An Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg -- A Birthday Wish

Dear Mr. Zuckerberg,

About a year ago, you and your wife penned a letter to your daughter, Max.  A few months after that, I wrote a letter to Kim Mai-Cutler, in response to her TechCrunch article entitled: "East of Palo Alto's Eden: Race and the Formation of Silicon Valley” (https://techcrunch.com/2015/01/10/east-of-palo-altos-eden/).  Your letter to your daughter is hopeful.  And ambitious.  And speaks about poverty, in a very general sense.  Mai-Cutler’s article recounts a very specific poverty.   My letter wrestles with my experience of poverty in a 2.5 square mile city in the heart of the San Francisco Bay Area.  Looking back, I have come to realize that your vision for your child to inherit a better world than the one you now inhabit is not vastly different from what many of us want for our children, in a town called East Palo Alto.  I believe we are neighbors.  

                                                                                                     

I am a community organizer.  But today, I write this letter as a former seminarian.  While some may disagree, I believe it is important to focus on the future of our world (as you have done in your letter), but it is equally important to focus on our current world.  If not, we miss out on an opportunity to shape the present moment.  If not, we are akin to the person whose theology focuses strictly on Heaven and the promise of eternal life, that they ignore the here and now, the everyday social realities such as racism and poverty and how they impact one on a daily basis in exchange for their belief that the future reality could be better.

In your letter, you state that your future goals are to: (1) “cure disease” and (2) “advance human potential and promote equality”.  Also, you delineate a desire to “build strong communities” and acknowledge that “inequities are interconnected”.  And these two sentiments are the reason I am writing this letter.  Mr. Zuckerberg, as Facebook's campus expands into low-income areas of town, historic communities of color are shrinking in the process.  In large part, this is because investors and developers are displacing people in order to make way for your potential new employees.  Take Trion’s recent purchase of Buckingham Apartments in Redwood City and the unjust evictions which ensued, for example (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/21/silicon-valley-eviction-facebook-trion-properties).  My hope is that you will not let this community vanish under these circumstances – or similar communities. 

I get the sense that you care about community, because you have created thousands of virtual ones.  However, my fear is that we have become so future-oriented and globally-minded in our technological and fast-paced society that we neglect our present local realities – especially when it comes to poverty.  In your letter, you say that “poverty is shrinking [,]” but I ask, for whom? As I pen this letter to you, many people in East Palo Alto live with a different set of realities:

Reality: According to the census, East Palo Alto’s median household income is $52, 716 per year, with 16.5 percent of the population living in poverty.  In Palo Alto, however, the median household income is $126,771 and there is a 5.3 percent poverty rate 

Remedy: Facebook can hire locally as it is currently expanding its campus with the intent to employ 6,500 workers  

Reality: Hundreds of low-income families of color have been priced out of the local community due to Facebook now being in Menlo Park

Remedy: Facebook can forego development/expansion until there is a jobs-housing balance OR contribute a substantial level of housing stock to the region which helps alleviate the housing crisis and does not exacerbate it   

Reality: East Palo Alto residents are saying “we want to be able to afford to live here” while Facebook offered its employees a $10,000 to $15,000 incentive to “move closer to work.”  And given that Facebook is located in Menlo Park, “closer” means East Palo Alto

Remedy: Facebook can cancel its relocation incentive

Reality: East Palo Alto is a predominantly Black and Brown community and is one of very few counties in California where low-income families can afford to live.  Facebook put up a “Black Lives Matter” sign at its headquarters after Alton Sterling was murdered by a police officer in July.  However, Facebook as a corporation has 1.5 percent black employees, out of thousands

Remedy: Facebook can hire people of color within the corporation with the possibility to climb the corporate ladder – beyond jobs as janitors, cooks, dishwashers and valet drivers

The remedies provided above are possibilities and are not mine alone.  They have come out of many conversations with community members and are in no ways exhaustive.  They are a starting point.  Mr. Zuckerberg, you wish to create and expand virtual communities. But what about the offline reality of local communities?  In my opinion, you can’t create virtual communities and ignore the everyday social, political, economic, cultural and racial context of the neighborhoods into which your corporation is expanding.  Furthermore, Black and Brown Lives cannot matter on a national level and not a local one.

In your letter to your daughter, you seem so hopeful, yet we are still so very unemployed, so very displaced and so very disconnected from the wealth in Silicon Valley.

Yesterday, I celebrated a birthday.  My birthday wish is this – that you take a stand to address the poverty in East Palo Alto – the heart of Silicon Valley and consult with the community about what our assets are.  In a conversation, Jesus was asked, “And who is my neighbor” (Luke 10:29, NASB)?  I am asking that you consider that question as you drive through East Palo Alto on your way home to Palo Alto, each day.  While philanthropy is important, consider making systemic changes which deal with root causes of poverty in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Please consider the change that can be made on a small scale locally today, before eliminating poverty globally, tomorrow.  Mr. Zuckerberg, consider the opportunity before you.  Consider the present moment.

Respectfully,

Kyra Brown, M.Div

#HousingCrisis #SiliconValley #EastPaloAlto #Gentrification #TechTakeover #OpenLetterMarkZuckerberg