Secrets of Silicon Valley: Transcript
(Note: Text on screen is underlined. Description of footage is in italics)

Title: Snitow-Kaufman Productions

Contemporary Footage of 19th century engines and of new factory machinery

John Doerr (vo):  I’m here to talk about the new economy. In the old economy the factors of production were plant and equipment.  In the new one, it's what you know that counts. The old economy was about security, and about monopolies, and about job preservation and wages.  The new economy is about risk taking and competition, job creation.  It involves ownership and options for everybody in the enterprise. The old economy pitted business versus the environment, Brown vs. Green.  The new economy says, forget that.  We've got to have growth, and we've got to have sustainable, clean growth. The old economy’s national, the new one’s global.  It's all about speed, and change, customization, and choice.  It's distributed, networked.  It’s a win-win situation. The old economy is standing still.  The new one is moving ahead.  

Doerr (Venture Capitalist) on cam: Can I tell you a secret? It’s not about the money. It’s about the future.

Title: Secrets of Silicon Valley

Soap box derby car race

TV News Magazine Reporter: Now everybody get ready for the third annual Sand Hill Challenge.

Reporter (vo): And you may be wondering what the Sand Hill Challenge is. Well let me tell you. It’s a soapbox derby that runs along Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, the Wall Street of the West. Proceeds from the Sand Hill Challenge go to Safe Rides and Plugged In… two local nonprofits.

Cheers… Go, go, go, go, go…

Race participant #1: The thrill of victory. Which is why we’re here.

Announcer: And they’re gone.

Race participant #2: Getting there faster and better with better designs and better technology. That’s what these guys are about.

Race participant #3: We spent a lot of time. We’ve been up all night. But, yeah, we used a lot of technology.

Magda (vo): The Sand Hill Challenge is my favorite thing of the whole year.

Magda (Executive Director, Plugged In) (on cam): I’m extremely nervous. I’m really panicky right now, so.

Announcer: And there they go.

Magda (vo): You know we get to race against the guys on Sand Hill Road and that’s pretty darn cool. And we get a donation for Plugged In, which connects low income people to computer technology.

Plugged In. Magda walks into Plugged In
Super: Plugged In Computer Training Center

Magda (vo): The kids who get involved with Plugged In they have an interest in technology. If they didn’t have access to the opportunities, they might fall between the cracks.

Magda on cam: What are you guys doing.
Kids: We’re reading.
Magda What are you reading.

Magda (vo): I spend a lot of time evangelizing for bridging the digital divide between East Palo Alto and Silicon Valley.

Magda: So are you getting good cheats?
Kids: Yeah.

Sand Hill Challenge: Yells and cheers

Magda vo: You know in Silicon Valley you have a lot of the guys who are out there like in the Wild West. …

Magda on cam: ….They’re on their horses and, you know, they’re about to sort of like run across the prairie and stick their stake into this piece of land that’ll be in their lives for generations and generations. And those territories are being created on the Internet…

 Street pictures of people in Whiskey Gulch

Magda (vo): … and people in low-income communities aren’t able to stick their stakes in the ground as fast as everybody else. You know…

Magda on cam:  …it’s not unusual for people to be making, you know, just huge amounts of money here…

Magda (vo):  …And that drives up rents. It drives up the cost of living.

Magda in Plugged In at night

Magda (vo): I think my worst fear these days, what keeps me up at night these days are completely focused on Plugged In and its future. I worry about, “Are we gonna make payroll in ninety days?”, or I worry…

Magda on cam: …. “Is one of my staff members gonna quit?” because, you know, they’re pretty damned skilled, and they’re going to go and, you know, and work for a Silicon Valley company.

Sand Hill Challenge race

Magda (vo): … I definitely feel as if we’re in a race against time.

Raj Jayadev (vo): It’s fast…

Hewlett Packard factory scenes

Raj (vo): …I mean it’s fast. I’m a worker. I’m an electronics assembler. You have a daily target that you have to hit. And it’s a hard target to get to. Eight hundred printers. I’m barely twenty-four years old and I think I got quick hands, you know, and I’m struggling a lot of times. I started work at six o’clock. I got moved around a lot today.  I spend a good couple hours just putting toners in a box. And then I found out there was a need to, to increase the speed at the foams and plastics department.

Raj on cam (Temporary Worker): …The cardboard boxes are smashing together and you got to wrap the plastic around it as quick as you can before they, before…

Raj: (vo): …the next box comes out. And so you get a whole bunch of little cardboard paper cuts on your, on your hands. First couple weeks at work…

Raj on cam: …people were saying, you know, “Hurry, hurry up. We gotta go fast. We gotta make our daily quota. We gotta get eight hundred and twenty six printers out today. You know. We have to. We have to.” Well, why? You know, I ask “Why?” Say, “I don’t know why, but we, you know we do. And sure enough a month or two later, I’m telling the new people you know, “Hurry up. Hurry up. We got to make our daily quota.”…

Picture of Raj’s Grandmother

Raj (vo): When I was growing up…my parents kept telling me I was like my grandmother. And that always bothered me because I was like, “Who is this woman?” you know, I’m my own person. And then I took a trip to India. They brought me over there to meet her one time. And I felt such a strength from her and I was so impressed with her. She was sort of the village mother for all the village children so…I like to keep a picture of my grandmother near me because…

Raj walking into HP plant

Raj (vo)  …it connects me to who I am and what is the values that I come from….  Almost every worker on the line is a person of color….

HP scenes

Raj (vo):  …Overwhelmingly…

Raj on cam: …it’s an immigrant workforce….

