Sean Penn attacked employees of his nonprofit organization that helped administer COVID-19 vaccines in Los Angeles after two of them complained about online working conditions.
The Oscar-winning actor wrote a scathing 2,200-word email to the staff on Friday accusing the unnamed couple of “obscene criticism” and saying they should quit, The Los Angeles Times reported.
“For anyone who has written them, understand that in every cell of my body there is a vitriol for the way your actions are reflected so detrimentally on your brothers and sisters in arms,” Penn wrote in the letter, which was leaked to the Times.
The letter came after two people who said they worked for Penn’s organization, Community Organized Relief Effort, told a Jan. 28 story in the New York Times describing a day at the Dodger mass vaccination site. Stadium.
A self-described “CORE” staff member said employees were overworked after LA Mayor Eric Garcetti changed the stadium from a virus testing site to a vaccination center.
The staff works 18 days, six days a week, “without the opportunity to take breaks.”
The other anonymous scribe complained that the article said site workers had “Krispy Kreme for breakfast and Metro for lunch.”
“We don’t normally eat breakfast, just coffee,” the person wrote, adding that the lunch was not “Metro,” but the same old lettuce is wrapped up every day. so I’m not complaining, but … not the subway. “
Penn, 60, described his “grave concern” over the comments, which he considered a “widespread betrayal of all,” the Times reported.
He said the “embarrassing guts” were “highly visible,” though they are part of at least 150 readers’ responses to the NY Times article.
Penn said CORE, which was a co-founder after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, has “strong grievance procedures and other endless internal avenues of productive criticism” on the part of employees.
Anyone “predisposed to a culture of complaint” and a “broad-based cyber lament” should stop smoking, he added.
“It’s called quitting smoking,” Penn wrote. “Go out for CORE. Go out for your colleagues who won’t let you down. Go out for your fellows who deeply recognize that this is a moment in time. A moment of service that we all have to capture sometimes until the collapse ”.