No Tech for Apartheid, with Ariel Koren & Bathool Syed | EI Podcast

Описание: On episode 69, we speak to two tech workers who have been organizing against Project Nimbus, a billion-dollar contract between Google and Amazon to build data centers in Israel on behalf of the Israeli military and government.

The technology will be used by Israel and its military to further surveil, contain and expel Palestinians.

Ariel Koren, who worked at Google, announced in August that she was quitting the tech giant over what she says was a hostile work environment, retaliation and illegal actions by the company after she became a vocal protester of Project Nimbus.

Koren and Amazon worker Bathool Syed are part of the No Tech for Apartheid campaign, which calls on major Silicon Valley companies to drop their contracts with Israel.

The campaign says that more than 1,000 Google and Amazon workers have mobilized against Project Nimbus, and in September, workers organized a day of action in several cities across the US.

More than 25,000 supporters have signed a petition in support of the campaign, and to call on Google to stop punishing workers who stand up for Palestinian rights.

Syed explains that the No Tech for Apartheid campaigners “believe the tech could do a lot of good, but it’s [about] what it’s being chosen to be used for – and, importantly, in this case, what the companies are allowing for it to be used for without any type of control, any overseeing any of what it can be used for in terms of violence, increased violence, increased discrimination against Palestinians, in their own homes, in their own land.”

Koren tells us that Google has attempted to sweep the growing protest movement “under the rug and to portray this as being a small group of workers,” and to make an example out of her “to scare the rest of the workforce into silence and keep this tucked away.”

But with their act of retaliation, she adds, “the opposite has occurred. Because when Google sought to retaliate against me, workers did not get scared into silence. Instead, they became activated, they became additionally and increasingly angry about Project Nimbus, and about Google’s culture as a whole.”

And now, she says, “all of these voices that Google was trying to silence are now coming to the forefront. … We’re not going anywhere until Project Nimbus does. And this movement is here to stay until something happens.”

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐜 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐚𝐝𝐚

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