Raj (vo): This is what shop floors are looking like now. They’re still brown and they’re, they’re mainly female but it’s this mix, right? It’s sort of this, this new potluck of different faces. The onsite coordinator is white. The people that are doing the management level positions. Those are really the only white faces that we see at the plant.

It’s eight dollars an hour, which is absolutely a ridiculous amount to pay a full time employee that’s living in Silicon Valley. And people have to drive in from seventy-five, a hundred miles away because they can’t afford the valley that they’re creating. I could tell stories just of  today, you know what I mean, just of today of this unfair, you know, oppressive work predicament. Without a union even looking.

Fade to Black
Collage of logos and TV news bites: “the hype”

John Chambers (CEO, Cisco Systems): We’re in the middle of a revolution. We’re going to change everything in this industry.

Steve Jurvetson (Venture Capitalist): The reason you’re doing this is you want to change the world.

Gerald Levin (CEO, AOL-Time Warner): The Internet is essentially like the library at Alexandria.

Lew Platt (Former CEO, Hewlett-Packard): I’d would say it’s in part responsible for the fall of the Berlin Wall, the fall of communism.

Carly Fiorina (CEO, Hewlett-Packard): This is a growth industry and there is no end to that growth in sight.

John Doerr (Text on screen: Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers): It helps us entertain and inspire and sell and make community, even make meaning out of life and out of death.

Jeff Bezos (CEO, Amazon.com): I do think this is like the Cambrian Era 550 million years ago when multi-cell life first spring onto the scene.

Magda drives her car

Magda (vo): People don’t feel alienated from technology yet… People right now still feel technology can be for me. I can use it. I can feel very optimistic about it, very curious about it. I think that sort of feeling is not going to last forever and then people will start making decisions about whether or not they too can be part of this revolution.

Footage of venture capital firms on Sand Hill Road

Magda (vo) : …You have Sand Hill Road. It has some of the most expensive real estate in the country. There’s tons of deals going through that are revolutionizing the world….

Whiskey Gulch street with East Palo Alto sign and people on street

Magda (vo): …And then you have Whiskey Gulch, the downtown area of East Palo Alto. Where people are sort of, they’re also sort of like making their deals but it’s happening at a very micro level. They’re bartering services, you know, “You fix my fence and then I’ll go walk your dog.” They’re not looking to revolutionize the world. They’re looking to survive day to day.

It’s diverse. It’s very vibrant.  It’s about forty percent African American, forty percent Latino. The rest of it’s a combination of Pacific Islander and Caucasian.

Traffic in Whiskey Gulch

Magda (vo): Whiskey Gulch is being redeveloped right now…

Magda (on cam): …What’s going to be there is a conference center and a hotel….

Whiskey Gulch street scenes

Magda: (vo): Rumor has it that everybody’s gotta be out of here by January.

Magda (vo): … And I don’t know what to say about it. It’s a shame.

Fade to Black
Framed photos of football players with autographs

Bob Lee (CEO, San Jose Manpower Temporary Agency) (vo): If you’re going to suit up and go to practice, you might as well win, right? And business is the same thing. It’s about winning, playing as a team. It’s a global economy, truly a global economy…

Bob Lee  (on cam):  …and in today’s economy, you have to be able to turn on a dime. And if you can’t turn on a dime, you’re going to be left behind, especially how fast technology…

HP footage—spinning boxes

Bob Lee (vo): …you know, changes.

Raj (vo): It gets sometimes pretty confusing…

Raj on cam:  …the question of who I work for. The printers that  I assemble every day…

Raj (vo):  …say “Hewlett Packard” on them. They’re the ones who are deciding production levels and then they hire Manpower temporary employees to do the actual labor. There’s nine hundred employees that are working on the line.

Raj on cam: All of them are temporary employees through Manpower.

Raj (vo): I’ve known people that have been there for four to five years… an extremely long time to still be considered temporary.

Manpower training session for new workers

Manpower trainer:  Good morning everyone. Welcome to Manpower. And what I’d like to do today is we’re going to go over some of Manpower’s policies and procedures. And I’d like you to go around the room and if you could just quickly tell me about yourself.

Brenda: My name is Brenda, and I heard about Manpower through a friend, and I’m looking for industrial type job.
Trainer: Okay. Hi Brenda. Welcome. And you are?
Elizabeth: My name is Elizabeth, and I heard from one of my friends at the same school that I go to. Um, And I’m looking for the same job, industrial.
Trainer: Industrial work. Great. Welcome, Elizabeth.
Katrina: My name is Katrina, and I heard through San Jose Job Corps. And I’m also looking for industrial.
Trainer: Industrial

Bob Lee (vo): I believe attitude is eighty percent of anyone’s job. And I believe that people mostly show up in the morning to do a good job. They don’t come and say I’m going to do a lousy job. So we look for a good attitude, want to work and maybe who’ve been in a team environment.

Male trainee: I’m looking for administration and some sales…

Bob Lee (on cam): And I don’t care what culture you’re from. If you can’t be a team player, most companies aren’t going to have a need for you. There are very few individual performers at that level. Very few. Engineers, yeah. Production workers, I don’t think so.

Alom Technologies factory floor

Raj (vo) : What they do at, in the training is give you a choice of what you want to do. Is, you know, and they’ll say, “Would you like, do you like doing things that, that require lifting loads, you know? Something that has a physical strength or would you rather do something that’s smaller more detailed oriented? You know, how fast are your hands?”…

Raj on cam:  …“Well, I have a young Latina woman. She’s very well with her hands….

