During the height of public outrage over the Trump administration’s barbaric “zero tolerance” policy, advocates called out Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff over the tech giant’s contract with Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the federal agency carrying out the kidnappings of migrant children at the border. For a moment, Benioff appeared to be listening, scheduling a call with a leading immigrant rights organization. But, his vacation plans apparently got in the way.
“’I am sorry I’m actually scuba diving right now,’ Benioff wrote to Jonathan Ryan, the executive director of the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (Raices) on 23 July, the day of their scheduled call,” the Guardian reports. Ryan was flabbergasted. “The first thought in my mind was, ‘What is this guy thinking?’ I’m managing the crisis of my lifetime, which is nothing compared to the collective crisis of all the people we are trying to help. It’s one thing to be too busy. It’s another thing to be too busy because you’re scuba diving.”
Benioff may have chickened out that day, but outside and internal opposition to the ongoing contract—CBP “began using Salesforce products this year to ‘manage border activities’ and ‘modernize its recruiting process’”—has in no way deescalated, with Fight for the Future, Color of Change, Demand Progress, Defending Rights and Dissent, Mijente, Presente.org, RAICES, Sum of Us, and other advocates setting up a mock detention center outside the company’s annual conference in San Francisco, California, this week. “We’re demanding that Salesforce cancel that contract,” said one demonstrator.
xCircled #Dreamforce this morning with a reminder of how tech contracts with government agencies facilitate human rights violations. Props to @ConMijente @fightfortheftr @DSA_SF @OaklandPrivacy #abolishICE pic.twitter.com/ozPvR0iu8X
— Shahid Buttar (@Sheeyahshee) September 25, 2018
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