EDITOR'S NOTE: Multimedia journalist Tara Lynn Wagner spoke with protesters and stand-up comedian Gloria Bigelow about the Netflix walkout. Click the arrow above to watch the video.

Netflix employees, upset over the company’s handling of criticism related to Dave Chappelle’s controversial new special, spoke with their legs Wednesday by staging a walkout.

The streaming giant has received backlash, including internally from trans employees, over its handling of Chappelle’s special, "The Closer." Employees criticized the special as transphobic, labeling some of the comedian's comments as harmful to transgender people.

On Wednesday, employees walked off the job and held a protest outside Netflix’s office on Vine Street in Los Angeles to voice their frustration. An employee group called Team Trans* is calling on Netflix to place more trans and nonbinary individuals in executive-level positions and for the company to create a fund supporting trans and nonbinary talent.

Ashlee Marie Preston, who organized the walkout, said she invited Chappelle to have “transformative dialogue” but that he declined. 

“I'm here today to talk to the people that sign the check, because Dave Chappelle doesn't have the capacity or the power to sign his own check,” Preston said during the demonstration. “It is about Netflix. … It is the emergence of hate economy of corporations profiting and making money off of us getting at one another's throats.”

The Netflix employees and their supporters gathered holding signs that included messages such as “BLACK TRANS LIVES MATTER” and “HATE ISN’T FUNNY.” 

“Understand that your jokes are promoting hateful and discriminatory behavior and conversation, and that is what hurts us,” said David Huggard — co-star of the HBO reality series “We’re Here,” who uses the stage name Eureka O’Hara. “ … It is not the fact that you laugh at it, it's the fact that you're laughing in the face of our pain.”

A group of counterprotesters tried to drown out the rally’s speakers by heckling them and chanting, “Dave is funny” and “We like jokes.” 

In “The Closer,” Chappelle jokes about transgender genitalia, says “gender is a fact” and declares that he is on “team TERF,” an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist.

Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s co-CEO and chief content officer, further enraged employees last week by sending an internal memo in which he defended the company’s decision to stream the special, citing its popularity. He also wrote that Netflix believed the “content on screen doesn’t directly translate to real-world harm.”

Sarandos gave a number of interviews Tuesday in which he said he “screwed up” in his communication with employees over the matter. 

“What I should have led with in those emails was humanity,” Sarandos told The Wall Street Journal. “I should have recognized the fact that a group of our employees was really hurting.”

But Sarandos said Netflix has no plans to remove Chappelle’s special from the platform. 

“We have articulated to our employees that there are going to be things you don’t like,” he said. “There are going to be things that you might feel are harmful. But we are trying to entertain a world with varying tastes and varying sensibilities and various beliefs, and I think this special was consistent with that.”

Preston wrote on Facebook that Sarandos’ remarks were “a great start, but added, “There are some things left to iron out, and voices to be heard that were ignored.”

In a statement sent to Spectrum News, a Netflix spokesperson said the company is supportive of the walkout. 

"We value our trans colleagues and allies, and understand the deep hurt that’s been caused,” the spokesperson said. “We respect the decision of any employee who chooses to walk out, and recognize we have much more work to do both within Netflix and in our content.”