Raj (vo): …You know, she can move fast and she’s very versatile. She’ll be a flexible laborer for you.” “OK. Well how much do you want for her? OK, I’ll give you this much.” …

Raj on cam: So that’s, that is what Manpower values are. And that is what a temporary economy is really trying to set up…

Manpower training session

Manpower trainer (vo):  We’ll tell you about the equipment that you’re going to be using and we’ll also talk about any safety issues or safety equipment that you might need…

Manpower trainer on cam: …So, you know: safety shoes, hard hat. You know, that kind of stuff…

Raj (vo): Their whole universe of what safety means is making sure that the employees wear their steel-toed boots. I mean the whole place is an ergonomic nightmare. You know, I found out the second week I was there that we have more than double the industry standard of workplace injuries. And I know of no person that’s doing their health benefits package through Manpower. Because it’s too costly.

Alom factory scenes/quality control supervisors and workers

Hannah Kain (vo): We in general ship about a million packages out of here…

Kain (CEO, Alom Technologies) on cam: ….per month and when we spike up and we’re really busy then we can do two or three times as many…

Kain (vo): ….and of course it takes a lot of hands, a lot of assembly work and a lot of picking and packing. We use temporaries. The lowest would just start at six dollars fifty.

Fernando Gomez-Dimas (Temporary Worker) on cam:  They would pressure us a lot to move the production by yelling and scolding…

Fernando (vo): I even ended up injuring my back… but I go to work anyway, like today, I was working … to make a living for my children, for my family, well my parents… because it is very hard in Mexico.

Kain on cam: Well, that’s exactly why we have the bottleneck all the time.

Kain (vo): I think a lot of people are very focused on… the flashiness of some of the Internet startups… But this is where the rubber meets the road…. We are really the engine behind the Internet.

Kain on cam: My main inspiration is probably the idea of perfection…

Kain  (vo): You work basically based on zero tolerance.

Fernando: And people wouldn’t say anything. They’d put up with it because they would get fired and get deported… And no one said anything until I exploded, no? The honest truth is I had to say what I was feeling…And me, I’m not scared of anyone. What I feel is we are all human. I believe we are all God’s children right?

Fade to Black
Footage of 19th century machines

Raj (vo): It’s an interesting concept, right? That there could be production. That people can see, they can feel. That they buy these computers and printers and all the hardware and all the software. But not think that there’s people that create that. That physically construct it….

Raj on cam: …That it’s sent down by some, some divine presence that we get our, our technology. And so I, it’s, I think it’s a phenomenal thing that there could be this mass misconception that, that manufacturing, that the construction of this equipment is obsolete….

HP footage of people assembling printers/wide shot of factory/ forklift

Raj (vo): …I’d ask any single person that holds that idea to sit down and examine their computer, look and examine their printer and, and try to back track on how that was created. It very much uses the same exact processes that the industrial era used. You hear gas pumps. It’s a big warehouse type setting. There’s nothing futuristic about that. The only difference is it’s not acknowledged.

Old Machines

Bob Lee (vo): It seems like every day there’s a new chip or a new process or a new something else that comes up that puts the other guy at risk. And so you have an open window….

Bob Lee on cam: ….maybe of this big (gestures), you know, maybe in months. And, and I think some company’s, you know, they produce a product and they already obsolete it when it’s produced. They figure it has a six-month life span and it’s gone.

Fade to Black
HMR and Micro Metallics Computer Recycling Warehouses. Melting computers.

C. Hai Teh (Vice President, Micro Metallics Recycling) (vo):  This is old technology, taking the new technology, destroying it, then recover the resources, the metal resources in the new technology…. The furnaces are melting….

Hai Teh (on cam):  …the metallic components in the computers…

Hai Teh (vo): …Hewlett Packard, Texas Instrument, Motorola… If it’s handled properly, then these metals, even though they’re toxic are not dangerous to human health. The high tech industry knows that we exist but the general public usually don’t.

Fade to Black
Jan Krieg soldering struts for a Sand Hill Challenge derby car

Magda (vo): The first year the Sand Hill Challenge was running, I was on the steering committee. And the kids in our program approached me and they said, “We really want to build a car for the Sand Hill Challenge.”

Magda on cam: And I was flipping out because we didn’t have any money and I certainly didn’t know anything about building cars….

Red car on street

Magda (vo): And one day I was having lunch with a colleague of mine and I saw a guy driving in a little red car. And I said, “Well that guy looks like he knows how to build a car. Maybe we should run out there and ask him if he can help us because we really need help.”  We built that car in partnership with Dr. Technology, Jan Krieg….

Krieg in garage

Jan Krieg (“Dr. Technology”) on cam: Let’s take the tape measure and go down right off the nose.
Jim Feuhrer: 30 from the ground.

Magda (vo) : We’re building a whole new car and we’re doing it in partnership with CMGI @Venture capitalists. I popped over an email to Peter Mills…

Magda on cam:  ….at CMGI and I said, “Hey”, you know, I, I sort of phrased it as a value proposition for them. “Here’s what you guys can do. You guys can beat all the other guys on Sand Hill Road and you can partner with us. You know we won the last two years in a row. You know, why don’t you guys do this?” And they said, “OK”.

CMGI Partners meeting

Peter Mills: Okay… Do you have Cisco down for ten am on Friday?…
Jon Cavanaugh: Friday, the 27th. Yeah.

Mills (vo): Plugged In approached us to sponsor them and it just seemed like a no brainer to us….

Mills (Venture Capitalist, CMGI) on cam: ….I am very intrigued by the competitive nature of the Sand Hill Challenge….

Mills (vo): …Competition for us is everybody.

