One funny thing about this mess is that "Team Helen" has never mentioned anything about safety, and Emmett said "The board did not remove Sam over any specific disagreement on safety".

The reason everyone thinks it's about safety seems largely because a lot of e/acc people on Twitter keep bringing it up as a strawman.

Of course, it might end up that it really was about safety in the end, but for now I still haven't seen any evidence. The story about Sam trying to get board control and the board retaliating seems more plausible given what's actually happened.