ICE rolled an armored military vehicle. with a gunner in the roof. through an immigrant community in Queens.ICE dropped an estimated $5 million on 16 of these military vehicles as an "operational necessity for officer safety."
Sophie Haskins: Why I Quit GitHub:
"What am I trying to accomplish by quitting? Am I quitting because I believe it will have some impact on ICE itself, on GitHub's contract with ICE? How will it compare to what I think I can do if I stay and organize from within?"
For me, the answer to the latter question is: I don't know. I don't know if quitting has more impact on stopping these things. Folks are still working hard to make changes from the inside, and I didn't know that quitting going to have more impact than if I were to stay and fight with them.; I realized the impact wasn't my goal -- I wanted to quit because it's unethical to participate in crimes against humanity. I was choosing based on what I can stomach. Even if someone had advised me, "it wouldn't help to quit," I still would have done it. I don't want to be part of a company that contracts with ICE. [...]
For those considering quitting their tech job, you should examine how your company contributes to these things: who you sell technology to, how tech isn't neutral, how that non-neutrality works. If you're working with image (facial) recognition, that's literally a weapon.
People criticize tech companies for putting money above principle, but Github is holding on to a $100K ICE contract despite employee anger, and Facebook says it will continue to sell toxic political ads that are 0.5% of revenue. These are clear examples of putting principle first.
The problem is that employees and journalists have trouble accepting what principles the companies hold. Big tech is not lying about this -- look at their political giving, their tax avoidance, their senior hires, their boards, their products -- but there's a fair amount of denial.
If I sponsored CPAC, evaded taxes, had dinner with Trump, gave Ivanka an Internet freedom award, donated to Mitch McConnell, appeared on Sean Hannity's radio show to defend Alex Jones, and had frequent off-the-record meetings with Republican figures, you would say I'm right-wing.
You would also say this if I had Peter Thiel on my board, hired a former Bush administration official and the public mouthpiece of Trump's family detention program to run my office of public policy, or operated a massive for-profit video recruitment network for white supremacy.
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
