No Tech for Apartheid: The 2023-2024 Google NYC Digital Memory Archive
Reviewed by: Alexandra Millatmal
Review date: March 1, 2025
Site Link: https://notechforapartheidmemory.com
Archive Link: http://archive.today/2025.03.02-022204/https://notechforapartheidmemory.com/
Keywords: Activism and Advocacy, Archiving, Big Tech, Public Humanities, Anthropology, Labor Studies
Data Sources:
- Primary sources (personal journal entries, pictures, legal documents, press articles and interviews)
- Media (art, newspapers, zines, flyers, stickers)
Processes:
- Some personal information is redacted in journal entries and legal documents.
- Some protest photos have interventions to cover protests faces / identifying information, but surprisingly not all do.
- Each entry has added metadata of type, date, and description.
Presentation:
The project is a web-based static media archive and timeline of No Tech for Apartheid protests — specifically around Project Nimbus at Google — in 2023 and 2024. The homepage features a short blurb about the project that directs users to the about section of the website, as well as a small sampling of archive materials and press links about the larger resistance movement against Project Nimbus, including the creator, Zelda Marcela Montes’ arrest and termination from Google.
Digital Tools Used:
- Cloudflare hosting
- Baserow database
- Python, Django API
- Bootstrap for frontend presentation
Languages:
- English
Review
The project’s creator, Marcela Montes, was an employee at Google involved in organizing with No Tech for Apartheid (NOTA) during the fall of 2023. The goals of the project were to raise awareness about NOTA and the campaign against Project Nimbus — a $1.2 billion dollar cloud infrastructure contract between Google, Amazon, and the Israeli government. Additionally, the project seeks to inform tech workers about organizing within their industry.
The project is composed of three parts: a timeline, archive, and press page.
- The timeline breaks down Marcela Montes’ story, from being introduced to NOTA in November 2023, through the worker sit-in at Google in April 2024. Each distinct step on the timeline is associated with pieces of media from the archive.
- The archive features the same media featured in the timeline, plus more. The entries appear to be sorted chronologically, and do not have the option to sort or filter by any other options. There is a mixture of originally-analog material that has been digitized as well as born-digital assets like digital photos, flyers, and sticker designs. When a site user clicks “learn more” underneath an object thumbnail, they are led to a standalone page for the object, where they can click into the photo of the object to make it larger.
- The press page includes links to press coverage of the campaign against Project Nimbus. Some of these have archival links as well, though it’s not clear why others do not.
It is not always clear if or how certain archival entries relate to the Project Nimbus campaign. Perhaps there could be more information that contextualizes the Project Nimbus campaign against the backdrop of the larger protest movement of that time. Additionally, I wish there were details about how the project ensures data integrity and safety, and information about its (non Google- or Amazon-provided!) web hosting.
Largely, this project accomplishes its goals of documenting the 2023 No Tech for Apartheid organizing against Project Nimbus. I commend the organizer for documenting a contemporary, controversial campaign as it was unfolding. But as a researcher who has also thought about projects centered around labor organizing, I’m curious about the gaps between sharing archival information and the imparting of knowledge of how organizing is achieved and what it wins. This is of course also balanced with a consideration of information security and is a fine balance to strike.
How are the collaborative aspects reflected in the project and are there elements that work particularly well?
It’s clear that there is a tight collaboration between Marcela Montes and NOTA, and the site benefits from linking its branding and resources to other NOTA pages.
Do you see an opportunity for collaboration that would be helpful to the project?
As mentioned, more contextualization about how this campaign was situated within the larger protest movement of the time would be helpful, especially since the archive features materials from other organizations and campaigns. Marcela Montes names the desire to extend the project to include wider NOTA work, which would be amazing and have a wide audience.