After wrapping up a successful first full year of owning the St. Paul neighborhood bar formerly known as Keenan’s, Ruth Kashmark, her son Gavin and Dan Guerrero decided to take a break and closed the place they now call the 620 Club for the first week of January.
The owners use the bar’s Facebook page to inform followers about food specials, live music and karaoke nights, just the sort of fare one would expect to see from a neighborhood bar that serves a wide variety of patrons. On Jan. 9, they posted an illustration of a megaphone announcing “We’re back” and a note that they were reopening that afternoon at 3 p.m.
Ross Raihala (John Autey / Pioneer Press)
But 90 minutes later, they posted a message expressing condolences for Renee Good, who was fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis two days prior. “We wish the current administration would stop using ‘public safety’ as an excuse to foment chaos and abuse among and toward the people of this nation,” the message read. Fair enough, I thought, and then I saw that the post ended with the note “F— ICE.”
“I typically am very much, like, no politics and no religion at the bar,” said Kashmark, who had worked at Keenan’s for nearly a decade. “I’m not trying to alienate people and I know it’s kind of contradictory to the post that we put up, but I really don’t see this as a political issue. It is a humanity issue. I wasn’t necessarily trying to alienate anybody or be political. I just think that it’s horrific the way that this is being carried out.”
She’s not alone. While Minnesota’s biggest companies — Target, 3M, Best Buy and General Mills among them — have largely remained silent during the record-breaking surge of ICE agents into the state, some small businesses are speaking up in protest.
Such moves come with risk. Hilton removed its name from a Lakeville hotel after the company found it refused to accommodate a man posing as an official from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Taking a political stance can turn off a potentially wide swath of would-be customers.
Still, some businesses feel they need to speak out. Here are the stories of four of them:
Makwa Coffee
Jamie Becker-Finn, who served in the Minnesota House of Representatives from 2017 to 2025, opened Makwa Coffee in Roseville in 2022. She said she’s been outspoken when it comes to ICE, from hanging “no fascists allowed” signs on her door to posting calls to action on social media.
“We are being really vocal about how important it is that we protect our community,” Becker-Finn said. “I live in this community and I’ve seen it. I’ve seen the vehicles, I’ve seen the officers and I know people who have witnessed abductions within Roseville city limits. I’m experiencing this as a parent and as a person who lives here, just the same as everybody else. It just seemed natural that I would use my platform as a small-business owner to share that with others.”
The gimiwan latte contains ube and non-alcoholic amaretto, as shown on Friday, Nov. 3, 2023, at Makwa Coffee in Roseville. (Jared Kaufman / Pioneer Press)
That’s been Becker-Finn’s approach since she opened her coffee shop, even though it’s meant enduring some nasty comments on social media.
“The thing is, being honest about your values is something that we’ve always done as a business,” she said. “This is a Native-owned, queer-owned shop. If you have a problem with that, then this is probably not your place. We’re not going to be the right fit for everybody, and that’s OK. I’ve overwhelmingly found in my time being open that being honest with the public feels better as a human being. If anything, I think we’ve grown because we aren’t staying neutral when the fight is at this level. Yesterday, we had our biggest sales day ever in three and a half years of business. I think it was directly because we have not shied away about sharing our values with the community.”
From her years of knocking on doors, Becker-Finn said she probably knows her community at a deeper level than other business owners. And she’s watched an ever-increasing number of her neighbors — who would have never joined her in campaigning — working and networking together and taking actions to keep the community safe.
“It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it what it’s like to be in this work and to be in this fight together,” Becker-Finn said. “You make eye contact with your neighbor and you both know that you’re doing the right thing. There’s this deep community connection and solidarity that I think is a lot stronger than a bunch of angry goons from out of state.
“The fascist playbook is that they want us to lose hope. But we’re not going to let them win. There’s just so many more of us and there’s a sort of belief that, yeah, we can do this.”
The Black Hart of St. Paul
Wes Burdine purchased the old Town House Bar in St. Paul’s Midway in 2018. While he’s straight, he pledged to maintain the Town House’s status as a gay bar while adding an emphasis on soccer. Burdine’s a big fan and Allianz Field is just a few thousand feet away.
