Remember, your coworkers have to be there. They have to be nice to you. They have to listen to you.
Respect that. Work is not an appropriate place for activism. Or bigotry. Or just assholery.
Your coworkers aren’t your audience.
Respect that. Work is not an appropriate place for activism. Or bigotry. Or just assholery.
Your coworkers aren’t your audience.
Protests don't work if you do them quietly in your corner without affecting anyone in a meaningful way.
It's also likely that people who saw this might now not want to be involved at all for fear of losing their job.
This action likely did nothing but make it less likely that anything will change, and been the absolute worst way to attempt to persuade people.
It is immoral to both take money from someone and actively work against them. You should chose one.
And let's be serious - they knew they'd be fired. (Or extremely naive)
It's less clear when the "someone" is a nebulous globe spanning transnational with multitudes of projects.
It's moral to work on software that assists humanity while protesting that which does not.
With companies that large your point is akin to claiming it to be immoral to be a citizen of the US while protesting the war in Vietnam.
Personal letters explaining what you gave up, financially and otherwise, because of your beliefs.
These are powerful, powerful things.
“Taking over” an office is not powerful. In fact this entire narrative has been constructed by Google, with almost personal testimony from those involved.
It was easy to silence them because they never really spoke up.
The police will be called, there will be more of them than of you, and they will remove you.
I'm not about to protest at work, but I respect protestors for fighting for what they believe in. But I agree, coworkers aren't usually your audience, and usually have no power. To quote the article:
> Protesters in Sunnyvale sat in [Google Cloud CEO's] office for more than nine hours until their arrests, writing demands on [his] whiteboard and wearing shirts that read “Googler against genocide.”
I think this is about as respectful as you can be in a protest, especially at work. Directly disrupt the actual person who's responsible for making a decision. Non violently, and out of the way of rank-and-file employees who have no power and are just trying to do their job.
Is there anything an employer could do or be involved in that, in your mind, justifies civil disobedience in the work place, or is there just no limiting principle here?
It’s not like they were sharing copies of the ICJ decision.
From what i understand a preliminary "plausible" ruling by the ICJ requires very little evidence. Its similar to the amount of evidence needed for a search warrant in a normal case - you need some, but much less then you need for an actual conviction. There is still a very good chance that Israel will win the case overall notwithstanding the "plausible" ruling.
And Google could freeze all work for and collaboration with the party plausibly accused of acts of genocide until the decision comes in. But they won't, and their employees are only following their lead.
It also doesn't seem reasonable to tell someone they need to wait until a potential genocide, and what might be their role in it, is done and over before they have the social okay to start engaging in political speech.
> Its similar to the amount of evidence needed for a search warrant in a normal case - you need some, but much less then you need for an actual conviction.
No, it isn't. The ICJ proceedings were adversarial, and the process of obtaining a search warrant is not.
Yes, Google could wait for "final" decision, like these companies always wait for final decisions when some of their employees rape or assualt someone (or is accused of such), or when their employees kill 10 children on camera, or take a buldozer and crush entire families in tents to death. They'd surely wait until final decision of the court to fire them, and stop doing business with them. Their all about fairness, and respecting the presumption of innocence. :D
It's all about the money, who cares how many people they help kill. Just like with all the data abuse. It only was somewhat limited when there was threat to Google from some governments. Quiting some employees is < $ than quiting a billion dolar contract. That's all there's to it, quite likely.
Pretty sure there are billions to be made between now and some 20-30 years later when the genocide may be recognized by some international court.
I commend these people for deciding to get quited by Google in the manner they did. They made the point publicly, instead of just silently quiting.
At the very least, any country that is "plausibly" committing genocide is engaged in some truly heinous actions, even if they don't amount to the legal definition of genocide.
In fact, there are no freedom of expression protections within private businesses outside a few protected categories such as work safety.