Tech workers and community activists gathered in front of the Salesforce headquarters in San Francisco Monday morning to protest the tech giant's contract with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency.
The protest comes on the heels of a letter signed in late June by 650 Salesforce employees who sought to persuade CEO Marc Benioff to end the company's contract with the CBP, which uses the company's Analytics and Community and Service Cloud programs.
Nothing came of the letter, prompting an uproar amongst tech workers and local activists who showed their solidarity with the 650 Salesforce employees by marching outside its headquarters Monday.
The issue at the heart of the protest is a part of a larger movement in the industry that has tech workers from various companies speaking out against how the technology they build is used. In June, Amazon employees wrote an open letter to CEO Jeff Bezos protesting the company's facial recognition contracts with law enforcement. Like the letter penned by Salesforce employees, it went unaddressed by its CEO.
"The workers here need to have a voice and need to have a seat at the table," said protest attendee and tech employee Stephanie Parker. "If we don't want to build it, we're not going to build it and we're going to have our voice heard one way or another about this."