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Company Town

"It's the Economy, Stupid!" • 1h 17m

Directed by Deborah Kaufman, Alan Snitow • Documentary • 2017 • 77 minutes

The once free-spirited city of San Francisco is now a 'Company Town,' a playground for tech moguls of the 'sharing economy.' Airbnb is the biggest hotel, Uber privatizes transit. And now these companies want political power as well.

Meanwhile, middle class and ethnic communities are driven out by gentrification, skyrocketing rents and evictions, sparking a grassroots backlash. Can an insurgent electoral campaign overcome corporate power and billionaires' megabucks to change a city's course?

COMPANY TOWN shows how a grassroots coalition of unions, tenants, neighborhoods of color, activists and artists can come together to win.

Tags
aaron peskin, airbnb, american (u.s.) studies, american studies, americas, area studies, asian-american studies, big tech, brian chesky, bullfrog films, business, business ethics, cafe zoetrope, campaign money, capitalism, chinatown, citizens united, citizenship, city council election, city hall, city supervisors' election, club fugazi, coit tower, community, company town, consumers, corporate power, cultural and ethnic studies, destroying middle-class and ethnic communities, development, digital revolution, district three, doc, eastern waterfront, economic theory, ed lee, evictions, expository, ferry building, financial district, fisherman's wharf, google buses, gordon chin, government policy, grassroots movement, grassroots vs big money, history, joe fitzgerald rodriguez, julie christensen, kalw, koch brothers, labor and economics, local economies, louie fong kwong association, lyft, mission district, moon festival, no on f, nob hill, north american studies, north beach, ovid, ovid_ca, patrick hannon, political history, political power, politics and political science, privatizing transit, proposition f, protesting uber, ron conway, russian hill, s_0022, s_0037, s_0041, s_0050, s_0055, s_0127, s_0180, s_0229, s_0231, s_0256, s_0263, s_0280, s_0306, s_0437, s_0608, s_0642, san francisco, san francisco taxi workers alliance, sectors, services sector, sharing economy, shaw san liu, silicon valley, skyrocketing rents, social issues, social movements and activism, social studies, sociology, stop gentrification. san francisco's future, telegraph hill, the, the american west, title_abc, title_c, uber, union square, united states, urban studies, willie brown, world regions

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