zlacker

>>Xordev+(OP)
What a bummer that workers are publicly demanding this, and (presumably) seeking press attention on it.

I'm no fan of ICE – a very large percentage of my friends in the US are immigrants, and I generally want my country to be a welcoming one. ICE has certainly committed unethical and probably illegal acts (probably true of most federal agencies).

But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private entity, especially for essentially political reasons, is lunacy. It'd attract extreme negative attention from the rest of the government, and great fear from all paying customers that an internet mob could separate them from their code at any time.

We should absolutely be lobbying hard for changes to immigration law, the restrictions placed on ICE, and justice for their wrongdoings.

But I can't see how this helps improve immigration, and it certainly seems likely to cause a lot of negative consequences for GitHub. The employees are putting their employer in a "damned if they do, damned if they don't" situation.

EDIT: Just to clarify, I love the vision of a world where executives don't take actions their workers will protest. I think that in order to get there, the protests need to be reasonable, and I think this one isn't.

EDIT DISCLAIMER: I own a small amount of MSFT stock, which was not on my mind as I wrote this. I use GitHub's free service and have no other relationship I can think of with MSFT or GitHub.

>>rattra+Rh
I don't see the connection between supporting black lives matter and enforcing our immigration laws. If they want completely open borders, then they need to come out and say that, but demanding ICE lose contracts and technical software access is absurd.

>>nodeso+781
As we are about to see in minneapolis, just like defund the police doesn’t mean no law enforcement, abolish ice doesn’t mean an open border. It means ICE is a structure that is harming american values (liberty, justice, due process).

And the idea here is to apply pressure any way possible. Maybe losing github doesn’t practically change much, but if I was working somewhere and companies started cancelling contracts due to the unethical actions of my workplace... i would start looking for another job.

>>kennyw+gd1
Should GitHub employees refuse to work on legal related matters to put pressure on the government to prosecute BLM protesters that recklessly put lives at risk during a pandemic?

>>LunaSe+tQ2
1. Given that black lives are disproportionately effected by covid (well documented) it seems like it’s more their risk to take than yours to criticize. But whatever the risk created by protesters, the teargas and “crowd dispersal” methods used by police forces will be responsible for way more spread than a bunch of people marching wearing masks.

2. If we had not been devaluing black lives and letting off murdering cops for hundreds of years, we would not be seeing protests in the streets. This was entirely preventable: just dismantle systemic racism, like yesterday.

3. If the majority of github’s employees shared your skewed view of the blm protests, they might apply pressure on their employer, yes.