In a letter released Wednesday morning, over 100 Google employees demanded that the San Francisco Pride Parade remove Google as one of its sponsors, citing an inability to protest Google’s position on the parade as well as the presence of Steven Crowder on Google’s video platform, YouTube.
Today, we publish this open letter from over 100 fellow @Google employees, asking @SFPride to remove the company until real improvements to LGBTQ+ protections are made on @YouTube https://t.co/dWSoDAbeBQ
— Ban Google From Pride (@NoPrideForGoog) June 26, 2019
The letter claimed that protest of Google’s position is a “violation of [Google’s] communications policy, a part of [Google’s] code of conduct.”
“They claim the contingent is their official representation, and we may not use their platform to express an opinion that is not their opinion. In short, they rejected any compromise.”
The letter also mentions recent controversy for their subsidiary platform YouTube’s refusal to take the conservative commentator and comedian Steven Crowder off the site. Carlos Maza demanded Crowder’s removal after the conservative comedian made fun of him. The letter went onto say that if “YouTube, allows abuse and hate and discrimination against LGBTQ+ persons, then Pride must not provide the company a platform that paints it in a rainbow veneer of support for those very persons.”
Since I started working at Vox, Steven Crowder has been making video after video “debunking” Strikethrough. Every single video has included repeated, overt attacks on my sexual orientation and ethnicity. Here’s a sample: pic.twitter.com/UReCcQ2Elj
— Carlos Maza (@gaywonk) May 31, 2019
Maza tweeted his support of the protest, saying that the employees were “risking their jobs” and that “[this] is what pride looks like.”
These @Google employees are risking their jobs to protest @YouTube‘s exploitation of the LGBT community. This is what Pride looks like. https://t.co/vINGJhAUKq pic.twitter.com/XVc1cpIVhy
— Carlos Maza (@gaywonk) June 26, 2019
Google has yet to comment on the letter.
