Democrat candidate and Democratic Socialists of America member Angie Nixon is defending portraits displayed at her Jacksonville, Florida, cafe and bookstore, including one of Marxist cop killer Assata Shakur. Nixon is running for Florida’s U.S. Senate seat against Sen. Ashley Moody, a Republican.

Nixon said she opened Cafe Resistance because “freedoms” were being attacked and there were “no places for us to be safely.” She also accused opponents of wanting to “ban the teaching of true history, particularly true black history.”

“And so I wanted to open the space so everyone can feel welcome, and so where we can organize and build power,” she said in 2024. Nixon told supporters the location would be available for gathering, organizing, and doing their work.

The campaign trail defense also included an admission about the financial condition of the black owned bookstore. Nixon said the business is not making money and that she sometimes puts her own cash into it to keep it alive.

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“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,” she explained. Nixon presented the struggling business as a place for meetings, education, and political organizing.

She then accused Moody of dispatching someone to the cafe while Nixon was holding a press conference. According to Nixon, the person criticized the figures whose portraits were hanging on the walls.

“I had a heckler, a tracker, someone that Ashley Moody sent to my shop the other day as I was doing a press conference talking trash about who I had on my walls,” Nixon said. The accusation against Moody came entirely from Nixon’s account.

 

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Nixon described those displayed as civil rights leaders who had been convicted or tried in cases involving robbery, killing police officers, and other crimes. She then claimed that many of those figures had been set up.

Even Nixon’s own explanation came wrapped in uncertainty. She acknowledged that this might not apply to everyone, said she did not know in some cases, and noted that many had maintained their innocence.

The figures on display included Shakur and Angela Davis, according to Nixon. She said the visitor accused her of celebrating cop killers because of the portraits inside Cafe Resistance.

Responding to that accusation, Nixon said, “it’s history. We don’t know our history.” Her defense was that troubling, ugly, or messy material still deserved to be taught rather than removed from the historical record.

Angie Nixon defends her bookstore displaying portraits of "civil rights leaders" Angela Davis & Assata Shakur

"A lot of them were set up. Not all, right? Maybe. I don't know. Possibly. A lot of them maintain their innocence. A lot of them said it was self-defense. I'm not sure." https://t.co/7VdVxOVZIa — Ezydu (@ezradulis) October 9, 2026

Nixon argued that history includes good, bad, messy, and ugly episodes. She opposed teaching only what she called a whitewashed and sanitized version, instead calling for lessons about people who fought and resisted, including those who were later imprisoned.

Shakur, whose real name was Joanne Deborah Chesimard, had at one time appeared on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s list of most wanted terrorists. She was a fugitive convicted of killing a New Jersey state trooper and became the first woman named to the FBI’s list of top terrorists.

Nixon’s public embrace of Shakur has extended beyond the cafe wall. While campaigning at a church, Nixon introduced a quotation from Shakur by describing her as “a famous freedom fighter.”

Nixon then recited Shakur’s words to the church audience. “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.” Nixon has also quoted Shakur elsewhere on the campaign trail.

The portraits, the bookstore’s financial struggles, and Nixon’s description of Shakur have now become part of her Senate campaign. Rather than distance herself from the display, Nixon defended it as history and maintained that the cafe serves as a safe space for learning and political organizing.

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