Cavanaugh: It’s got billion dollar opportunity. Clearly. I mean huge consumer electronics, consumer purchasing marketplace. So it’s clearly billion dollar market opportunity.

Krieg in garage

Jan Krieg (vo): Sand Hill Road happens to be the epicenter of the venture capital guys in Silicon Valley. The race started out just to be a fun thing as a fundraiser but the, the venture capital guys are really in it for the race. You know they’re out for billion dollar deals. There’s a lot of secrecy before the race. It’s like the Pentagon. They don’t want to give away their secrets….

Krieg on cam: You know, you can throw a lot of money at it and buy a lot of expensive stuff…

Krieg (vo): …. anywhere from 200-thousand down to Plugged In’s car was 15-hundred dollars… but I don’t think a lot of people went out and practiced enough to find out if their ideas were working…

Krieg on cam: ….So, I’ve been building coaster cars since I was five or six. Just, you know, sticking wagon wheels on two by fours you know. But this is something where you’ve got aerodynamics and you know a bunch of other things on the plate at the same time….

Krieg (vo):  …I’m not really that wired into the technology of today. I think computers are great but I just don’t think they’re the answer for everything yet….

Krieg on cam: ….You still have to go with the bumps in the road that the computer doesn’t know about….

Night shot outside garage as he solders

Krieg (vo): ….You just can’t get it done just knowing how to do things with your head and not doing things with your hands.

Sand Hill Challenge morning/ races

Magda on cam: It’s pretty cool, don’t you think. I’m so excited.

Krieg (vo): The competition is people like Lockheed, Stanford Linear Accelerator, NASA has every computer available to mankind.

Crowd: Go, go go go go

Krieg (vo): Kleiner Perkins they have more money than God. At Home spent a couple of hundred thousand dollars. They just come back with more money next year.

Various cars race

Announcer: And they’re gone.

Magda (vo): What strikes me, you know, when I, with my interactions with some of the business people around here is that they live in a very frictionless world. You know, where there aren’t sort of like obstacles. Everything kind of works perfectly because here’s the plan and here’s the flowchart and of course, you know, if you follow this path, it’s going to work. And that’s the scary part. And I think that’s where things become pretty unreal and not very grounded in what’s really happening in life.

Phone rings over race
Cut to Avram Miller’s conference room

Avram Miller on cam: Hello.

Avram (vo): I got involved with Plugged In about six years ago and….

Avram Miller (Former Vice President, Intel) on cam:  …for the last five years, I served as chairman of the board of Plugged In and recently I was made chairman emeritus.

Secretary comes into conference room

Secretary: Avram, Mike Ovitz called. Do you need to speak with him today or should I schedule something for another time or I can transfer it in here.
Avram: Well, uh transfer it into here for a second, OK?
Secretary: OK.

Avram (vo): I joined Intel in 1984….

Avram on cam: …At the time the company had a market capitalization of less than a billion dollars. I think today  it’s about 280 billion…..

Avram (vo): Currently, my primary activity is advising CEO’s of some of  the most important Internet companies in the world.… It was very difficult to generate support for Plugged In…

Avram on cam: …It doesn’t mean that there weren’t companies that supported Plugged In. Companies like Cisco, Hewlett Packard and Intel all did. But given the wealth of the area, the wealth of the companies, the wealth of the people, the number of companies that were involved in technology, it really was kind of pitiful what we were able to get.

Avram in conference room/then Sand Hill Challenge races and camels

Avram (vo): The people you have to give money to very often represent to you the kind of people that you don’t really want to be with. They’re in the nonprofit world. And I’m the profit world. So, OK. So now I’m going to take my money, which is, really my money is my energy; it’s my life force, you know. And so I’m not going to give it to those people because they’re not going to you know, honor my life force properly. They’re going to squander it on stupid things so, how can I give money to people I don’t respect? I mean, nobody would say that. I’m just saying it for them.

Derby cars crash

CMGI venture capitalist #1: We’re obviously at ground zero here for venture capitalists. There are a lot of those types around.

CMGI venture capitalist #2: And a lot of entrepreneurs as well that we’re kind of making the rounds. I got more business cards today.

CMGI #1: So it could have been a very productive day for the portfolio, we’ll see.

Collage of traffic speeded up, machines, people on cell phones on the street

Avram (vo): There is no time to think. There is no time to analyze and that’s why…

Avram on cam: ….I believe that intuition is now the most important competitive weapon….

Avram (vo): ….Things have changed so quickly that we don’t have the ability to go off and study things. We’re competing with people who are willing to take the chances.

Avram on cam: And those who have to stand back and try to analyze and use the tools of the industrial age to make business decisions will be left totally behind….

Fade to Black
HP Plant

Raj (vo): The first week I was there at Hewlett Packard, when we got our paychecks, people told me….

Raj on cam: ….“Look at your checks. Make sure that the hours and the money match up. Cause a lot of people here have been getting shorted.”…

Raj (vo):  …And I was like, “Oh damn.” You know sure enough like my hours weren’t accounted for. And apparently this was happening to a lot of people. Like, repetitively. And so this was creating an energy on the shop floor….

Raj on cam: …And so people were going in by themselves and going, going up to the onsite coordinators saying, “Look…

Raj’s pay stub

Raj (vo): …my pay stub does not match the hours that I’ve worked. I want to be compensated like I was supposed to be.”

Raj on cam: And this would, this would go on for, for days and weeks while people’s bills were not being paid.…

Petition

Raj (vo): And so the next day, I brought in this petition….And so there’s, they started to sign their names to it. And on top of that, they started taking it around to other lines. And by the end of two days, eighty, ninety percent of the people had signed that document. And by the end of that week, we had taken a delegation over to Manpower office ….

