Employees of Simon & Schuster have delivered a petition demanding the publisher stop all deals with Trump administration officials, wherein they accuse the firm of “perpetuating white supremacy” by going forward with a book by former Vice President Mike Pence.
What are the details?
According to an exclusive report from The Wall Street Journal, Simon & Schuster CEO Jonathan Karp was aware that a petition was circulating when he announced internally last week that a memoir by Pence would move forward despite pushback from some employees.
All told, 216 Simon & Schuster employees signed the petition, which equates to roughly 14% of the company’s workforce. They also solicited the signatures of another 3,500 outsiders, some of whom were “well-known Black writers,” the newspaper wrote.
The Daily Mail later published the contents of the petition in it entirety.
The letter begins by stating:
“The events of the past week have affirmed that Simon & Schuster has chosen complicity in perpetuating white supremacy by publishing Mike Pence and continuing to distribute books for Post Hill Press, including predator Matt Gaetz’s FIREBRAND.
