Jennifer Sey on the Courage to Stand Against ‘Wokeism’

Former Levi's top executive talks about fighting for children during the pandemic

Jennifer Sey, former Levi Strauss and Co. Brand President and author of “Levi's Unbuttoned: The Woke Mob Took My Job but Gave Me My Voice," in Denver on Nov. 20, 2022. Jack Wang/The Epoch Times

“I was a traitor to what has become almost a religion. ... I was a traitor to my class, which maniacally upheld these ideals that COVID restrictions were for the good of the masses, when in fact, they were doing such great harm,” Jennifer Sey says.

In this recent episode of “American Thought Leaders,” host Jan Jekielek sat down with Sey, who was poised to become CEO of Levi Strauss & Co. after working her way up the corporate ladder at the company to Levi’s brand president. Her advocacy against COVID-19 restrictions, especially school closures, changed all that. She’s the author of “Levi’s Unbuttoned: The Woke Mob Took My Job but Gave Me My Voice.”

Jan Jekielek: Let’s start with your story. Give us the background of how we got here.

Jennifer Sey: I worked at Levi’s for almost 23 years, a brand that people around the world love. I love the product. I’m wearing it now. But in 2020, I pushed back on the school closures in my city of San Francisco. This went against the “woke” ideology and the Democratic leadership in my city and state and at the national level.

I pushed back for two years. Ultimately, I was pushed out of the company because I was foolish enough or perhaps courageous enough to say, “This is a lie. This is benefiting no one, and, in fact, is harming many people and children.” But I was a traitor to what has become almost a religion. And certainly, I was a traitor to my class, which maniacally held that COVID restrictions were for the good of the masses, when, in fact, they were doing such great harm.

Mr. Jekielek: You were sending your kids to public school, which was atypical of your peer group.

Ms. Sey: In the two or three employee levels below me in the corporate hierarchy, you probably couldn’t find a single soul who sent their kids to public school, not in San Francisco. By and large, I was in the vast minority.

So over the course of my two years of kicking and screaming about how wrong this was and how children were being harmed, my peers all sent their kids back to school, because their kids went to private schools. That’s when I thought the light bulb would come on, and people would see the hypocrisy if I just made it clear in a calm, nice way, but they didn’t, because this “wokeness” is a cloak the left-liberal elite wraps around itself to say, “I care about social justice. I’m a good person. If you threaten to expose that, you need to be banished.”

As Sam Bankman-Fried, the now notorious founder and [former] CEO of FTX, said in an exchange with a Vox reporter, “It’s a game we woke Westerners play so that people like us.” I couldn’t say it any better than that.

Mr. Jekielek: When did you first notice something was off?

Ms. Sey: March 13, 2020, the day that everything locked down in San Francisco. The fear and panic were already being generated. But I was obsessively reading the data, along with my husband, that was coming out of Italy, in which the median age of death was older than 80.

Nobody was bothering to look at actual data or adhere to the pre-pandemic playbook, which states that you never shut schools down for more than a couple of weeks. And so, my alarm bells went off from the beginning. From day one, my husband and I both said, “Hell no, this is wrong. People are going to be harmed.”

I was outspoken from the very beginning about the school closures.

It wasn’t until September 2020 when our head of corporate communications said: “You might want to think about not doing this. When you speak, you speak on behalf of the company.”

By December 2020, I started to lead rallies with my husband and a few friends, but they were sparsely attended. People were afraid to push back against this religion because you experienced tremendous reputational harm if you did. You were called everything from a teacher-killer to a racist to a eugenicist. People would dare to say to me, while sending their own kids to in-person schools, “You can’t advocate for poor children to be in school.”

I still don’t understand it. It lacks empathy. It’s cowardly. I don’t like fighting, and I like to be liked, but I couldn’t stop, because the hypocrisy enraged me.

By December 2021, I was told, “There’s no longer a place for you. You can’t become the CEO because of the things you’ve been saying and doing. You need to leave.”

I was offered severance. I decided I wouldn’t take that because that comes with the signing of a nondisclosure agreement that would require me to never speak about the terms of my ousting. I wasn’t okay with that because I was increasingly alarmed at the illiberalism that had taken hold of this institution and other corporate entities across the country.

Mr. Jekielek: You put your money where your mouth was too, because you would have gotten at least $1 million or something like that if you had played along.

Ms. Sey: I would’ve gotten $1 million if I had signed the non-disclosure and never spoken of this again.

Mr. Jekielek: You became even more outspoken after leaving, writing a book and so forth. Along the way, what has happened to your friends and peer group? How has that changed?

Ms. Sey: None of my friends and colleagues at Levi’s stood by me during the course of those two years. I’ve heard from a few since who say, “I’m probably not supposed to talk to you, but I hope you’re well.” These are people I knew and worked with for 20 years. With my friends outside of work, it’s more like, “Well, we’re really confused by the things you say and do. We won’t banish you completely, but we find you upsetting.”

And then there are family members that I have no contact with because they deemed what I said to be evil and dangerous, which is what I'll never truly understand in my heart of hearts. Why couldn’t we all just disagree on the best path forward? Why did I have to be the incarnation of all things evil, even in my own family?

But I’ve also made many new friends, lots of moms from across the country who pushed back on the restrictions and this unfairness directed at children. We come from all walks of life and all sides of the political aisle. I’ve never really had a group of friends so diverse in their upbringing. They’ve been a tremendous support to me.

Mr. Jekielek: Has your view of humanity changed at all through this?

Ms. Sey: It has. I try to be optimistic, but I feel sad mostly. People seem more interested in fitting in with the group than doing the right thing. I didn’t believe that before about my friends. I thought they were critical thinkers who believed in questioning authority and challenging the narrative.

But when it came down to it, 90 percent of people went with the story they were told and were willing to ostracize and demonize their own friends and family members. They’re true believers. They believed in this bigger cause and couldn’t allow the facts to creep in.

Mr. Jekielek: In your book, you observe that people high up on the corporate ladder are quite influenced by their kids, who have been going to schools where they’ve been indoctrinated with this woke ideology. That had never occurred to me.

Ms. Sey: It’s part of this whole trend toward “I’m your friend, not your parent.” Parents want to be in good with their kids. And the kids feel guilty. They’ve had every advantage under the sun since forever. They have unimaginable wealth. They have trust funds. They feel very guilty about it, and they want to overcome that guilt.

They do it through the presentation of themselves as social justice warriors. They’ve learned this in their woke elementary schools. They went to woke colleges. They come home and tell their parents about this, and their parents lean in because they’re the friends, not the parents. They take guidance from their children. They take fashion advice from their children, as well as moral and ethical advice. It’s insane.

Mr. Jekielek: As we’re finishing here, tell me what you hope people can get out of your book, which, frankly, covers a lot of bases.

Ms. Sey: It’s my fondest hope that it gives people a little nudge and a dose of courage to stand up and do the right thing and say what they really think. It’s really the only way to pierce this bubble, this hypnotic bubble we seem to be in, of wokeism. Stand up for your friends and neighbors who use their voices, and use your own. It’s the only way, and it’s the only way we can pierce this mass hypnosis, what appears to be mass hypnosis.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.