Protesters stormed Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters on Monday, placing them in President Brad Smith’s office in Building 34, forcing a temporary lockdown. The “azure for apartheid” group reportedly chanted their twitch-in, “rolling up the banner, chanting “Brad Smith,” and supporting the genocide.” He then posts a mock legal subpoena claiming Smith for “crimes against humanity.”
TechCrunch has contacted Microsoft for more information.
According to Verge, the protest included both active Microsoft workers and former employees who were fired for previous activities. Monday’s escalation follows protests over a Microsoft cloud contract with Israel. This includes recent arrests at the headquarters.
A recent Guardian investigation reveals that Israel uses Microsoft services to store data from Palestinians in Gaza and millions of phones daily in the West Bank.
Today’s acquisitions of companies reflect tactics from Google employees over a year ago. In April 2024, nine Google workers held coordinated protests across their New York and California offices, with five occupying Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian for nine hours. They wrote requests on his whiteboard and wore a “Googler against Genocide” shirt.
Google’s protesters are targeting Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion deal with Amazon, which provides cloud computing and AI tools to Israeli government and military. Employee sit-ins and arrests were similarly streamed live on Twitch. Three days later, 28 employees involved in these protests were fired.
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