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250 Microsoft Employees Call on CEO to Cancel Police Contracts and Support Defunding Seattle PD

The letter also asks for the resignation of Seattle’s mayor and for full support of Black Lives Matter

Dave Gershgorn
OneZero
6 min readJun 9, 2020

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Photo: Jeenah Moon/Stringer/Getty Images

Hundreds of Microsoft employees have signed a letter to the company’s top executives asking for Microsoft to take action in the wake of national protests. The letter, which was obtained by OneZero, requests that Microsoft cancel contracts with the Seattle Police Department (SPD) and other law enforcement agencies, asks the company to formally support the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, and calls for the resignation of the Seattle mayor.

The email, which eventually included more than 250 employees CC’d in solidarity, was sent in the early hours of Monday, June 8, and was addressed to Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, and executive vice president, Kurt DelBene, with the subject line “Our neighborhood has been turned into a warzone.”

Much of the email focused on the protests and police response in Seattle. “Every one of us in the CC line are either firsthand witnesses or direct victims to the inhumane responses of SPD to peaceful protesting,” the letter said, according to the copy obtained by OneZero.

“Every one of us in the CC line…

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OneZero
OneZero

Published in OneZero

OneZero is a former publication from Medium about the impact of technology on people and the future. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

Dave Gershgorn
Dave Gershgorn

Written by Dave Gershgorn

Senior Writer at OneZero covering surveillance, facial recognition, DIY tech, and artificial intelligence. Previously: Qz, PopSci, and NYTimes.

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