1) smash up a google bus
2) ????????
3) communism

i suppose it's a shocking way to get the issue covered. unfortunately, the kind of press this produces is

"luddite bay area idiots go tourettes on taxpaying citizens"

it's not a question of supporting or condemning them. i'm very vocally of the opinion that rent is too high, but i blame property owners and not workers. i certainly don't blame "techies". the tactic is too uninformed, counteractive and bluntly stupid to get to the point of asking that question.

i mean, if you're opposed to pipelines do you attack a ketchup factory and then claim diversity of tactics? there's no sense in this. it's just derp.

http://pando.com/2013/12/20/breaking-protesters-attack-google-bus-in-west-oakland-smashing-window/

of course, this has all the signs of infiltration by the cops in the sense that it was a random act. the anti-gentrification groups (and i hate that concept, as it enforces class division instead of fighting against it and shifts the target of attack from people who own property to people who rent it) all expressed shock and confusion.

i mean, this is what cops do. they've been doing it since bismarck. it's deeply documented. the derp of it all is hard to explain through other means.

we shouldn't be reducing the issue to increasing living conditions OR maintaining livable rent, then condemning wide swaths of the city to crime-infested and impoverished slums. we should be demanding increased living conditions (through a combination of community work and investment) AND livable rent, possibly through cooperatives. that requires refocusing the attack on property owners.

there should ultimately be an attempt to build solidarity with these tech workers to try and convince them to help create low rent solutions, possibly through subsidization programs involving tactics like the state buying up property. these are workers. they pay rent themselves. they're not likely to lack empathy on the issue.

attacking them solidifies feelings of us v them, creating arbitrary divisions that are not actually class divisions. it pits proletariat against lumpenproletariat. smart socialists understand that the lumpenproletariat needs to form the infantry for proletariat revolt because employed workers are too co-opted by capital to form a revolutionary class of their own. so, who benefits by turning them against each other?

....and, no, you can't scare them out of the neighbourhood; they have riot cops, you have sticks, that's delusional.

so, it just creates division across a dispossessed front when the focus should be on building solidarity against bosses and property owners.

if it's not the cops, these people need better class politics and it's up to the anti-gentrification groups to make sure they get that education.