Dozens of community members, activists and Amazon employees rallied in front of the rain-streaked Spheres on Friday in downtown Seattle, demanding Amazon cut ties with immigration-related government agencies.
Those in the crowd came ready for wet weather, wearing Gore-Tex rain jackets and holding laminated signs as they chanted shame" while speakers named activists killed by federal agents over recent months. Speakers lambasted the business relationship between Amazon and agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.
ICE and CBP have spent $140 million buying cloud services from Amazon and Microsoft during the second Trump administration, Forbes reported in January.
Organizers of the rally, led by Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, No Tech for Apartheid, Defend Immigrants Alliance and other community groups, set out their demands on Thursday. Those included Amazon ending its cloud-computing support to ICE and CBP; ending its partnerships with Palantir, a company whose data has reportedly been used by ICE; and ending Amazon-owned Ring's partnership with Flock, a police surveillance tech company.
Though Amazon didn't say the move was in response to activists' demands, the company did scrap its involvement with Flock on Thursday.
The move followed backlash to an advertisement aired during the Super Bowl that highlighted a new feature from Ring allowing users to share footage to a network of doorbell camera owners. The ad featured people using the technology to spot a lost dog; critics faulted Ring for creating a system that could be used for mass surveillance.
The feature wouldn't have used Ring's planned collaboration with Flock. Instead, Ring and Flock were planning to give users the option to share their footage with law enforcement.
In a statement, Ring said "following a comprehensive review, we determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated," and that the integration never launched.
The sphere of worker-led advocacy at tech companies is growing, as employees become more aware of the contracts their employers ink with agencies like ICE and CBP. The umbrella of activism is also large enough to hold those who oppose the tech industry's relationship with other entities like the Israeli government and the Trump administration.
Though the rally Friday centered on three demands over Amazon's relationship with the Department of Homeland Security and its agencies, signs throughout criticized President Donald Trump and lent support to Palestinian rights.
Speakers included former tech workers who had been fired after criticizing their employers' relationships with the Israeli government, including Ahmed Shahrour, a former Amazon software engineer who urged workers to join him in a worker-led Palestinian resistance.
Other companies like Microsoft and Google have faced repeated backlash from former employees over cloud computing contracts with Israel.
Several Microsoft events last year were disrupted by employees calling for the Redmond tech giant to sever ties with the Israeli government. Protests escalated over the summer when activists planned encampment-style protests on Microsoft's campus and breached the office of Microsoft President Brad Smith.
Seattle City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck also spoke, reinforcing her stance against immigration enforcement in the city and calling for consumer resistance against companies like Amazon.
"This is a moment where every action matters, where every decision matters," Rinck said. "Where you decide to spend your money as a consumer matters. And that was proven today, with Amazon ending their relationship with Flock because the consumer said 'absolutely not.'
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