[liberationtech] I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left.

[fuzzyTew]

Yosem, thank you so much for sharing this.  If you can, PLEASE ADD THE
EXPERIENCE TO A PUBLIC IMMUTABLE BLOCKCHAIN RECORD, along with the replies,
ANYBODY AND EVERYBODY WHO CAN.

It's incredibly obvious that people are being turned against each-other
worldwide for the benefit of one set of interests, and that includes
people, including us, being forced to harass anyone who talks about it.  I
think it's incredibly important to establish a norm of PERMANENTLY SHARING
REAL, RELEVENT INFORMATION about situations like this when they arise, even
though it puts the speaker at severe risk, so people can learn collectively
to act in ways that make sense.

The strategy of harm-to-peer is an incredibly efficient way for the
isolated dominant values to struggle, especially when used on people who
talk about what is happening, and we need to talk to form conclusions to
act.  We need to all post this to the BLOCKCHAIN and the NEWS and I am not
able to now because I burnt out this option for freedom posting this
also-important reply.  WE ARE NOT FREE TO HELP, AND IT WILL HAPPEN TO YOU
TOO UNLESS MORE EFFICIENT DISCUSSION FORMS.  We can risk our situation
worsening to facilitate efficient discussion and action.

We all know these things are obvious, but nobody is expressing assumptions
and conclusions for new people (like me) to prevent the slow, painful
learning by exposure that results in the speaker eventually becoming by
force a tortured harasser themselves.

PLEASE REPEAT THIS INFORMATION TO OTHERS

Karl Semich

On Thu, Jan 2, 2020, 9:48 AM Yosem Companys <ycompanys at gmail.com> wrote:

> My solution was to advocate for the adoption of a company-wide, formal
> Human Rights Program that would publicly commit Google to adhere to human
> rights principles found in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, provide a
> mechanism for product and engineering teams to seek internal review of
> product design elements, and formalize the use of Human Rights Impact
> Assessments for all major product launches and market entries.
>
> But each time I recommended a Human Rights Program, senior executives came
> up with an excuse to say no. At first, they said human rights issues were
> better handled within the product teams, rather than starting a separate
> program. But the product teams weren’t trained to address human rights as
> part of their work. When I went back to senior executives to again argue
> for a program, they then claimed to be worried about increasing the
> company’s legal liability. We provided the opinion of outside experts who
> re-confirmed that these fears were unfounded. At this point, a colleague
> was suddenly re-assigned to lead the policy team discussions for Dragonfly.
> As someone who had consistently advocated for a human rights-based
> approach, I was being sidelined from the on-going conversations on whether
> to launch Dragonfly. I then realized that the company had never intended to
> incorporate human rights principles into its business and product
> decisions. Just when Google needed to double down on a commitment to human
> rights, it decided to instead chase bigger profits and an even higher stock
> price.
>
> It was no different in the workplace culture. Senior colleagues bullied
> and screamed at young women, causing them to cry at their desks. At an
> all-hands meeting, my boss said, “Now you Asians come to the microphone
> too. I know you don’t like to ask questions.” At a different all-hands
> meeting, the entire policy team was separated into various rooms and told
> to participate in a “diversity exercise” that placed me in a group labeled
> “homos” while participants shouted out stereotypes such as “effeminate” and
> “promiscuous.” Colleagues of color were forced to join groups called
> “Asians” and “Brown people” in other rooms nearby.
>
> In each of these cases, I brought these issues to HR and senior executives
> and was assured the problems would be handled. Yet in each case, there was
> no follow up to address the concerns — until the day I was accidentally
> copied on an email from a senior HR director. In the email, the HR director
> told a colleague that I seemed to raise concerns like these a lot, and
> instructed her to “do some digging” on me instead.
>
>
> https://medium.com/@rossformaine/i-was-googles-head-of-international-relations-here-s-why-i-left-49313d23065
> --
> Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable from any major
> commercial search engine. Violations of list guidelines will get you
> moderated: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/lt. Unsubscribe,
> change to digest mode, or change password by emailing
> lt-owner at lists.liberationtech.org.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ghserv.net/pipermail/lt/attachments/20200106/bd8e6dc8/attachment.html>