As native San Franciscans, cartoonists and cranky gentlemen (and women), we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the influx of tech workers that are rapidly turning our hometown into a white washed mono-culture. The natural reaction would seem to decry this wave of economic thugs for their brutish attitude towards those they are displacing and their libertarian kookery, entitlement and ego… But here at Mission Mini-Comix, we pride ourselves at not taking the knee jerk reaction, and digging a little deeper to greater understand our subjects. Truly, it is not all tech workers that are the bad actors in this societal spectacle. I’ve been working in the “tech” world for about 7 years now, and I know many who are decent, caring people… attuned to the plight of the unfortunate and trying their best not to negatively impact all the mistreated and forgotten things that capitalism is constantly trying to manufacture conflict with. This comic is not about those people.

It’s about the people who dislike locals angry about displacement for “making things awkward“, it’s about the idiots who think that people disliking them for their actions and attitudes is the same as being anti-immigration or even comparing the backlash against tech workers to the holocaust, it’s about the soulless automatons you can see in online forums celebrating evictions, it’s about the bros with more dollars than sense that breathlessly insist that the midwestern cornbread they’re bringing to the table is just as much ‘culture’ as the people they’re displacing, it’s about those who move to a city and then complain about the smell, the homeless, the crime, the graffiti (newsflash, don’t move to a city… any city, if you can’t handle living in a city).

Now, as artists who grew up in and around the Mission, we’re self aware of our own roles in the gentrification of the neighborhood and San Francisco in general. The question remains if these “tech bros” can be similarly self aware of their own faults, or if they will always respond with a victim complex at the slightest whiff of criticism.

Oh yeah, this comic was written by Rio, who drew the 1st and 8th panels. Hayden Currie drew the 2nd panel, Mikey drew the 3rd and 6th panel, Justin drew the 4th panel, Antonio drew the 5th panel and Cameron Forsley drew the 7th panel.