Amtrak conductor asks Sherilyn Ifill to give up seat. Be careful who you mess with!

[tulipsandroses]

NAACP Lawyer Sherrilyn Ifill Blasts Amtrak Conductor for Asking Her to Give Up Seat

They got the right one on the wrong day!

The head of NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund went off on social media about an Amtrak employee who asked her to give up her seat on the train to accommodate someone else—on the weekend of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

WTF Is Really Going On?

Sherrilyn Ifill nearly broke the internet when she tweeted about the incident, claiming a conductor asked her to move with no explanation during her trek out of Washington D.C. to Baltimore on Friday.

Her initial tweet was liked by nearly 50,000 accounts and retweeted over 11,000 times.

“There are no assigned seats on this train,” Ifill started in her original tweet Friday. “The conductor has asked me to leave my seat because she has ‘other people coming who she wants to give this seat.’ Can you please explain?”

According to Ifill, she later spoke to the agent who asked her to move and the lead conductor told her she wanted to keep empty seats at the front, in contradiction of what she told the noted attorney earlier.

[link:https://www.theroot.com/naacp-lawyer-sherrilyn-ifill-blasts-amtrak-conductor-fo-1841096981|

[CatWoman]

1. it wasn't Gwen Ifill

Gwen Ifill is dead.

Sherrilyn is a relative

[hlthe2b]

2. She's a cousin to Gwen. RIP, Gwen

[WhiteTara]

9. I thought Sheriyn is Gwen's daughter.

[hlthe2b]

10. I think a lot of people do. Myrtle is Sherilyn's mother. Gwen was a cousin to her.

Share the same good genes and journalistic environment, regardless

[WhiteTara]

11. Thanks for the correction

I loved Gwen Ifill, sometimes I thought that she was too gentle, and I'm happy to see that Sherrilyn is taking the next step and her family's quest for racial justice.

[hlthe2b]

12. Me too. Quite a legacy.

[dewsgirl]

6. I was so confused, earlier.

[tulipsandroses]

3. I know, I changed it, Gwen was in my head as I was typing.

I watch Sherrilyn all the time so I am aware of who she is and how they are related.

[MineralMan]

5. What a stupid thing for someone to do!

Individuals often pay little or no attention to policies. Amtrak's policy on its trains is not to have reserved seats in most cars. Nobody should ever have suggested that someone move to another seat for any reason. First on; first choice of seats. Some employee, probably with racist tendencies, decided to take the step of asking a person of color to move to "the back of the bus."

Amtrak, failed to clear this up in a timely way. That is Amtrak's fault. The actual incident, however, was the fault of the racist conductor on that train, who doesn't care about Amtrak's policies and who tried to inflict his or her own prejudices on a passenger. That conductor should be on unpaid leave right now, and should be retrained in no uncertain terms about the policies.

[whistler162]

7. "WTF Is Really Going On?"

Two things come to mind.

1 - Keep new passengers in a group to make ticket checking easier.
2 - After the passengers leave the train get new passengers on board and seated quickly.

[smirkymonkey]

8. From the explaination, it sounds like she might have sat down in the 4 seats in the front

of each car that are facing each other and are usually "reserved" for families with children or larger parties traveling together. It's not a technical reservation, but just kind of an unwritten rule on Amtrak. I have also been asked to move to another empty seat when I have parked my self there (I now don't do it anymore unless there really is no other place to sit).

I agree that racism exists, but I think Ms. Ifill might have been a little too ready to jump the gun on this one.

[tulipsandroses]

13. She jumped the gun how? by not moving? by asking for explanations?

She jumped the gun based on some unwritten rules that you adhere to? Hmm, oh OK. I'm with the noted attorney on this one.