A nonprofit cafe in Portland, Oregon, says it won’t build a free coffee shop in Gaza after all amid pushback from the community.
Heretic Coffee Co. planned to open the shop, to be called the Dept. of Peace, in a partnership with the Humanite Peace Collective charity as a way to provide free food and employment to Palestinians and “serve as a hub for rebuilding local culture,” per the Humanite website.
As of Friday, over $39,000 had been raised toward a $100,000 goal, but Heretic is no longer involved.
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The cafe said on social media Thursday that “on Monday, Heretic & Humanite came to the agreement that we part ways. Humanite will continue this project with the funds currently raised and with whatever funds they continue to raise for this project. For Heretic, we are removing ourselves and refocusing closer to home.”
The cafe said it “did a terrible job in framing what this project is on the social media post” and that it’s “sorry that we have put ourselves in a position where you are having to choose to trust us or not.”
Responses to the announcement of the Dept. of Peace plan on social media included accusations that Humanite is a “Zionist nonprofit” and implied that Heretic Cafe is run by “white saviors,” calls for the cafe to donate money more directly or to different groups working in Gaza, and a comment calling the plan “pure and unadulterated narcissism” on the part of the cafe.
The backtracking and public apology did not mollify all the commenters.
Responses to the Thursday post on Instagram included one person calling the cafe’s owner “a grifter with a dose of white saviorism” and another exhorting the shop to “just sell coffee, give out food and donate proceeds to local orgs to help our community.”
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