Long time lurker, first-time poster here.
I guess I just wanted to vent. Earlier this year I was fired from my job at a squad-linked, progressive political consulting firm. Things were going great last year, until my wonderful boss left and one of my coworkers replaced her. The firm is outwardly progressive, but internally it's a different story.
During my time there, my boss blatantly discriminated against me for being autistic. One time when I told her I was burnt out and that getting mad at me didn't help, she told me “we all are”, as if autistic burnout is the same as when a neurotypical person reaches that point (it's not). For my BS PIP I was put on, she basically criticized me for things that are because of, or due to me being autistic, while basically reviewing me as a non-autistic employee. When I complained in an email to the CEO, he said he would circle back about it, then basically protected my ableist manager and did nothing about it. After I complained, they changed the reason for firing me and said it was because a client had “significant complaints about me”. My clients loved me, and the first I ever heard of any complaints was in the zoom meeting when I got let go. What's even worse is that I couldn't even do anything legally about it. because the firm fired me after letting all of their paid fellows and one of my coworkers go, getting them below the 15-employee ADA threshold. I still filed with the EEOC and have tried to be a thorn in their side since, but it still bothers me there is nothing I could do legally to rectify that.
After I was let go, offered me a shitty two weeks severance (I worked there for over 2 years and raised their clients millions of dollars), and then the firm tried to deny my unemployment benefits. They even went so far as to say I caused “undue hardship to my coworkers”. When the firm found out there was going to be a negative article about them, they had a co-owner of the firm who basically suggested my separation agreement could be re-negotiated, and then essentially offered me a blank check (bribe imho) to be quiet, which I didn't take out of principal.
I admittedly tried getting more money because I would have signed it had they actually agreed to not talk badly about me, and give me an adequate severance so I could survive these months of unemployment, but the CEO called it “fair” and wouldn't budge on their shitty number.
On top of all of that, I've had an impossible time finding a remote job either in my industry, nonprofit jobs, or even just a remote customer service job to get by. Literally, no one will hire me in the industry because I think my firm blacklisted me in the democratic/progressive politics space.
My lease is up in a few months, and if I don't find a job that I can pay my bills with soon I'm probably going to have to move back in with my parents for a little while. I just feel like such a failure. I can't seem to catch even one break this year and don't understand why no one will hire me. I've had lots of interviews, some of which I thought went really well. Only for them to go in a different direction, or eliminate the position, or completely ghost me and never get back to me.
I did basically expose them to a reporter in a national political outlet everyone in DC reads religiously, so at least I have that. It feels like an empty victory though because even though they've lost some clients and their reputation will be ruined amongst the progressive wing of the party, I'm still stuck in poverty and jobless from the actions of a firm that publicly and internally purports to be better. I just need a way out of this, and it's never felt this hard, and I don't know how that's going to happen.