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Comment by davidw | Hacker News Reader

If by "politics" you mean "not being harassed" or "paid the same for the same work", yes, yes you should be free to bring that to work. Every damn day.

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Harassment is a crime and plenty of workplace laws are in place for that.

If Google fired someone for speaking up against an incident of harassment that would be a huge story in the media.

Yes, if only there was some news story alleging that Google treated workers poorly after raising harassment concerns. Sounds like you want to see that!

She reported an incident of sexual harassment that was ignored and then she was fired?

I can't speak specifically to this case, but yes, that happens all the damn time. Higher-ups are protected in harassment incidents and the victim is retaliated against.

From the actual article: ```She was one of six women who organized massive walkouts after reports that Google paid handsome sums to executives accused of sexual harassment.```

She didn't report those incidents. She merely organized a generic protest.

I have no idea why her reporting or not reporting these incidents is relevant. Also not sure why this the protest was 'generic'. Your comment comes off as dismissive without any substance. Please feel free to elaborate.

Because it doesn't make sense to protect anybody who mentions an incident of sexual harassment from being fired. Because then everybody would be protected from being fired, because everybody can tell a story of some incident they read in the news. Presumably the law is supposed to protect people who have been harassed and report it.

So...You shouldn't be able to protest something unless you personally experienced it? Like, if my buddy was sexually harassed, and I wanted to change the culture in my company to reduce the likelihood of this happening again, I shouldn't because I didn't have it happen to me? Your argument seems to be making a lot of assumptions that I don't share.

You can protest whatever you want. But it should also be possible to fire you.

Protesting against something doesn't magically turn you into a superior person that is exempt from mundane things like being fired or being disliked.

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