Protesters in San Francisco dumped a huge pile of scooters in the street and blocked 11 tech buses - and then things got tense
At about 8:45 am, protesters carried scooters to an intersection in San Francisco's Mission District with the intention of blocking shuttles carrying Google employees.
Activists piled scooters in front of buses and unfurled signs that read "Techsploitation is toxic."
To make their point that Big Tech is "toxic," protesters dressed in white hazmat suits and masks.
An entire intersection was blocked by the protest.
Both the piles of scooters and the protest in the middle of the intersection stalled traffic for about 2 hours.
While Google currently doesn't have any scooters in San Francisco, demonstrators told Business Insider they were also protesting Google's plans to expand in San Jose and the broader tech industry that they say is partly responsible to the housing crisis the city is facing.
Kelley Cutler, a human rights organizer at the Coalition of Homelessness, told Business Insider that sweeps, where authorities force homeless people off the streets, should be priority for lawmakers — not scooters.
The protesters see the San Francisco's pilot program to regulate scooters as hypocritical. The city, they said, is rewarding bad behavior from scooter companies that entered the market without permission, while at the same time punishing homeless people with sweeps.
Just after the protest started, a man got out of one of the buses and started to remove scooters to clear the street. "It's not fair, you're punishing the wrong people," he said.
He was confronted by protesters who quickly moved each scooter he pulled away back into the pile.
Police officers eventually told the man to stay inside the bus while the protest continued.
Employees stayed in the buses, which have WiFi, and captured the moment on their phones.
Someone spray painted some choice words on one of the buses as employees sat inside.
In total, 11 buses and several cars were stalled at the intersection. Chirag Bhakta, a protester at the scene, said the protest wasn't meant to be a personal attack on the employees going to work, but an outcry form residents who no longer can afford to live in the city.
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