When employees at Al Gore’s nonprofit, The Climate Reality Project, opened their emails on Dec. 15, 2023, they were greeted with a new edict: Do not discuss the war in Gaza at work, on email or on Slack.
“On behalf of the Executive Leadership team, I wanted to reach out about the memo emailed to us on Tuesday and then also shared with both staff and external partners on Slack,” Climate Reality Project CEO Phyllis Cuttino wrote to staff.
At the time, 15 employees had requested that leadership call for a cease-fire in Gaza, arguing that the Palestinian territories were among the most “climate-vulnerable in the world” and that the organization had “a duty to call out injustice.”