I don’t know how I missed this when it happened. It’s an amazing story which deserves as much attention as it can possibly get. It started with two leftists named Sonam Parikh and Kate Egghart who decided to open a coffee shop in Philadelphia. They were only able to do this because Kate Egghart’s mom, EJ Egghart, was a successful accountant who purchased a building in Philadelphia from an Iranian businessman who’d been using it for storage.

Sonam Parikh and Kate Egghart then spent 3 years cleaning and preparing the site to open their coffee shop, Mina’s World. EJ Egghart said she new from the start that it was not a good business gamble. Just the cost of cleaning and refurbing the building was far too much for the shop to make a profit, but she wanted to do it anyway because she felt like it would give something back to the community.

Mina’s World finally opened on February 28, 2020, which quickly turned out to be a truly terrible time to open a business.

Mina’s World, sitting on 52nd Street between Hazel and Larchwood, was founded in February of 2020 on the principles of social justice. The two majority owners, Sonam Parikh and Kate Egghart, define themselves as queer and trans people of color (QTPOC) and strove to make their cafe a safe space for others like them. Mina’s World sold local artists’ goods, covered community members’ meals when they couldn’t afford them, and offered lower–priced coffee in an effort to make often–elitist coffee culture accessible to lower–income customers. Mina’s World also funds and maintains The People’s Fridge, a food bank outside of the cafe.

Two weeks after it opened, businesses in Philadelphia were largely shut down and Mina’s World became a pick-up window for coffee. Customers, who were outside, were required to always wear masks when interacting with staff.

Speaking of staff, the fledgling company hired four employees all of whom were trans and/or black. Those employees soon decided they were unhappy with conditions at the shop and demanded a “radical accountability process” from the owners.

“We are facing systemic employer opposition, manipulation, abuse of power, exploitation, anti-blackness, ableism, hostility and complete disregard for our livelihoods,” they said. The “List of Grievances” published by the workers — don’t we all have one? — was extremely vague, with such claims as:

• “Anti-blackness in a multitude of forms & occasions”
• “Tokenization as a way to appear safe by association
• “Ableism in the form of inaccessibility, etc etc”

One alleged instance of anti-blackness was that when a group of black teenagers stole the Mina’s World tip jar and customers ran after them to retrieve it, the owners didn’t defend… the thieves. Without a hint of irony, the employees also accused the owners of “wage theft.”

The owners made a cringey video apologizing for their role in gentrifying the neighborhood and promised to turn the store into a co-op, meaning the four employees would become co-owners. Here’s a transcript:

Sonam: HI, this is Sonam.

Kate: And Kate from Mina’s World. Um, we’re going live as part of a radical accountability process. Um, we’re complicit in the gentrification and anti-Blackness on 52nd Street. We’ve put our community at risk with our presence, um, as well as our workers. In particular, this was highlighted by inaction from us, um, and we are here to take responsibility for that inaction, and the harm that we caused. With the guidance of the workers and the Black and Brown Workers Collective, we’re trying to raise funds to by the business and turn it over to our staff. Um. As the owners of the space, we put our workers in harm’s way each day that we’re open and we want to recognize that harm and want to uplift their concerns and needs. Um. We want to be, uh, accountable for our complicitness and, uh, our complicitness with gentrification and our engagement with anti-Blackness, uh, in that gentrification.

Sonam: And in that space.

Kate: And in that space, yes.

Sonam: The workers of Mina’s World deserve so much more. They have worked beyond their means. They have made the space what it is, and our ultimate goal is to return the space to them and give them the shop that they truly deserve to have. And what we’re asking you to do right now is stayed tuned for a funder so we can raise the funds to turn over the space to them and to make sure that they get to have Mina’s World in the way that they have envisioned it, and rightfully should have it.

However, the employees plans to seize the means of production didn’t go as smoothly as they had hoped. Kate Egghart’s mom, EJ Egghart, decided enough was enough. She had bought the building and had been allowing Mina’s World to operate rent free. Plus she was paying the electrical bill for “The People’s Fridge.” She also paid their insurance and did their books. In an Instagram post she explained that the “current business model of low coffee pricing, high labor” costs wasn’t sustainable. They were literally buying top tier beans and selling coffee at discounted prices so low-income customers could afford it. (There’s an old joke: Whatever we lose on each sale we’ll make up in volume.)

So instead of allowing the co-op to proceed, EJ Egghart put the building up for sale. The employees accused EJ of being rich and responded by creating a GoFundMe campaign to buy the building. They were seeking to raise $200,000. The description on the page read:

The Worker’s of Mina’s World have been put in a position that requires quick and precise action from community. The owner of the building Mina’s occupies is selling the building as a method of retaliating against the worker’s collectivizing. We are in a position where we desperately need to save our livelihoods!! If you have the means we really hope you will stand in full and complete solidarity with us as workers. We are asking you to share this widely and support us in our need to buy the building as well as the 18% of Mina’s World that the owner of the building also owns.

They eventually raised just over $10,000 but by that point it didn’t matter. The cafe close for good on July 1, 2022. The four employees announced they would be keeping the money:

Initially, the funds were to be used to attempt to purchase the building Mina’s World operated out of. Now that Mina’s is no longer operating, the funds will be dispersed amongst the now unemployed workers with a portion of it being distributed to local mutual aid funds & orgs.

It’s a pretty spectacular example of left-wing organizations being eaten alive by their own leftist employees. It’s just one more example of the broader problem Ryan Grim wrote about last year. Many leftists now see work not as a place to get things done for their employer but as a place to test out their ideological issues. This is probably happening a lot more often than we realize.