Yeah, I'm beginning to think we're arguing about two different things here. I think we'd be completely in agreement about the problems of online cancel culture. I'm not talking about drumming up support to get people fired. I'm not talking about firing people before the facts are clear (as Emma Sarley's boss did) or because of social pressure. And I'm definitely not talking about "harm" in the "you hurt my feelies" sense. That's why I was clear about physical harm.
Amy Cooper wasn't fired because an online mob pressured her bosses into doing so. After the incident, her bosses suspended her while they reviewed the situation, and then fired her once they decided that her behaviour was unacceptable. This, I think, is how it should be. Amy's behaviour had clear potential to cause physical harm to Christian. Amy knew this. Which is why she used calling the police and "telling them there's an African-American man threatening my life," as a threat. If any physical harm had come to Christian, there would have been an absolutely straight line between Amy's actions and the resultant harm to Christian. That's a standard I'm happy to use to define "impact".
As for the anti-abortion conservatives, as I think we agreed in our last conversation, it's on them to demonstrate the "harm" caused by Katy's private decision. I'm the last person who would say they can just assert it. A ten year old joke? Same thing. Even in the case of our teacher we can raise the question of how to demonstrate harm. How much guilt is "harmful"? How do you measure it? How many children need to feel it before there's a problem? There are no terms of employment which state, "a child may never feel guilty in your class".
Yet here we agree, because we understand that there are certain reasonable standards that we should hold people to, even if they aren't written into a contract or prescribed by law. I don't think we should abandon these standards because the puritans among us want to enforce unreasonable ones.
Lastly, I think you're conflating punishment in the legal sense with punishment in the individual sense. You can't imprison somebody for a crime they haven't committed yet (well, actually, even this isn't clear cut. Legal action can be taken for death threats or bomb threats for example), but as an individual, you can--and I'd strongly argue should--act if you have good reason to think that somebody poses a danger to somebody else.
There's a lot of daylight between "you're fired because you told a joke I don't like," and "you're fired because you're a credible physical threat to our white, male members of staff." I don't think we should treat those two as if they're similar.
