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After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

latimes.com

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Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#461

Post by overgard »

moolcool wrote: post #311
overgard wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So who decides? Do companies now need a chief political officer? Do they do some sort of political review of each new customer? What issues do they use to decide on? Do they deny Apple or Nike because of overseas labour conditions? IMO it's foolish for a company to wade into these waters at all unless activism is part of their brand. If you signal you're going to take a stand it ends up having to be around everything…

> So who decides? Do companies now need a chief political officer? Companies make "political" decisions every single day, in literally everything they do. Just as Apple and Nike make the _decision_ to employ the questionable overseas labour practices, providing services to them is also a _decision_. The whole point of the corporate executive branch is to make decisions for the company, it's the difference between McD…

How many large corporations really have a spotless record? (At least from the point of view of activists). You could also not sell to microsoft because of antitrust, or Google and Facebook for privacy issues, or boeing because of how executives made bad decisions around safety, or McDonalds over pay, or.... pretty much every company does something people wont like. I just think it's a slippery slope and not every company or person needs to be an activist around everything. We all have to pick and choose our battles.

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#462

Post by dnautics »

monocasa wrote: post #435
dnautics wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have. And you know what, civil rights laws did jack all to protect me. I'm much happier knowing that the people that operate that business were racist jerks (instead of, say, them being forced to serve me and spit in my food, which would be a health concern), and I have dissuaded probably on the order of a hundred people from going to that place, and that was in the era before social media.

Why didn't that strategy work for black people in the 1960s? Or LGBT more recently?

My claim is it didn't. You don't think black people were discriminated against in private locations well past the 1960s? What absolutely worked in the 1960s, was the banning of government REQUIRING segregation in private entities by law (which by the way, many companies absolutely chafed at, because quite frankly segregating your business is a cost-sinking pain in the ass to arrange and enforce). Nobody is disputing that CRA I and CRA II were much needed reforms.

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#463

Post by moolcool »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #239
tsimionescu wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got this backwards. What is happening here is the real political process - people congregating and trying to achieve their political goals through organizations they can actually influence. Organizing to convince your employer, or your local government, or your school board or whatever organization you can to push things in some direction is the political process. Sure, voting is one aspect of it, but it is by…

I don’t believe I’ve got it backwards. If Github/Microsoft won’t serve ICE, someone else will. If you want to fix ICE, the political process is what fixes that, not feel good efforts on a single business. As someone with entities that are registered to do business with the federal government, I’d provide services to ICE, because ICE isn’t the problem: how they’re regulated is the problem. Not providing services to IC…

> If Github/Microsoft won’t serve ICE, someone else will

I'm sorry but that's an incredibly spineless take. If people stopped having this kind of attitude, then there would be no "someone else".

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#464

Post by empath75 »

philwelch wrote: post #396
empath75 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say you're, say, IBM in the 1920s. At what point does the SS become an organization with which you refuse to do business? They didn't start off running concentration camps, after all.

If you’re referring to the Nazi movement in general, probably the point where they openly campaign against the concept of liberal democracy or use street violence (roughing up opposing groups, smashing windows, attacking/commandeering government facilities) as a means of social protest. Those are all pretty big warning signs that were present in the Nazis long before they seized power let alone built concentration ca…

No I'm referring to the German law enforcement agency that eventually ran the death camps. At what point in their journey toward the gas chambers do you say enough is enough. I would suggest that separating families and putting children in cages is far enough.

Trump repeatedly asked his followers to rough up protestors 4 years ago.

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#465

Post by moolcool »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #29
rattray wrote: post #14

What a bummer that workers are publicly demanding this, and (presumably) seeking press attention on it. I'm no fan of ICE – a very large percentage of my friends in the US are immigrants, and I generally want my country to be a welcoming one. ICE has certainly committed unethical and probably illegal acts (probably true of most federal agencies). But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a pri…

(Edit: Removed “people are lazy”, poor choice of words) People feel despair, hence pushing on Github instead of the political process. I’m all for unconventional leverage, but Microsoft is a trillion dollar org and has shareholders; this isn’t some VC funded dual class share startup where the founder has a blank check to do whatever they want. Edit: Can’t give up on the political process, that’s where the change happ…

> Can’t give up on the political process, that’s where the change happens

Applying the brakes (voting) works better if you also stop applying the gas (providing services).

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#466

Post by kuzimoto »

code_sloth wrote: post #421
kuzimoto wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are completely right. In a free society you should have the liberty to do business with whomever you want (no matter how politically in-correct your reasoning is). The great thing about this, is that someone else will realize there is now an under-served market, and create a business to fulfill that need. The same case can be made for hiring practices.

> The great thing about this, is that someone else will realize there is now an under-served market, and create a business to fulfill that need. Except that every other business can now refuse to serve that business services, because that business serves people nobody else likes. Given even time and systematic discrimination, that business owner and everyone they serve will be driven to destitution and cease to be a…

If this type of situation happens, I think these would be symptoms of a much larger issue.

I think there will always be places that exist that help everyone. First in mind are churches, who often will help people even if the people they help have differing views.

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#467

Post by toomuchtodo »

moolcool wrote: post #463
toomuchtodo wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t believe I’ve got it backwards. If Github/Microsoft won’t serve ICE, someone else will. If you want to fix ICE, the political process is what fixes that, not feel good efforts on a single business. As someone with entities that are registered to do business with the federal government, I’d provide services to ICE, because ICE isn’t the problem: how they’re regulated is the problem. Not providing services to IC…

> If Github/Microsoft won’t serve ICE, someone else will I'm sorry but that's an incredibly spineless take. If people stopped having this kind of attitude, then there would be no "someone else".

I won’t apologize for being realistic.

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#468

Post by akerro »

chasing wrote: post #300
deadalus wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shareholders don't want to make money? That's not their primary goal?

“Primary” != “only.” “Shareholders” != “only people with a stake in a company existing.”

Yes, I worded it completely wrong and people are responding me by concentrating on this word rather than message :(

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#469

Post by moolcool »

johncena33 wrote: post #2

I guess this is the reason lot of corporates try to stay out of politics. Because once you set a precedence then people will use that as to push their own political agendas. I personally don't like the slippery slope argument since it's very lazy and justifies inaction in many cases. But at the same time when I see news like this, I just wonder how long it will take two different subgroups trying push their own confl…

> I guess this is the reason lot of corporates try to stay out of politics

Literally everything a corporation does is politics. Every hiring decision, every office they open or close, every client they take on, every vendor they ditch, every ad they publish. It literally all has political implications and messaging. Why is there an expectation on companies to "not be political" whenever one of those inherently political decisions intersects with something that happens to be a hot-button issue? Like wtf does that even mean?

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#470

Post by kuzimoto »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #305
kuzimoto wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are completely right. In a free society you should have the liberty to do business with whomever you want (no matter how politically in-correct your reasoning is). The great thing about this, is that someone else will realize there is now an under-served market, and create a business to fulfill that need. The same case can be made for hiring practices.

> is that someone else will realize there is now an under-served market, and create a business to fulfill that need. That is a childishly simplistic understanding of how free markets work. There is no way a retail business would be established to service the needs of 2% of the population who are wheelchair users for example, when they could easily make their stores considerably more efficient by making the aisles a l…

If someone can still get groceries without physically going into the store, is it still discrimination?
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