FAccT for a Free Palestine

Condemn the violent occupation of Palestine and refuse funding from complicit corporations

Technology plays a massive role in the apartheid and violence happening in Palestine. Occupied Palestinian territories have been used for decades by the Israeli state to test military technology before selling it to repressive regimes around the world.

Biometric surveillance tools like facial recognition and license plate readers run at military checkpoints and surveillance cameras tracking the movement of Palestinians.
Gamified smartphone applications help the Israeli military register Palestinians into databases.
Automated drones regularly shoot and kill Palestinian civilians.

and the list goes on.

As technologists, researchers, and FAccT community members, we are all implicated.

Two of ACM FAccT's funding sources, Google and Amazon, are in the business of making Israeli apartheid more efficient, violent, and deadly by providing the Israeli government with $1.2 billion worth of cloud compute infrastructure.

It's our duty as the ACM FAccT community to live up to our own code of ethics and send a message: We will not take money from war profiteers.

We demand that the FAccT EC and Steering Committee:

Condemn the violent occupation of Palestine, and
Refuse funding from complicit corporations.

It's not just FAccT. There are lots of other ways your institutions may be entangled with the genocide in Palestine.

Many tech corporations, large and small, contract with the Israeli government -- even non-military contractors.
Many of our labs receive grants form the U.S. Department of Defense, which has massively supported the ongoing Israeli military assaults on Palestine. Even seemingly innocuous projects are often co-opted and used for weapons research.
Many of our universities' endowments are invested in arms manufacturers and complicit corporations via their hedge funds.
For example, of the University of Michigan's $23 billion endowment, 62% was in high risk investments connected to weapons manufacturers and the Israeli state.
Universities know this, and they are calling the police on their own students and faculty protesting the occupation, sometimes to violent ends.

How do we fight back?

Start conversations with your colleagues. How can we be more connected?
Participate in the ongoing Boycott, Divest, Sanctions movement. Where does your money go?
Map the flow of military funding into your own research groups. Whose money are you taking?
Coordinate actions with your coworkers and colleagues, like sick-outs or sit-ins. What can we accomplish together?
Read and sign the HCI Researchers Divestment Pledge: bit.ly/HCIdivest. What do we stand for?

For more information, check out the resources on the home page.