Manpower office and names on the petition

Raj (vo): …They had never been hit by anything like this, as far as workers getting together and challenging the company practice…. Within a couple weeks, every paycheck problem was resolved…. And when we do something within one little plant in Silicon Valley….

Raj on cam: …I feel like the most dangerous person on the planet.

Raj plays Mergeroids computer game

Raj: These corporations are coming together and merging then you need to destroy them before they creates this one big corporate hegemon that has this ring to it of being an evil force the way, you know, in Star Wars the, the empire was….

Raj on cam: They replicate Silicon Valley all over the planet and all the, all the different metropolises want to be part of that. They want to be part of that new vision because of the tremendous amount of profits and affluence that it brings to a few.

Raj: (vo): There’s an idea of enlightenment that’s tied in the new economy. That the backward labor standards may be in the past… I actually think there’s nothing new about this new economy…. There’s always production needs. If people weren’t doing the manual labor, how would you have the new economy? You need labor that’s inexpensive.

Raj (on cam): The temp economy  is extremely secretive. I think that is built into its characteristic.  It has to be hidden. You know, these exploits have to be hidden. Because it would completely burst the bubble of the…“All boats floating of, of the affluence for everybody.”

Raj types—“the civil rights struggle for today”

Raj (vo): …I want the secret of Silicon Valley just exploded everywhere. Cause I want that myth destroyed. Cause it, I mean, it pisses me off every damn day.

Revolving doors/Avram walks into building

Avram (vo): ..Legislation, regulation, language, customs, speed. All these things are collapsing. I think it’s homogenization in a sense. I’ve never really cared for the idea of nation states, artificial boundaries. What will happen is that…

Avram on cam: …hopefully the best concepts will be the winning concepts not just for the country, but for the world.

Construction workers board up storefronts in Whiskey Gulch

Magda (vo): I frankly don’t know what’s going to happen to a lot of these small businesses here. You know, like Home Depot moved in so you kind of wonder what happens to the local community hardware store. You know the little taquerias here.

Nina’s Nails Storefront

Man on the street on cam: Nina’s is over in Menlo Park now and this place is somewhere else.
Woman on the street: And so is Harris, Century 21…
Man on the street (vo): And the donut shop, he’s doesn’t have a place.
Woman on the street on cam: That’s sad.
Man on the street: You know. So it’s, it’s just, you know, it’s part of change and it’s getting used to change.
Man (vo): So what we used to know this as being, it will never be again, you know.
Woman on the street on cam: It’s, it’s, it’s so sad.
Home Depot shots
Man on the street (vo): I lived in East Palo Alto since I was nine years old. Where they built Home Depot and the Good Guys, you know. I went to school there.
Man on cam: This was a little community. Everybody traded what, with each other. So they, you know, if you needed something at the hardware store, and you said, “Hey I need this.” Coffee, go get the coffee at Manning’s. If you didn’t have the money, you know, I’d come back the next day and give them the money for coffee. You can’t go to McDonald’s and do that.

McDonalds/more pictures of boarding up and Whiskey Gulch scenes

Magda (vo): Without Whiskey Gulch being there, I do worry that what it means is that East Palo Alto will be a huge parking lot for Silicon Valley. I think it’s going to be gentrified pretty quickly. And a lot of people are going to have to move out of here. If you’re getting paid 5.25 minimum wage, then you have to have three jobs to rent an apartment that maybe costs 14-hundred dollars a month. People, you know crowd three families in an apartment trying to make ends meet. They definitely could no longer afford to be here.

Fade to Black
Moving out of Plugged In/Magda packing up

Magda (vo): What Plugged In is doing is we’re looking to move to the other side of highway 101 and launch a capital fundraising campaign to build a building and that’s a really big deal for a small organization like ours.

Music and carrying computers out of Plugged In
Fade to Black
Dust blowing

Raj (vo): A lot of it is just dust… dust from cardboard and machinery… dust from the toners… it’s carcinogenic.

Raj wakes up/ brushes teeth

Raj (vo): Within the first, say, month or so that I was there, you know, my health dropped. I was getting sort of deep chest pains. It was hard to breathe. I was coughing a lot. I had a respiratory illness, you know, one after the next. It was continuous, and I’ve never been like that in my entire life. I don’t, I don’t smoke. I don’t drink. And so I was asking around. Everybody said, “Yeah, you know, that’s commonplace, you know I have that too. I have that too.” And then we actually had a safety meeting. All I did was really just ask that question….

Raj on cam:  …I said, “How many people here have bronchitis?” An overwhelming number of hands went up. “How many people have asthma?” Hands went up. “How many people have bloody noses since they started here?” Hands went up. And the list goes on and on of those type of illnesses which none of them had before they started working there….

Raj puts on boots

Raj (vo): …At that time, I was a member of the safety committee. So all I was really doing was my responsibility of notifying management of what the safety concerns were of workers.

Plane coming in and Raj at bus stop

Raj (vo): They told me to my face that I was getting people too riled up. Said that I can’t ask these questions any more. And then I hear, the next day, they said, “Oh did you hear Raj? Yeah, you’re off the safety committee.” … They just told me yesterday… just like that. .. I don’t even know how long I’m going to be in HP cause I think I’m pretty much already on the target list to get fired.

