Salesforce, the Silicon Valley cloud computing giant, is being targeted by activists hoping to force the company to end its contract with US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) amid accusations that the agency is violating human rights.
Organisations including Greenpeace, Demand Progress, New York State Nurses Association and Fight for the Future, an advocacy group which is coordinating the campaign, are threatening to boycott the company if they do not end their contract.
The activists are also calling for a boycott of Salesforce’s flagship Dreamforce conference, to be held in San Francisco in September, and targeting speakers at the conference including former vice-president Al Gore, musician will.i.am, Unilever chief investment officer Jane Moran and Entourage actor Adrian Grenier, asking them to drop out.
CBP is using Salesforce products to manage border activities. The company’s involvement with CBP comes as the Trump administration continues to struggle to clear up the mess left by its policy of separating undocumented migrant children from their families once they have been intercepted.
“Salesforce prides itself on being a socially aware and responsible company, but they are showing otherwise by refusing to drop their contract with a government agency that has and is clearly violating human rights,” said Jelani Drew, a campaigner for Fight for the Future. “In history, tech has been used to drive the human suffering, oppression and tragedy. It’s time for Salesforce executives to pick which side of history to be on and what they want their legacy to be.”
The move comes after more than 650 Salesforce employees signed a petition calling on chief executive officer Marc Benioff to end the contract.
“Given the inhuman separation from their parents currently taking place at the border, we believe that our core value of Equality is at stake and that Salesforce should re-examine our contractual relationship with CBP and speak out against its practices,” the letter read, according to a copy viewed by Bloomberg News.
Benioff – who backed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election and has been highly critical of Trump – has told staff he shares their concerns. “I’m opposed to separating children from their families at the border. It is immoral,” Benioff wrote in a memo to Salesforce employees obtained by Bloomberg News. “I have personally financially supported legal groups helping families at the border. I also wrote to the White House to encourage them to end this horrible situation.”
But so far the company has made no moves to end the contract.
