Twelve Ways Not to Be Awful, #DontBeAwful
- Don't rent or buy from a landlord/speculator/real estate agent who has profited off of displacing someone. Use our Pledge Map to look up addresses and pledge not to enable someone to capitalize off of the dispossession of someone else!
- Frequent local businesses that have been around for a while. Don't only go to the hippest and newest establishments. Many older businesses are not being frequented by newcomers to San Francisco and other urban spaces. This, coupled with skyrocketing rents, leads to not only the businesses shutting down, but business owners and employees not being able to afford to remain in the city.
- Get to know your neighbors.
- Support the unionization efforts of service workers at your workplace. Consider what it would mean to unionize employees out of the service sector as well. Check out SEIU-USWW for more info.
- Don't kick youth off of soccer fields and playgrounds.
- Learn the history of your city and neighborhood, from the Ohlone and other indigenous peoples to the present. Shaping SF has some great resources!
- Don't call the cops on your neighbor. See the Justice for Alex Nieto Committee for more!
- Support open source technologies and companies/organizations that don't profit by surveilling you and selling your data.
- Organize against the military technologies that tech companies produce and abet in.
- Demand that your company pay its taxes to the country, state, and city that it resides within. Apple is off-stating money from California in Nevada. Airbnb owes SF $25 million in back hotel taxes. The list goes on.
- Study histories of gentrification, not only in the city that you live in, but in different spaces across the US and beyond. Learn about intersections of racism and displacement.
- Aid existing groups' efforts to fight against displacement, such as Eviction Free SF. There are countless groups in the Bay Area that need more physical support. It seems that those in tech are always trying to start new projects. First, get to know the terrain in which you are working. Perhaps an app can help address the problem, but most likely the problem will be better solved if you first get to know those being impacted by the problem, and if you get to know what community efforts of addressal are already underway. Not everything needs to become an app. Some struggles need more labor power, and more protestors in the streets. Often in virtually privileged spaces we forget that collectives of material bodies can go a long way in fighting back against systems of oppression.