From the owner

A letter from Parviz

Poetica Coffee · Brooklyn · July 2026

Last week on Father's Day, my Congress member visited my coffee shop, Poetica. Rep. Dan Goldman purchased a coffee while we let his daughter use the bathroom. He paid, tipped and left. Afterward, the barista contacted me about not wanting to keep this politician's tip. After confirming he had indeed been a patron, I posted what I felt about his actions as my representative in Congress, and I refunded his payment in full.

This happened in the final hours of his highly contentious reelection campaign, and he and the media amplified my post as if it were breaking news. Given his overwhelming loss at the polls, perhaps it was a last-ditch effort to energize his base.

If we simply had a public disagreement about the policies he supports, that would have been fine. But conflating criticism of those policies with antisemitism did something else: it used the influence of a sitting member of Congress to smear a local, immigrant-owned small business for possible election-eve media exposure.

The resulting attention spurred death threats and horrific harassment. Strangers from around the world posted fraudulent reviews of my business — and the U.S. Department of Justice opened a civil rights investigation, citing my post and those fake reviews as evidence. Most recently, we received envelopes in the mail filled with white powder — along with death threats that are now under NYPD investigation.

I also saw an outpouring of support for Poetica: people coming in to buy coffee, strangers ordering merch, volunteers organizing on our behalf and even offers of legal help.

Throughout, my focus has been the safety of my family and staff. We even had to have police present when I picked up my son from school, and he missed most of the final days of the school year out of fear for his safety.

The election is over, and Rep. Goldman is no longer interested in talking about my coffee shop. But the threats against us continue. A few things are worth addressing.

First, had I known my post would be read around the world, I would have chosen my words more carefully. The incident came at a very difficult moment for me as a father, as I've watched the war in Gaza unfold from afar — the UN Commission of Inquiry has found that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and reported last week that Israeli forces continue to deliberately target children — and that passion drove my message. I'm not apologizing for calling out how my representative refuses to represent me, and I'm not responsible for people who make death threats over a social media post, or for a member of Congress who conflates criticism of his support for the Israeli government with antisemitism. I simply wish I had written more carefully given the times we're in. I sincerely regret the impact on the safety of my family and staff.

Second, I have to wonder why, in multiple back-to-back interviews, Rep. Goldman repeatedly noted that our barista was wearing a hijab. What message was that meant to send? Soon after those interviews, about a dozen people showed up at our shop to harass that barista, who was easily identified as a result of Rep. Goldman's interviews.

Third, business owners who serve the public need to think about both our legal obligations to serve everyone and our free-speech right to align our businesses with our values. We don't want to slide back to the days of segregation at the Woolworth's lunch counter. But we also aren't obligated to give those who support human-rights violations a free pass through our communities without hearing how we feel. Business ownership carries social responsibility, and we shouldn't abandon it because doing so is easier or safer.

Everyone has always been welcome at Poetica and — just as this member of Congress experienced — everyone is treated with kindness when they order from us. That will never change. The law, and our values, do not allow unequal treatment of legally protected classes, such as those based on race, religion and sex, among others. That is not what happened here, whatever Rep. Goldman implied.

In my post, I named the categories of people we don't serve: racists, fascists, homophobes and genocide enablers. These aren't protected classes and neither are elected officials who vote for policies and funding that enable such harms. We can't know everyone who walks in, and safety is our first priority — but if someone came in wearing a shirt supporting one of those harms, we would have every legal right to object. That's especially true of officials wielding the power our community handed them.

Now the main issue: what generated disdain toward Rep. Goldman? I had written to him for years about his voting record on Israel and Gaza, and I never received a meaningful response — and neither, it seems, did the international community. Rep. Goldman voted for the ICC sanctions bill known as the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act, in both 2024 and January 2025, after the International Criminal Court sought arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. How can we expect him to reckon with findings of genocide when he voted to sanction the very court with the legal authority and expertise to investigate it?

For clarity: everyone is welcome to buy a cup of coffee at Poetica, which is quite delicious. The community we've served for years is beautifully diverse across faith and race — including the Jewish friends and neighbors who are a vital part of it. I am grateful for how our community has shown up during this time.

On Father's Day, I was thinking of all the fathers and children killed by bombs that Rep. Goldman's votes helped fund when I told him he wasn't welcome in my coffee shop. On Tuesday, the rest of our community agreed and told him he's no longer welcome in Congress — he lost his primary to Brad Lander by more than 30 points.

But if he comes back — and if he denounces the violent threats that this episode inspired against me, my family and my staff — the coffee is on me again, this time with a conversation.