“With tech leaders swiftly capitulating to Trump, tech workers are building a rank-and-file movement against Trumpism”
Excerpted from Rebecca Solnit:
“One of the loudest voices in this movement belongs to Maciej Ceglowski, a Polish-American developer and entrepreneur. Ceglowski has long enjoyed a loyal following for his sharp insider critiques of Silicon Valley. Since the election, he has emerged as a withering critic of the tech industry’s rapid accommodation to the new administration. He is also the main force behind Tech Solidarity, a new group that has become the leading hub for tech organizing against Trump.
The first meeting of Tech Solidarity took place in San Francisco on 28 November. Since then, they’ve expanded to Boston, New York, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, and Washington DC. The meetings aren’t entirely public – to obtain an invitation, attendees must contact Ceglowski via email or the encrypted messaging service Signal. Crucially, participants are asked not to disclose the identity of anyone else in attendance. This promise of anonymity is indispensable for fostering candid conversations among tech workers, who tend to be heavily bound by nondisclosure agreements.
These gatherings are already proving to be important incubators for grassroots initiatives. The inaugural Tech Solidarity meeting in San Francisco helped produce the Never Again pledge, a public declaration by tech workers that they will refuse to build a database identifying people by race, religion, or national origin. The pledge went live on 13 December – the day before Silicon Valley’s top executives made the pilgrimage to Trump Tower to sit down for a summit with the president-elect.
The organizers of the pledge are keenly aware of their industry’s history. The Never Again site refers to IBM’s well-documented role in providing the punch-card machines that streamlined the Holocaust – a history the company has never fully acknowledged or apologized for. Which makes it all the more chilling that IBM has gone out of its way to court Trump since his victory.”