An Open Letter To Ryan Holmes, CEO of Hootsuite
Hi Ryan –
It’s us again, Democracy Rising. We’re pretty sure you got the letter we sent last week. We emailed you, we shared it with your team via social media, and we even sent it via registered mail. There’s almost no way you didn’t get.
But maybe you didn’t. So we’ll recap a bit a of it:
First of all, we wanted to congratulate you on your new (old) role as CEO of Hootsuite.
We here at Democracy Rising have been following your company for a while and are optimistic that you’ll bring about positive change.
Specifically, we are hoping that you will make the decision to drop the contract that Hootsuite has with ICE (or DHS, or any other similar American government organizations. They’re all pretty rotten right now). This work was covered in the media here, here, here, here, and probably a lot of other places.
In fact, we’re event putting out a petition for your employees, the Vancouver tech community, and Canadians to ask you top drop that contract. You can check the petition out here.
We’re group of people here in Vancouver who have been closely watching events in the United States over the last little while, and in particular the erosion of their constitution and the expansion of a network of detention centres with famously inhumane living standards.
By continuing to work with ICE you are demonstrating that your company actively supports those activities.
We called upon your predecessor, Irina Novoselsky, to cancel contracts with the U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement agency of the Dept. of Homeland Services. We were frustrated with her response, which addressed only whether that agency was following Hootsuite’s terms of service. She never addressed the actions of ICE or the particulars of your company’s work for ICE.
As you no doubt are aware, ICE has been violating U.S. law and incarcerating people without criminal records who are legally going through the immigration process. They have detained thousands of children.
They have gunned down people in the streets and blocked any investigations while labelling citizens who disagree with government actions as domestic terrorists. Again, your continued work with them demonstrates that you actively support those activities.
Your leadership represents an opportunity for Hootsuite to realign itself with Canadian values and distance itself from fascism.
Whether you like it or not, your own personal legacy is closely tied to that of Hootsuite’s reputation.
if you cancel the contract with ICE we’d love to celebrate with you, and we’re sure businesses in Vancouver and even your own employees would join us. We know that there a few good breweries in the neighbourhood who would welcome us. And we’ll buy you the first round.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Yours always,
Democracy Rising
PS: If you’re not Ryan Holmes and made it this far you might want to add your name to the petition to get Hootsuite to drop the contract with ICE.
