Google employees in New York City and California have been arrested and fired after staging sit-ins to protest the company’s business with the nation of Israel. Although it’s not mentioned specifically in reports, these are classic tactics of the boycott, divest and sanction (BDS) movement.
Like other protests of this kind, these employees accused the company of supporting genocide.
The FOX Business Network reports:
‘Googlers against Genocide’ arrested after 10 hour sit-in at corporate headquarters: WATCH“Googlers against genocide” protesters were arrested on Tuesday after holding a 10-hour sit-in against the tech giant’s contract with the Israeli government.Jane Chung, a spokesperson for the protesters, said in a press release that nine employees at offices in New York City and Sunnyvale, California, were arrested during Tuesday’s sit-in.”Last night, Google made the decision to arrest us, the company’s own workers – instead of engaging with our concerns about Project Nimbus, the company’s $1.2 billion cloud computing contract with Israel,” a statement from the arrested employees said.”Those of us sitting in Thomas Kurian’s office repeatedly requested to speak with the Google Cloud CEO, but our requests were denied,” they said.The protesters said that the company was telling “bare-faced lies” after Google released a statement saying that Project Nimbus was “not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.””We will not stay silent in light of Google’s bare-faced lies. Hundreds and thousands of Google workers have joined No Tech for Apartheid’s call for the company to Drop Project Nimbus,” they said.
CNBC has more:
Nine Google workers were arrested on trespassing charges Tuesday night after staging a sit-in at the company’s offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California, including a protest in Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian’s office.The arrests, which were livestreamed on Twitch by participants, follow rallies outside Google offices in New York, Sunnyvale and Seattle, which attracted hundreds of attendees, according to workers involved. The protests, led by the “No Tech for Apartheid” organization, focused on Project Nimbus — Google and Amazon’s joint $1.2 billion contract to provide the Israeli government and military with cloud computing services, including artificial intelligence tools, data centers and other cloud infrastructure.Protesters in Sunnyvale sat in Kurian’s office for more than nine hours until their arrests, writing demands on Kurian’s whiteboard and wearing shirts that read “Googler against genocide.” In New York, protesters sat in a three-floor common space. Five workers from Sunnyvale and four from New York were arrested.
This video includes the idiotic chant you hear at many of these protests, which sounds like it was written by fourth graders.
This video includes a moment when police arrive on the scene.
The company will be better off without these people.
Featured image via Twitter video.
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