How I lost my job but kept my voice & what I’m going to do next.

Calling all free thinkers. Join me at Sey Everything.

After two years of advocating for open schools and kids during Covid, a position I thought was in line with what “good progressives” would have cared about prior to March 2020, I was pushed out of my job as the first ever female Levi’s Brand President.

After 22.5 years at the company, leading a signature ad campaign urging consumers to use their voices in support of the causes they care about, a campaign that helped bring the brand back from the brink of bankruptcy, I was told there was no longer a place for me because I’d used mine.

My views were too controversial. In defending children I’d challenged Public Health authorities and Democratic party leaders. I didn’t care if people died. I was racist and anti-science and a host of other terrible unemployable things.

Amidst the maelstrom of today’s unforgiving and relentless identity politics, my challenging California’s 18-month closure of public schools was an egregious offense.

Amidst corporate America’s dramatic drift leftward, or at least the assumption of a leftward pose in an effort to pander to a new generations of employees and younger, hipper customers, I was an abomination and in violation of the unspoken rule at Levi’s – use your voice, but only if you say what we want you to.

So I was unemployed.

I was offered severance to walk away quietly. I chose to resign and walk away with my voice.

In addition to losing my job, I lost friends and suffered from fractured family relationships. All because of my views and how I expressed them.

My conclusion: for all too many, identity politics and loyalty to party take precedence over content and ideas, free speech, logic, data and even truth. And sometimes your colleagues, friends and family will decide you’re too problematic, too deviant, and they will sever ties altogether. And they’ll feel pretty righteous and morally superior for doing so.

Free speech is no longer permitted because it threatens the endorsed narrative of those in power.  We are told to reject anyone who proffers “misinformation” or simply holds the “wrong view”. And belief in “wokism” and all its attendant principles including cancel culture, is an article of faith, a requirement – almost religious in nature.

You must believe, proof or no proof; if you do not you are cast aside as a heretic, unfit for polite society. Cancelled.

You may be a lifelong lefty like I was, but you’re cancelled because you obviously wanted black children to die if you thought schools should be open.

Once I came to understand all of this, I questioned everything. The scales had fallen from my eyes and the reality I once took for granted - the integrity and honesty of those I’d affiliated with for decades - all came apart at the seams.

I did not retreat. I challenged. Because my voice is what I have left.

I want to discuss and openly debate issues and how they are presented by the media. I want to come out of my corner and have conversations with people I dismissed in the past. I reject the notion that veering one step – or even ten steps! - outside the conventional narrative, makes me an unemployable bigot [or insert any defaming appellation here - anti vaxxer, white supremacist, anti-masker, granny killer, fat-phobe.]

I have met so many people in the past two years from all sides of the political spectrum, from all walks of life, who just want to be able to talk about stuff. To not be deemed outside the boundaries of society because they ask questions or simply show any understanding of and empathy for the “other side.”

Like me, they feel the world has gone mad when they are told to dismiss family and friends because they vote for someone different or (gasp!) choose not to get vaccinated.

These folks seek truth rather than righteousness and moral superiority from dismissing others’ views as repugnant. They are curious and interested in being challenged. They exhibit empathy for the other side’s arguments even when they don’t agree.

I want to contribute to opening up dialogue again. I want Sey Everything to be a place where folks can interact, share their thoughts, challenge the authorized and government-endorsed, party-sanctioned, media-touted stories of the day.

I’ll write about rampant censorship and illiberalism in our nation’s institutions, which started on university campuses and has bled into corporations across the country.

I’ll talk about “woke capitalism”, which demands that a woman who stands up for kids and their right to an education be fired from a company that urges their fans to use their voices. And then continues to profit off of this hollow exhortation.

I’ll talk about my projects – a book and a documentary feature film – that are related to these subjects.  

I’ll interview people who share some of my views and some I disagree with on lots of things. I might share books I’m reading or films I’ve watched that made me think about an issue differently than I had before.

I also want to talk about relationships – being a parent, a spouse, a friend. How do you maintain connection in such a divided world? It’s not easy but it is so important. Fractured relationships may be the saddest part of all this discord.

Topics and subject matter to be tackled:

• How do we as a society bring back respect for free expression? What can we do as individuals to slowly inch our way back to this?

• How did corporate culture get sucked into the censorship and demands for conformity? Why did the formerly right-leaning corporatists convert (or pretend to convert) to left-wing activism and how can they even claim this to be the case given their overarching goal is to make money?

• My projects – a memoir and a documentary film about the impact of closed schools on kids during Covid. I’ll share snippets, things I’m thinking about including or not including and share behind the scenes clips from the film.

• Conversations with readers/subscribers.

• Relationships – raising kids, being married, having (and sometimes losing) friends.

I’m still sad about not working at Levi’s anymore. It was the thing I’d done longer than anything in my entire life. I lost community, friends, the future I’d planned for myself.

But I kept my voice. And that is more important. I don’t know how I could have lived with myself if I’d heeded all of the many the warnings and just stayed quiet so I could get promoted and make lots of money.

I hope Sey Everything can be a place where people, who perhaps have heterodox views or views that just don’t align 100% “right” or 100% “left”, can come and glean some sense of community. You aren’t crazy because you see things differently than how they are consistently presented by the media, by political parties, by your friends.

My aim is to be inclusive of all viewpoints. The only thing I’ll reject is gross disrespect and not in this new-fangled words are violence kind of way. You can disagree with me and other readers/commenters, that’s fine. But no doxxing or name calling, personal insults or ad hominem attacks. Just lively discussion. I can take it. And so can you.

I think there are a growing number of people who are interested in this kind of thing. There are a lot of men in this space. People like John McWhorter, Douglas Murray, Glenn Greenwald and Bill Maher. There aren’t that many women because we tend to be peacemakers and avoid making trouble. We often, not always, don’t like not being liked. I’ve gotten over that of late.

There are quite literally zero women from corporate America talking about standing up to this kind of group-think and censoriousness in companies. Zero.

We’ve got Sheryl Sandberg telling us we need to lean in but no one explaining to us how to deal with being a whole human being while trying to do our jobs. Lean in but don’t talk! Lean in but only a little? No thank you.

More than 50% of American workers are employed by corporations. There is no way they are all woke lefties. 

2/3s of Americans say they feel they can’t say what they really think. What are we doing?

Someone has to start speaking out and it might as well be me. Thanks to Bari Weiss and Common Sense for leading the way and giving me a platform to share my story.

There simply aren’t enough women calling out the bullshit and I aim to be one. I’ll share frontline details of what it’s like to be a woman in corporate America, and what it’s like to be a free thinker in woke corporate America. I will challenge this stupid and illogical binary - left vs right, good vs evil, you’re with us or against us. And hopefully be a small part of bringing together the truth seekers, the free thinkers, the alt middle, the unaffiliated.

I’m one of them.

If you’re one too, or even if you aren’t, welcome!

Lastly, please subscribe.

If you can afford it, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. It is my fondest hope that with your help, we can build a community where we can say everything. And debate it. And disagree. And still respect each other. I can’t wait to hear from you.

Later today, I’ll post an excerpt from my upcoming book!

Thank you.