Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg faced disgruntled investors and environmental protesters at the company’s first public meeting since going public last year.
Nonviolent civil disobedience resulted in arrests at the San Francisco Westin Hotel on June 11, 2013. At Facebook’s first shareholders meeting since going public last year, environmentalists protested Mark Zuckerberg’s support of the XL Pipeline. Inside the hotel, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg faced complaints from shareholders worried that the value of their investment shows little sign of recovering.
While investors are unhappy that the profits aren’t rolling in as they had hoped, serious business was going on outside the Westin Hotel in Millbrae on Tuesday. On the street protesters demanded that Zuckerberg refrain from bankrolling any more pro-fossil fuel industry Keystone XL and drilling ads. One demonstrator said, “Can’t he just admit that the ad campaign was a mistaken effort to attract conservative support for immigration reform? That is, the kind of immigration reform that serves businesses needs best, the expansion of H1B visas. Of course what the business community wants is not what is really needed in the way of immigration reform.”
Environmental activists suggested that Zuckerberg could make amends by committing the same amount of money already spent on funding these ads to support education about negative climate, economic and public health impacts recognized by the EPA and many well known scientists of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.
Colleagues of the XL Pipeline Action Council joined them in protesting in front of the hotel where the shareholders meeting was being held. They briefly blocked entrance to the hotel and arrests were made for their act of civil disobedience.
