Black Staffers Say Warren Used Them As Tokens For Votes
It looks like Warren has a problem keeping her campaign staff diverse. Half a dozen black folks have left her campaign as they feel she only has them around for appearances. This from the candidate that wants to make sure the White House is diverse.
"A half-dozen women of color have departed Elizabeth Warren’s Nevada campaign in the run-up to the state’s caucuses with complaints of a toxic work environment in which minorities felt tokenized and senior leadership was at loggerheads.
The six staffers have left the roughly 70-person Nevada team since November, during a critical stretch of the race. Three of them said they felt marginalized by the campaign, a situation they said didn’t change or worsened after they took their concerns to their superiors or to human resources staff.
“During the time I was employed with Nevada for Warren, there was definitely something wrong with the culture,” said Megan Lewis, a field organizer who joined the campaign in May and departed in December. “I filed a complaint with HR, but the follow-up I received left me feeling as though I needed to make myself smaller or change who I was to fit into the office culture.”
Another recently departed staffer, also a field organizer, granted anonymity because she feared reprisal, echoed that sentiment. “I felt like a problem — like I was there to literally bring color into the space but not the knowledge and voice that comes with it,” she said in an interview.
She added: “We all were routinely silenced and not given a meaningful chance on the campaign. Complaints, comments, advice, and grievances were met with an earnest shake of the head and progressive buzzwords but not much else.” A third former field organizer who was also granted anonymity said those descriptions matched her own experience.
The other three women who recently left the campaign did not respond to requests for comment. One of the departed staffers declined to be interviewed because she feared professional consequences in an arena where it's already difficult for women of color to advance, according to another ex-Warren employee who spoke with her about the situation."
It seems ever since Warren lost her Native American Heritage she has been struggling to pick up the minority vote.