All the while, Burdine has made his politics loud and clear, both on social media and in person. “I’ve never been shy about it, we have a big ‘F— Trump’ scarf over our window,” Burdine said. “It’s important for people to walk in here and know that this is queer space and if you don’t like it, you’re not welcome.”
U.S. soccer star Megan Rapinoe poses in front of a mural of herself Sunday at The Black Hart of St. Paul in the Midway neighborhood. Courtesy of Jonathan Pavlica
In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis in 2020, Black Hart was one of the dozens of St. Paul businesses that suffered property damage. Burdine said he thinks the community has learned a lot of lessons in the time since.
“My bar was broken into and it was by suburban kids,” Burdine said. “It was by these people taking advantage of a really hard moment and wanting to sow chaos and be part of that chaos. That’s one thing that’s on my mind, and I think on a lot of people’s minds. People really started to get organized in their neighborhoods to take care of one another.”
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After ICE began to surge into the area in December, Burdine saw those neighborhood networks not only spring back into action but to grow. “I went away for the holidays and when I got back, it was amazing to see the number of people just in Midway who are organized and keeping an eye out for us.”
Burdine said he has gotten some blowback over his vocal opposition to the president and ICE. He recently received an email from someone telling him he’s alienating half of his customers.
“That’s just patently false,” Burdine said. “People think that because Trump won the election that 50 percent of America loves Donald Trump. That’s just not true and in the Twin Cities, it’s an even smaller number. The number of people who think that Renee Good being murdered or that picking up old ladies off the street is something that’s appropriate is tiny. And I just don’t care about those people. Like, if you are for that, I absolutely don’t want your business.”
Mischief Toy Store
A glance at Mischief Toy Store’s Instagram feed includes both whimsical retail displays and a wall of yard signs that read “No Ice: Resist Fascism” and “Black Lives Matter.” There are photos of the Grand Avenue mainstay’s buckets of free whistles that activists have been using to alert neighbors of the presence of ICE as well as a screenshot of a message from a woman angry about those very whistles: “It is people like you that agitate, escalate and contribute to the problem we are having.”
Dan Marshall owns the store with his wife, Millie, and daughter Abigail. He said being vocal about his family’s values, and hearing complaints in the process, is something the store has experienced since it opened in 2015.
Snow covers the sign at Mischief Toy Store on Grand Avenue as heavy, wet snow creates its own mischief in St. Paul on Tuesday, Oct 20, 2020. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)
“We hung a Black Lives Matter sign after Philando Castile was murdered (in 2016), so this is not new to us,” Marshall said. “I think businesses have traditionally tried to be apolitical, but that hasn’t been a viable position for at least a decade now. We’ve been trying to stand up for community. Right now, it’s about immigration. But it could easily turn back to attacking the transgender community again. And none of this is acceptable. We’re just trying to use our voice as a business to stand up against this madness.”
After Thanksgiving, when ICE was cracking down on Chicago, the store began handing out whistles, which are created by 3-D printers owned by a growing, informal network of people who provide them to the store free of charge.
“We’re just a toy store, but we’re hearing every day, story after story, of people who’ve been traumatized by things happening in their communities,” Marshall said. “And, yeah, we’re giving out whistles, which is great. But these are normal, ordinary Minnesota people getting these whistles. And they’re using them in the full knowledge that it could get them shot. And they’re doing it anyway.”
620 Club
Unlike Makwa, Black Hart and Mischief, the 620 Club doesn’t get political beyond ICE. And Kashmark wanted to make it clear that the bar has “mad respect for local law enforcement” and that this is not about them at all.
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“First of all, we wanted to express our condolences to Renee Good and we wanted to make that public,” said Guerrero, a semi-retired criminal defense attorney and former Keenan’s patron who, like Kashmark, lives in the West Seventh neighborhood. “Second, we wish the administration wasn’t doing things the way they are, sowing fear and chaos among people.”
In the days since the post, the bar has weathered angry comments on social media and one-star reviews, which come with the territory.
“The next day, I got a phone call and he’s cussing me out,” said Kashmark. “Part of me is like, you know, we might lose some business for speaking up. But I also felt this is what my heart is telling me. I want my community to know that we stand with them. We had record-breaking sales over the weekend. People were coming in to say, ‘we saw your post, we love you and we’re here to support you.’”
