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GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

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Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#131

Post by fiter »

CydeWeys wrote: post #30
ratsmack wrote: post #2

It seems that these kinds of demands are becoming more common. Is it because conflict resolution is becoming a dying art, is it because people don't rise to the level of maturity of past times? I just find it to be confusing. Non PW link: https://archive.ph/IkYQ3

That's very weird to conflate employees of tech companies caring more about other people's rights with a loss of "the maturity of past times". It wasn't the maturity of past times, it was the status quo of not really caring about anyone else's rights at all. The civil rights movement was only half a century ago!

The maturity could be the ability to compartmentalize. Whether that's a good thing is up for debate.

Should we keep religion out of politics? Should we keep politics out of work? I doubt there are any clear answers.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#132

Post by tenpies »

zozbot234 wrote: post #62
CydeWeys wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very weird to conflate employees of tech companies caring more about other people's rights with a loss of "the maturity of past times". It wasn't the maturity of past times, it was the status quo of not really caring about anyone else's rights at all. The civil rights movement was only half a century ago!

> caring more about other people's rights Except when those rights involve things like freedom of speech. Or even privacy.

Or the rights of people they don't like.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#133

Post by shadowgovt »

baggy_trough wrote: post #121
shadowgovt wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That kind of characterization is definitional. See: the Japanese Internment camps the US ran during World War II.

It's really outrageous to characterize them that way. It minimizes the Holocaust.

The Holocaust wasn't the only situation involving concentration camps in history. The US ran concentration camps during World War II for Japanese-Americans more or less because of racism coupled with fear of espionage or anti-nationalism; that's just fact in terms of the definition of these terms. In fact, when discussing contemporary US policy, it's the most relevant historical comparison.

In addition to running concentration camps (unacceptable), the nazi party also ran forced labor camps and death camps, which distinguishes the horrors they inflicted from the horrors the US inflicted on its Japanese-American population. But to ignore the US's history of depriving liberty from classes of people when it suits us opens up its own can of dangers that is (one hopes) smaller than the dangers of nazi ideology but should not be ignored.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#134

Post by ilikehurdles »

tenpies wrote: post #124
geofft wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the Washington Times (a right-wing news organization), 49% of Americans live in sanctuary jurisdictions, based on data from FAIR (a right-wing pro-ICE advocacy group). https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/may/10/half-of-ame... I think that makes it clear that a sizable number of Americans are opposed to receiving ICE's services, only receive them because there isn't actually a way to opt out of them…

That is inconsistent logic. I have nearly the same power to determine where my taxes go as I do to stop the people in local council making non-binding declarations that don't carry any legal consequences or obligations. If I happen to live in an area with a HOA, does that mean I support HOAs too? If I live next to a Mosque does that mean I support Islam? My point is that geography is not a good determinant for agreem…

Then we are in agreement that the premise of being able to refuse services from a divisive government agency we have no power over is flawed? Because it sounds like we are, but are presenting the argument in different ways. Apologies for speaking for the other commenter.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#135

Post by throwGuardian »

geofft wrote: post #14

> With the issue refusing to go away, GitHub executives have changed their internal messaging, including a memo to employees saying barring ICE from “access to GitHub could actually hurt the very people we all want to help,” in the words of Chief Operating Officer Erica Brescia. > “We have learned from a number of nonprofits and refugee advocates that one of the greatest challenges facing immigrants is a lack of tech…

> At that point the question isn't "Should we have political opinions on who we sell to," it's "Can you retain employees when your organization is so partisan."

The irony in that statement! Employees are so partisan that they insist on disrupting normal work at corp., while simultaneously accusing management of being "partisan" for not entertaining their polarizing cancel culture.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#136

Post by geofft »

tenpies wrote: post #124
geofft wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the Washington Times (a right-wing news organization), 49% of Americans live in sanctuary jurisdictions, based on data from FAIR (a right-wing pro-ICE advocacy group). https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/may/10/half-of-ame... I think that makes it clear that a sizable number of Americans are opposed to receiving ICE's services, only receive them because there isn't actually a way to opt out of them…

That is inconsistent logic. I have nearly the same power to determine where my taxes go as I do to stop the people in local council making non-binding declarations that don't carry any legal consequences or obligations. If I happen to live in an area with a HOA, does that mean I support HOAs too? If I live next to a Mosque does that mean I support Islam? My point is that geography is not a good determinant for agreem…

Sure, I'm not claiming that 49% of Americans don't want to receive services from ICE - I am claiming that a large number do, as evidenced by the fact that 49% of Americans live in jurisdictions with sanctuary policies. Of course some people will oppose the policy and live in a jurisdiction that supports it - and some will support it and live in a jurisdiction that doesn't.

From your analogy, the fact that tons of Americans live in HOAs does in fact imply that there is a fair bit of support for HOAs in America. It doesn't imply that everyone in an HOA is happy about it - but it definitely doesn't imply that everyone in an HOA is unhappy about it, otherwise they wouldn't exist.