Raj gets on bus/rides bus

Raj (vo): They moved me off the line and isolated me into this one box machine job where I can’t talk to the other workers. And the other workers would be told not to speak with me. And then like systematically almost every person that was being vocal, they were pulled off the line by our supervisor and told, “You’re on a hot list to get fired.” It’s a lot harder to make this just a romantic struggle, you know. It’s just a lot more down and dirty struggle than that. People’s backs are against the walls, you know. That’s the reason why the temp economy is making the land fertile for organizing.

Restaurant—Raj and two of his co-workers sit around a table

Raj (vo): A youth magazine I know wants me to talk to some of my co-workers about their experiences.
laughter
Raj on cam: Man, that’s a good story actually. It’s like the spreading, you know, of like temporary work in Silicon Valley.
Raj (vo): We could do something. I think it would be good to do something like on temp workers.
Victor: Assembly line?
Raj: Assembly line, yeah.
Victor: Semiconductor issues, stuff like that.
Raj (vo): Yeah, stuff like that. What  are interesting angles that will come up?
Victor (vo): Interesting angles?
Victor on cam: I was in high school and a lot of my family members said “Oh you work at HP. It’s a good company, you know”. I said break it down, tell ‘em the truth. No , it’s not.  
Julio on cam: They don’t really care about safety unless the big guys come into town, and that’s when they provide their employees with safety gloves and back braces and stuff like that.
Victor on cam: I mean.. pissed me off the most, I waited two months for a back brace…. It took them two months to get a back brace.
Raj: Yeah. You know what I mean, like, stuff that happens all the time that no one knows about.

Fade to Black
Children and adults paint a big mural on Plugged In’s temporary home

Magda (vo) : When we got here actually…

Magda on cam: ….it was this cream color, very antiseptic, just really boring, and that’s not really our style (laughs). We’d rather have loud colors…

Magda (vo):  ….messiness, creativity hanging around all over the place.

Magda (vo): What we’re doing is really sort of creating our home here….

Magda on cam: …So I actually think it’s less a sort of, you know, poor East Palo Alto is getting screwed. It’s more about how do you incentivize the phone company to come out here? (laughs) So and hopefully that’s what we’re going to be doing.

Jennifer: Albert, too you could probably do all that black stuff needs to be covered up.
Magda: You’re doing a great job.
Jennifer: Yeah, exactly, perfect.

Magda (vo): This is essentially our home for the next year and a halfish while we sort of work on our building campaign. I think people are looking for an anchor of stability within the community that’s changing very rapidly. So that’s what I feel Plugged In is becoming for them. So it’s sort of a way to sort of get connected to this change, but also at the same time be anchored within a very grassroots, community-based family.

Fade to Black
State Senate Committee hearings/Raj walks in/Gavel
Super: “California Senate Hearings on Economic Insecurity in Silicon Valley”

Jolani Hironaka (vo): This is a photograph…

Jolani Hironaka (Safety and Health Attorney) on cam: … in a San Jose home of a Philipino family. You can see the kitchen table, the motherboard being loaded on the kitchen table and the rice pot in very close proximity to this work.

Jolani (vo): Why would workers expose their family members to…

Jolani on cam: … a substance that damages the nervous system, the reproductive system, the kidneys, the blood-forming organs and the digestive system?

Doris Ng (Equal Rights Advocates) on cam: We refer to this other side of Silicon Valley as the home of the high tech sweatshop.

Raj (vo):  The management head of the safety committee…

Raj on cam: …said that the reason why so many people were having so many problems was because of pollen in the air, not because of anything at work….

Raj (vo): What was also so frustrating to me…

Raj on cam:  …was that when concerns were being raised, I was never really sure who I should be raising them to. I didn’t know if….

Raj (vo): …it was Manpower or HP….

Raj on cam: …And HP was never anywhere to be found despite the fact that we were performing work that HP, a huge multinational corporation, contracted and benefited from. I was let go shortly after these incidents. I believe I was let go because I was raising health and safety concerns at work. Since that time, I have filed for wrongful termination through the Industrial Relations Board… This was a bit of my experience as a temporary worker in Silicon Valley.

Raj (vo): I need to be part of something. (laughs). You know I need to be part of something big because me alone, no matter how egotistical I am, you know. It’s very hard to make changes…. If you go to any shop floor where, where they’re mainly temporary workers and say, “Would you like a union?

Alom factory scenes

Raj (vo): A voice? Something that represents your interests?” almost all of them will say, “Yes.”

Raj on cam: They’ve called for unions before, but the unions haven’t responded at all.

Raj (vo): They’re scared to go against a Hewlett Packard, much less a Manpower. These companies have a tremendous amounts of political and financial weight and they have a track record of eliminating unions.

HP factory/ HP printer close-ups/money machine counts cash/news story

Male TV News anchor on cam: A woman has made the list of the top ten highest paid Silicon Valley executives…

Fiorina pictures

TV Anchor (vo): …Hewlett Packard President and CEO Carly Fiorina earned just under 70-million dollars, most of that in Hewlett Packard stock.

Printer close-up
Skyscrapers/Avram and an associate in Avram’s office

Avram (vo): I’m in the process of trying to get my shares from World On Line that I own transferred to me.
Avram on cam: So how do I get them in my account.
Man: You got to get them out of the notary and into physical share certificates and then it can be transferred to your account.
Avram: But I just want to have my shares.
Man: That’s the best place to start (laughs). Possession is nine-tenths of the law.
Avram: That’s solved.

Avram (vo): A lot of people say that what drives the industry is….

Avram on cam: ….greed. I think that’s true. I think that greed is not a bad thing if it makes people do good things….

Avram (vo): ….And yes, many people are driven by greed, money. Although most of the people I know that run businesses have more money than they ever need and I don’t really sure it’s…

Avram on cam: …greed but it may be something else just as despicable so to speak. You know, power, or whatever. I don’t really care.

