MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (Diya TV) — On a day their homepage featured the illustrated likeness of Fred Korematsu, Google employees gathered on their campuses around the country to speak out against immigration policies of the new federal administration. They used the hashtag “#NoBanNoWall.”
Using the hashtag “NoBanNoWall”, large crowds assembled at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, as well as at their various offices around the world holding signs which read, “Ban fascists, not religions,” and “Free hugs for an Iranian.” Those in attendance in Mountain View said Google chief executive Sundar Pichai and co-founder Sergey Brin both spoke, and Brin expressed gratitude for being admitted to the United States from the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
#GooglersUnite Sundar and Sergey addressing the crowd. pic.twitter.com/jY0vOi0ye4
— William Rucklidge (@wjrucklidge) January 30, 2017
The demonstrations were organized by Google employees, and more than 2,000 attended the Mountain View protest, according to those in attendance.
It came in response to President Trump’s executive order restricting travel from seven Muslim-majority nations and indefinitely banning Syrian refugees spurred protests over the weekend at airports around the country. Google has established a $4 million fund for the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, International Rescue Committee, UNHCR and American Civil Liberties Union, (one of the main organizations fighting the ban).
The keynote speaker at Google’s Mountain View headquarters was Soufi Esmaeilzadeh, a product manager on Google Assistant, who was on a plane from San Francisco to Zurich when rumors began to leak that the executive order would be signed.
An Iranian-born Canadian citizen who has lived in the U.S. for the past 15 years, Esmaeilzadeh attended Brown University and Harvard Business School and had been working at Google for more than five years.
President Donald Trump has downplayed protests of the ban, tweeting Monday: “There is nothing nice about searching for terrorists before they can enter our country. This was a big part of my campaign. Study the world!” Google shares fell more than 2.5 percent on Monday.
Google employees posted tweets of the protests:
So proud to work at @Google, a company that 2x'd matching to ACLU, hosted a protest on campus, and sent its founder to #SFO. #NoBanNoWall pic.twitter.com/Is7plv6xFd
— Tarun Galagali (@tarunjg24) January 30, 2017
#NoBanNoWall protest at #Google. So proud to work here. pic.twitter.com/oVDbxipAxx
— Lan Haarmann (@lhaarmann) January 30, 2017
https://twitter.com/isaaccp/status/826195151030669312?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
