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Comment by NeverFade | Hacker News Reader

They didn't just "protest" their company's work with Israel.

They took over company offices, including the office of Google Cloud CEO in Sunnyvale, and refused to vacate them for 9+ hours.

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Yes... That's what protest looks like.

There are lots of ways to protest, and plenty of them don’t involve impeding others or trespassing on private property to make their point. We have parks and government centers and sidewalks they can do it in. Your right to protest does not supersede the rights of others.

And these are (were) employees and it’s quite likely Google already has established mechanisms for hearing employee grievances. Google’s not going to allow a small but vocal and disruptive group to override those existing mechanisms, nor would any serious business.

It isn't nice to block the doorway

It isn't nice to go to jail

There are nicer ways to do it

But the nice ways always fail

- Malvina Reynolds, "It Isn't Nice"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lWkV2QpgQo

It doesn’t matter. The law is what it is. Breaking the law to get your way isn’t the right way to get things done. Otherwise we’d all be justified in doing it whenever we don’t like something and there would be no point in laws anymore.

In a democracy, you can participate in our system and vote to have it changed, though. And that’s the effective way to address these issues.

If laws were the only truth there would be no justice in this world, as proven multiple times in history.

Breaking the law isn't a moral question, it's a legal one. You break the law, you go to jail, okay. But what is this "it isn't right" business? Some innocent bystanders are inconvenienced, so what? These people are protesting their employer's complicity in mass murder! And a corporation isn't a democracy, so they can't "vote to have it changed". Should they be bringing their concerns to HR, is that the right way to get things done?

The point is that the "right way"--the way that is sanctioned by the system--is deliberately hobbled by many people in positions of power, to be completely ineffective. So you may well have to push the bounds of the system to actually address these issues.

First of all, these are (probably now former) Google employees. I don’t work for Google, but I do know that most big companies have established channels for addressing employee grievances.

Second, Google isn’t a democracy, but we have a democratic system that allows us to influence our representatives to make reprehensible conduct illegal. If you want to change how a business operates, you can arrange a boycott as well. Companies take the threat of losing significant amounts of money very seriously.

If you honestly think that this type of action should be legal, then by all means, go convince our government to make it so. But I don’t think you are considering the long-term consequences such a change would have.

No, I don't think this type of action should be legal. I think they should do it anyway. Protest is more meaningful (and raises more awareness) when there are consequences.

(You're Lawful Good, which is an admirable quality in a fellow citizen, but Chaotic Good can be more effective when the system has been captured by a strong Lawful Evil element.)

"I don’t work for Google, but I do know that most big companies have established channels for addressing employee grievances"

If you read any of the articles coming out of this event you'll see that the protestors tried for months to get a dialog going with management in half a dozen different capacities, all of which were denied or swept under the rug immediately. Due to this behavior from management, many of the employees engaged in this cause had decided to quit, but if you were one of them why not try to protest one last time? This was basically the last option they had prior to leaving

Bombing civilians and blocking food food aid also isn't nice.

Sitting in an office is much nicer.

Have you ever heard about the Underground Railroad?

Yeah it's insane that anyone from Jan 6 was arrested and jailed for protest /s.

No, you can't just occupy private property as a protest. Hence why they were arrested.

You certainly can occupy private property as a protest, if you get arrested afterwards is immaterial to the fact that you can indeed do the as a protest.

People throw pies at politicians faces as a protest and they're often arrested afterwards for assault, but it doesn't mean they can't do it.

You’re obtusely mistaking the word “can” to mean “physically able” when in this context it clearly means “is permissible.”

Can you murder someone? Even if you are physically capable of pulling a trigger, I think you know damn well that’s not what anyone means.

Am I using the word in that way?

Sit-ins are an old protest tactic. They were used during the civil rights movement, in private property. They were used during labour protest, in private property. They have repeatedly been successful at achieving the protestors ends. They have repeatedly, in hindsight, been viewed in a favorable light and broadly seen as permissible. They were frequently, at the time, viewed as illegitimate and impermissible. Of course, there were other sit-ins which failed and were very much unpopular and were unjustified.

That's some 'Comaneci perfect 10' level semantic gymnastics. Honestly I'm impressed.

That's what they said about Rosa Parks.

Rosa Parks wasn’t trespassing or interfering with anyone else. And she wasn’t on private property; she was on a public conveyance. She had every right as a paying passenger to be on that bus.

