Aatif Awan, a vice president at LinkedIn, was rallying to action a few hundred people milling around a plaza in the center of Palo Alto, California, many in bright-blue shirts with a fist and the words “TECH STANDS UP.”
“Take your phones out of your pocket, and open your calendar app right now,” he commanded. “Now look at your schedule for tomorrow.”
Awan wanted employees to pledge in meetings with their immigrant colleagues “that you will stand up for them” and fight an executive order from the president restricting entry to the United States from several majority-Muslim nations.
After the ban went into effect, nearly 100 tech companies signed onto a legal brief opposing it. But at the Palo Alto gathering, convened Tuesday to protest the Trump administration, tech workers called for more vociferous opposition.
“We want to show the higher-ups, the C-Suite, that employees are behind this movement,” said Javed Ali, a designer who has worked for several technology firms and is currently developing a plug-in that would provide “pre-made content” to battle with trolls spreading Islamophobic messages on social media.
Event organizers hoped outrage over Trump’s actions—one attendee called it “my woke-up-ness”—would stir to action highly-paid members of an industry that’s often ignored the concerns of the less fortunate.
“I’m here to get to the people who want to change the world, but who are beginning to get that that takes more than algorithms,” said Laura Impellizzeri, of Legal Aid At Work, an organization that provides free services largely to low-income workers for wage claims, discrimination, workplace safety and other issues. “I’m trying to take advantage of this moment to get money and raise awareness.”
Noel McKay, left, a program manager and Karen Latina, right, a biotech consultant, hold up signs during a Tech Stands Up rally on Pi Day, Tuesday, March 14, 2017, outside City Hall in Palo Alto, Calif.
Photo: Eric Risberg/AP
Brad Taylor, the event’s organizer, and a software engineer at the personalization engine Optimizely, said he was also encouraged by employee initiatives putting pressure on executives, such as a petition by IBM workers against their CEO’s overtures to the Trump administration.
“The people in this industry have so much power because we’re in demand,” Taylor said. “So let’s use that to support our janitors and our baristas and let’s demand that companies who put up slogans like diversity and inclusion put them to work.”
Fighting for the tech industry’s least privileged workers has in the past fallen to labor and community groups and to nonprofit coalitions like Silicon Valley Rising, who have helped to begin to organize the tech world’s service workers, an army of subcontracted labor tens of thousands strong. In recent months, security officers in hundreds of Silicon Valley sites have formed a union, as have cafeteria workers at Intel’s headquarters. Unions sent speakers to the “Tech Stands Up” rally, including Jacky Espinoza, a barista at Intel, who spoke of living in a cramped apartment with several relatives because they couldn’t afford housing in the area.
She called on companies “to protect all immigrant tech workers, not just the high-skilled immigrant tech workers.”
A demonstrator holds a sign during a Tech Stands Up rally on Pi Day, Tuesday, March 14, 2017, outside City Hall in Palo Alto, Calif.
Photo: Cora Currier/The Intercept
“No one has come and talked to me about it yet, but maybe I got them to think about it,” she said in Spanish.
Matt Schafer, a software engineer, is also a volunteer organizer with the Tech Workers Coalition, which began in 2015 as a way of “breaking down divisions between service workers and white collar workers” in the sector, as he puts it. The coalition pushes initiatives such as FairHotel, urging conference-goers to stay at hotels that pay their staff good wages.
Ann Badillo, an executive coach, was “pumped” about helping to organize the event. “I made a living through Silicon Valley. And now I have the bandwidth and time and the pocketbook,” she said. “It’s like being at a start-up. We’ve got that real discipline to ship a product. That’s what we do.”
As the last remnants of the crowd began dispersing from the rally Tuesday — distracted, perhaps by unconscionably beautiful Palo Alto weather, or by Rachel Maddow’s tweet about Trump’s tax returns — Brad Talyor was still preaching.
“America has been around for 240 years,” he said, “and while that sounds like a long time, we are still just a start up.”
Top photo: Katherine Forrest, with the group Raging Grannies, holds up a torch during a Tech Stands Up rally on Pi Day, Tuesday, March 14, 2017, outside City Hall in Palo Alto, Calif.
Hey, Silcon Valley. Fight Trump so you can finish giving the rest of your jobs away to H1-B visa holders.
