I organized the Google walkout. Here's why thousands are protesting.

More than a thousand Google employees walked out of work on Thursday to protest how the company handles sexual harassment.

Erica Anderson, who the Head of News Ecosystems at Google News Lab, helped organize the employee walkout after a New York Times article on Oct. 25 exposed how the company had protected powerful men, provided some executives accused of sexual misconduct with multimillion-dollar severance packages, and detailed multiple allegations that were handled improperly. “This is a grassroots moment,” she says. “We have to hold our company accountable because it matters.”

Anderson, who’s been at the tech giant for nearly three years, says she knew she had to help give a voice to other women and men in tech. “I felt like I needed to get involved if only to step up for other people who don’t have the voice right now,” she tells Makers.

Protests at the global company started in Asia and quickly spread across continents, with workers walking out at 11 a.m. in each time zone.

Those participating in the walkout included men, women, and gender nonconforming individuals, and Anderson says seeing the solidarity is extraordinary. “It creates this sense of strength that we’re not alone. That this isn’t happening in isolation and that collectively, we want the company — we need the company — to do better,” she says.

Anderson is working to make sure that the conversation doesn’t end after the protest and that the walkout leads to change. On Wednesday, along with six fellow organizers, she released a list of five demands to Google’s leadership team, including an end to forced arbitration and the promotion of the chief diversity officer.

“We’re trying to be specific with the demands to make it easy for leadership to sit down, review them, and take action,” she says. “A company is nothing without its workers. From the moment we start at Google, we’re told that we aren’t just employees; we’re owners. Every person who walked out today is an owner, and the owners say: Time’s up.”

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