Food workers in Washington, DC vowed to refuse service and create other inconveniences for members of the incoming Trump administration.
Industry veterans, bartenders and servers in the nation’s capital told Washingtonian Resistance from Republican figures in the progressive city was inevitable and a matter of prudence.
“You expect people to ignore RFK eating at Le Diplomate after a few mimosas on Sunday morning and not throw drinks in his face?” said Zack Hoffman, a D.C. restaurant veteran who is now a manager at the National Democratic. Club.
The report involved bartenders and servers promising to “take their power back” by ousting certain executives or performing other small acts of resistance against these figures.
“This person theoretically has the power to take away your rights, but I have the power to make you wait 20 minutes to get in,” said Nancy, a fine dining bartender.
“There are a lot of opportunities for us as employees to feel like we’re taking our power back, while not necessarily ruining someone’s life. “Giving them a little inconvenience feels like a little victory for us,” he added.
Nancy said she would refuse to serve some Trump officials. If her employer tried to pressure her, she claimed she would quit “on the spot.”
“There’s power in stating that you’re not comfortable with a situation, and it doesn’t have to be this big dramatic show,” he said. “It’s just little bits of resistance that add up, and little bits of resistance that other people will see and hopefully they’ll feel empowered to hold on to those convictions, too.”
Susanna Van Rooy, a server and manager at Beuchert’s Salon on Capitol Hill, also vowed to refuse service to Trump officials who she believed held moral values that opposed her views.
“I would personally refuse to serve in office anyone I know is a sex trafficker or trying to deport millions of people,” she said.
“It’s not, ‘Oh, we hate Republicans.’ “It’s that this person’s moral beliefs are completely contrary to my convictions and I don’t feel comfortable serving him,” Van Rooy said.
An unnamed host at a fine dining restaurant said he planned to look up every Trump administration figure online so he could learn who they were and give them a bad table if they came in.
“I will only give them a bad table but otherwise guarantee decent and polite service,” she added. “I feel like them getting a bad table is nothing compared to the damage they cause.”
However, not every liberal activist in the report plans to oppose the incoming administration while doing their jobs.
A bartender named Joseph said he was disappointed with the election results, but he was hoping for better tips with more Republicans in Washington.
“I think the average of my tips from Republicans — at least the ones I or any of my colleagues have identified — is closer to 30 percent. With the Dems, I’d be surprised if it’s more than 20,” he said, adding that Republicans also tend to be low-maintenance patrons.
The comments are reminiscent of the first time in Trump’s time in office, when Republicans were heckled while dining at a DC-area restaurant.
Then-White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her family were kicked out of a Virginia restaurant and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was harassed at a Mexican Washington DC restaurant in 2018.
A few months later, Republican Senator Ted Cruz and his wife were also chased out of a DC restaurant by left-wing protesters.
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., encouraged supporters to fight against the Trump administration after the two incidents. He said that current administration officials defending Trump at the time “knew what they were doing was wrong” and said that they would soon no longer be able to appear peacefully in public without being harassed. She later retracted those comments.
(TagstoTranslate)US News(T)Donald Trump(T)Republican(T)Restaurant(T)Trump(T)Washington DC
