Above photo: No Azure for Apartheid demonstration on Microsoft’s campus in Redwood, Washington, Aug. 20, 2025. No Azure for Apartheid
As the United Nations’ world food crisis authority finally declared a famine in Gaza, direct action demonstrators protested war profiteer Microsoft, whose technology is used to aid the U.S./Israeli war, which is committing genocide in Gaza.
After months of protests in Seattle, on Aug. 20 and 21 worker-led activists took the struggle to Microsoft’s vast campus in Redmond, Washington, where No Azure for Apartheid and Bilyad Seattle exposed Microsoft’s complicity.
On Aug. 20, around 35 current and former Microsoft workers and solidarity activists set up a protest encampment on the East Campus Plaza of Microsoft. They claimed it as the Martyred Palestinian Children’s Plaza. They left when Microsoft asked them to leave, but returned the next day and declared their occupation is not going anywhere!
These activists demonstrated and were seen by many of the workers on the campus. They refused to leave, upholding the righteousness of their cause. Then the Redmond cops and state troopers attacked and brutalized the worker-led demonstrators. They were attacked for peacefully protesting Microsoft’s crimes in aiding the war on Gaza. Red paint, representing the blood of the Palestinians, was spread across the plaza. Twenty demonstrators were arrested.
According to the Aug.6 Guardian, the Israeli occupation forces use Microsoft’s Azure Cloud computing platform to store call data obtained through the mass surveillance of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. The Associated Press has reported about Microsoft’s close relationship with the Israeli Ministry of Defense, with the military’s use of artificial intelligence skyrocketing nearly 200 times since October 7, 2023.
Microsoft is near the top of the world of capitalist exploitation with an enterprise value of $3.79 trillion. Even with their wealth, they laid off 15,000 workers in May and June of this year. The company represents a merger of hi-tech corporations with the big Pentagon contractors, Big Oil and the imperialist banks in forcing war and occupation throughout West Asia and around the world.
On Aug. 23, demonstrations were held in eight cities around the U.S. against hi-tech Pentagon contractor Palantir Technologies. Demonstrators at the corporation’s office in Seattle loudly protested the violence-producing effects of Palantir technology in Palestine and domestically against migrant workers.
