Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement and Gaza
Hidden in the 53 minute documentary applauding Land as a difficult but liberal innovator (he hired black employees during the civil rights movement and women in leadership positions) is a tangential story about two black Polaroid employees - Caroline Hunter and Ken Williams. They discovered that at the peak of Polaroid’s business, the company was selling its technology to the apartheid government of South Africa. In response they started the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement, which organized employees, protested on Polaroid’s campus, interrupted executive appearances, called for a public boycott of Polaroid and over the course of a decade, their efforts resulted in the divestment of Polaroid from South Africa, the first major US company to do so.
In the same week that “Mr. Polaroid” was released, Microsoft employees were fired for PRWM-inspired tactics in response to Microsoft’s cloud services and AI products being sold to the Israeli military, who are currently waging a genocide against Palestine.
Revolution is not new. Corporate support of apartheid and war is not new. Just as Polaroid set a template for the founders and tech companies of today, the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement set a template for how we continue to fight apartheid and hold power structures accountable for their complicity. And their actions serve as a reminder that the fight for justice is a long one - we can’t measure it in months or even years. It spans decades and generations.
I struggle with that reality, with time as constraint...how can we quite literally stop the bleeding while leaving room to build what comes next? It took the PWRM 10 years to accomplish their goals of divesting Polaroid from apartheid South Africa. The movement followed suit. We too have to keep working towards both ends - minimize suffering, maximize imagination - on a time scale that might go beyond our own understanding of change.
Read more about the PRWM: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/when-polaroid-workers-fought-apartheid/
Learn about Microsoft employee organizing with No Azure for Apartheid: https://noazureforapartheid.com/petition/
Read about the chaotic and now deadly aid deliveries from the GHF: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/04/briefing/gaza-aid-shootings.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Mk8.zmIX.09FHAJ6L3boA&smid=url-share
Watch Mr. Polaroid: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/mr-polaroid/#part01