The Real Story Behind the 2018 Google Walkout

2018年谷歌大罢工背后的真实故事

In 2018, Claire Stapleton was living in New York, raising a young child, and working at Google as a marketing manager. In October of that year, upset with how the company had handled sexual harassment claims, she helped organize what became known as the Women’s Walkout. In this new excerpt from her book Don’t Be Evil, she explains how one Google Group helped start it all.

2018年，克莱尔·斯台普顿（Claire Stapleton）住在纽约，一边抚养年幼的孩子，一边在谷歌担任营销经理。那年10月，由于对公司处理性骚扰指控的方式感到不满，她协助组织了后来被称为“女性大罢工”（Women’s Walkout）的活动。在她新书《别作恶》（Don’t Be Evil）的节选中，她讲述了一个谷歌群组（Google Group）是如何开启这一切的。

On the Saturday after I started the womens-walk Google Group, I sprang awake at 6 and opened my laptop, stealing time before my son Malcolm stirred. My inbox was dotted with the usual weekend emails from my manager, Marion. We were in the middle of a big push involving Article 13, a piece of EU legislation that would hold platforms liable for user-generated content. I’d strenuously avoided learning the ins and outs of this particular bit of lobbyist infighting. But the drumbeat went on. “#SaveYourInternet!” we screeched from our Twitter and Instagram accounts, multiple times a day, with slick branded graphics. It was supposedly “top urgency,” despite being both inside baseball and counter to every brand goal we’d set for the year.

在我创建“womens-walk”谷歌群组后的那个周六，我早上6点就醒了，打开笔记本电脑，趁儿子马尔科姆（Malcolm）还没醒抓紧时间工作。我的收件箱里充斥着经理玛丽恩（Marion）发来的常规周末邮件。当时我们正全力推进一项名为“第13条”（Article 13）的欧盟立法，该法案要求平台对用户生成的内容承担责任。我一直极力避免去了解这些游说团体内部斗争的细节，但这种宣传攻势从未停止。我们每天多次在Twitter和Instagram账号上发布精美的品牌图片，高喊着“#拯救你的互联网！”（#SaveYourInternet!）。尽管这只是圈内人的博弈，且与我们全年设定的所有品牌目标背道而驰，但它被标榜为“最高紧急事项”。

I’d been at YouTube long enough to know the truth: If Google wanted this law overturned so badly, Article 13 was probably good for the world. The company didn’t want limits on growth, accountability, or liability; it wanted a frictionless, consequence-free internet and the endless consolidation of power that came with it.

我在YouTube工作的时间足够长，足以看清真相：如果谷歌如此迫切地想要推翻这项法律，那么“第13条”很可能对世界是有益的。公司不希望增长、问责或责任受到限制；它想要的是一个无摩擦、无需承担后果的互联网，以及随之而来的无休止的权力整合。

I couldn’t absorb Marion’s Saturday to-do list. My mind was consumed by the Women’s Walk. I refreshed the tab where I’d set up the new Google Group. An avalanche of names had joined—only a handful I knew. Most were strangers, and yet their presence felt like a new kind of belonging.

我无法消化玛丽恩周六布置的任务清单。我的心思全在“女性大罢工”上。我刷新了创建新谷歌群组的标签页。大量名字涌入——我认识的寥寥无几。大多数人都是陌生人，但他们的存在让我感受到了一种全新的归属感。

I wasn’t overthinking anything; I was just writing, sending, doing. The energy was right there, primed. I typed an email—from my own account, my name fully attached, come what may.

我没有多想；我只是在写、在发、在做。那种能量就在那里，蓄势待发。我写了一封邮件——用我自己的账号，署上我的真名，无论后果如何。

From: Claire Stapleton Sat, Oct 27, 2018 at 6:46 am To: womens-walk rolls up sleeves welcome to ground zero of the google women’s walkout / a day without women (naming/branding tbd). couple of open Q’s for the group (200 of us and counting!) as we start to formulate the statement of purpose and next steps: what do you hope this collective action accomplishes (could be what we express/communicate to leadership, could be an action leadership agrees to take, could be a more existential cultural change we set into motion)? put another way: why are you here? thoughts on when we should do it? mindful of giving us enough time to make this as global, inclusive, and big as we can while also capitalizing on the rage-buzz-momentum we have flowing right now. there’s also the US midterms (a week from Tuesday) to consider. please forward to friends who’d be interested in getting involved. –claire

发件人：克莱尔·斯台普顿，2018年10月27日，周六，上午6:46 收件人：womens-walk 卷起袖子 欢迎来到谷歌女性大罢工的零点地带 / 女性罢工日（名称/品牌待定）。 在我们开始制定宗旨声明和后续步骤时，向群组（我们已有200人，且人数还在增加！）提出几个开放性问题： 你希望这次集体行动达成什么目标（可以是我们要向领导层表达/沟通的内容，可以是领导层同意采取的行动，也可以是我们推动的某种更深层的文化变革）？换句话说： 你为什么在这里？ 关于我们应该何时行动有什么想法？既要考虑到给我们足够的时间，让这次活动尽可能全球化、包容且规模宏大，又要利用我们现在拥有的愤怒、热度和势头。此外，还要考虑美国中期选举（下周二的一周后）。 请转发给有兴趣参与的朋友。 –克莱尔

Replies shuffled in all weekend. People wrote under their real names; the anonymity cloak was gone. The I’m so fucking mad emails gave way to discussions of culture, then strategy. We made our first decision almost immediately: The walkout would be Thursday, November 1—just five days away. The US midterms were November 6; waiting would dilute everything, especially our greatest asset: rage.

