In my experience, when people say "I don't want politics at work", what they mean is they don't want what you'd call toxic politics. For example, I consider my workplace generally apolitical despite our large and active DEI committees, because they consistently frame their work in positive terms: lots of "here's how we can make people happier and more successful!", occasional "suchandsuch was a tragedy and we hope to work towards a better future", nothing in the vein of "X group is bad" or "Y politician must be defeated".

There's political activism that's related to your employment/career, and then there's political activism unrelated to your employment/career.

Discussing career related political activism at work - such as unionization, or fair pay, because it actively affects you in the workplace - is fine to me.

However, woke politics, like gender equality, abortion, or some other trending topic that is unrelated to your workplace, should be discouraged. Things like that are more akin to religion - it's private, and should be kept off the workplace. Do it in your own private time, with people who also want to do it in their private time.

Gender equality is the law of the land, it's not (or at least shouldn't be) a "woke" topic.

Eh, feels pretty different.

HN’s ban was intentionally a short term reboot/cooldown, during a particularly hot time - not a broad and indefinite ban.

Society is hard. I think it’s good to experiment, and when you’re explicit about a timeline, it seems like the stakes are reasonable.

Starting a comment with "sounds dumb" isn't a great way to make your case that "it doesn't have to be toxic".