Google employees who occupied the California office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian for more than eight hours to demand the company stop doing business with Israel were arrested late Tuesday.
The employees broadcast their protest on a “notech4apartheid’ Twitch livestream. The video showed they given the opportunity to leave voluntarily, and then arrested by police after refusing to do so.
In the stream, a man is seen approaching the protesters to notify them that they were put on administrative leave and asking them to leave.
POLICE ARREST GOOGLE EMPLOYEES WHO OCCUPY SENIOR LEVEL OFFICES pic.twitter.com/ERcRTkn9RC
— Sulaiman Ahmed (@ShaykhSulaiman) April 17, 2024
“It’s getting kinda late,” the man says. “I wanted to ask you, you know, to cooperate, you’ve been placed on admin leave and we’d like to see if you’d just voluntarily [leave] it’s been a while. Can you do that for us?”
When he threatens to call law enforcement, employees state that they understand. Seconds later, police walk in the office and detain them all before the livestream cuts off.
The protests were announced in internal emails to employees that shared a list of demands, including that Google drop its $1.2 billion contract with Israel for Project Nimbus, a cloud-computing project of the Israeli government.
Demands also include that Google cease all “business with the Israeli apartheid government and military,” stop the “harassment, intimidation, bullying, and silencing,” of Palestinian and Muslim employees, and address the “health and safety crisis” among workers who are rattled over their labor being used to “enable a genocide.”
Organized by No Tech for Apartheid, the protesters claim they will remain in the office until Google drops Project Nimbus and heeds the other demands.
Anti-Semitism appears to be rampant throughout Google’s workforce.
“By choosing to provide the Israeli government and military with our powerful cloud computing and AI technologies, we have continuously enabled Israel’s apartheid state in Palestine and ongoing genocide in Gaza,” the protesters write in a letter to Kurian. “Years of being silenced, ignored and lied to by leadership has confirmed to us as workers that our concerns will not be heard without significant action, and as you read this, we are sitting in the office of Thomas Kurian, the CEO of Google Cloud, until our demands are met.”
Protests also took place at other Google offices in New York City, San Francisco, and Seattle.
Left wing communist eating each other. That’s the liberal way.
Did they really think they were indispensable that they could do this and come back to work in the morning? Their brains are shorted.
Stupid SOBs. Do they really think they have enough pull to demand such actions? Not from any company. I say fire their asses and don’t recommend them for any job, ever. If you don’t like something, fine, you can have your opinion. But to take over an office and make demands is wrong. Just like people blocking roadways and freeways. I would be the person who would exit my vehicle and pepper spray every damn one of them in the face. Let’s see how that works out for them. While they are crying, others can drag their asses across the road and out of the way, or toss their butts over the bridge. I will not tolerate anyone from stopping me from getting from site A to site B because they want to protest. Oh, hell no.
I hope their bonds are so high they can’t afford to pay it. They might convince Kamala to pay it for them
Didn’t hear a peep out this lot when the Russians were harvesting the lives of innocents in Ukraine. But I suppose a dead Ukrainian baby isn’t fashionable these days. Oh, by the way Google workers. They weren’t Jews flying jets into the WTC. They aren’t Jews beheading westerners on video. They aren’t Jews carrying a holy scripture that insists we all die at their hands. So you know, I’m not Jewish. I just know who wants me and my family dead, and who doesn’t.