By Matt Drange, Ryan Mac and Shelby Carpenter
Thousands of employees of Alphabet, Google's parent company, walked out of work Monday afternoon to protest President Donald Trump's recent executive orders curtailing immigration from predominantly Muslim countries. The demonstrations and speeches from Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Google cofounder Sergey Brin amounted to the strongest rebuke yet of Trump's orders, which prompted sharp criticism from Silicon Valley over the weekend as tech executives at dozens of firms blasted the President's actions.
More than 2,000 Alphabet employees from at least eight offices walked out Monday afternoon, the culmination of days of internal organizing. Pichai and Brin addressed the crowd at the company's main Mountain View, Calif. campus and were joined by Soufi Esmaeilzadeh, a product manager at Google and an Iranian-born Canadian citizen who has lived in the U.S. for the past 15 years.
"This is something, there are some values, which are really near and dear to your heart," said Pichai. "It’s foundational and it’s something you should never compromise on. The thing we’ve been debating for the past three days is one of them."
On Saturday, as plans for the walkout began to take shape, Pichai sent out a memo to employees. He said more than 100 employees were affected by Trump's orders, which call for "extreme vetting" of immigrants, among other things. Google, like many other household names in Silicon Valley, counts immigrants among its current executive team and founders. Brin, who attended protests at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday, is one of them.
Google employees protest executive orders on immigration at the company's Mountain View, Calif.... [+]
"I came here to the U.S. at age 6 with my family from the Soviet Union, which at that time was the greatest enemy the U.S. had--maybe it still is in some form--but it was a dire period of the Cold War," Brin said to the crowd. "Some of you probably remember it. And there was threat of nuclear annihilation. And even then the U.S. had the courage to take me and my family in as refugees."
While Brin cracked jokes, and at one point suggested that some people may start sporting "Pence 2017" bumper stickers, he implored his employees to embrace others with different viewpoints. He also alluded to actions that his company had taken to court Republican lawmakers in Washington, D.C. as reported recently by The New York Times.
"I guess it’s important to frame this debate as not being liberal versus Republican and so forth," he sad. "It’s a debate about fundamental values and thoughtful policymaking and many of the other things, I think, that are apparently not universally adored but I think the vast majority of our country and legislators support."
According to people who were there, Esmaeilzadeh delivered the key address when she spoke of her experience learning about Trump's orders as she was on a plane from San Francisco to Zurich. Google's immigration team was in touch with Esmaeilzadeh, and advised that she remain in Zurich so as not to risk deportation upon returning to California. Shortly afterward, a federal judge ruled in favor of a request from the American Civil Liberties Union that delayed implementation of the sweeping ban. Google management opted to fly her home immediately.
Google product manager Soufi Esmaeilzadeh spoke Monday at a company-supported protest of Donald... [+]
"It’s painful to see the personal cost of this executive order on our colleagues," Pichai wrote in a memo to employees over the weekend, according to a copy obtained by Bloomberg News. "We’ve always made our view on immigration issues known publicly and will continue to do so."
Google employees at the protests described an emotional scene and support from company leadership in speaking out. Employees were encouraged to share images and video of the event, according to people involved. The protests quickly became a trending topic on Twitter, with the hashtag #GooglersUnite drawing together a collection of photos and live video streams.
The rally comes less than 24 hours after the creation of a $4 million "crisis fund," with an initial $2 million donation by Google, later matched by employees. The money will be sent to the ACLU and Immigrant Legal Resource Center, among other groups, and is reportedly the largest such fund that Google has created.
