200 Google employees. Like many tech workers, many are contract workers that do all the same work as fully recognized google employees, but receive no benefits and no promises. These Google workers are setting a higher standard for the tech class solidarity, and yet their efforts are largely resisted with classic corporate union busting. However I would be willing to bet our Dennis Towne is not one of these lonesome contractors, with the extensive list of cities he cited as previous homes. It seems as if he is a regular sponsored Google rōnin with plenty to say report to SMELLPGH how Pittsburgh is an un-livable city. While he isn’t wrong, he isn’t right.

It’s true, Pittsburgh is unlivable. It’s unlivable for all the black people and working poor who were displaced in it’s re-invention. It’s also unlivable for the 1 in 4 current Pittsburgh residents that live in poverty. But it is not unlivable for Dennis Towne. Actually, he could stay here, and use his privilege and free time to advocate for the people he lives over. Dennis could easily learn about the context to which he owes his residence, and understand the community he could be a part of. But these corporate cultures incentivize isolation, and it is precisely his ability to pack up, write this article, and move on to the next Google sponsored town that is the problem. Because it’s not people like Dennis who are in danger, it is the people that he steps on as he makes his exit stage right.

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Pittsburgh certainly has terrible air quality. It has consistently received F ratings from researchers, and yet who truly suffers from these grades? I would argue the people that have the resources to leave at the first sign of smog are the real toxic polluters. This town is being built for them, and the corporations that benefit from their services are likely some of the biggest contaminators. Pittsburgh’s 2016 lead crisis is not over. It has been reported that negligent companies have brought us lead levels comparable to Flint, Michigan — and yet the people who truly suffer lack the resources to conveniently escape.

I should make my bias clear — I work in a tech office. But I don’t type anything and rake in 80,000 a year. I am a Janitor, that works for a company with a contract. I clean a dusty carpeted office not unlike the one Dennis probably worked at. Truly I probably clean up after a Dennis 5 days a week. I made under 12,000 dollars last year, and my manager told me I will never have full time hours because they don’t want to pay for healthcare and benefits. But I am a tech worker, I make desks look neat, and make those pretzel crumbs disappear.

When I saw this article I thought about the irony. I moved here 5 years ago, not much longer than our friend Dennis. However I had no job, and I did cigarette studies for money. Dennis lamented about how he couldn’t sleep at night because of the smell in “Bakery Square”. It truly makes me wonder how he would sleep if he had to work in the ways I had to work. Taking out trash-bags full of rotten meat into dumpsters, cleaning out fryers, walk-ins and toilets. If he lived in the ways I was forced to live. In apartments where bathroom ceilings collapsed — or houses filled with deadly levels of mold that required my partner to wear a respirator to go to sleep. How bad does Bakery Square really smell?

Ironically he may be smelling all the construction growing on the bones of the people displaced from this town. In the 5 years I have lived in Pittsburgh, they have been constructing an ugly housing monstrosity in “Bakery Square” right next to Google. So I suspect the smell he actually cant stand is the smell of his own lunch. With Pittsburgh’s ever changing face — I find myself living in a city I never got to know change before my eyes. Businesses I remember from 5 years ago are fledgling and disappearing — as are many of the people. Just like the 7,000 black residents that left between 2014–2017. Why don’t we elevate their voices? Why don’t we ask the thoughts and feelings of the people that were forced to move to Rankin, Braddock and deep Allegheny?

In light of this racist displacement what is the future for our cities? More Google dormitories? Pittsburgh suffers deeply in modern segregation, it’s geographic diversity has also been used as a racist weapon against people of color and the poor. It has been described a city with “hidden fences”, and this is just as true as ever. Local gastro-pubs and vegan restaurants funded by hometown heroes and transplants alike can contribute to Gentrification all the same. Swaths of hometowns all over the US are sold to outsiders by locals with capital who profit from the racist structure of city planning. All over the country opportunists and city governments give the cities to people who make businesses for people who don’t even live there. The poor and the working class always hold up these industries, and these local business vultures will rely on the working class of Pittsburgh. We will clean their floors, empty their cans, and yet we must also ask ourselves — who truly holds the future of cities in their hands?

I’ll be honest, I have no ancestral call to Pennsylvania, I still struggle to spell it. But still — newcomers shouldn’t hold our criticism. But before we speak, first we should listen. Because it is through listening to the displaced communities and their analysis that we can serve the future. We must navigate both our realities and our privilege with care. Without this understanding no amount of work and advocacy can begin to find a way serve justice to the communities that have suffered at the expense of Pittsburgh’s new faces. People from all positions of privilege and power should fight for these people we live in the homes of, and we should not expect the poor to do all the work.

I believe we can only succeed if we find broader solidarity. While saying good riddance to Google transplants is valid, what if they used their privilege and voice to amplify others? If we had a larger union of thought and justice think of what we could do? But we shouldn’t wait, because we can still fight. We can fight locally, organize our neighborhoods and collect our thoughts. We can write articles, and advocate for the displaced voices we have learned from and heard. We can fight to vote corporate puppets out of office and threaten them with our votes until they hear the voices of the displaced — and we can challenge people like Dennis Towne to do more.

We have to use all of our bargaining power as the workers that they need to build this city. While many tech workers deserve a little vilification, shouldn’t we stand up to them and push them to fight for the rest of us? They are still workers, but workers with many privileges most of Pittsburgh’s working class is not allowed. But we owe to those that were forced out, and those that still suffer under a racist and classist system. In these ever changing cities we need to learn to listen to the larger voice of our local history, and force those that ignore those voices to hear us all.