Who qualifies as a “tech worker?”

By “tech worker,” we are referring to anyone who works in and around the tech industry. “Tech worker” is not a monolithic identity. Some of us work in Big Tech; some of us work in start-ups. Some of us are technically trained; others don’t know a single line of code. Some of us make six figures; some of us barely make a living wage. Some of us have spent decades in the tech sectors; others are new. Some of us are full-time employees; some of us are contract workers. 

We firmly believe that tech workers’ collective power is strongest when workers unite across contracts, levels, sectors, and expertise. We acknowledge and reckon with the differences in material conditions between, say, an engineer and a warehouse worker. Yet, it is the same structures of oppression that exploit us. Our opposition sets out arbitrary divisions between workers to divide us, because our division and schism is in their interest. 

We choose solidarity over siloing. In our shared struggles, we see a need for a united front. We are united in spite of our differences because we share our opposition to structures of oppression. 

Why divestment?

Divestment can materialize in different ways depending on the context. Even in the context of tech divestment from the occupation in Palestine, this could mean different things. Within TDN, when we say divestment, we mean tech companies divesting from business relationships in occupied Palestine. This can include, but is not limited to:

• Closing offices in Tel-Aviv

• Canceling contracts with the Israeli government

• Ending partnerships with Israeli firms that align with the apartheid state

• Pulling financial investments from Israel/Israeli companies.

Divestment can also be a strategy towards accomplishing this goal. For example, as a part of divestment campaign targeting a given tech company, its workers can organize with students to pressure universities to divest from that company. In this scenario, a student-led divestment campaign targeting universities is a tactic used to support a worker-led divestment campaign against a target tech company. 

We choose divestment as a north star in our organizing because of the material and strategic impact on the occupation. Divestment isolates the occupation forces from the support and connections they need to continue. An act of divestment is a statement backed up by material, measurable change.

I am a worker, and I want to organize my workplace in solidarity with Palestine. Why should I choose divestment over other strategies?

First and foremost, divestment creates material changes by targeting the financial relationships that bind the tech sector and Israel. We believe that changing the material conditions is the most effective method of organizing. It’s the profit motive that sustains the apartheid regime, so our organizing must focus on disincentivizing the profit motive. Divestment is the strategy that most directly disrupts this financial relationship. 

There are other strategies, such as shareholder education, hiring more Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab talents, or reducing Zionist bias in content moderation. These are important tactics, and we encourage organizers to employ them where appropriate. The reason why we call for divestment as our main strategy above all is because divestment can actually impact the profit motives underpinning the tech sector’s complicity.  

If tech workers are already organizing, then what’s the point of this network? 

We are witnessing an unprecedented moment of tech workers mobilizing and organizing throughout the industry, but at the same time, we are seeing tech workers face similar obstacles, many of which exist because the tech industry has actively sought to squash dissent and erode workers’ capacity for collective action. 

Organizing is most effective when it is coordinated, and we firmly believe in the power of a united front. As Fanon writes in The Wretched of the Earth, “For the politically committed, urgent decisions are needed on means and tactics, i.e., direction and organization. Anything else is but blind voluntarism.” 

This is a particular challenge for the tech sector. Tech does not have a strong history of labor organizing to draw on, we have no organized structures for resourcing, education and stability. Right now, building on decades of movement organizing for a liberated Palestine and the momentum generated by the visibility of the ongoing genocide, tech worker campaigns have been started across the industry. Each of these campaigns is at a different level of development and has different targets, but each is critical to grow the industry-wide movement.

We are all building our own structures and campaigns as we go, but we don’t all need to rediscover everything. We embrace “Don’t Repeat Yourself” (DRY) in our tech companies, and we find value in repurposing and sharing our labor. We come here to share experience, to reflect on what has and is working and what is not. We form as a unit to allow for stronger partnerships with broader labor and the Palestine movement. We help each other learn and grow, and reduce the overhead for new campaigns. 

Lastly, we know that tech companies are competing to furnish the tools for genocide. We know that one company divesting does not mean that another company will not step in to fill the gap. To truly isolate the occupation, we must win on many fronts, and hold the entire industry accountable to liberation. By growing and working in relation with one another, we allow our movement to spread adaptively throughout the industry, infecting the entire sector and building strength before they can inoculate their genocidal business practices against us.

Tech companies are going to profit from weapons regardless. Wouldn’t it be a better use of your time to focus on removing bias and integrating AI ethics practices? 

We fundamentally reject the idea that war profiteering is inevitable. Proponents of this idea may claim that they are “being practical,” but what we see instead is deep pessimism. There is a defeatist mentality here: that militarism is inevitable, that capitalism is inevitable, and that workers hold little to no power to course-correct. Thus, the best we can do is to make small improvements so that the automated war machine can be “more ethical.” 

We believe that some technologies and business practices should not exist, because the harms they bring outweigh potential benefits to few. Even in our imperfect world, individuals and groups have some choice. Google and Amazon do not need to do business with the Israeli state. Yet they choose to, because they are prioritizing their shareholders’ bottom line above all.

This is why divestment is our chosen strategy, not AI ethics. We challenge the choices that tech executives are making to create lethal technologies and profit from their sale. Our positionality as workers enables us to resist these choices. When the executives and managers drop existing projects to focus on genAI for no other reason than shareholder appeasement, we see this choice for what it is and we organize to call for a different set of choices. This is why we are calling for divestment. 

This is not to say that AI ethics is at odds with our call for divestment. In fact, we see both as important strategies that can enable different types of pressure and mobilize different people. But our vision for a future without militarism and our positionality as workers whose labor is used to enable automated warfare beckon us to prioritize divestment as our method of resistance.

So if corporations divest, are they good to support?

No, the opposite of divestment is not absolution. The goal of divestment campaigns is to pressure corporations to withdraw their investments that sustain Israeli apartheid. So, when a company decides to divest its investments from the Israeli apartheid regime, that is all that it means. It does not absolve them of their past complicity. In fact, it may very well be that corporations that divest may redirect its investments to, say, the Pentagon. 

However, in successfully pressuring a corporation to divest from Israel, we are creating an economic landscape where Israel is ostracized for its human rights violations and corporations are scrutinized for their defense contracts. Individual divestment campaigns may end, but the work of organizing for a future without militarism continues.  

Tech is currently laying workers off left and right. What’s the point of organizing as tech workers when tech workers are so disposable to companies? 

Individual workers are disposable, but the collective workforce is not. This is why we build for collective power—because it is our only form of protection. That workers are treated as disposable is simply the condition of our industry and the conditions under which we must organize. It adds risk to organizing, but are there any meaningful wins possible without risk?

As long as there have been workers, there has been precarity. Tech platforms have increased the amount of precarity in the workforce overall by spreading the gig-economy and contract labor. Understanding this aspect of our organizing environment allows us to see worker mistreatment and retaliation as an opportunity—for agitation, for exposing anti-worker executives, and for connecting our experiences to those who are more deeply oppressed by the same systems.