Avram (vo): And, you know, when I grew up in the sixties, I would, could have never imagined that I would ever say this here in San Francisco….

Avram on cam:  ….with a long beard and long hair but I’ve learned this.

Fade to Black
TV News story

Female TV News Anchor: The President continues his Bay Area visit this morning with a quick stop in East Palo Alto. The city sits in the shadow Silicon Valley’s high tech giants and start-ups, yet has not shared in all the economic boom. Lisa Beckett is covering the President’s trip and she joins us live with the very latest. Hello, Lisa.

TV Reporter: Good morning, Diane and Frank. There is a lot of preparation already going on here today. We are standing outside with a ton of other media you can see. And the President’s entourage outside a nonprofit computer training center called Plugged In. This is where President Clinton is scheduled to hold a town hall style discussion in just over an hour’s time.

Magda and co-workers prepare for President Clinton’s arrival

Magda: (vo): The reason that the White House chose to come here was because of the mural. We posted a picture of it on the Internet. And they loved it. Yeah, it’s pretty unbelievable.

Voice: Isn’t though?

Magda (vo): Yeah. Yeah, I’m really psyched. I’m totally psyched.

Voice: Magda.

Magda on cam: Yeah.

Voice: Can you come look?

Magda: Yeah. Can you get the people together? I want to go and deal with these guys. But grab people together and then I’ll start when you give me the cue.

Bobby: Where should we put everybody that’s gonna speak?

Magda: Huh?

Bobby: Armando!

Magda: Just put ‘em off to the side right here.

Bobby:  …off to the side right over by that..

Magda: Yeah, off the side right there.

Magda (vo):  Well, I’m gonna be really nervous once I get up there. Like I have two speeches that I’m trying to combine because I decided that the one I wrote was no good. (laughs)…

TV Reporter: Tons of people are coming down University right now. We’re going to get out of the way and show you. About a hundred people lining up outside of this nonprofit computer training center. Now a lot of these people, little people. A lot of the kids who benefit from using this center. Now President Clinton is said to show up here in about thirty minutes.

Magda (vo): Hey, we’re going to do the preprogram in five.

Voice (vo): And I’m gonna give you…

Magda: (vo): Oh, I for… I lost my names. I have to get my names because I lost my names…Blake. Where’s Blake?

Magda on cam: LARRY!! (pants).

Magda (vo): Yeah. Go find, go find some place for them to sit. Yeah! …

Magda on cam: …Rosie saved seats for them (spinning guy around).

Bobby on cam: Or, Carly’s going to introduce you, right? Or... Carly’s going to introduce each of them. She does that.

Magda on cam: Right. Right. She’s just going to say something. I’m going to introduce everybody.

Bobby: on cam: OK. So, so…

Bobby (vo): …Carly’ll go up and then she’ll go up and then…

Magda (vo): Do we have everybody down here?…

Magda on cam:  …’Scuse me. Can you all go and take a seat please? Because we’re clearing the area for announcements.

Blonde woman on cam: Can you make sure Mike Honda gets up on the stage?

Magda on cam: OK. I’ll try to see what I can do.

Black man on cam: Am I supposed to be in the VIP stage or the regular stage.

Magda on cam: I don’t know.

Brunette on cam: Where is Elizabeth Newman from the President’s office?

Magda on cam: I don’t know

Andrew Cuomo on cam: Andrew Cuomo.

Magda on cam: Oh, pleasure to meet you. Thank you for coming. Magda Escobar Executive Director Plugged In.

Cuomo: You’re doing great stuff.

Magda on cam: Thank you so much.

Cuomo: You’re an inspiration…

Magda on cam: Thank you so much!

Cuomo: …To all us paper pushers back in Washington.

Magda: (laughs) Wonderful. Thank you so much for coming…

Magda (vo): …You ready?

Carly Fiorina on cam: I’m, I’m waiting for someone to tell me where to go…

Magda on cam: Oh, great, great. I’m sorry.

Fiorina on cam: No, no, no.

Magda on cam: Stand  right here on the side in the little triangular area next to the blue goose. So if you just stand right there and see where Armando is?…Wave Armando. Yeah…Stay right there! Go where he is.

Fiorina on cam: Thank you. OK.

Magda on cam: Go where he is.

Man’s voice (vo): Hi there. How are you?

Magda (vo): Good to see you.

Man’s voice (vo): You all set?

Magda (vo): Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Man’s voice (vo): Cool. Now, you’re, you’re the one, right? You’re going to introduce the President, aren’t you?

Magda (vo): Yes. Yes. Hopefully, I will do an OK job of it.

Man’s voice (vo): Cool.

Presidential entrance music/shots of media

Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States, accompanied by Mayor Sharifa Wilson and Magda Escobar.

Music: “Hail to the Chief”/President Clinton enters with Magda

Magda on cam: Mr. President, friends and guests, I’m thrilled to introduce you to the Plugged In community. It’s a community filled with dreams, energy, creativity and drive.

Magda (vo): Fellow East Palo Alto community members, take control of your destinies and seize this unique moment

Magda on cam: Don’t be content to simply be the next pair of eyeballs. Don’t be content to simply use computers to become better consumers, but use these wonderful new tools to produce, create and build your dreams.

Magda (vo): Now I’d love to introduce you to one of our angel investors. Welcome our angel investor, President Bill Clinton.

Clinton on cam: Oh, you’re great.

Magda on cam: (laughs)

Clinton on cam: Thank you. You all sit down. Good morning.

Crowd: Good morning.

