is a senior editor and author of Notepad , who has been covering all things Microsoft, PC, and tech for over 20 years.
Some Microsoft employees are willing to risk everything to protest their employer. No Azure for Apartheid, a group led by current and former Microsoft employees, started last year as a petition to Microsoft executives. It demanded that Microsoft end all Azure contracts and partnerships with the Israeli military and government, disclose all ties, call for a ceasefire in Gaza, and protect pro-Palestinian speech.
Microsoft hasn’t met any of these bold demands, so the group has turned to increasingly brazen actions at Microsoft events, the company’s headquarters, and now the homes and offices of Microsoft executives to get results. Microsoft downplays how many employees are involved, but many are quietly working behind the scenes to help get the message out.
While the petition failed to have an impact, a louder protest outside Microsoft’s headquarters kickstarted a wave of public activism. Two of the organizers of No Azure for Apartheid — Abdo Mohamed and Hossam Nasr — were fired for disrupting colleagues with “bullhorns and speakers.” They’ve been recruiting Microsoft employees, other tech workers, and community members ever since. The group has since made headlines for interrupting Microsoft executives during a 50th anniversary celebration and at the company’s Build developer conference earlier this year.
The protests have escalated dramatically in recent weeks. Microsoft executive Teresa Hutson was targeted on August 7th by the group, which gathered more than 30 people carrying Palestinian flags and signs reading “WANTED for PROFITING from GENOCIDE” outside her house. The group covered the sidewalk in front of her home in red paint and scrawled “Teresa Hutson kills” in chalk on the road.
The chalk and red paint outside a Microsoft executive’s home (blurred and cropped to remove details). Image: No Azure for Apartheid
Huston is Microsoft’s CVP of the Trusted Technology Group, and not an EVP or senior executive at the company. “She publicly describes herself as the owner of the human rights work at Microsoft and delivers the Responsible AI Transparency Report, making her one of the key complicit executives,” says Abdo Mohamed in a message to The Verge.
The group had previously targeted Hutson on June 18th at an ethics and tech conference at Seattle University, where she was due to speak. “When no Azure for Apartheid disrupted the first Microsoft speaker, she ended up leaving the conference to avoid us,” says Mohamed.
The rally outside Hutson’s house — which included speeches and protesters carrying wanted signs with the executive’s headshot — marked a serious escalation in what the group was willing to do to get Microsoft to respond to its demands.
Protesters also carried wanted signs and banners (blurred to remove details). Image: No Azure for Apartheid
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