Several reports have confirmed that transgender employees at Netflix are planning a walk-out protest to show their disproval of Dave Chappelle’s controversial comedy special The Closer and the streaming service’s refusal to cancel Chappelle’s edgy stand-up.
It is being reported that all transgender employees of Netflix and all those who consider themselves allies to the LGBTQ community, will join the October 20th walk-out. This comes after three transgender employees who were suspended were reinstated following their own individual means of protest.
A memo has circulated among the transgender employees, stating, “Trans Lives Matter. Trans Rights Matter. And as an organization, Netflix has continually failed to show deep care in our mission to Entertain the World by repeatedly releasing content that harms the Trans community and continually failing to create content that represents and uplifts Trans content. We can and must do better!”
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Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos sent a memo to all Netflix employees discussing the Dave Chappelle special and in the memo he states, I wanted to follow up on ‘The Closer’ – Dave Chappelle’s latest special – as several of you have reached out following QBR asking what to say to your teams. It never feels good when people are hurting, especially our colleagues, so I wanted to give you some additional context. You should also be aware that some talent may join third parties in asking us to remove the show in the coming days, which we are not going to do.“