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

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

#751

Post by webmaven »

toasterlovin wrote: post #573
Drakim wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Illegal immigrants in the US are most certainly a minority group. It's not hyperbolic and unproductive, it's the plain truth, just like the Japanese concentration camps during WW2.

Illegal immigrants are not at all entirely of a single minority group. And even though they are mostly of a single minority group, that fact is incidental to the fact that they are being put in detention facilities, it is not causal .

Incidental and not causal, huh?

How certain are you that Canadian refugees (for example) in equivalent numbers would be subjected to similar treatment and held in similar conditions?

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

#752

Post by zaroth »

dgellow wrote: post #550
fennecfoxen wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that all corporations are political is obviously quite true, especially insofar as potentially-everything is political. What's interesting is erosion of the norm that corporations should not be particularly political (picking and choosing customers based on politics, touting allegiance to one specific side). This was once a somewhat stronger (political) norm that has fallen by the wayside as the nation has g…

> This was once a somewhat stronger (political) norm that has fallen by the wayside as the nation has grown more bitterly divided. Just a thought: what if the nation's divide comes from companies taking more political stances, instead of the opposite? As an example to entertain the thought, when Nike takes a political position through their advertising on social platforms, people react to it by taking side. If done a…

I think the hyper politicization of just about everything definitely contributes to polarization, and particularly the “cancel culture” approach to politicization is a blunt instrument that seems very likely to push people to take sides against each other, and see differing beliefs more as opponents that must be defeated rather than neighbors with different priorities.

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

#754

Post by rattray »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #313
Wohlf wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your argument is a better fit for the Chinese government which is currently running concentration camps for Uyghurs.

I think you are misunderstanding my argument. My argument is you (and github employees) should feel free to raise that about the Chinese Government vis a vis the Uyghurs too. If we agree that there are any circumstances where a company is ethically required to refuse selling it's software to a national government, then we can look at the particulars of any specific instance and decide if we think that's such a case,…

Yeah, thanks, you make good points here and I agree. Companies should certainly refuse service to government entities in certain cases on ethical grounds.

I think there's a moral component and a practical component. The latter becomes very difficult when taking a stand against a government entity in your home jurisdiction, since the offending government may put you out of business or something.

For example, in Nazi Germany (which I agree is a useful example to reference), a company that refused service to the Nazis would have had its executives murdered and been taken over by the state within a day. (My guess based on my recent read of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, but I may be off).

On the other hand, refusing service to North Korea (sanctions aside) is a clearly ethically correct thing and offers little practical risk for companies based in the West.

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

#755

Post by zaroth »

tsimionescu wrote: post #298
NE2z2T9qi wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you don't get your way, what's next? Shutting off ICE employee's water, electricity, and telephone service? And why not kick them out of their apartments too since sheltering an ICE officer helps enable them.

No one is going for ICE employees, at least in this thread. They are proposing going against ICE as an institution.

ICE as an institution doesn’t even know what Github is, and they won’t blink an eye if suddenly it goes away. It’s ICE engineers lives which are suddenly miserable because they would have to deal with setting up new systems and processes for source control and bug tracking on top of whatever else they were working on.

Cutting off GitHub access to ICE engineers is like sitting outside their offices banging pots and pans together for a few weeks. A lot of people are generally worse off for a short while, GitHub revenue goes down, maybe they lay off a few engineers who were supporting that customer, a few news articles are written alternatively praising another step towards corporate activism or bemoaning cancel culture.

The most important part of convincing GitHub to cancel ICE to those who are rooting for it isn’t so much ICE losing access to GitHub, but another drop in the bucket toward normalizing the politicization and disruption of basic services to deplorable customers.

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

#756

Post by woutr_be »

hvis wrote: post #683

Okay, suppose this works. And even turns out to have an actual impact, somehow. What will be next? Gas stations and steak restaurants (or whatever businesses are considered conservative/republican) refusing to serve democrat/liberal customers? AT&T refusing Internet connectivity to abortion clinics?

