Silicon City

by Cary McClelland

  I look at California’s government. We’ve gone from number one in education to number forty-seven. We dropped from the best place to do business to the worst. We now have four times the number of prisoners, and our recidivism rates are extraordinarily high. So by not educating, by making it hard to do business, we’ve created criminals. We have a real problem.

  California is a monopoly supplier—such good weather, nobody wants to move. If you leave here, you lose the sunshine, the weather, the beauty, and you lose your friends. So, in my industry, what do we do to challenge monopolies? We start new businesses.

  I thought, Okay, I need to start a new state. And the more I went down this track, the more I thought, No, it’s not fair to start just one new state, we need to start six, eight, ten. Competition. Accountability. It’ll take a couple of years to get everybody’s feet on the ground—but once you do, you’ll have amazing governments. You’ll see what each other is doing and improve on it.

  So we started a ballot initiative.

  In California, under the current regime, there are poor regions. They’re poor because Sacramento has kept them stuck in this bad environment. Right now, the money comes from Silicon Valley, it goes to Sacramento, but it doesn’t find its way very easily back out. It doesn’t find its way very easily down to the Central Valley or up to Jefferson. It’s a shell game.

  With six new Californias, imagine what could happen. It’s not one restart, it’s six restarts. You start from scratch, are you really going to start with the “dance of the lemons”? Bad teachers getting fired and showing up in the district next door? 1980s computers in the DMV and the election commission?

  No, you’re going to start fresh.¶

  REGIS McKENNA (CONT’D)

  He removes the silicon ingot from its acrylic case and hands it to me. It’s cool—not as smooth as I expected—like putting your finger in dirt in the shade. He takes it back and begins to gesture with it as he speaks.

  My father was born in 1898. When he was in his eighties, after my mom had died, he came out here. I took him around the Valley a little bit. He basically had worked his whole life in a public utility. I was showing him things, calculators, and computers, and he said, “I don’t know how you’re going to make it in this world. All these gadgets and so forth. This is really too much going on.”

  I said, “Dad, think about what you lived through. . . . ” Electricity—I mean, he wired our original home, because it was all gas until then. The automobile. The airplane. Jet aircraft. Man on the moon. Television. I said, “How did you do it?”

  You learn to learn and to adapt to your world. It’s not even a conscious activity. It’s just because you’re interacting with the world all the time. As a child, it becomes more or less seamless. As an adult . . .

  We don’t know how to live in this kind of a world right now. I mean, look at the chaos! We’re not making rational decisions. In fact, quite the opposite. This is what happens when people are not in tune.

  It is this absorption of the technology without thought, because it becomes part of you very quickly. The iPhone became an extension of us. And literally people now, it’s their ears; it’s their eyes; it’s their voice. It’s everything. And somehow or other, we haven’t put all the technology into any sort of a rational pattern as yet. We are still allowing it just to be absorbed without thought. Some people are trying to fight it, but it becomes very hard. And we’re not capable of adapting fast enough.

  This has been beginning since the ’80s, with the start of the internet. I gave this presentation to a group of senators in Washington. I was very active in the New Democrats, Gary Hart was a close friend, Jerry Brown, Al Gore, and Bill Clinton, and so forth. I had a slide with two sides: one was black and one was white. And they were in a tug-of-war. I called one “matter,” and one “antimatter.” The struggle was between what matters and what is antimatter.

  In the internet, there is no difference between the two. Because everybody has an opinion. Every time you say that something matters, there is an antimatter. And antimatter kills matter. They were predicting the world coming together—like the United States, Europe. And I said that we’re going to see more disunity rather than unity. And technology has been a source of fragmentation.

  Look at the infinite number of cars that are on the road. There may be all but a few manufacturers, but the cars all look different: different color, different shapes, different sizes, different stuff on the inside. And it happened in tech: software is infinitely programmable, infinitely changeable, infinitely adaptable. A computer can come out every twelve months and be completely new. And it’s happening on the internet. Mass customization of ideas, beliefs, influence. That feeds into this feeling of individuality.

  In my work, we did a lot of social-trends research. One trend they noted: Americans’ “tolerance for chaos,” they called it. For example, you can always put restaurant tables closer together. Americans will tolerate more noise, more chatter around them, and just sort of isolate themselves within it. We have come to accept a certain amount of chaos in our society. Traffic. Cost of housing. People are pushed out, but they commute here. They will tolerate the chaos of getting here. Look at history, look at Beijing, London. We will tolerate it.

  Like the transistor. We are infinitely adaptable, infinitely programmable. But our lives keep getting smaller and smaller.

  * A private club that meets in secret and whose members include global leaders in business, politics, and the arts.

  † The Last 3% organizes on behalf of the black community living in and displaced from San Francisco. In the 1970s, the black community made up approximately 13 percent of the city. That population shrank to around 6.5 percent in 2013, and then halved again by 2015—to around 3 percent.

