This was reposted by Shelly Strauss, but it's really a Heather Cox Richardson post. It's unusual for her, because she is advocating resistance rather than just describing what is happening. Read it.
--Kim
In November 2024, a florist in Memphis did what most CEOs, influencers, and morally flexible Yelp chasers still won't: she stood up and told fascism to go to hell. Kristin Wolter, owner of Everbloom Design, looked around at the rubble of American democracy and made a decision. She wasn't going to wait for the next attempted coup, the next hate-fueled law, or the next viral meltdown at a brunch counter. She was done serving Trump supporters. Just like that. No corporate statement, no teary-eyed apology tour, no lukewarm branding campaign about "unity." She drew the line. And she meant it.
Wolter's announcement, made publicly and without apology, ignited a firestorm. She was doxxed, harassed, threatened, and temporarily forced to shut down her shop to protect her staff and her family. But what did she actually do? She exercised the very freedom conservatives claim to love—she ran her private business how she saw fit. She made a choice: not to hand-deliver wedding flowers to people who would gladly vote away her rights and the rights of everyone she loves. And MAGA lost their collective minds. Because if there's one thing the MAGA movement hates more than Black voters, women with boundaries, and books, it's consequences for their own goddamn behavior.
Let's make one thing crystal clear: refusing service to Trump supporters is not "discrimination" in any meaningful legal sense in most states. Political affiliation is not a federally protected class. Unless you live in places like California, New York, D.C., or a few rare exceptions, you are entirely within your legal rights to say, "No, I won't make a custom cake for your Proud Boys baby shower." Just like they're allowed to boycott Bud Light, scream about Dr. Seuss, and only order from pizza places where the manager says "freedom" twice before taking your name. That's the marketplace. That's capitalism. That's America, baby. And it cuts both ways.
What makes Wolter's stand so vital—so urgent—is that it wasn't just personal. It was strategic. It was a recognition that fascism doesn't arrive all at once in jackboots and torchlight. It arrives in passive compliance. In polite transactions. In smiling small talk with people who think children in cages were "a necessary deterrent." It arrives in our storefronts, our service industries, our daily lives—and unless we interrupt it, unless we make it uncomfortable, unless we refuse to make it easy, it spreads like mold. There is no neutral when one side is actively dismantling reality and the rule of law. There is no "both sides" when one of them tried to overthrow the government and still thinks they were in the right.
And let's be honest, MAGA only cares about "rights" when they're the ones getting bounced from a brunch spot. They scream about censorship when Spotify removes their favorite genocide podcast. They cry about persecution when someone asks them not to wear their "Trump 2024: Fuck Your Feelings" shirt to a kindergarten Christmas concert. They don't want freedom. They want exemption—from decency, from responsibility, from the social contract. They think that wearing a red hat is a get-out-of-consequences-free card, and it's time the rest of us stopped validating that fantasy.
Business owners, listen up: you are not obligated to pour coffee for people who think climate change is a hoax and your pronouns are a threat. You do not have to seat people who would happily strip away bodily autonomy while demanding extra lemon for their water. You do not have to cater to those who fantasize about political violence while pretending their party is the victim. This is not cancel culture. This is self-respect. This is drawing the line where it should've been drawn years ago. You are allowed to say no. And if you don't—if you keep saying yes out of fear, or habit, or some misguided dream of bipartisan harmony—you are feeding the beast that will eventually devour you, too.
Kristin Wolter understood this. She understood that fascism feeds on accommodation. That silence is consent. That there are worse things than losing a sale. She didn't burn down her business—she baptized it in integrity. And we need more like her. More baristas. More hairstylists. More florists. More web designers. More wedding venues. More dog groomers. More freelancers. More anyone with a service to offer and a soul they'd like to keep. If your business has a front door, you have a decision to make: do you let fascism walk in and smile, or do you politely show it the way out?
Check your state laws. Then hang the sign. Tell the truth. And let the red hats rage into the void they created. You don't owe them civility. You don't owe them your time. You don't owe them your labor. Not after the lies, the deaths, the insurrections, the stolen rights, the stolen lives. Not after what they've already done—and what they're still threatening to do.
Let them scream. Let them cry. Let them post unhinged reviews on Yelp. At the end of the day, history won't remember the trolls. It will remember who stood up and who stayed open.
And it should remember you.
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