After more than eight hours of protesting, a few employees were taken into custody because they would not leave the building until their demands were fulfilled.
A group of Google workers in California and New York started the protest, which was sparked by the company’s participation in the billion-dollar AI contract known as Project Nimbus, which was inked back in 2021. According to Daily Wire, staff unhappiness peaked due to Google’s connections to the Israeli government.
The protestors, who were members of the Google-based No Tech for Apartheid organization, voiced their complaints in a Twitch livestream, using the hashtag #notech4apartheid to identify their demonstration. Citing moral concerns and a rumored conflict of interest, their demands included a total break between Google and the Israeli military and government.
A corporate official approached the demonstrators as dusk was falling, telling them they were on administrative leave and asking them to leave the property. But the demonstrators refused to back down, and police had to step in. The sit-in came to a dramatic conclusion when police were called to the site and the protesting employees were taken into custody.
One of the demonstrators, Emaan Haseem, a software engineer at Google, acknowledged that she was reluctant to jeopardize her career but stressed how important it was to denounce Project Nimbus and any backing for the Israeli government. Haseem disclosed that a number of coworkers have left Google over worries about Project Nimbus, claiming its detrimental impact on mental health.
