A cyclist who went viral after giving President Donald Trump’s motorcade the finger was fired for posting a picture of the gesture to social media, she told several outlets.
“I’d do it again,” Juli Briskman, 50, told Washington Post columnist Petula Dvorak in a post published Monday.
Briskman worked for the government contractor Akima LLC, until she told them about the photo. Briskman told the Post and HuffPost that she was fired for violating Akima’s social media policy.
Briskman’s bird twittered across the web on Oct. 28:
Pool: Motorcade "overtook a female cyclist… who responded by giving the middle finger… cyclist caught up, still offering the finger."
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 28, 2017
Trump's motorcade "overtook a cyclist… who responded by giving the middle finger… cyclist caught up, still offering the finger." #resist pic.twitter.com/8aTFZpN6ff
— SeriouslyUS? (@USseriously) October 29, 2017
“They said, ‘We’re separating from you,‘” Briskman told HuffPost, recalling a conversation with her Akima superiors. “Basically, you cannot have ‘lewd’ or ‘obscene’ things in your social media. So they were calling flipping him off ‘obscene.’”
A colleague, she noted to both publications, had faced minimal consequences for comparable social media obscenity: He called someone “a fucking Libtard asshole” on Facebook, but kept his job.
Briskman told HuffPost she’d been biking in Virginia, thinking critically about Trump’s performance in office, when she saw the President’s motorcade pass.
“He was passing by and my blood just started to boil,” she said. “I’m thinking, DACA recipients are getting kicked out. He pulled ads for open enrollment in Obamacare. Only one-third of Puerto Rico has power. I’m thinking, he’s at the damn golf course again.”
She added: “I flipped off the motorcade a number of times.”
Although the article does not mention it, someone is likely to comment that the woman’s First Amendment rights were breached. Nope. The Amendment operates only against government agencies, and the employer here was a private business, even if it did have one or more government contracts. It may have been foolish, or intolerant, or bigoted, but it had a perfect right to dismiss the woman from her job.
And maybe she can get a place with a more congenial employer.
Also, she wasn’t fired for being in the photo. She was fired for then using that photo as her Facebook profile picture. This is an important detail.
Good on you for standing up for your principles (and your finger) MS Briskman!! The article makes no mention of your job skills but certainly you’ll find a new career with a different employer.
I’d be very much at peace parting ways with a company that allows this but has a problem with another person expressing their displeasure with the current occupant…
Here’s hoping for a new and better job for Briskman. If I had a business, I’d hire her in a heartbeat.
I hope she gets a flood of offers of well paying jobs.