Posted on 10/25/2020 5:18:59 AM PDT by gattaca
When Danielle Reiss attended President Trump’s campaign rally in Henderson, Nevada, on Sep. 13, she had no idea it would cost her job.
Reiss is a music publicist partnered with Pop Off, a Boston-based advertising agency that connects publicists like Reiss with artists. She signed a contract in August under which Pop Off would refer artists to her, and she would give the agency a percentage of the money she earned from helping referred artists with publicity. In early September, Pop Off connected her with her first client.
But on Sept. 13, Reiss went to a campaign rally for President Trump. Afterward she posted on social media a photo of herself with a “Make America Great Again” sign and the caption: “I saw our president speak in Anaheim, California in 2016. Yesterday, I watched him speak in Las Vegas, Nevada. God Bless America.”
Four days after the rally, Reiss says she received an email from Pop Off announcing the agency’s plans to terminate their business relationship as soon as their contract ended.
“We saw your latest Instagram post in which you held a ‘Make America Great Again’ poster,” the email said. “From this, we infer that you support the policies and ideologies of Donald Trump’s administration, which blatantly undermine the values we uphold at Pop Off.”
The email, which appears to be from Pop Off President and Chief Financial Officer Ben Silvers, adds that the agency will continue working with Reiss until February 2021, but after that “we will be terminating our professional relationship with you and will cease all partnership activities.”
The email Reiss received cited the agency’s commitment to “stand for equality, inclusion, and kindness in everything we do,” before expressing the agency’s decision to terminate any future partnership with Reiss.
“There’s nothing less diverse or less inclusive than a company who terminates someone because they have different beliefs,” Reiss insisted. “Diversity also includes diversity of thought and diversity of opinions.”
Despite agreeing to continue working with Reiss until February, Pop Off has not sent her any clients since she received the email. Reiss also says she was excluded from Pop Off’s company-wide meeting in October.
Meanwhile, Pop Off has shared political views on its Twitter account. On Sept. 24, just a week after Reiss received the termination email, Pop Off re-tweeted a video encouraging people to vote. It included the hashtag #VoteHimOut.
Pop Off Agency and Silvers did not respond to a request for comment.
As an author I have a contract for 2 years with my publicist. I can wrote fiction as much as I want, but not nonfiction in my specialty for anyone else.
Good point - when you’re a federal government contractor, generally in the contract there are provisions (required by statute) that as a contractor you will follow federal nondiscrimination policies/regulations. There’s no indication that there was a government contract here. Of course, even a private contractor is required to follow nondiscrimination laws (such as prohibited to make employment decisions based on the protected status/activities such as race, gender, religion, national origin, age (over 40), disability or perceived disability, union (or other protected concerted) activity, etc - but as far as I know there is not a protected category of political activity or identification. Otherwise a president appointing judges based on political leanings would be unlawful discrimination.
Wasn’t voter intimidation legislated in part due to business owners telling employees how to vote?
Big Brother is watching.
That I don’t know.
Intentionally getting someone fired for being pro-Trump is a hate crime, not much different than burning down someone’s house for voting “wrong.” - Scott Adams
And what would your advice to this woman be?
You too, beautiful!
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