The Netflix trans employee resource group is organizing a walkout across the company on October 20th in protest of Ted Sarandos' statements regarding Dave Chappelles comedy special The Closer.
Trans Lives Matter. Trans Rights Matter. Netflix, as an organization has failed to care deeply about its mission to Entertain the World. They have repeatedly released content that is harmful to the Trans community and continue to fail to make content that supports and encourages Trans content. In an internal organizing message, a trans leader wrote that we can and must do better.
This event is happening as Netflix reinstates Terra Field and two others who were suspended for attending a meeting at director level they weren't invited to. According to sources familiar with the matter, Field had posted a viral tweet about the Dave Chappelle special. She claimed it attacked the trans community and its validity. Netflix will now issue guidance to its employees about its meeting attendance policy.
Related Netflix: Trans employee suspended for tweeting about Dave Chappelle special
Netflix employees claim that Ted Sarandos' comments only exacerbated the situation. The executive sent an email to his employees on October 8th stating that the company would not take down the special. He said that he did not believe Chappelles stand up had crossed a line.
Sarandos wrote a second memo, saying: We hope that you can be enormously inspired by entertaining people around the world while living with titles that we strongly believe should not be on Netflix. You may be wondering if Netflix is still worth your time. I hope you can.
Chappelle addressed criticisms from the LGBTQ community and then doubled down his jokes about transgender people in the special. Trans activists, groups such as GLAAD or the National Black Justice Coalition have criticized Chappelle's stand-up act.
Organizers wrote internally: We have discussed via Slack and email, text, as well as other means, that our leadership has demonstrated they don't uphold the values we hold dear. We have received numerous emails with no answers and been told explicity that we cannot understand certain nuances.
