Apple Store Protest in Palo Alto

September 20 was “Apple Accountability Day”, an international day of action.

Apples Against Apartheid, a group of current and former Apple Inc. employees, and Genocost Belgium spearheaded the action. Organizers called for people around the world to protest at Apple stores and otherwise disrupt business as usual because the company is complicit in the genocide in Palestine and it contributes to the horrific human rights abuses happening in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Apple's Board of Directors includes war profiteers and the Zionist nonprofit Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces is eligible for matching employee donations.

Protests took place in more than a dozen cities including Brussels, Paris, London, Berlin, New York, Los Angeles, Capetown S.A., Amsterdam, Sidney, and Tokyo. In the San Francisco Bay Area stores in San Francisco, Emeryville and Palo Alto were targets.

The Palo Alto demonstration was led by the Raging Grannies, San Jose Against War (SJAW), and San Mateo Peace Action; it ran from late afternoon and through the early evening. The Grannies sang songs they wrote for the occasion and chanted "Free, free Palestine" and "Free, free the Congo children" to a drum beat.

One of the Grannies explained, "Apple creates excessive demand for illegally mined minerals that kill people. As a group of older women we are particularly concerned when children’s lives are endangered. Children as young as six years are forced in enslaved conditions to work in coltan mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo to mine the minerals used in Apple Inc. products.”

While passing out fliers to people leaving the Apple store, customers standing in line to enter, and to passersby, members of the Grannies and San Jose Against War explained that while it is true that other tech companies use coltan, a conflict mineral, this day of action focused on Apple because it was the release day for the iPhone 16 model. Activists emphasized that Apple's advertising encourages consumers to purchase new model products in a frenetic manner without considering true need.