Grievance - Racial minorities (specifically, black people) are unfairly discriminated against by law enforcement.
Just because, in this case, this tragic situation was deemed a legally acceptable use of force, doesn't mean that racial minorities are not generally discriminated against by law enforcement.
Similarly, just because this case wasn't a clear-cut case of gender discrimination, doesn't mean it isn't still a valid problem in this industry.
Michael Brown supporters/witnesses made claims about that situation that were later shown to be false.
I am arguing that the public ties the validity of that case to the underlying grievance.
Same here: If people think Pao was lying or view her negatively, that causes quite a bit of harm to her cause.
"made a reference to a woman’s testimony who claimed she had seen the shooting of the black teenager by the white officer, but she “clearly wasn’t present” at the scene. McCulloch reportedly said that the woman “recounted a story right out of the newspaper" that backed Wilson’s version of events surrounding the fatal shooting that occurred Aug. 9."[1]
"Most of the dozens of witnesses who testified likely did their best to describe what they saw, but a review of thousands of pages of grand jury documents shows that untrustworthy testimony came from some witnesses on both sides." [2]
"Key Witness In Michael Brown Case May Not Have Actually Seen Him Die, Report Says" [3]
[1] http://www.ibtimes.com/mike-brown-shooting-witnesses-gave-fa...
[2] http://edition.cnn.com/2014/12/14/justice/ferguson-witnesses...
[3] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/16/sandra-mcelroy-ferg...
The point/original statement is that people should not do this; whatever did or did not happen with Michael Brown and Ellen Pao in their specific cases does not actually have any bearing on whether there are general issues with race or gender discrimination in this country. Which IMO at least there clearly are.
I would much rather that the media focuses on the trials of the underrepresented many who are facing real gender discrimination in the workplace.