Chris Daly, the former supervisor who is now 1021’s political director, was holding a bullhorn out in front of One Market, calling on the mayor to come down and talk. A crowd of activists gathered, and I walked around waiting for the mayor’s car to show up. No such luck: Either the event had been called off (unlikely, since there were cops everywhere, led by a captain, Michael Redmond) or the mayor went in through the underground garage and avoided all the protesters.
A little after noon, when it was clear that the mayor wouldn’t be making an appearance on the street, the demonstrators decided to go up to the third floor, where Salesforce has its headquarters – but that wasn’t happening. Before anyone could get through the doors, building security chained them closed.
So the demonstrators started to make noise: “Ed Lee, let us in! Ed Lee, where’s our lunch!”
I asked the cops if the mayor was upstairs. They said they didn’t know. But there was a lot of security on hand – so much so that regular employees working in the building couldn’t get in through the main door – so something was going on.
I asked Daly what he would have told the CEOs if he had been invited in. “Well, the future of San Francisco is too important to leave to a group of tech executives,” he said. “I would talk to them about basic tax justice.”
I can pretty much guarantee that wasn’t on the agenda.