I have a solution to Trump’s ban on people from the unpreferred countries… Ban immigration for everyone! Ban all immigrants until we fix the bullshit within our borders. Silicon Valley hires unAmerican employees for cost savings among other things. Jobs that are given to unAmerican people is a big fuck you to this country. Those protesters are RACIST and encourage discrimination against Americans! In Silicon Valley the percentage of Caucasian kids under the age of 18 is around 10%. That is freightening!
Those protesters a fucking idiots! Why don’t they open their own homes up to immigrants?
Is this the same Silicon Valley that has the huge homelessness problem?
This is it…
NSA “Project Dragnet Master Database”
“America has been around for 240 years,” he said, “and while that sounds like a long time, we are still just a start up.”
Yes, about to undergo some reorganization for good or ill real soon. Hope all you labors and janitors don’t mind the long commutes to serve the high tech folks in the valley, a labor’s salary does not buy much there.
Silicon Valley is hardly progressive. Well not when it comes to economics. In fact it is predatory and give a whole new meaning to the word greed.
They write the software that the NSA and CIA use to spy on you.
Their business model: Steal your data and publish it.
They’re basically part of the corporate oligarchical hegemony now, and create more problems than they solve at this point.
Ned, Truth and Mary, You know them beneath their vernier of compassion. They do have truths to share that could make a difference, if they really gave much of a dam.
Personally I would love to see the US deport their hi tech and guest workers with all the others, it would bring home to Americans rather quickly how wrong they are about “American” innovation and maybe they will finally understand that an American company staffed with Indian H1b workers creating innovative products does not mean that America or Americans are themselves innovative.
A lesson the US has needed to understand for quite some time.
And where were they when Obama was busy making the middle class poor?
Partisan hypocrisy is a hallmark of American thought.
Silicon Valley is Civil Coward Central Station. And dumb, too. Have you ever listened to geeks talk about politics?
Another hideous aspect: some Indian, Chinese, Indonesian, and Israeli immigrants with tech visas are enthusiastic Stasi collaborators. (I am an eye witness.) These (rats) are the only the immigrants I would like to see shipped out, along with the “native” Stasi vermin who rent them.
“Matt Schafer, a software engineer, is also a volunteer organizer with the Tech Workers Coalition, which began in 2015 as a way of “breaking down divisions between service workers and white collar workers” in the sector, as he puts it. The coalition pushes initiatives such as FairHotel, urging conference-goers to stay at hotels that pay their staff good wages.”
Yes. Pay living wages to service workers in the USA’s miraculous service economy.
As radical and nihilistic as that notion seems to Americans today, it was not such a wooly headed, controversial idea to Americans living under Eisenhower’s and Nixon’s Communist yoke. (Take a look at the top marginal tax rates during those years too… all you middle class snuffing, infrastructure demolishing Ayn Rand groupies out there.)
People living in the Bay Area should be able to pay the rent, the medical and electricity bills, and buy food and a car even if they are not interested in collaborating with the Stasi, or slinging and selling code. A rational economy would not force people to chose between stalking, selling code, or serving yuppie chow. (And a world conisting only of politically infantile geeks and tech marketers is as hideous and dull as a world where everyone is an investment banker — especially to the “server” class.)
How about a few more options, like making computers, clothes, handcrafted furniture and boats, and machine tools, refrigerators, and solar panels, or even books (instead of relying on that CIA collaborator who destroyed the book market)?
Never mind.
While I disagree with the ban there is more to look at here. Workers better be on the lookout when the rich capitalists want them to go against the government, which I think they should . However, when the rich capitalists are done using you they go back to abusing you. When the craft guilders and merchants used the workers and peasants to overthrow the nobility the capitalists screwed the workers evn more. Watch out with whom you go to bed.
I think trans-humanism has become more of a disease than a cure up there in SV. Much like Laurel Canyon was a CIA project.
“Our brains are poorly programmed, according to Ismail. Rewiring them might fix the glitches–like stupidity and violence. “We need computer chips monitoring our neural networks,” he said. “Evolution isn’t going to do this for us. So technology is going to have to do it.” ”
Mind control 2.0, anyone? This version of ‘progressive liberal’ is the product of trance formation.
http://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=4790
Intercept, how could you stoop so low? Seriously, the tech industry? These are the limousine liberals and neoliberals and everything that is so wrong with liberalism..barf!
And sadly for you one of the smartest single group of people in the US, it is a career that preselects fo high IQ. No brains at a tech firm and your mopping the floors.
