A Tale of Two Restaurants: They go low, we go high.

A tale of 2 restaurants.

Reem’s café and bakery is adorned with a floor to ceiling image of a confessed murderer- Rasmea Odeh,  a convicted terrorist responsible for the deaths of 2 young men in a Jerusalem bombing nearly 20 years ago.   Peaceful vigils by a group of community elders opposed to the glorification of violence were violently attacked by ReemAssil’s staff and patrons.  

Ellen Brotsky of JVP attacking an elderly man at Reems, Fruitvale Oakland

Lara Kiswani of the Arab Resource Organizing Center and Ellen Brotsky with posters
ripped out of the hands of community elders.  

When the physical attack failed to silence their voices,  the police were repeatedly called to break up the vigils.  Ultimately, Reem Assil attempted to take out restraining orders to quash the communities rights to freedom of assembly and freedom of speech.

Contrast and compare

Mannys in San Francisco is under protest by alt-left fringe groups, threatening to run him out of town.

Its not about the artwork Manny has chosen to display- glorious representations of our diverse community.  Its about who Manny is- a proud and  progressive queer Jew who happens to fail the litmus test of political correctness- and accepts the right of the Jewish people to self determination.  Manny’s business has been vandalized with anti-Semitic imagery.  His windows have been broken.

Mannys vandalized with spray painted Jewish star.  Photo from Mission Local 

Manny’s response to the protesters harassing his customers was to invite them in to talk.  They refused.  The community response  has also been open and loving. There have not been violent attacks against the protesters, or attempts to silence their voices.   The community instead has embraced Manny, his shop and his mission.  On Wednesday evenings, the day of the protests, Manny’s restaurant has been packed with patrons, celebrating in the community gathering space that Manny has created. . 

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. knew best: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. "  

The community will continue to respond to these attacks with light and with love. 
Read more about Manny's:

How many hoops must Manny Yekutiel jump through before he’s deemed worthy to set foot in the Mission?

Manny’s builds a real-life space for civic discourse in SF

Jewish cafe owner in San Francisco hounded over his ‘Zionist ideals’

Support Manny's. Support Progressive Activism in San Francisco's Mission District.

Opened earlier this year by Emanuel Yekutiel, a former intern in the Obama White House, Manny’s is a community gathering place on the corner of 16th and Valencia St in San Francisco’s Mission District. Inspired by DC based Busboys and poets, the space was envisioned as a coffee shop, restaurant and event space

From Mission Housing:

Sam Moss, the executive director of Mission Housing, said he was excited about the project. “One thing about the affordable housing industry that gets lost in translation is how important our ground-floor spaces are, and should be, to serving the general community’s needs,” he said. Moss said he chose Yekutiel’s business out of a half-dozen other interested parties for precisely that reason. “16th and Valencia should be a hub of empowerment,” he said. “I see this as a way to do it.”

The community was clearly engaged by Emanuel Yekutiel’s vision. His kickstarter raised over $75,000.

From the Kickstarter campaign:

Where can you go to meet and engage socially with civic leaders, advocates, public servants, activists, elected officials, unsung heroes, artists, and poets, and writers, the motivated and the marchers?

Where can you go to plug in civically? To get inspired by your community leaders and hear about the issues that motivate them? To get informed on the fights being waged both here and abroad for a more justice and equitable society? Where can you physically go to take that first step and get involved?

With the help of many people, I am building that place - building it at a bustling intersection in San Francisco, one of the most civically engaged cities in the world. The City of the Summer of Love, of the Beat Poets, of Harvey Milk, and of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta.

I'm calling it Manny's.

Manny's will be a civic social gathering space that will combine high-quality coffee, tasty food, great beer and wine, a political bookshop, and a large civic event space.

One half of the space is devoted to social: food, drink, and books. The other half will be devoted to civic: a fully functional event space that will hold nightly programming. The bookshop will be run by the 25 year old veterans of the book industry, Dog Eared Books.

It sounds like a perfect fit in San Francisco, and particularly in the Mission district, yet Manny’s is being targeted by some of the most bizarre protests since Cliff’s Variety in the Castro was tormented for daring to sell Israeli seltzer machines.

Its an astonishing level of hypocritical virtue-signaling, even for San Francisco, a city that elevated it to an art form.

Photos from the Lucy Parsons Project on Twitter

The Lucy Parson's Project calls for running the Jew, er, "Zionist", out of town.   Sounds like they are calling for a pogrom.

World salad from Indybay, the Bay Area's own agitprop site calls Manny's a " gentrifying wine-bar, cafe and fake “social justice” space", claiming the existance of this community space will  "accelerate the raising of rents and the displacement of Black, Latinx, disabled and trans/queer people in the Mission."  And worse of all  (is this the real reason for the protest?), they describe Emmanuel Yekutiel as  having "unequivocally espoused racist, Zionist, pro-Israel ideals".

What can you do?   Visit Manny's, on the ground floor of Mission Housing’s Maria Alicia Apartments, 3092 16th St., San Francisco.   Attend some of the sponsored events.  And consider donating here