Overview

As many of us are aware, technology plays an ever-increasing role in our society and it is vital that our community has a voice in the decisions that are made.

Techqueria’s mission is to advance Latinx professionals within the tech industry. We want to take a moment to talk about how this impacts Techqueria as an organization.

One of the ways we generate revenue as a nonprofit is by partnering with tech companies on events and digital marketing. We must decide which companies to partner with and how those partnerships impact our community.

This is where our values come in:

• Community First
• Radical Inclusion
• Over Communication
• Positive Vibes
• Data-Driven

Our highest value is being community-first and in order for values to have meaning, we must apply them to actions.

In particular, this translates to Techqueria having a firm policy that we will not partner with companies who are known to work with and support ICE.

ICE’s agenda and efforts have directly torn apart families, harmed children, violated human rights, and actively support a racist agenda.

Leaders of tech companies need to recognize there are consequences when they make these kinds of deals. We want to send a clear message that this is not okay.

Many of our members and their families suffer due to the abusive actions of ICE and Techqueria has even had one of our own volunteers, Carlos Martinez, detained by ICE.

While Techqueria does not partner with these companies, we understand that the Latinx employees of these companies can benefit from our community and events. So while we hold these companies accountable for their actions, we still want to support and offer resources to their employees.

Call to Action

If your company supports ICE, we encourage you to:

• ENACT change from the inside
• REFUSE to design tools that power ICE
• FOLLOW the work of Mijente who started the #NoTechForICE campaign
• WORK somewhere else, if you are able to