Google resists
Google is observing Fred Korematsu Day today.
Korematsu tried to enlist after Pearl Harbor, but instead he was interned. Today is his birthday and recognized as Fred Korematsu Day in California, Hawaii, Virginia and Florida.
The illustration, known as the Google doodle, comes a day after Google established a $4 million fund for the American Civil Liberties Union, Immigrant Legal Resource Center, International Rescue Committee and UNHCR.
The ACLU has been one of the main organizations fighting Donald Trump‘s executive order to temporarily ban travel for immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries — Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen — and temporarily halt the entry of refugees into the United States.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin, whose family fled the Soviet Union in the 1970s, participated in protests of the travel ban this weekend, telling a Forbes reporter, “I’m here because I’m a refugee.”
Google is one of those organizations you can love and hate at the same time. On the one hand, they do wonderful things like this. On the other, they are busy taking steps to deprive working artists of the ability to limit their work so they can make a living off it, because Google wants to be able to make money off it.
Piggybacking off iknklast’s comment, here’s another recent article about Google, this one detailing how the company is actively trying to get in bed with Republicans. So, it’s one step forward, five decades back.
Similarly Starbucks promise to employ refugees and provide eligible staff who loose health insurance as the result of the repeal of the ACA insurance coverage. I dislike much about the company (and the coffee is milky dishwater), but you gotta love that.
Do the WASPS surrounding Trump never look at the leaders and innovators of US tech and industry and note that they are so heavily dominated by second generation Americans? People who were bought up in an environment that gave them a desire to improve, strive and succeed.
Trump is of course a third generation immigrant. His grandfather fled economic hardship, the turmoil of an unstable Europe constantly teetering on war and the threat of conscription. I guess now he’s rich and secure he doesn’t want to share that good fortune with anyone else.
These corporate examples are good reminders that ‘pure’ evil is rare–most folks are a blend of selfish and altruistic urges, even those who might normally be viewed as firmly in the ‘opposition camp’. No, we shouldn’t let Google skate on cooperating with the Chinese government, but we can at least use this action as a proof of just how extreme and not-“Real American” Trump and his cronies actually are.
Rob, you are mistaken. Donald Trump is a second generation immigrant – his mother went to the USA from Scotland at the age of 17.
I’m with Freemage.
If you can point out how UnAmerican these companies have been, and then demonstrate that they are, nevertheless, more ProAmerican than Trump, we may have a way of swaying at least some of the minds of those who voted for him.
tiggerthewing, good point, how patriarchal in my thinking. That said, given how his family seems to operate…
The problem is, un-American is a rather wishy-washy term. It usually depends on who is defining it, and what they want at the time. Strangely enough, it seems to be un-American to most of the Trumpites to actually support what America pretends to stand for – freedom and equality for everyone, free speech (even disagreeable speech), and minority protection from majority tyranny.
Of course, these white men see themselves as the oppressed minority. Minority they may be, but oppressed they are not.