zlacker

>>Tanger+(OP)
I think a key phrase here is "he was dismissed for publicly challenging a colleague’s silence".

In other words, he publicly harassed a colleague who (for what could be any number of perfectly valid reasons) preferred not to publicly state their beliefs. That would seem to me to be an eminently reasonable reason to fire someone. If you go around publicly harassing your colleagues to publicly state their political opinions, you deserve to be fired.

>>nsains+P8
I'm starting a new job soon and I'm trying to figure out how I'll handle these "silence is complicit" characters. My personal policy is to not discuss political/social issues at work.

>>PiggyS+Ha
The way it works at my workplace is that in meetings with more than one person, we just say "times are tough and thanks for coping with the hard times and still getting the work done. We also recognize that times may be especially hard for some people." But in 1-on-1 convos some of my colleagues and I trust each other enough to say, for example, that we attended a protest.