By Marsha Goldberg
July 31, 2023

New York City

Tech workers from Amazon and Google rallied outside the annual Amazon Web Services Summit at the Javits Center in New York City on July 26. Workers chanted loud and clear:  “Free free Palestine, no tech for Israel’s crimes!” The rally was part of their continuing two-year “No Tech for Apartheid” campaign.

Hand-painted signs throughout the crowd showed working class solidarity with the Palestinian people, targeting Amazon and Google bosses for the billion dollar contracts that enable mass surveillance by the Israeli apartheid state. Some of the workers’ signs read: “Tech workers united against Israeli apartheid,” “Amazon and Google workers united for Palestinian rights” and “Amazon profits off of Israel’s military occupation.”

The first speakers at the rally were five Amazon tech workers who had just come from inside the Javits Center, where they had stood up, one by one, and disrupted the entire keynote speech. Representatives of the Amazon Labor Union at the Staten Island warehouse – the first Amazon warehouse where workers won a union representation election – were there in solidarity.

They connected the Israeli surveillance of the Palestinian people using Amazon technology with the surveillance of workers in the huge Amazon warehouses, where every second of their time is tracked.

Workers held up Workers World Party signs saying, “Defend Palestine – Zionism is Genocide!” and “Israeli apartheid genocide funded by the U.S.”