  ‡ A controversial state law that lets landlords evict residential tenants in order to remove their units from “rental use.” Critics argue the measure allows landlords to bypass rent control and capitalize on the inflated housing market—selling the building, flipping the units into condominiums, or re-renting them at peak rents—while tenants relocate without proper notice or resources.

  § In June 2017, Travis Kalanick stepped down as CEO of Uber, forced out by investors after a series of scandals rocked the already controversial company.

  ¶ Tim got his initiative back on the ballot in 2018. This time, he is calling to break the state into three Californias, not six.

  PART IV

  THE BREAKDOWN

  Like any big American city, San Francisco has struggled with crime, with homelessness, with lagging public services. And as a region, the Bay Area got very good at sometimes hiding, even ignoring, those suffering most.

  The area has weathered a rise in crime, especially street crime, property crime, thefts, robberies. Homelessness has surged, and many wealthy suburbs are overcome by this problem for the first time. Cities are declaring bankruptcy, schools are failing students, hospitals and clinics are struggling to keep up. California’s prisons were so overcrowded that the Supreme Court ordered the release of thousands, citing cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. Each of these symptoms describes a disease that attacks the cities’ most vulnerable: the young, the old, the sick, the mentally ill.

  Perhaps most distressing, the civic immune system that we depend on is in its own struggle for survival. Many teachers cannot afford to live near their students, doctors near their patients. Nonprofits cannot keep an office near the communities they serve. The problem is bigger than public servants and their commutes. It is about a void of expertise that is expanding with each departure, those who had dedicated themselves to standing on the front lines leaving their watch, and the community unable to see and respond to the crisis as it evolves.

  TITUS BELL

  Twenty-two years old, he lives in the Tenderloin. After his father passed away he was put in foster care until he aged out of the system. He crashed with friends, girlfriends, family, trying to keep off the streets. A
tattoo on his arm names a nearby housing project: “That’s the neighborhood where I was doing most of my dirt. I had done a lot of things there to prove my loyalty.”

  The reason why people came here, for the gold, is the same reason why people still come here. It’s still gold here.

  But it is rare to find people who succeed in my spot, because the system isn’t designed that way. You go to jail and you get sent out, back to the same environment, same resources, and you’re expected to magically find a way to get through all the crap. A majority of people right back in prison in like three months! That makes no sense. It’s a setup for failure. Even though you get released from jail, you’re still in jail.

  The Tenderloin, it’s disgusting. You could literally walk down the street and there’s a dude just shooting up right there. Or the Muni station underground, dudes shooting up. You’re like, Oh my God! People just defecating everywhere. It smells horrible.

  I’ve always wanted to live somewhere else, where it’s nice and cool and relaxing. And your own people not wanting the same thing, you’re just like, Dude, how the hell am I supposed to do this by myself? It’s a lot of sacrifice, hella hard, because you need help. But your own people want to hold you back. Sometimes the family puts this guilt on you. Like, “Oh, you don’t love us? You don’t want to help us out? Well, forget you.”

  I understand why my dad acted the way he acted. The influence of the environment you live in—the Tenderloin. And coming from where he come from. He started on Oxy, then was hooked on heroin.

  The system dehumanizes people of color, poor communities. These people, they’re lazy. That’s the dehumanization. They don’t want the same things I want. They don’t want to put in as much work. They’re victims, so they think like victims. And so they make sure we stay victims.

  Think of prison labor: so many companies get their products made in prison. It’s much cheaper. These men get paid ten cents! That’s exploitation. It’s a new system of slavery.

  You think about slavery—they demanded more slaves because they demanded more product. Product is king. Either you’re making the product, selling the product, or you’re in everybody’s way.

  It makes it easier to kick people out. Oh, I’m about to go to this area and open up a Google. The majority of the stores on Market Street, black-owned, neighborhood places, have been bought out by coffee shops, bike shops. And they don’t hire the people from the neighborhood.

  They’re about to open up a new bank on the corner of my street. They’re building this new, nice-looking mall, but there’s this homeless person sleeping right outside of it. That makes no sense to me! I don’t get that.

  It’s hard to explain, it’s hella hard to explain. How dehumanizing it is. How exploited I feel. Because the city does not help the poor at all. And when these companies come in they say, “We need this. This is gonna raise the economy up. So we won’t care what happens to these people. They need to move out!” And they’re like, “We’re not going to help you get housing. You have to figure that out on your own. It’s not my fault that you didn’t do the work to find resources for yourself. So, sorry.”

  And the recession made it worse, everything went crazy! When you affect the family’s income, everything changes. Everything. Longer hours. Longer hours cuts that quality time, you know, the family dinnertime talk. So what happens? You spoil them. I’m gonna give this kid everything that I didn’t have. Here’s a phone. Here’s some Jordans.

  Kids start thinking things. Kids need that attention. Kids who say, “I put all my worth in these shoes, and if you mess up these shoes, I’m gonna smoke you.” They start believing that they have to take care of themselves. Kids who say, “My mom don’t take care of me. I have to worry for myself.” You’re only twelve years old!

  After eviction, a lot of people go to homeless shelters, family houses. A two-bedroom for a family of five. Kids who couch-hop. There was a lot of that, hell yeah.

