A Progressive Firm Fired A Partner For Allegedly Assaulting A Female Staffer. Soon She Was Gone, Too
By all outside appearances, 2016 was the year Revolution Messaging arrived. The upstart political firm, founded by alumni of Barack Obama’s presidential runs, was the mastermind behind the punk-rock vibe of Bernie Sanders’ campaign and helped him raise a staggering $218 million in small donations.
But inside the firm, the staff was in revolt.
Revolution forced out a female employee in early 2016, just two months after one of the company’s partners ― her supervisor ― had been accused of physically assaulting her at a company holiday function, several people with knowledge of the incident said. The firm had quickly fired the partner. But multiple Revolution employees worried that the woman’s departure was retaliatory ― and symptomatic of a workplace in which some women and people of color felt overlooked or marginalized.
By mid-February of that year, employees at the Washington, D.C., firm were circulating a draft letter to management demanding to know whether the woman had been forced out as an act of retaliation.
“If it is the case, as we fear, that [her] employment was involuntarily terminated just two months after being assaulted by her supervisor and a partner at the firm,” the letter read, “that would be untenable.”
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But Revolution’s leadership failed to live up to the ideals that are its stock in trade, according to nine former employees. They described a company where the most thankless positions were usually held by women and where people of color sometimes felt their opportunities for growth or visibility were constrained. “People were very frustrated by the hypocrisy of the leadership in the face of the values they espouse,” one former employee said.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/revolution-messaging-assault-female-staffer_us_5a8cd12fe4b0273053a5baad
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