Rosa Parks was both trespassing (she was subsequently arrested, the exchange shockingly resembles the one here) and interfering with folks that her race was legally proscribed from interfering with.

We should all be glad that the view of "she should have just founded her own capitalist, nonwhites-only bus company" did not prevail.

(Google's anti-Gazan defense-dealing is the bus company, in this example)

Those are some interesting uses of the words “trespassing” and “interfering.”

You’ll find a copy of her arrest warrant here: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/26/us/rosa-parks-montgomery-...

“It took the police a couple of tries to settle on legal language describing her alleged offense.”

That's a pretty interesting use of the word "interesting". As I said, the exchange shockingly resembles the one here ('sorry, but if you dont leave, Im gonna have to have you arrested' or some equivalent), and she was interfering with folks that her race was legally proscribed from interfering with, as Palestinians are often legally proscribed from interfering with Israelis.

>“It took the police a couple of tries to settle on legal language describing her alleged offense.”

You say that as if we don't all already know that the actual offense was upsetting the order of the apartheid. What took a bunch of racists a couple of tries to eventually settle upon is irrelevant. Similarly, the police in this case may take a couple of tries to eventually settle upon legal language, but we nonetheless all know that the actual offense was upsetting the order of the apartheid. Just like Rosa Parks.

My point was that her offense was neither trespass nor interference with others, contrary to your claim. So actually trespassing and interfering with others at work doesn’t make you a Rosa Parks—even if you or others think you’re doing the right thing.

Besides, Ms. Parks herself was impacted by the unjust laws that required her to sit at the back of the bus. It’s unclear how Google’s activities directly and substantially impacted the lives of the protestors here.

My point was that Rosa Parks' offense, whatever the racist police's explanation for it, was indeed interfering with apartheid. There is no "contrary to the claim" there. Rosa Parks was indeed arrested according to some legal framework around preserving an apartheid, just like here. Maybe they took some time to "settle upon legal language". Maybe the police here will, too. Either way, both cases are around protestors protesting apartheid and being arrested under some charges that the apartheid-preserving powers conjured up.

To address your edit:

Rosa Parks was protesting the treatment African Americans were receiving, these workers were protesting the treatment Gazans are receiving.

Laws against trespass to property exist in every nation that has private property rights. (They protect you, too.) There’s no “conjuring up” of trumped-up charges going on here.

Sometimes laws preserve apartheid.

In those cases, it is better to violate the law than to preserve apartheid.

Just like Rosa Parks.

No.. that's what a stupid and illegal protest looks like. You can peacefully protest in public as much as you want, it's your right under the first amendment. This does not extend into private property. If you don't have permission from the property owner, that's no longer a protest, that's trespassing. One could argue that the whole thing is a meta-protest (along with the arrest and the media coverage) which would be more or less correct, but that's not what you're arguing.

See https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/protesters-rights

Anyway, if the protestors actually believe they changed minds with this, I will forever be disappointed by Google's hiring practices.

It's important to remember, whenever a news headline reads "Y after X", that the headline does not actually claim "Y because of X". I find it a frustrating misdirection by the newspaper to employ such headlines, since they are so easy to misread in that way.

Historically civil rights protest movement have been disruptive. Protesting a genocide arguably be even more disruptive.

- Stonewall Riots (1969)

- Soweto Uprising (1976)

- Tiananmen Square protests (1989)

- Women's Suffrage Movement

- Anti-Apartheid Protests in South Africa

US politician are hostages, opposing Israel on the political stage puts your life at risk.

That the rich digerati have taken up the cause of the ongoing Palestinian man-made famine and genocide diverges from actions of similar demographics in the past. The genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia received little notice in the global press and received little global action. This is positive progress. Even if the effect of an individual protest causes no direct change, it is important voices are heard and directed toward the political class and the owners of capital who buy influence over the political class. Unfortunately though, far-right Christian fundamentalists hold too much clout in America for mystical theological reasons and will never chide Israel for any behavior, no matter how abhorrent.

Not to agree or disagree with what you are saying here, unlike Rwanda and Bosnia, which were horrible enough, every single day of the apartheid and genocide operations are funded and aided by US. And in this instance the Nimbus program is actively complicit in it. If I were to use the trolley thing here, Rwanda and Bosnia were inaction, but this is fueling and arming the trolley to be a killing machine.

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