'creaghpatr is trying to imply that, because ICE exists and is tax-funded, 100% of taxpayers support ICE and everything they do, and anyone who opposes it would just stop paying taxes. That's the inconsistent logic, and it's in the general class of "yet you participate in society" fallacies. I don't know what the true number is and I don't have a good way to get an exact estimate, but I do think the evidence is that it's far closer to 51% than 100%.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#137

Post by shadowgovt »

commandlinefan wrote: post #125
duxup wrote: post #19

I'd like to get a feel about what volume of employees have an issue with these things. From issue to issue I hear about various forms of employees making themselves heard but it is REALLY hard to jive with what that means. We've seen Google employees post about some ideas that seemed to be genuinely popular (measure that how you will...) but later ideas or advocacy were reportedly far less supported by the general em…

I also have to wonder what percentage of GitHub’s employees _are_ non-US citizens. Every programming job I’ve ever had in the U.S. was for a company that was staffed by at least 90% foreigners; if they see U.S. immigration as an adversary, they may be opposing any contract on personal grounds.

And I don't think one should restrict that reasoning to only the foreign-born employees. Native-born US citizens working side-by-side with employees who have regular contact with our immigration process get a second-row seat to how broken it is.

(Spoilers: personal observation, it's pretty broken.)

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#138

Post by throwGuardian »

pm90 wrote: post #42
creaghpatr wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ICE is not a partisan organization, it's a government agency. If you pay taxes, you support ICE, and are their customer, period.

> ICE is not a partisan organization, Only if you have your head deliberately under the sand in the face of all the reporting that has been done so far about wanton cruelty inflicted on human beings by this agency, including but not limited to: * separation of toddlers from their parents * horrific conditions in detention facilities * detaining immigrants for as long as they possibly can * arresting and trying to dep…

> * separation of toddlers from their parents * horrific conditions in detention facilities * detaining immigrants for as long as they possibly can * arresting and trying to deport brown people in suspicion of being illegal immigrants

You've proven beyond all doubt that these actions are indeed partisan. Hence, we ought to resist the party that revved this into high gear - the one led by the deporter in chief [1]!! Resist!

[1]: https://www.npr.org/2017/01/20/510799842/obama-leaves-office...

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#139

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #90
mc32 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it’s a neutral position not taking a stance for or against a particular business because of politics. So while it may look to someone like it’s “for” something, they’d also take business from an “ICE-alert” system, so from some PoV that would look like it’s “against”, but it’s not. It’s staying neutral.

There's the edge of a definitions rabbit-hole looming. To short-circuit it, let's establish as ground-truth that some people think "neutral" is the same has having no position, and some people think "neutral" is a position one can try to take that will have consequences, same as any other position, and at the end of the day, the effects are the same whether it's not a position or a position so the question of "positi…

> "If a company declares selling computers to the legitimate government of a country is "Just doing business," then, well, that's IBM during the reign of the Nazi party, and history has held them accountable regardless."

Seems more like a historical footnote than any real accountability. IBM is still around and the era where "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" and had a immense workforce occurred well after the WWII era.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#140

Post by tenpies »

annoyingnoob wrote: post #51
tj-teej wrote: post #4

I think that a lot of people see a rise and mainstreaming of White Nationalism and want to push back.

That is surely in the mix. To me, its about human decency. I support immigration, but even if you do not support immigration you should support human decency. Making people sleep in cages on concrete, limiting supplies, limiting legal assistance, separating families - those are horrible ways to treat other humans, other humans simply seeking a better life. We are largely a nation of immigrants. We've lost sight of ou…

I think the problem is an attribution of intent. You see "white nationalism" but:

> Making people sleep in cages

There was a spike in the number of illegal immigrants in the last few years, facilities were swamped. This was an unfortunate but temporary measure. It would be more irresponsible to just release people into the country without establishing their identity, criminal history, or a suitable guardian (for children).

> Limiting supplies / legal assistance

There are a finite resources, especially when one party sees every penny spent on immigration matters as "racist". Politicians were sounding the alarms months before this reached crisis-levels, but the other side refused to release a single penny until after it reached critical levels.

> Separating families

When an adult and a child arrive illegally with no documents you have two major facts to deal with: the adult has just broken a law, and you cannot establish familial ties. Given the extent of child trafficking, would you rather just give any adult that says "that's my child" custody, or would you rather separate the child from the adult until you can establish if that is actually a parent? You are damned either way because your critics will say you're "separating families" or "you're a pedophile helping traffic children". Personally, I would rather be told I'm splitting families than enabling child trafficking, but I could see the argument against that preference.

So at the end of the day none of these things are happening because of white nationalism. They are happening because of an inability to control illegal immigration rates, a lack of funding for facilities, materials, and legal aid; and in order to protect minors who may be trafficked.

To me, that is the real problem. One side of the media/political spectrum has decided it's white nationalism. The other sees it as something that has to be done because the alternative is worst. And to be charitable, I am sure there is a tiny fraction of a percent of a segment of the population and people involved who are white nationalists, but to think that's the motivating force is to dismiss the vast majority of people who have good intentions.

What is also exponentially annoying is that both sides have become so polarized that they will never work together on this.

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