There was a time not too long ago when one clothing brand represented America’s freedom and individualism like no other — Levi’s.
I’ll never forget working at a cell phone kiosk inside a grocery store during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. A group of young German tourists was staying at a camp just outside of town, and the camp would bus them into town once a week to do some shopping.
The one item these young Germans craved more than anything else was “five hundred and one levees” (just say it with a German accent and you’ll get it). It took us a while to figure out that they wanted Levi’s 501 jeans, and after that, we knew to direct them to the clothing store in the same shopping center.
Gymnast Jennifer Sey knew the power of Levi’s, which is why she packed 10 pairs of the iconic jeans in her luggage when she attended the Goodwill Games in 1987. Sey was only 17 at the time, and she used the jeans to barter for Russian lycra.
Sey would go on to a long career in the marketing department of Levi’s, rising as high as global brand president. She was in line to become the next CEO — until last week.
Levi’s parted ways with Sey because they couldn’t bear one particular political position she took on her personal social media accounts. They offered her $1 million in severance money, which would have presumably come with a non-disclosure agreement, but she turned it down so that she could tell her story.
Sey did just that over at Bari Weiss’ Substack. She explains the one non-negotiable position that got her in so much trouble with her employer:
Early on in the pandemic, I publicly questioned whether schools had to be shut down. This didn’t seem at all controversial to me. I felt—and still do—that the draconian policies would cause the most harm to those least at risk, and the burden would fall heaviest on disadvantaged kids in public schools, who need the safety and routine of school the most.
I wrote op-eds, appeared on local news shows, attended meetings with the mayor’s office, organized rallies and pleaded on social media to get the schools open. I was condemned for speaking out. This time, I was called a racist—a strange accusation given that I have two black sons—a eugenicist, and a QAnon conspiracy theorist.
What’s really mind-blowing about Sey’s story is that she’s no right-winger. In fact, she’s solidly a woman of the left. She supported Elizabeth Warren in the 2020 Democratic primaries, she has marched in Pride parades as a heterosexual “ally” of the LGBT movement, and she expressed her disdain at the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd.
Levi’s didn’t have any issue with any of those positions, and they stood by her in 2008 when her memoir uncovered the dark side of gymnastics and turned her into a lightning rod for controversy.
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No, the red line for Levi’s was Sey’s insistence that kids should be in school learning with their peers and in-person teachers rather than sitting in front of a computer for hours upon hours.
In the summer of 2020, I finally got the call. “You know when you speak, you speak on behalf of the company,” our head of corporate communications told me, urging me to pipe down. I responded: “My title is not in my Twitter bio. I’m speaking as a public school mom of four kids.”
But the calls kept coming. From legal. From HR. From a board member. And finally, from my boss, the CEO of the company. I explained why I felt so strongly about the issue, citing data on the safety of schools and the harms caused by virtual learning. While they didn’t try to muzzle me outright, I was told repeatedly to “think about what I was saying.”
Levi’s employees could hold forth on Black Lives Matter, their desires to get rid of Donald Trump, and plenty of other left-wing causes. But acting in the best interest of kids? That was a bridge too far.
Sey was told that education was a “hyper-local” issue and the company just couldn’t get involved. But at the same time, they didn’t want her to speak out — not as a high-ranking executive of a clothing brand but as a mom.
She didn’t stop speaking out. Sey and her husband relocated their family so that their kids could go to school in person. The last straw came when Sey appeared on — you guessed it — Fox News.
The comments from Levi’s employees picked up—about me being anti-science; about me being anti-fat (I’d retweeted a study showing a correlation between obesity and poor health outcomes); about me being anti-trans (I’d tweeted that we shouldn’t ditch Mother’s Day for Birthing People’s Day because it left out adoptive and step moms); and about me being racist, because San Francisco’s public school system was filled with black and brown kids, and, apparently, I didn’t care if they died.
The company’s lead Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion officer pressed Sey to apologize, insisting that she was “not a friend of the Black community at Levi’s.”
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Last fall, the CEO of Levi’s told Sey that she was on track to become the next CEO of the company under one condition: that she stop speaking out about in-person learning. By January, the CEO had told Sey that it was “untenable” for her to stay with the company. So she left and turned down the severance money in order to speak out.
Sey believes that Levi’s once stood for “what was good and right about this country.”
“But the corporation doesn’t believe in that now,” she continues. “It’s trapped trying to please the mob—and silencing any dissent within the organization. In this it is like so many other American companies: held hostage by intolerant ideologues who do not believe in genuine inclusion or diversity.”
Jennifer Sey refused to bow to the all-or-nothing commitment that wokeness demands. On today’s far left there’s no room for independent thought, and there’s no room for bucking The Narrative™. Sey spoke out, and the graceless woke forced her to pay a price.
But Sey isn’t a victim. Instead, she holds her head high, knowing that she has stood up for what she believes. That’s as American as a pair of Levi’s ever was.
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