1/11/2024 0 Comments Edwin land sexist“ We looked back,” she recalled in an interview, “ and on the bulletin board was an ID made for the Department of the Mines. One day, as Hunter and Williams were heading through the photography department on their way to lunch, they noticed something strange. The PRWM was started in 1970 by two African-American employees at the company ’ s headquarters in Cambridge: Caroline Hunter, a bench chemist who worked on the gel that rolled onto Polaroid film in the company ’ s signature product, the instant camera, and Williams, a photographer. Their burgeoning activism echoes the struggle that workers at Polaroid undertook fifty years ago. These actions show that tech workers are recognizing the leverage they have to improve working conditions within their companies and influence how those companies behave in the world. Workers from Google, Postmates, Uber, and Lyft joined the Strike for Black Lives on July 20, drawing a connection between racial injustice and the precarity of essential workers. The George Floyd uprising has accelerated this activism. Office workers at Kickstarter even voted to start their own union in February, one of the first of its kind. They have also spoken out in support of subcontractors and wage workers fighting for better working conditions. Office workers at Amazon, Google, Salesforce, and Wayfair have signed public letters, rallied, and walked off the job over issues ranging from their companies ’ collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the military to sexism and racism in the workplace to climate change. The past few years have seen salaried employees protest at tech firms across the country. This kind of political activity is growing increasingly common in the tech industry. The rally was the first public action by the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement (PRWM), a little-known group that launched the first anti-apartheid boycott of a U.S. Ken Williams, a worker at Polaroid, called out the company for supporting fascism, while Chris Nteta, a South African Harvard student, demanded that the company cut all ties with the racist government. Student protests were common in Cambridge, but this one was different: many of the attendees were workers from the nearby Polaroid headquarters, protesting the company ’ s business with the apartheid government in South Africa. On October 8, 1970, some 200 people gathered for a protest in Technology Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Their activism mirrors the burgeoning organizing efforts of tech workers today. Fifty years ago, a group of Polaroid employees launched the first anti-apartheid boycott of a U.S.
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