Sunnyvale police on Tuesday arrested five Google employees for criminal trespassing after they refused to leave a company building to protest the tech giant’s contract with Israel.
Roughly 80 employees protested in the afternoon outside Google’s complexes, demanding the company drop Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract that provides computing services to the Israeli Ministry of Defense. They also called on the company to stop the harassment, intimidation and censorship of Muslim, Arab and Palestinian employees.
After the protest cleared at 1:30 p.m., five remained in the complex and were allowed to stay by Google, but refused to leave at 6:30 p.m. when they were asked to leave, according to Sunnyvale police Capt. Dzanh Le. The arrestees were booked at the police department and released on a citation that same night.
“We were called back by Google. They wanted the individuals to leave but they refused the request,” Le said. “We asked them to leave and they refused again.”
Advocate group Notech4apartheid, which also helped organize the protest, claimed in a live Twitch stream of the incident that they sat inside the office of Thomas Kurian, the CEO of Google Cloud. Google’s spokesperson reportedly told other news outlets that a number of employee protesters disrupted their locations and were put on administrative leave. Similar sit-in and protests were held at Google office in New York.
Their actions came a day after hundreds of protesters blocked major freeways in the Bay Area and in several other U.S cities to oppose the war in Gaza.