A Message to Slack Employees

This would be a heartwarming message at any workplace, but honestly it's impressive to see how even Bay area tech superstars can be human. This may have or not something to do with the recent hyperactivity of pg.

I can agree that we have a race problem in this country.

I completely concur that Dr. King was an extremely important individual in combating the race problem of his day, and would no doubt have had a much bigger impact on our country had he not been assassinated so early in his life and work.

However, this statement has me concerned:

    > This movement continues to this very day in Ferguson and 
    > Cleveland and Baltimore and Chicago and all across the 
    > country.

Lumping the Ferguson incident with anything which Dr. King worked to accomplish shows a distinct lack of discernment.

From the Wikipedia article on the Michael Brown shooting [1]:

    > The Department of Justice investigation into the 
    > shooting determined that witnesses who corroborated 
    > Darren Wilson's account were credible while those who 
    > incriminated him were not. The witnesses that claimed 
    > Brown was surrendering or did not move toward Wilson 
    > were not credible; the report stated that their claims 
    > were inconsistent with the physical evidence, other 
    > witness statements, and in some cases prior statements 
    > from the same witness. No witness statements that 
    > pointed to Wilson's guilt were determined to be 
    > credible. Twenty-four statements were determined to lack 
    > any credibility, while eight which were found credible 
    > corroborated Wilson's account. Nine did not completely 
    > contradict nor corroborate Wilson's account. Several 
    > witnesses reported fear of reprisals from the community 
    > for providing evidence that corroborated Wilson's 
    > account.

Dr. King envisioned a world where people would "not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

But with Ferguson, you have the POTUS ordering a federal investigation into what would otherwise be a local or regional investigation, solely because a white officer shot a black civilian.

Then, even after the DoJ determined that all of the evidence and the autopsies and the eyewitness accounts corroborated the officer's account of the incident, Michael Brown is still held up as a hero of a movement which continues with this letter to Slack's employees.

By all means, be an active agent for change in the world in both your personal and business activities. But either get your facts straight about what Dr. King was fighting for, or don't appeal to his authority while holding up examples of behavior he would have despised.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Michael_Brown