No Tech for Apartheid: Google Workers Arrested for Protesting Company’s $1.2B Contract with Israel
184,743
Published 2024-04-17
Democracy Now! speaks with two of the Google employees who were arrested staging sit-ins on Tuesday at the company’s offices in New York City and in Sunnyvale, California, to protest the tech giant’s work with the Israeli government. Organized by the group No Tech for Apartheid, the protesters are demanding Google withdraw from Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract to provide cloud computing services to the Israeli military. “Google execs basically chose to arrest workers for speaking out against the use of our technology to power the first AI-powered genocide,” says Google software engineer Mohammad Khatami, who was arrested in New York. Google worker-organizer Ray Westrick, who was arrested occupying CEO Thomas Kurian’s office, says “more people are willing to organize and risk their jobs in order to take a stand against complicity in genocide.” We also speak with No Tech for Apartheid organizer and former Google worker Gabriel Schubiner, who calls on the tech industry to divest from Google and Amazon services. “Technology workers actually have a lot of power to shift this paradigm and to remove technology from this deep complicity with the Israeli occupation,” Schubiner says.
Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on over 1,500 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream at democracynow.org Mondays to Fridays 8-9 a.m. ET.
Subscribe to our Daily Email Digest: democracynow.org/subscribe
All Comments (21)
-
This tech will be used against anyone who speaks out against Israel. Not just Palestinians.
-
And today they have all been fired....28
-
We salute your integrity and principled stand
-
When Google banned Trump and his supporters, you were fine. Now enjoy your own medicine.
-
FREEDOM of speech in America, where???
-
Google is another company that needs to be down sized
-
They were all fired
-
Great job Google! Buying more shares tomorrow
-
❤️🇿🇦South Africa 30yrs democracy free from Apartheid, THANK YOU WORLD! ❤❤❤
-
I lost one of my YouTube channels talking about this
-
Can we protest being US citizens since our tax money goes to this war as well?
-
It’s not about Palestine or Israel. It’s about the fact that they’re paying you quite handsomely to do what engineers do and not only were you not doing it you were impeding your coworkers from doing theirs as well as making them feel unsafe. It’s amazing how that doesn’t register in their minds.
-
Thank you for posting this. I never would have known.
-
Kudos to our youth who see and stand up. thank you for being an example
-
No politics at work. Everyone knows that. If you're good at what you do, you'll spend your time working. Do what you want in your own time.
-
Many kids have always wanted to work for Google, now in these days they would reconsider
-
Excellent work by Google, business should never be mixed with politics and cult ideologies of Islamists. They are a company, and they have to provide salaries and profits to their employees and Shareholders. 👏🏻👏🏻If they want to protest then resign from the company because a business will not suffer for your cause.
-
You are in a free country, go work somewhere else and respect others' work space.
-
Freedom of speech is not too free. It was meant to do something good. Not telling your company to fire us
-
Google employees are fortunate to express their voices because they live in the Western world and work for Western companies. This is not the case in other parts of the world, particularly in the Arab world, where even employees of this media cannot freely express democratic ideas in the country where the media is based.
