G.E.T. OUT: Faux Tech Contingent Brings the Gentrification of SF OUT of the Closet at PRIDE
June 30, 2013 -- As tech boom 2.0 forces out long-time residents and virtually anyone not making $101K (the average salary of a Silicon Valley tech worker), queer artists, activists, organizers and community members are banding together to strike back. Placing a visible symbol of SF gentrification – the “Google bus” – in the middle of Gay Pride, one of the city’s biggest public events, the G.E.T. OUT contingent highlights the Bay Area's eviction epidemic for thousands of onlookers and provides an all-hands-on-deck call to action to save diverse, affordable and culturally intact neighborhoods.
The group’s slick white bus, resembling Google and other Silicon Valley tech companies’ private buses that shuttle their workers from SF to the South Bay, rolled through the packed parade sporting the words “Gentrification & Eviction Technologies OUT” in Google-style font with the tagline: Integrated Displacement and Cultural Erasure; GETOutOfSF.com. Trailing the bus, dozens flanked a giant Google map of Ellis Act evictions, each dressed as a map location pin marking a recent eviction. Twenty marchers followed with rolling suitcases, another symbol of people who are forced to pack up and get out, handing out info detailing how to plug into the growing movement fighting this wave of skyrocketing rents and evictions.
“Rents are soaring throughout the Bay, and if you’re not ‘on the bus’, you’re not safe. If the shuttles stop in your neighborhood, the speculators and landlords-by-trade are sure to swoop in, force the low to middle-wage renters out, take the rent-controlled units off the market and then command a premium that only a Silicon Valley salary could afford,” said Leslie Dreyer, one of the artists who organized this project.
“The San Francisco we know and love is being pushed aside, and this shift is affecting the entire Bay Area,” said Zeph Fishlyn, a local artist co-creating this spectacle who was evicted twice in 2012. “In the past year, 35 people in my immediate circles were forced out of their homes, and we are landing in neighborhoods where we may be displacing people with even less resources.”
The organizers of this anti-gentrification, anti-displacement contingent are not ‘proud’ that folks are being kicked out of this city that was once their refuge. The 2013 SF Homeless Count and Survey shows that 29% of the city’s homeless population is “LGB and other”. The Castro is experiencing the highest number of evictions in the city. Meanwhile, the SF Pride Parade is becoming as gentrified as SF—Zynga, Genentech and foreclosure giant Wells Fargo, some of Prides’ major corporate sponsors, were also marching in the parade. The "GET OUT with PRIDE" contingent was positioned among Google, Twitter and Dropbox, adding even more context to the "google bus" parody. The group's organizers are calling on Pride to remember its roots.
GETOUTOfSF.com, the site on their faux “Google bus”, redirects to Heart-Of-The-City.org, a gateway to information, resources and ways to jump in on the action to fight evictions.
SF Bay Guardian coverage here.
The group’s slick white bus, resembling Google and other Silicon Valley tech companies’ private buses that shuttle their workers from SF to the South Bay, rolled through the packed parade sporting the words “Gentrification & Eviction Technologies OUT” in Google-style font with the tagline: Integrated Displacement and Cultural Erasure; GETOutOfSF.com. Trailing the bus, dozens flanked a giant Google map of Ellis Act evictions, each dressed as a map location pin marking a recent eviction. Twenty marchers followed with rolling suitcases, another symbol of people who are forced to pack up and get out, handing out info detailing how to plug into the growing movement fighting this wave of skyrocketing rents and evictions.
“Rents are soaring throughout the Bay, and if you’re not ‘on the bus’, you’re not safe. If the shuttles stop in your neighborhood, the speculators and landlords-by-trade are sure to swoop in, force the low to middle-wage renters out, take the rent-controlled units off the market and then command a premium that only a Silicon Valley salary could afford,” said Leslie Dreyer, one of the artists who organized this project.
“The San Francisco we know and love is being pushed aside, and this shift is affecting the entire Bay Area,” said Zeph Fishlyn, a local artist co-creating this spectacle who was evicted twice in 2012. “In the past year, 35 people in my immediate circles were forced out of their homes, and we are landing in neighborhoods where we may be displacing people with even less resources.”
The organizers of this anti-gentrification, anti-displacement contingent are not ‘proud’ that folks are being kicked out of this city that was once their refuge. The 2013 SF Homeless Count and Survey shows that 29% of the city’s homeless population is “LGB and other”. The Castro is experiencing the highest number of evictions in the city. Meanwhile, the SF Pride Parade is becoming as gentrified as SF—Zynga, Genentech and foreclosure giant Wells Fargo, some of Prides’ major corporate sponsors, were also marching in the parade. The "GET OUT with PRIDE" contingent was positioned among Google, Twitter and Dropbox, adding even more context to the "google bus" parody. The group's organizers are calling on Pride to remember its roots.
GETOUTOfSF.com, the site on their faux “Google bus”, redirects to Heart-Of-The-City.org, a gateway to information, resources and ways to jump in on the action to fight evictions.
SF Bay Guardian coverage here.
