Over the summer I (Nate) had a chance to speak with Oisín Rowe (they/them) from Barista Mag after I responded to an Instagram post that asked:
Does your café post online about issues or opinions that might be considered political? Why or why not? Do you believe it is possible for a café to be politically neutral?
I initially sent them a reel on our Instagram page that highlighted the work we did out of our café in its final year. Among the highlights were
- We became a regular meeting place for a group of Veterans to meet, build community, support each other, and find access to resources to help them when our government inevitably turns its back.
- We hosted congressmen and state representatives for conversations with their constituents
- We rallied behind the Florida Palestine Network in their struggle to bring an end to the genocide in Palestine and in their efforts to raise legal funds for two young activists who were brutalized by the Orlando police department.
- Twice we’ve hosted multiple survivors of the Pulse night club shooting to tell their stories of how their trauma has been exploited by politicians and businesses for political or financial gain.
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We hosted individuals and organizations for 46 events that have brought practical or political education to our community.
- We hosted over 86 formal and countless informal meetings for community organizers who, among so many other accomplishments and initiatives, have pressed City Hall to stop laws that criminalize homelessness and infringe on our first amendment rights of assembly and free speech.
- We partnered with the People’s Free Kitchen to serve over 4,700 meals from our kitchen to people experiencing homelessness in our city.
Clearly, I have no hesitation around being explicitly involved in the political realm and using CREDO to support the causes I believe in.
Oisín reached out with some follow-up questions for the piece, and I was glad to contribute. Their article pulls together voices from across the US, and I encourage you to read it in full. Since not everything from our exchange made it into print, I wanted to share my complete responses here as well:
1. As a café/roastery, what is your role in political discussions?
Since 2010, we at CREDO have always seen ourselves as a community of people committed to impacting our city and our world for the better, beyond serving amazing coffees, and that commitment has inevitably pushed us into the political realm.
Most recently, I sat at a roundtable alongside other local business owners and our Congressional and State House representatives to discuss policy issues related to climate change, tariffs, and supply chain regulation. Our role in those spaces is to lead with clarity and advocate for those who are often underrepresented or left behind.
In that meeting, we called for an end to all direct and proxy conflicts and demanded the recall of American troops stationed abroad, because the U.S. military is the single largest institutional emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet. That may sound unrelated to running a coffee company, but its short and long term effects would impact the coffee industry as a whole, from Yemen, to Brazil, and beyond.
2. Since things like welcoming trans people are considered political, where do you draw the line?
Welcoming trans people (or any identity marker) isn’t political to us; it’s a marker of basic human decency. If you can’t treat people with dignity and respect, we don’t need your business. Full stop.
When we still had our café, we regularly hosted Orlando’s longest-running open mic. One night, the main organizer was out of town and his substitute host veered into transphobic “comedy.” The barista on bar that night (who is trans) had the courage to speak up in the moment, and then called me to explain what happened and say they no longer felt safe. I made the 15-minute drive from my home in 9. After making sure my employee was okay, I removed the MC from the building and invited him to never return. I was proud for having fostered a working culture where my barista felt comfortable speaking up for themselves while also knowing they could reliably call on me to come back them up, handle the situation, and ensure our space was safe and protected.
3. Does your café or roastery post things some people may consider political online? Why or why not?
We’re not opposed to it. We’ve collaborated on posts with organizations that are explicitly anti-Zionist, anti-capitalist, or pro-LGBTQ+. But those posts are usually tied to events, not infographics, and that reflects what we prioritize: the work.
Whether it’s sourcing, roasting, and serving coffee or feeding our unhoused neighbors, advocating with our representatives and City Council for policy change, or helping build networks of solidarity and survival, we prefer our impact to be tangible and in-person, not just for content and engagement metrics. We don’t chase controversy or clout online.
That said, we’re no stranger to heat. We’ve been hit with slews of 1-star Google reviews from Zionist groups and have lost major wholesale partnerships over our public stance against apartheid and genocide. But we’re with the people, and the people are with us. When you need us most, you’ll find us right where we’ve always been: quietly working and serving coffee to the city and nation we so love.
4. Do you believe it is possible for any café to be neutral?
Neutrality is a luxury only afforded to the enfranchised. Those who claim it are never truly neutral- their passivity defaults to protecting the status quo. Businesses and individuals can present as apolitical, but that often reveals their hand: they either benefit from the existing order or are hedging against its collapse.
The coffee industry loves to market itself as progressive, championing fair wages for farmers, equity for baristas, sustainability, and spotlighting women and marginalized communities. And while much of that is true on the ground level, many of the corporations shaping the industry direct their employees and marketing departments to craft this narrative while quietly bankrolling reactionary agendas.
Should we trust companies like Blue Bottle when they speak of treating farmers well and protecting the environment, even as their parent company Nestlé exploits child labor and extracts water at unsustainable rates? Who benefits when we stand idly by, saying and doing nothing? Is it really neutrality that keeps us quiet or apathy that keeps us complacent? Or do we know what is just but fail to act for fear of losing what little we’re allowed to keep? Have our imaginations run dry until we cannot plot a course correction or conceive of a world any different than what we have?
These are the questions we’ll all be forced to reckon with sooner than we think. And when this reckoning comes, coffee -both the commodity and culture- won’t have the luxury of staying neutral for long.
5. Historically, cafés were a space of political discussion. How do you see that reflected in your space today?
Coffee houses have been breeding grounds for civil unrest and anti-imperial movements since at least the 1500s in Constantinople in dissent against the Ottoman Empire. That legacy continued through the 1700s in resistance to British rule in the American colonies, into the 1900s as gathering points for opposition to U.S. imperialism in Vietnam, and it persists today as a new world struggles to be born.
At CREDO, I have been intentional in embracing relationships with local grassroots revolutionary organizations that work to remake our world into what it ought to be. I was proud when our café was given the nickname “The House of Revolution,” placing us in a long lineage of resistance to the status quo.
Though I’ve since closed our cafés to focus on e-commerce and wholesale, we continue to support local organizing efforts—mostly through our own direct involvement, but also by leveraging our social capital to highlight their work and connect them with broader audiences. We’ve also launched collaborations where proceeds go to mutual aid projects or organizations that support marginalized communities, including the LGBTQ+ community.
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The throughline in all of this is simple: coffee is never just coffee. It has always been tied to the struggles of people, to questions of justice, and to the shape of our common life. At CREDO, we embrace that reality rather than hiding from it. Our cafés closed, but we still work for a better tomorrow through the coffee we roast, the partnerships we build, and the communities we choose to stand with.
If you’ve read this far, you know what we’re about. The best way to support this ongoing work is also the simplest: drink coffee with us. Start with our Roaster's Choice Subscription and be part of a community that believes coffee can power people.
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