As for their being liberal, intelligence does that to people.
That you think it’s a bad thing shows pretty much where you sit on the bell curve.
It’s the neo Liberals that have caused the mess.
They aren’t the brightest group on the planet in any country.
I don’t know if you work in Silicon Valley, but if you do your comment is reflective of the gated community snobbery endemic in the industry.
When these guys start being concerned with economic inequality and the present suffering of millions (some of which is caused directly by them), I’ll take them seriously.
IQ measures only a small portion of human potential. You need only a good average IQ to do good theoretical biomedical or other science. IQ can boost ability but is no substitute for it or motivation. Further if one is blessed with a higher learning ability and can put 10,000 hours of preparation to good practice does that include the right to over exploit others. Too many self anointed intellects want to be masters of the universe. IQ is only one measure of the complexity of ability and creativity found in most persons if nurtured. Genius (translation guardian spirit) is a state of grace not a state of being. Many with average IQ have done wonderful things and many of the best and brightest have made a mess of things.
I published an option article on this “Exclusion of Diversity and Creativity Impedes Scientific Innovation.” Fred Cowan. Opinion, The Scientist, Nov. 27, 1995.
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/17674/title/Exclusion-Of-Diversity-And-Creativity-Impedes-Scientific-Innovation/
Silicon Valley is so deeply embedded into the Deep State …
..I recall reading here about Google’s constant presence inside the beltway and “The Farm”, etc..
Even though Obama’s high profile bi-monthly visits to the Bay Area have ceased, I’m sure nothing has changed..
Even though it is heartening and reassuring to hear about people who work for these places speak out about relevant issues,, the “Trump-bashing” stories seem a tad silly. The “immigration issues” affecting tech workers and those from Mexico, etc..are bureaucratically similar and familiar to both groups, except the one group usually pays the other to mow their lawns and clean their house when their at work.
What a stupid joke. The most despicable totalitarian americans are in silicon valley., They are the ones who created a worldwide cyber police state.
Americans are biggest hypocrites on the planet.
Immigration is all about labor costs. It’s not a racial issue, its economic. Pierre omidyar, the tech oligarch that owns the intercept, is notorious for using every sleazy trick he can pay an unfairly low wage.
This article is propaganda to try to obscure the economic realities that cause hostility to illegals
+1!
The thing is that there aren’t enough skilled Americans to fill those jobs or they would have them.
Period. Full stop.
Those workers are brought over not because they are cheap but because finding a suitable candidate isn’t possible within the local workforce.
I know this for a fact, I have been in IT for 25 years and conducted more interviews than I would care to remember and finding American born candidates has always been a serious challenge.
This is nice if something genuine builds from the energy. The realist in me sees the whole “our brand is better than their brand” as just business as usual. It’s like one drug gang fueding with another drug gang about whose “product” is better at keeping the addicts hooked yet docile.
In the end, businesses want the same thing, cheap and willing labor. Whatever marketing they want to use to sell their brand is just that. I wonder if anyone in those crowds is “woke” to that.
More progressive propaganda. Silicon Valley thrives on illegal labor. Indians here illegally are employed as contractors. There are so many illegal Indian immigrants in tech in the silicone valley that they actually even outnumber illegal Mexicans in the region.
A lack of cheap illegal labor is the cause of tech CEO, and the intercept’s concern, not compassion for the less fortunate.
Intercept journalists are racist authoritarian scum
Aside from the pejorative..I concur
The only pejorative I see up there is “journalist,” which, sadly has lost it’s valor in most places ( I am grateful for what the Intercept is doing, despite the sometimes sickening SJW progressive tone.)
And below, free is right about this: “The most despicable totalitarian americans are in silicon valley., They are the ones who created a worldwide cyber police state. ”
I think our armed forces are bombing the wrong people….
Do you have any evidence to support your claims?
Search “PRISM”.
The statement about the unionized cafeteria workers at Intel is a bit misleading. The union was formed to negotiate not with Intel, but the food contractors Intel uses. I would not count on Silicon Valley high tech being part of the resistance .
There are more illegal Indians in the Silicon Valley than there are Mexicans, and they are all working in tech. Lack of cheap labor is their concern
No there aren’t.
Illegals can’t get past the vetting processes in place for tech firms and big companies and banks requiring tech workers.
They are legal and have visa’s and that has been the case for at least two decades after all the laws were put in place that made even hiring a local such a hassle.