整个周末，回复纷至沓来。人们用真名发帖；匿名外衣被抛弃了。那些“我他妈太愤怒了”的邮件逐渐转变为对文化和策略的讨论。我们几乎立刻做出了第一个决定：罢工定在11月1日周四——仅剩五天。美国中期选举在11月6日；等待只会稀释一切，尤其是我们最大的资产：愤怒。

What followed was a week at Google unlike any other. Here’s how it unfolded.

接下来的那一周，谷歌经历了一段前所未有的时光。事情是这样展开的。

The Walkout was all I wanted to work on, but there was the usual rigmarole first. Article 13 had momentarily faded, so we pivoted to a slate of uninspired Halloween tweets—special-effects makeup tutorials, a stop-motion pumpkin. The contrast between that bullshit and the walkout planning—with its electricity and urgency as women across Google convened—was almost psychedelic.

我只想专注于罢工，但首先还得应付那些常规的繁文缛节。“第13条”暂时淡出了视线，于是我们转而发布一系列毫无灵感的万圣节推文——特效化妆教程、定格动画南瓜。那种胡闹与罢工筹备工作之间的反差——随着谷歌各地的女性汇聚，那种电力感和紧迫感——简直让人产生幻觉。

A project manager named Tanuja reached out and offered to help. We met in a conference room in my building; she was hyper-organized, fired up, ready to project-manage the hell out of this. In 45 minutes, we outlined a rough plan and built an internal site: a “hub and spoke” model with local leads in every office, each customizing the day with their own stories and flair.

一位名叫塔努贾（Tanuja）的项目经理联系了我，提出帮忙。我们在我办公楼的一间会议室见了面；她条理极其清晰，充满干劲，准备全力以赴地管理这个项目。在45分钟内，我们勾勒出了一个粗略的计划并建立了一个内部网站：一种“中心辐射型”模式，每个办公室都有当地负责人，每个人都可以用自己的故事和风格来定制当天的活动。

Tanuja was another good girl pushed to the brink. Rule follower. Devoted worker. And now: ready to step out of line and not care who saw. I left the meeting fortified. This was what solidarity felt like—so different from the solitary, self-erasing “teamwork” I’d practiced for years.

塔努贾是另一个被逼到边缘的“乖乖女”。守规矩，工作勤奋。而现在：她准备好越界，并且不在乎谁会看到。离开会议时，我感到内心强大了许多。这就是团结的感觉——与我多年来实践的那种孤独的、自我抹杀式的“团队合作”截然不同。

That night, as I cooked dinner for Malcolm and my husband, Shane, I took a call from a guy named Amr. He’d chimed in to the womens-walk group with a warning: Yes, we had a legally protected right to organize, but Google would likely push back hard. It was bracing to hear aloud: The company was almost certainly monitoring us, taking note.

那天晚上，当我为马尔科姆和丈夫肖恩（Shane）做晚饭时，接到了一个名叫阿姆尔（Amr）的人打来的电话。他在womens-walk群组里发过警告：是的，我们有法律保护的组织权利，但谷歌很可能会进行强力反击。亲耳听到这些令人警醒：公司几乎肯定在监视我们，并记录在案。

Amr described himself as an “entry-level engineer,” which was a bit of shtick but also refreshing—the rare person at Google who didn’t care about posturing their seniority, calling themselves a “global head” of whatever microscopic-in-the-grand-scheme project they’d been assigned to. He was incredibly knowledgeable and passionate about organizing—he had organized restaurant workers in the South after college with the Fight for $15 movement and had been involved in various activist causes at Google since the day he joined. He referred to management as “the bosses,” a phrase I’d never heard in the company’s Disneyland of techno-optimism.

阿姆尔自称是“初级工程师”，这有点自嘲，但也让人耳目一新——他是谷歌里罕见的不在乎摆弄资历的人，不会把自己称为某个微不足道项目的“全球负责人”。他在组织工作方面知识渊博且充满热情——大学毕业后，他曾参与“争取15美元”（Fight for $15）运动，组织过南方的餐饮业工人，自加入谷歌以来，他一直参与各种激进事业。他称管理层为“老板们”（the bosses），这个词我在公司那充满技术乐观主义的“迪士尼乐园”里从未听过。

He told me we had an obligation to use our privilege to check Google’s power. The directness of that sentence alone was disorienting.

他告诉我，我们有义务利用我们的特权来制衡谷歌的权力。单是这句话的直接程度就让人感到迷茫。

Amr, along with a woman named Meredith Whittaker, had been organizing opposition to Maven, the Department of Defense project that used Google’s AI for drone surveillance and targeting. I’d heard her name for years—she was known as a rare example of actual moral clarity inside Google. We had mutual friends, and she was a fellow Californian who’d joined Google at roughly the same golden-era moment I had.

阿姆尔和一位名叫梅雷迪思·惠特克（Meredith Whittaker）的女性一直在组织反对“Maven”项目，这是美国国防部的一个项目，利用谷歌的人工智能进行无人机监视和目标锁定。我听过她的名字很多年了——她被认为是谷歌内部罕见的具有真正道德清醒的例子。我们有共同的朋友，她也是加州人，加入谷歌的时间和我差不多，都在那个黄金时代。

Meredith had a mane of wild brown curls and dressed in head-to-toe black, a cross between a philosopher and a downtown artist. She carried a gro…

梅雷迪思留着一头狂野的棕色卷发，全身穿着黑色衣服，看起来既像哲学家又像市中心的艺术家。她带着一个……