Only in San Francisco: Activists block Google buses with scooters to protest 'techsploitation'

Jessica Guynn | USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO — Housing activists blocked more than a dozen buses ferrying technology workers to Silicon Valley during the morning commute, piling scooters in a makeshift barricade at a crowded intersection in the city's Mission District.

Thursday's protest marked a sharp escalation in tensions between the haves and have nots as the tech boom has sent housing prices and evictions soaring in San Francisco and surrounding areas.

A banner read: "Techsploitation is toxic." Protesters, wearing white hazmat suits, lit an orange smoke grenade on top of a pile of about a dozen scooters in front of a Google shuttle bus, according to the San Francisco Examiner.

The demonstration was organized by housing advocates from San Francisco and San Jose to protest "the continued techsploitation of our public space, workers and environment."

VIDEO: Orange smoke plumes from scooters at homeless/tech bus protest in #SanFrancisco #scootergate pic.twitter.com/PW2KkHk5U3 — Joe Fitz Rodriguez (@FitzTheReporter) May 31, 2018

Sweeps of homeless encampments in the Mission District on April 25 were ordered by San Francisco mayor Mark Farrell. Activists on Thursday accused the city of treating scooters, which are regularly strewn on sidewalks, better than the homeless population, according to news reports.

“[We’re] fighting against Big Tech coming into our city, causing displacement, exploiting every aspect of life,” Chirag Bhakta, who was born and raised in San Francisco, told news outlet Motherboard. “What are they giving us? Buses and drones we can’t use? Taking my privacy? They should ask us what we want.”

Using tech enabled scooters to block google buses is the most san francisco protest i've seen as of late — Gregg³ (@greggawatt) May 31, 2018

The so-called "Google bus" protests began in 2013, targeting the hundreds of shuttles that transport the young workers that Google, Facebook and Apple covet from their San Francisco homes to suburban campuses in Silicon Valley.

The spark? The cost of living in the Bay Area which has surged with the rapid growth of Silicon Valley's tech industry, widening wealth inequality, particularly in San Francisco.

Now activists have seized on the hundreds of "shared" scooters which can be rented by the minute from three competing start-up companies —Lime, Bird and Spin — as the latest symbol of the tech industry's disregard for the damaging effect it is having on the Bay Area, from displacement to homelessness.

i’m on valencia where anti-tech demonstrators have blockaded three tech buses—at least one to google—with scooters pic.twitter.com/RDULbFGoL5 — Sarah Emerson (@SarahNEmerson) May 31, 2018

Hailed by some as a public benefit, derided by others as a public nuisance, the scooters have been temporarily banned by the city starting Monday. They will only be allowed back on the streets in July with city permits.

“They’re more willing to sweep people off our streets than an electric scooter," a Coalition on Homelessness representative told Motherboard.

Scooters left haphazardly on city sidewalks have been targeted by vandals and dumped in garbage cans and the San Francisco Bay, tossed into trees and smeared with human waste.

That angry reaction has baffled some tech entrepreneurs and workers, who wonder openly why people are objecting to a venture capital-funded experiment in increasing mobility in a city choked by automobiles, but not to the feces, broken glass and discarded needles that pedestrians must step over each day.

“I don’t know why we’re being identified with scooters,” a Google employee who exited one of the buses told Motherboard. “[People inside the bus] are pretty pissed off and irritated,” he said before jogging away.