By The American Tribune | Created at 2026-10-12 10:36:21 | Updated at 2026-10-12 11:49:37
1 hour ago
Florida Democratic Senate candidate Angie Nixon is defending a wall inside her Jacksonville bookstore that features Assata Shakur, the convicted murderer and Black Liberation Army member once placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list. Nixon described Shakur and others on the display as “civil rights leaders” while responding to criticism of the portraits. The Democratic Socialists of America member now faces Republican Senator Ashley Moody in Florida’s U.S. Senate race. Her answer has added another controversy to a campaign already marked by her praise for Shakur.
The dispute focuses on Cafe Resistance, the far-left bookstore and coffee shop Nixon opened in 2024. Nixon said she opened the shop because “we had our freedoms coming under attack” and “there were no places for us to be safely.” She described it as a space “where people are learning their history, where we can convene and we can meet and we can learn and we can power-build.” The shop’s walls include portraits of Shakur and activist Angela Davis.
Nixon raised the subject during a recent interview after a critic confronted her at a press conference inside the store. She accused Moody of sending “a heckler, a tracker” who was “talking trash” about the portraits. Nixon described the people on the wall as “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.”
As Breitbart News reported, Nixon then said “a lot of them were set up,” before adding, “Not all, right? Maybe. I don’t know. Possibly. A lot of them maintain their innocence.” She named Shakur and Davis as examples. Recalling the visitor’s allegation that she was celebrating cop killers, Nixon responded, “It’s history. We don’t know our history.”
Nixon leaned on the same defense when discussing the violent records associated with people on the wall. “Some history is good, it’s bad, it’s messy, it’s ugly, but it needs to be learned,” she said. Nixon called for teaching “not just the whitewashed, sanitized version” but accounts in which “our people were fighting and resisting,” including people who “wind up getting locked up because of it.”
Nixon also disclosed that Cafe Resistance depends on her own money. “My bookstore ain’t making money. As a matter of fact, sometimes I’m like infusing cash into it,” she said. “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.” In 2024, Nixon said the store would be available for people seeking “to gather to build power to do the work.”
Watch Nixon discuss the bookstore and the controversy here:
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Shakur’s legal history is far more concrete than Nixon’s speculation about people being set up. Shakur was born Joanne Deborah Byron and was convicted under the name Joanne Deborah Chesimard. She was convicted in 1977 of first-degree murder and other crimes tied to the 1973 killing of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster. The FBI said she escaped from prison in 1979, surfaced in Cuba in 1984, and in 2013 became the first woman added to its Most Wanted Terrorists list. An FBI official called her a “domestic terrorist who murdered a law enforcement officer execution-style.”
Nixon had invoked Shakur before the wall became a campaign issue. “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 while campaigning at a church. She continued, “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.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video.
