"These two people are two nobodies who took it upon themselves to be the arbiters of judgement and instead of checking with their colleagues to see if their views were collectively aligned with the consensus of their colleagues."
The article stated a thousand Amazon employees accepted the event invite before it was deleted by management, which goes without saying that they had enough group interest internally to warrant the event... which is within the purview of their already established employee interest group.
Source: Amazon Employees For Climate Justice @AMZNforClimate We're a group of Amazon employees who believe it’s our responsibility to ensure our business models don’t contribute to the climate crisis. Views ≠ Amazon.
https://twitter.com/AMZNforclimate
These employees are only guilty of voicing their dissent publicly and running afoul of corporate PR policy. We are all entitled to voicing our opinions and beliefs and rallying around a cause individuals are passionate about e.g. climate change impact, Google ending military/China contracts, etc. The unfortunate way I've seen this play out is that at-will employment means an employer is free to sever your relationship at any time with them and can do so under the cloak of bad performance, violating company policy, etc. and it will be an uphill battle to prove retaliation in court when they have the best legal team money can buy. Best to be prepared to look for employment elsewhere if you are organizing a group event to expose your employer to negative PR when on their payroll.
I'd love to be proven wrong though.
FWIW: my experience with Brazilian Google-employees is that their lives are shockingly insulated from the rest of the country. home -> car -> guarded parking -> <entertainment> -> home. we admittedly privileged expats got to experience more than them even, at times!
Lastly, the ad hominems have no place on HN.