Democrat candidate and Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member Angie Nixon, running for Florida’s U.S. Senate seat against Sen. Ashley Moody (R), defended having portraits of people such as Marxist cop killer Assata Shakur, whom she called “civil rights” leaders – in her cafe/bookstore, “Cafe Resistance.”
The Democrat senate candidate said she opened “Cafe Resistance” in Jacksonville, Florida, because “freedoms” were being attacked and that there were “no places for us to be safely.” She also claimed that her opponents were wanting to “ban the teaching of true history, particularly true black history.”
“And so I wanted to open the space so everyone can feel welcome, and so where we can organize and build power,” she said in 2024. “And so I’m just super honored and excited to be in this fight with you all, and just, you know, whatever you need to say to gather to build power to do the work. Please just know that this place is available for you all.”
Now, Nixon is defending herself for displaying in her cafe portraits of questionable “civil rights leaders” — her words — including Marxist cop killer Assata Shakur, whom she has quoted on the campaign trail. She admitted during a recent interview that her bookstore is not making any money, stating that she has infused cash into it herself to keep it alive.
“I opened up a black-owned bookstore,” she said. “My bookstore ain’t making money. As a matter of fact, sometimes I’m like infusing cash into it. But it is a safe space where people are learning their history, where we can convene and we can meet and we can learn and we can power-build,” she explained, accusing her opponent, Sen. Moody, of sending a “heckler” into her bookstore cafe as she was doing a press conference to talk “trash” about who was displayed on her cafe’s walls.
“I had a heckler, a tracker, someone that Ashley Moody sent to my shop the other day as I was doing a press conference talking trash about who I had on my walls,” Nixon said. “Who I had on my walls were civil rights leaders that wind up like getting convicted or like tried for like, you know, robbery or killing police officers – just all types of things,” she said before claiming that “a lot of them were set up.”
“Not all, right? Maybe. I don’t know. Possibly. A lot of them maintain their innocence,” she said, pleading ignorance.
“But it was Assata Shakur. It was Angela Davis. Like it was all these different people in the wall. And then the guy came in and he tried to like just trash and say I’m celebrating cop-killers and I’m like, it’s history. We don’t know our history,” she said.
She said history can be messy but it has to be “learned.”
The DSA member continued:
We don’t know our history, and history is — some history is good, it’s bad, it’s messy, it’s ugly, but it needs to be learned, and so we need to teach our history, not just the whitewashed, sanitized version, right? Like we need to teach the versions where our people were fighting and resisting, right? Even if they like wind up getting locked up because of it, like, like that is what needs to be taught.
WATCH:
This should come as no surprise. Nixon has quoted Shakur – whose real name was Joanne Deborah Chesimard, and who at one time appeared on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) list of “most wanted terrorists” – while campaigning in a church and beyond.
On the 40th anniversary of the cold-blooded murder of a New Jersey state trooper, the fugitive convicted of the killing, Joanne Chesimard, has been named a Most Wanted Terrorist by the FBI—the first woman ever to make the Bureau’s list of top terrorists. (FBI screenshot)
“I’m gonna open this up for questions, but I’m gonna leave y’all with these words of a famous freedom fighter before we open it up: Assata Shakur,” Nixon said at the church. “‘It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love and protect one another. We have nothing to lose but our chains.’”