Clinton (vo): Today we’re in a time of fundamental economic transformation. The trade routes…

Clinton on cam: …of the information age can run through every city, every town, every community.

Clinton (vo):  No one has to be bypassed this time around.

Applause- crowd

Fiorina on cam (CEO, Hewlett-Packard): Hewlett Packard and East Palo Alto have been friends and neighbors for many years, and this is a day long in coming.

Fiorina (vo): We will be using the Plugged In Garage as the hub…

Fiorina on cam: …of our activities and provat-, providing a permanent building for the people of Plugged In.

Applause/cheers/Clinton leaves podium and shakes hands

Magda (vo): I think I’ve got to return a lot of phone calls, follow up with Carly, and drive the momentum so it doesn’t evaporate. Because I think everything has their trends and their ups and downs. So how do you prepare for when maybe people aren’t so interested in the issue around the digital divide? Um and I think corporate involvement in this area is enlightened self interest… and they understand this is a market to be captured and they sort of see that as an investment… On the one hand, the corporation is defending its public image. On the other hand, is that marketing or is that really philanthropy? So, how do you prepare when Plugged In is no longer the sexy thing to fund?

Fade to Black
Demolition of the Old Plugged In building

Magda (vo): Just at the beginning of a lot of the redevelopment efforts there was this renewed sense of progress and this excitement, this sense of being connected to the larger sort of progress of Silicon Valley. I think right now, there’s sort of reaction that’s happening to the speed of the progress…

Magda on cam: so now that people are sort of feeling scared and nervous and wondering “Wow, we’re moving so fast…

Magda (vo): …Things are changing so quickly. What have we done? And can we go a little bit slower?”

Bird tweets amid the wreckage
Fade to Black
Incense/Raj meditates

Raj (vo): The Bhagavad Gita, which is an ancient Indian text, is actually sort of a running dialogue between Arjuna who is a warrior prince and, and Krishna who is actually a god. And Arjuna is in, in the heat of a battle at the time when Krishna comes to him and he’s finding himself in this dilemma because his…

Raj on cam: ….spiritual teaching has taught him not to fight and that there’s something beyond this that he needs to be focusing on and so Krishna, you know, tells him…

Raj (vo): …you can connect with the greater consciousness, but you have to fill your role here. And so your role is to be a warrior, so fight your battles. And as you fight your battles, you’ll be filling your purpose in life and in that you could also connect to what is, what is greater. So a lot of ways, every day, say, in a plant, is a battle. So I try to keep in my head…

Raj on cam:  …“Well, Raj you know, just fight the battles, you know, that is what you need to do right now. In doing that you’ll connect with something greater.”

Raj ends meditation and gets up
Fade to Black

End Text on screen

Raj won his claim before the California Labor Commission, which ruled that Manpower fired him unlawfully for challenging unsafe working conditions.

Magda raised enough money to start building a permanent home for Plugged In.

The new economy of Silicon Valley leads the country in the use of temporary workers, in the number of Superfund toxic waste sites, in the high cost of housing, and in the growing income gap between the rich and the rest of the population.

Credits

Produced and Directed by
Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman

Editor
Jennifer Chinlund

Principal Cinematography
Vicente Franco
Marsha Kahm

Additional Camera
Purcell Carson
Bob Elfstrom
Ashley James
Stuart Math
David Wilson

Principal Sound
Wellington Jon Bowler
Saul Rouda

Additional Sound
Ray Day
Jaime Kibben
Mark Mandler

On Line Editor
Ed Rudolph
Video Arts

Audio Mix:
Mark Escott
Robert Berke Sound

Original Music
Jon Herbst

“Arizo M.V.” and “A’iga” by Tibor Szemzo
Courtesy of Gordian Knot Company, Budapest

“Parijs” by Tibor Szemzo
from “Maelstrom” by Peter Forgacs
Courtesy of Lumen Film, Amsterdam

“Dark Sun” by Open Canvas
from “Nomadic Impressions”
Courtesy of  Waveform Records, (c)1998
www.waveformhq.com

Archival Sources
ABC
Apple Computer
CNN
Hewlett-Packard
Intel
KPIX
KTVU
MSNBC
Lucent Technology
PBS

“Mergeroids” courtesy of Tactile Pictures
Lina Hoshino and Derek Chung
www.globalarcade.org

www.secretsofsiliconvalley.org
Designed by Tactile Pictures

“Gerry’s Machines”
Steam engines and industrial machines courtesy of
The Collection of Gerry Weinstein

Assistant Editor
Kristin Howard

Production Assistants
Cindy Avitia
Stacy Bloom
Tania Chelnov-Snitow
Adam Hirsch
Byron Potter

Academic Advisors
Selma Burkom
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Robin D. G. Kelley
Vicki Ruiz

Legal
James Wagstaffe
Kerr and Wagstaffe

Accounting
Turid Larsen

Insurance
Larry Walsh
Hammond, Martin & Walsh

Major Funders
Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Foundation
California Council for the Humanities
The California Wellness Foundation
The Nathan Cummings Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation

Additional Funders
Astraea National Lesbian Action Foundation/The Bessie Coleman Fund
Cavalier Family Fund/Nashville Jewish Federation
Shirley Daleski
Marta Drury
The Lucius and Eva Eastman Foundation
Fleishhacker Foundation
French-American Charitable Trust
Funding Exchange
Hannah Kranzberg
Limantour Foundation
Puffin Foundation
Abraham and Lillian Rosenberg Foundation
Virginia and Charles Snitow
Vanguard Public Foundation
The Women’s Foundation

 (c) Snitow-Kaufman Productions, 2001