The fuel behind the latest Google bus protest Friday morning was outrage over a Google executive who, protesters say, is using the Ellis Act to evict tenants, including teachers, from a building in the Mission Dolores neighborhood. At the corner of 19th and Dolores streets, Fairmount Elementary School third-grade teacher Claudia Tirado, 44, held a sign with a mug shot and the words, “Jack Halprin,” “Google” and “Can I ride your bus back to SF after my eviction?”
8am this morning, and by the time I arrived at the corner of 19th and Dolores in San Francisco’s Mission district, only two protesters had showed up. Still, the street was already teeming with tripods and booms and audio equipment. A pair of cattle gates were propped against a nearby wall and an ominously full-looking, covered baby carriage waited next to them. On the ground was a bullhorn. KPIX and KRON vans were parked across the street. I chatted briefly with a german man who works for NEON Magazine, a culture affair out of Germany. “This story is a huge thing in Germany, I think because it makes the whole Silicon Valley thing more tangible,” he said.