Google Bus Protests: How Far Is Too Far?

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Protestors hold signs in front of the home of Google Ventures general partner Kevin Rose on Saturday as part of the ongoing Google Bus protests.

By Kurt Wagner2014-04-07 23:00:05 UTC

Had you been standing on the corner of 24th and Valencia Streets in San Francisco last Tuesday, you would have been forgiven for thinking the circus was in town.

People in skin-tight red, blue and yellow suits rolled around on inflatable balls, performed acrobatic routines and walked on stilts.

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The performers certainly generated a crowd, but not solely for their acrobatic talents. Instead, this was another Google Bus protest, an increasingly common occurrence in San Francisco where citizens are expressing displeasure over rising rent costs and gentrification brought on by Silicon Valley's tech growth. The tech shuttles, which are referred to as "Google Buses" — regardless of which company operates them — serve as symbol for this anger.

But while last Tuesday's protest was a clever way to attract attention, multiple protests in the following days have taken a turn for the bizarre.

A group of protesters in Oakland, Calif. mounted a bus full of Yahoo employees last Wednesday, before one protester vomited on the vehicle's windshield.

On Saturday, protestors brought signs and banners to the house of Kevin Rose, a general partner and venture capitalist at Google Ventures. Claiming to be a group called "The Counterforce," the protesters handed out fliers to Rose's neighbors that had the headline "Kevin Rose: Parasite!" The flier cited Rose as a reason that rents have skyrocketed:

As a partner venture capitalist at Google Ventures, Kevin directs the flow of capital from Google into the tech startup bubble that is destroying San Francisco. The start-ups that he funds bring the swarms of young entrepreneurs that have ravaged the landscapes of San Francisco and Oakland.

In both instances, protests were taken to a more extreme level than what San Francisco has previously seen with the bus blockades. However, the two incidents are not unprecedented: A Google Bus' window was smashed during an Oakland protest in December, and The Counterforce claimed another personal attack in Berkeley, Calif. when the group protested outside the home of Google engineer Anthony Levandowski in January, calling him "evil."

The increased intensity of these protests leads to other questions: Have protesters gone too far? Is targeting an individual's home or vandalizing private property crossing the line?

It's a tough question to answer, said Tom Temprano, co-president of Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, one of the organizations that appealed San Francisco's proposed tech-shuttle program last week to the city's Board of Supervisors.

Temprano and his organization are working on the tech-shuttle issue from a political angle, putting pressure on politicians and city administrators to initiate change. That said, he doesn't believe he has the right to dictate how others get their message across.

"When you threaten to take away something as essential as the roof over someone's head, they're going to respond," Temprano said, adding that he hasn't participated in any of the blockade protests to date. "For some folks, it's hitting home hard, and they're hitting back in a way that they feel is most appropriate."

"I personally don't feel comfortable telling a protester whose grandmother has been forced to move the South Bay because she was evicted from her home of 30 years how they should or should not be responding to this crisis."

To some of those who responded to the news on Twitter, calling out individuals at their home and vandalizing buses crosses the line of acceptability. Google Ventures did not respond to Mashable's request for comment, but it appears the protesters got at least one prize out of their trip to Rose's house: a Twitter declaration in support of their cause.

The jury is still out on whether that means much from a man they consider a parasite.

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Topics: google bus, Google Ventures, Harvey Milk, kevin rose, protest, Tech, U.S., yahoo bus