“I collected the data, but I did not leak the data,” says Pagels-Minor, who spoke to NPR. They said they shared the information internally among coworkers, but not to anyone outside the company, and added that when they were terminated, they weren’t offered an opportunity to prove their case.
“It was just like: ‘Hey, you’re the person. You’re gone,'” Pagels-Minor says.
In a statement, a Netflix spokesperson said that a discrepancy in Pagels-Minor’s account had gone unexplained, and that they had wiped their electronic devices, “making any further investigation impossible.”
Pagels-Minor—who started at Netflix as a senior data product manager for membership and finance engineering, before moving on to work at the company’s game launch department—says there wasn’t any investigation to begin with.
Pagels-Minor co-led the Employee Resource Group for transgender and non-binary employees, known as Trans*, and was part of one for Black employees, known as Black@. They said the walkout began as a proposal for a day when trans and nonbinary employees would take paid time off as a result of the exhaustion incurred from the Chappelle news cycle, with any other employees invited to join in support. But then Pagels-Minor saw how executives weren’t engaging with questions about the controversy, and started organizing a full blown walkout, along with drafting a list of employee demands.
A rally in support of the walkout is also planned for today.
The list of demands, first reported by The Verge, includes hiring trans and nonbinary people to executive positions, creating a fund to support trans and nonbinary talent, and adding disclaimers “that specifically flag transphobic language, misogyny, homophobia, hate speech, etc. as required.” It doesn’t ask for anything to be removed from the platform, nor does it mention Chappelle. Instead, it asks for the promotion of trans-affirming content alongside any content deemed anti-trans.