Dave Boze: Cancel culture warriors who tear down Caffe Vita should look in mirror

I’m getting so sick of hearing of people freaking out at Caffe Vita.

In case you haven’t heard, the coffee shop, which has locations throughout Seattle, told its employees not to hand out day-old food to homeless people outside the business because this would enable them.

Everyone now on social media is jumping all over Caffe Vita and saying things like, “You don’t want to help people, you want people to suffer, you’d rather have food go to waste.”

None of those things are necessarily true. But I feel like in this era of Cancel Culture, sometimes people define their own value with how much they can tear down someone else and declare others as unrighteous. We’ve all become the great Pharisees.

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In one context, Caffe Vita said not to give out these day-old baked goods. They didn’t say you couldn’t give them to a shelter, like Union Gospel Mission or any other organization where people are trained to get homeless people off the streets.

What they probably meant was, if you give the food away at the store, you’re going to attract more people, and that could cause problems for workers and customers. That is not the same as saying they don’t care about homeless people.

I’ll bet 90 percent of the people who are critical of the folks who own this coffee shop haven’t actually done diddly-squat themselves for the homeless. Instead of taking a business down on Twitter and feeling like you’re such a great social justice advocate, how about taking out your credit card and going to the website of a nonprofit that helps people who are struggling, and then giving some money to them? Or, how about volunteering at a homeless shelter?

Then you can say to the cafe, “I understand your concerns about your customers, but you could give these day-old items to a food bank or other service organization.”

My grandparents used to run a food bank. If the food from Caffe Vita is truly going into the trash, giving it to a food bank or a homeless shelter would be a great thing to do. I realize there are liability issues, but perhaps the food still could be donated.

I’m just so sick of this attitude that people have where they find something in which they can condemn someone else for not caring enough. And then the owners feels compelled to “take another look at their policy.” I almost look forward to the people one day who will refuse to give their policy another look and will tell the Cancel Culture warriors to take another look at themselves.

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