POLITICSParadis Books & Bread 86es Fox News Analyst for Violating Safe Spaces Policy, Faces Backlash
JESS SWANSON JANUARY 22, 2023 1:11PM
Fox News analyst Gianno Caldwell (left) was asked to leave Paradis Books & Bread in North Miami. Photos via @GiannoCaldwell/Twitter, Isabella Marie Garcia
A Fox News analyst walks into a Marxist Miami wine bar. No, it's not the opening line to a joke but rather the impetus for a local small business being put on blast on network TV and social media for "lack of tolerance."
The bar is
Paradis Books & Bread, a collectively owned North Miami bakery and wine bar with a "carefully curated selection of new and used books in and between the subjects of Black Studies, ~Critical Theory~, International Struggle & Solidarity Movements."
The Fox News flamethrower who was 86'ed is Gianno Caldwell, who promptly
tweeted to his 135,700-plus Twitter followers that while he and his companions "were having discussions about politics we were told by the owner that we were not welcomed there because we aren't politically aligned."
On
Fox & Friends Weekend on Sunday morning, Caldwell elaborated on the incident to host Rachel Campos-Duffy, explaining that he and his friends had been discussing what it was like "working over at Fox News," "my values," "violent crime," and "progressive [district attorneys]," when they were shown the door.
"This situation reminds me of something that MLK said in 1963: a very simple truth. He said, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.' And what I experienced yesterday, me and some of my neighbors who I'm just getting to know, was that injustice," Caldwell, a Black conservative commentator who lost his younger brother to gun violence, told Campos-Duffy "If this was not the Jim Crow South, I can't tell much of a difference... There's a target on the backs of people who happen to be Black, who happen to be conservative, and it needs to come to an end.
The owners of Paradis declined to comment to
New Times, explaining that they did "not want to engage with these people at all and are trying to operate with utmost caution because we find their audience genuinely dangerous to us and our community."
On its Instagram, Paradis clarified its version of events, stating that Caldwell's group had been "talking about women in degrading ways, as well as using eugenic arguments around their thoughts on
Roe v.
Wade" and that "their behavior and their words made other folks in the space as well as one of us working very uncomfortable.
"Once it was clear that they were finished with their meal, we told them that our views don't align, and that the language they were using was unwelcome in our space. One person in the group said, 'That is your business model, and I respect that.' As a space co-owned by black folks and women, we firmly stand by our zero tolerance policy."