55: The Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement

When two employees at Polaroid discovered their company’s technology was being used by the South African government to help enforce apartheid, they protested and called for an international boycott of their employer until it withdrew from that country. It was one of the first anti-apartheid protests against a major U.S. corporation and the beginning of the broader divestment movement that followed. Polaroid’s leadership responded with steps it thought could help Black South Africans, and its efforts pose a question we still grapple with today: What responsibility do corporations have to promote social justice and human rights around the world?

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