After Google put them on indefinite leave for exposing the company’s connections to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, employees Laurence Berland and Rebecca Rivers rallied tech workers in The City to protest Friday.
“I did my part in (telling) Google not to work with CBP because of the atrocities that they are perpetrating against refugees, including the ongoing detention of children away from their families,” Berland, a software engineer at Google’s San Francisco office, said at the rally. Now, “Rebecca and I are experiencing the full force of Google’s retaliation.”
More than one hundred protesters gathered at Google’s San Francisco Headquarters at noon to hear Berland and Rivers speak about their experience and demand that Google take them back immediately. They waved signs reading “Shame on Google” and “We are not in this alone.”
“We are here to say that Lawrence and Rebecca must be returned to their jobs right now,” said Google Software Engineer Zach Siegel, before leading the crowd into a chant.
“What do we want? Bring. Them. Back. When do we want it? Now.”
We're calling for all workers and allies in the Bay Area to come out in support of this public action by Google workers tomorrow in San Francisco.
Location: 345 Spear St, San Francisco
Time: 11amSpread the word.https://t.co/o609LEGRxw
— Tech Workers Coalition (@techworkersco) November 21, 2019
Ten days ago, a Google spokesperson told Bloomberg that Rivers and Berland were put on administrative leave and are currently being investigated for violating company policy and sharing internal documents.
The employees said the company is retaliating against them for speaking up against injustice.
Rivers, who works out of Google’s Boulder, Colo., office, was suspended in August for opening documents that did not pertain to her work. Coincidentally, the decision came soon after Rivers had also created a petition to demand that Google stop bidding on contracts with Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
More than 1,400 Google employees signed that petition.
“I was told (I was put on leave) because they were investigating my document access to make sure everything was on the ‘up and up.’ However many of the questions during this interrogation focused on my involvement in the Customs and Border Protection petition and social media usage outside of Google,” Rivers told the crowd, which began hissing and whistling in disapproval.
Rivers said she is proud to have helped educate her coworkers on Google’s cooperation with CBP.
“I believe everyone has a right to know what their work is being used for,” she added.
We won’t be complicit: #NoGCPforCBP
With this petition, we call on Google to publicly commit not to support CBP, ICE or ORR w/ any infrastructure, funding, or engineering resources, directly or indirectly, until they stop engaging in human rights abuses.https://t.co/8RITUXKJBq— Googlers for Human Rights (@EthicalGooglers) August 14, 2019blockquote>
