9 Google staff had been arrested for trespassing in New York Metropolis and Sunnyvale, California on Tuesday night time after an hours-long sit-in protest towards their firm’s contracts with Israel, a spokesperson from No Tech For Apartheid tells Gizmodo. Google says it has reduce the protestors’ entry and positioned these workers on administrative go away.
“Bodily impeding different workers’ work and stopping them from accessing our services is a transparent violation of our insurance policies, and we are going to examine and take motion,” mentioned a Google spokesperson in an electronic mail to Gizmodo Wednesday. “These workers had been placed on administrative go away and their entry to our programs was reduce. After refusing a number of requests to depart the premises, legislation enforcement was engaged to take away them to make sure workplace security.”
The New York Police Division confirmed to Gizmodo that 4 protestors had been arrested for trespassing in Google’s New York Metropolis headquarters on Tuesday night time. The Sunnyvale Police Division didn’t instantly reply to calls made outdoors of regular enterprise hours. A spokesperson for the protestors says all 9 Google staff have been launched from custody as of Wednesday morning.
The Google staff protested their firm’s $1.2 billion Venture Nimbus contract, which provides AI and cloud computing companies to the Israeli authorities and navy. The sit-ins lasted for hours, drawing massive crowds outdoors of Google’s headquarters for bystanders to protest the corporate’s alleged function within the Israel and Palestine struggle.
No Tech for Apartheid says they’ve confronted excessive opposition inside Google, however they confronted new hostility from on-line members of the tech group on Wednesday. On X, many revolted towards these protesting workers, calling this the newest “woke fiasco.”
“This firm is actually overrun by worker mobs,” mentioned Marc Andreessen, cofounder of Andreeseen Horowitz, in a tweet on Tuesday.
“All these entitled brats ought to be fired on the spot,” mentioned Chaya Raichick, creator of LibsOfTikTok, in one other tweet.
“That is what occurs if you end up a DEI firm,” mentioned one other.
The 9 workers positioned on administrative go away are the newest to face penalty for protesting Google’s contracts with Israel. Final month, a 23-year-old Google software program engineer, Eddie Hatfield, was fired for disrupting an government’s presentation and screaming “No tech for apartheid!” at an Israeli tech convention. Hatfield advised Gizmodo on Tuesday that “we’ll have to attend and see” whether or not extra protests will comply with these sit-ins.
