Why a Brooklyn coffee shop banned a congressman from entering the store after he visited
Congressman Dan Goldman was told not to return to a Brooklyn coffee shop he visited with his 7-year-old daughter. Here’s what you need to know:
A social media post has embroiled a New York City coffee shop in controversy, spurring a federal investigation and sparking a protest right outside the store.
Poetica Coffee, which has multiple locations in the city, did not expect to receive a response from New York State Representative Dan Goldman to a post it posted last month saying it had refunded the money after a visit with his daughter. The store used the post to criticize the Jewish lawmaker’s support for Israel and banned him from the store.
But Goldman did make a comment, and the post went viral and attracted national media attention.
It was in late June, just before the primary election in which Mr. Goldman staked his district’s survival (he ultimately lost to Brad Lander, the city’s former comptroller). And although the headlines have shifted, coffee shop owner Parviz Muhammadkurov is still dealing with the fallout from death threats, suspicious packages arriving at his Poetica store and protests, he says.
“For Mr. Goldman, this was probably just an opportunity,” Muhammadkurov told USA TODAY Network. “It’s a chance to get more headlines. But now I’m left with real consequences.”
Posts that led to criticism
Muhammadkurov claimed that the situation began when the barista asked Goldman to refund his tip after the congressman’s visit.
However, the incident took a turn for the worse after the post received media attention.
“We do not serve racists, fascists, homophobes, genocidal promoters, or anyone in between,” Poetica Coffee posted on social media in June. “Unfortunately, we didn’t recognize you right away or we would have turned you away.” It included a photo of Mr. Goldman checking out one of the company’s locations.
In a statement, Goldman said the barista “couldn’t have been nicer” to her and her 7-year-old daughter. “I hope she at least gets the tip she deserves.”
“Suddenly every news channel started writing about it,” he said.
“At the time, I felt like they saw political value in it.”
Repulsion
The post eventually caught the attention of Harmeet Dhillon, an assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s civil rights division, who wrote about X at the time the department began investigating the store.
“There are other people in the Jewish community who are really scared, and the Office of Civil Rights should focus more on them than on public figures,” Goldman said in response to the inquiry, according to the New York Times.
“This is not the first time I have posted about him, and it is not the first time I have contacted him as a voter to have a conversation with him,” Mohammadkurov said in an interview.
“Since the war in Gaza began, he has not spoken to us. He has been avoiding us. We have contacted him millions of times through various channels, but he never speaks to us.”
Mohammadkurov said Poetica had to push back against allegations of anti-Semitism amid a series of criticisms of the company. Protesters organized by the Jewish community advocacy group #EndJewHatred broke into one of the locations last month and demanded an apology, according to a Business Insider article at the time.
“If people simply disagreed about the policies he supported, it would not have been a problem,” Mohammadkurov said in a subsequent statement.
“But conflating criticism of these policies with anti-Semitism did something else: leverage the influence of sitting members of Congress to smear local, immigrant-owned small businesses for potential media exposure on the eve of an election.”
Mr. Muhammadkurov reached out to Goldman in hopes of easing tensions. But lawmakers have yet to respond.
“I sent an email to Dan Goldman’s office so we can work together to ensure everyone’s safety,” he said. “I’m still waiting.”
USA TODAY Network also reached out to Goldman representatives for comment, but did not receive a response.
“People often ask me if I want to do it again, and I thought about it for quite a while,” Muhammadkurov told USA TODAY Network.
“And I would add that I would do it again, in the words of Khaled Hosseini in his book The Kite Runner, ‘a thousand times over’ — for all the murdered Palestinian children.”
He said he still wanted to talk to Goldman and suggested they meet for coffee some other time.