> Gas stations and steak restaurants (or whatever businesses are considered conservative/republican) refusing to serve democrat/liberal customers?

Having lived through a year long political crisis in Hong Kong, this is actively happening right now. There's even a whole "yellow economic" (meaning, protestors) where they support businesses who also support them. Some of these businesses refuse to serve customers who don't speak Cantonese, or even recently refused to serve customers who wear a government issued face mask.

Businesses who were considered "against" the protestors, got trashed or set on fire.

Whatever their political stance is, I personally refuse to go to any business who's actively refusing to serve customers based on their political stance. You wouldn't feel right refusing customers based on their skin color or religion, so why do it based on politics?

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

#757

Post by kelnos »

sukilot wrote: post #662
kelnos wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We don't need laws to see [freedom of speech] as a public good. I think it's very easy to refute this statement by looking at any country where freedom of speech isn't guaranteed by law. The most populous country in the world is a glaring example.

You got it backwards. The fact that unfree nations are seen as human rights violations shows that free speech is a public good even when illegal.

I'm not sure what the argument is, then? Either we need or don't need laws in place to ensure freedom of speech (clearly we do). If that's not what we're talking about, what is a law "recognizing free speech as a public good"? That... isn't a thing?

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

#758

Post by dnautics »

danans wrote: post #727
dnautics wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saying we have to work twice as hard as white people, not African Americans. You're missing my point. I'm saying that I don't trust government to make "black lives matter". There might be a chance that government can self intervene and stem the bloody police abuse against African Americans (I'm also not terribly optimistic about this since cops are abusive to plenty of non African American citizens, too, e.g. Kel…

> I'm saying we have to work twice as hard as white people, not African Americans. The point still stands. How do you know you have to work twice as hard as white people? Which white people? Wealthy who got admitted to elite Private universities on legacy? How about working class white people with non college educated parents? This question does not deny it all that there is workplace discrimination against Asian Ame…

I think if you read what I wrote carefully and with a clear mind, you will see that I very much support efforts by the government to self regulate and reduce violence against African Americans, even if I'm pessimistic that it will work in the case of police violence. Indeed, I've been following the subject for over a decade now and have also put my money where my mouth is on this subject.

It's government regulating private citizen's racism that I abjectly disagree with because I think there will be very bad unintended consequences for a strategy that will not work.

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

#759

Post by ryanwaggoner »

camdenlock wrote: post #656
dnissley wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't celebrate too early. It took less than 5 years for this 'thing' to go from college campuses to big companies... What will you do when a twitter mob comes for your company because you're "oppressing your workers ability to speak out about injustice and human rights" or "remaining silent, which is violence"?

This is the real threat we should all be talking about. It’s so sad to me that it’s barely discussed. These new religions and their witch hunts are great at silencing discussions out of fear.

The perceived overreach of political correctness is a vast area of discourse, especially on the right.

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

#760

Post by ryanwaggoner »

devalgo wrote: post #678
kgin wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The specific incarnation of border controls as ICE isn't the only way to control the border. I'm sure that some people are advocating for completely open borders without concern for consequences. But I think the larger call is saying that ICE as it currently is conceived as a paramilitary-style organization is not the way control the border and manage immigration.

>But I think the larger call is saying that ICE as it currently is conceived as a paramilitary-style organization is not the way control the border and manage immigration. This seems like what people on the right do with Trump. He'll say some outlandish or indefensible thing on Twitter and pundits will walk it back and lay out some complex argument to support it. It's not convincing in either case. It's the same with…

What protesters? I attended a march in NYC this weekend and the protesters demands included shifting $1 billion of the NYPD budget to community, education, and social welfare programs, and a $500 million investment fund for black businesses. No one was screaming to get rid of all cops everywhere forever.

Are you genuinely seeking to understand, or do you hols these protesters in too much disdain to actually listen to them?

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