Workers Establish "Liberated Zone" On Microsoft Campus To Protest Company's Genocide Profiteering

Dozens of Microsoft workers, former employees and Seattle-area community members established a “Liberated Zone” on Microsoft campus Tuesday afternoon. Almost 700 days into Israel’s genocide in Gaza, workers part of the anti-war organization No Azure For Apartheid set up the demonstration to demand Microsoft cut ties with Israel, use its global influence to call for an end to the genocide, pay reparations to to Palestinians, and stop discriminating against Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and pro-Palestinian workers. Though the Liberated Zone packed up within two hours, the fight to end Microsoft’s complicity continues.

About a quarter past noon, while many of their colleagues took their lunch break, organizers descended upon Microsoft’s East Plaza. In front of the iconic logo, they set up tents, art to commemorate those killed by Israel, and a negotiation table open for discussion with the company’s execs. The organizers encircled their Liberation Zone with metal chairs, banners that explained their mission, red splatter bags of flour as a nod to the February 2024 flour massacre, and white cloth fashioned into mock body bags, a sight all too common in Gaza. 

The action comes after recent reporting revealed that Israel used Microsoft cloud storage services to surveil Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank by collecting and storing recordings of millions of mobile phone calls and texts sent by Palestinians. 

“Today, we refuse to be part of the system that is insistent on dehumanizing Palestinians and enabling their mass murder,” said Palestinian Microsoft employee Nisreen Jaradat. “Today, we revolt, we rise up, we disobey, and we carry the torch of Intifada until every inch of Palestine is liberated from the river to the sea.”

Jaradat said as a Palestinian herself, she refuses to give one more minute of her labor to her people’s annihilation and she encouraged her colleagues to withdraw their labor to pressure Microsoft to cut ties with Israel— “Make no mistake, labor is not apolitical.” 

“You do not have to be on the side of the genocide-profiteering executives,” said Hossam Nasr, a Microsoft employee the company fired last year for hosting a vigil for Palestine. “You do not have to comply, you do not have to listen to their orders.”

Nasr continued, “I’m talking to you, every single one of you sitting there having lunch right now. I am talking to you, the security guards in blue vests. I am talking to you. You do not have to comply, you do not have to listen to your masters, you do not have to shut down this encampment, you do not have to treat us like we are the evill ones for trying to stop a genocide.”

“You have the choice to refuse, you have the choice to listen to your heart not to your bosses, you have the choice to be on the right side of history, you have the choice to join us right here, right now in the Microsoft liberated zone,” Nasr said. 

While many workers took photos and asked the organizers questions, it did not appear any joined their “Worker Intifada” before Redmond Police ushered the organizers to public property under threat of arrest. 

No Azure For Apartheid didn’t win the day, but they are certain their victory will come. 

“There will come a time when everyone will have been against this,” Nasr said. “There will come a day when Microsoft brags that this action took place on its campus. Today, Microsoft brags that it divested from apartheid South Africa in 1986 — there will come a day when Microsoft brags that in 2025, they divested from apartheid Israel.”

“When that day comes, the executives with their blood-soaked hands deserve no credit,” Nasr continued. “They deserve shame, accountability and the eternal haunting of the screams of the thousands of Palestinian children they massacred. The only honor will be for the workers, former workers, community members who are putting their jobs, their immigration status, their livelihoods, and their lives on the line to stand on the right side of history.”