The first Google Bus blockade in December 2013 touched off a year of protests against tech industry-fueled gentrification in San Francisco, so when a Facebook invite circulated calling for a blockade of tech shuttles at the MacArthur BART station on May 1, it seemed possible that the time had come for the East Bay to start its own revolt against a growing population of Silicon Valley commuters. But despite the brief presence of Max Alper, the union organizer whose impersonation of an entitled tech worker at the original protest went viral, this was no San Francisco blockade.
There were no complicated props, no acrobats in unitards, no performers on stilts. The huddle of protesters gathered under the overpass at 7:30 a.m. held cardboard signs ("Fuck your bus"; "Die techie scum no one wants you here"; "Take a bus to hell") and swapped rumors about where the tech shuttles for Facebook, Google, and Yahoo had been rerouted to avoid the protest. Around 8 a.m. a giant white coach bus was spotted nearby, causing a brief flurry of excitement, but it didn't stop.
Most of the demonstrators were teenagers on a field trip to the Bay Area with the Woolman Semester School, a private alternative program for high-school students in Nevada City that emphasizes "peace, justice, and sustainability in the world." One of the students, Alejandro Manzonarez, 17, is from West Oakland and says his family was evicted from its home in 2013.
"The neighborhood I used to live in just changed," Manzonarez said. "People who take the buses — it causes people to get displaced out of areas."
After the blockade, the teens planned to join the labor-backed march from the Port of Oakland to City Hall and the evening march in downtown Oakland.
"We were stoked that today was May Day," said Amelia Nebenzahl, 28, the group's teacher. "Experiential learning is the best."
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