  At that point, you try to get some love out in the street from friends who are going through the same thing. And the self-medication—smoking, drinking—it’s all to numb it, just to get through it. But it’s really self-destructive.

  So, everything that I went through was kind of what was happening globally around me. I lived it and I seen it. A lot of my friends were getting smoked, getting killed. Over petty stuff. You’re not even thinking about your future. Because when you’re a kid, right, and you get evicted or you’re homeless now—how are you gonna make money? You sell drugs. Product is king.

  When your friends pull up with $900—ha, in one day!—whatcha gonna do? You’re not about to work, what, how many hours? You’re gonna pick, pick that money.

  And it’s easy too. And that’s the thing. It’s so easy. It’s simple. Anyone can literally go out into the street and make a profit. If you know what you’re doing.

  I got those Oxy pills from my dad, and was like, Oh my God. I’m good at this. I know how to demand a product and resell it for more than what it’s worth. Hell yeah.

  And you have family in the street. Family, where everything is balanced, there’s not too much worries, and you know someone is gonna have your back without even having to ask for it.

  That’s why it’s insidious. It feels good at that moment. Because you’re getting recognized. It was worth it, yeah, to get that love back.

  It’s a different world. For some folks, you pull an all-nighter and you get that A on your next test, your family is gonna be like, “Good job!” For us, you make a lot of money and you risk your life for it, “Bro, you sick! I need to rock with you!” You be like, “For sure!” You feel like, Hell yeah. I’m the one. I’m the man! Same thing, different circumstances.

  No one’s offering us anything else that gives that same feeling. Because this is where the gold is at.

  AMANDA MACHADO

  Something about her own education made her want to be a teacher: coming from a good high school, being the first in her family to go to an Ivy League college, and nonetheless feeling always a little behind her classmates, always somehow struggling to catch up. “Seeing all these other students that had come from such different backgrounds—and a lot of ways, more privileged backgrounds, boarding schools and things like that—just made me realize this stark difference in what kinds of educations and experiences people get, depending on where you grew up or how much money you have or what school you end up enrolling in.” She spent several years teaching high school English in an Oakland suburb.

  Kids, they’re honest. They’ll say something so jarring that you just can’t get it out of your head. “I don’t listen to you because you’re not black. If you were black, I would listen to you because my mom is black. I only listen to black women.”

  Or the Latino kids saying, “I don’t want to learn English because English is a white-people thing, and my family’s not white. And I don’t want to be like white people.” Or telling me, “You don’t really talk Latino,” or “Your Spanish isn’t that great, you’re not really Latina,” or “You’re from Florida, so you’re not actually Latina.”

  You just want to teach verbs, but Katie can’t sit with Antonio because Katie’s Hispanic and she doesn’t like Antonio because Antonio is from El Salvador, or he said something about her mom the other day. Or the kids from East Oakland hate the kids from Hayward, and the Hayward kids hate the Asian kids, and the Asian kids hate the black kids. You think you’re just going to pair kids off for an English assignment, but really, there’s a war going on in your classroom.

  A lot of single parents, a lot of abusive fathers, a lot of alcoholic fathers, alcoholic mothers, drug abuse, a lot of gangs in their neighborhood, a lot of police brutality. The Oscar Grant case was going on, and a lot of my students were really angry about that.* I remember one student came in telling me that his cousin just got shot by the police. So that was very real for them. A lot of them in Oakland would deal with their apartment getting robbed or violent things happening near their house. Put that on
top of what you normally want to be dramatic about as a teenager, and then it just becomes too much.

  A lot of the issues were just low-income families struggling with money. Your mom comes home a little late every day because she works so much, so she’s not reading to you, and she probably doesn’t take you to all these extracurricular activities that enhance your ability to learn or to experience new things—then you’re going to be a little behind. Even if your mom and dad are very caring, the simple fact that they don’t speak English, they don’t have college degrees, and they come home late every day, and you have to take care of your siblings while you’re doing your homework—that could make a huge impact on how you end up doing in school.

  There was a student from Burma who had just gotten here, his English was nonexistent—I was concerned about him, and wanted to meet his parents. I knew they didn’t speak English either, but I was excited to make them feel welcome. Instead, he came in with a “guardian.” Since they were refugees, his family was assigned a person from the United States to help navigate things.

  She was a white American from Oakland. He seemed really uncomfortable to have her next to him. But she seemed like a very nice lady and was trying to explain to me what he goes through every day. I conducted the conference the way I would with any parent.

  But then she told me that the family had just gotten robbed, everything stolen, the kids and the family at gunpoint. That’s part of the reason why the parents weren’t there. They’re struggling with that, trying to move to a new neighborhood that’s safer. And I felt incredibly naïve.

  There’s a lot of good work being done. A lot of the nonprofits in the Bay Area are tackling the problem in interesting ways. And I think a lot of charters are getting good results and sending kids to great schools. That’s amazing, but is that really all we need to be doing? Just helping some students escape their community by going to a great school?