The founder of a well-known pro-life organization has gone viral in recent days after reportedly being kicked out of an Idaho coffee shop after the owner learned she was holding a meeting there.
Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, shared a video of what purportedly took place at Wydaho Roasters last month — and that video went viral.
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Hawkins told CBN News that coffee shop owner Jim Sheehan made his displeasure known after she, her son, and others met to discuss pro-life issues inside Wydaho Roasters. Her son’s goal has been to rally people against Proposition 1, an abortion measure that will be on the ballot in November.
“We’re recruiting door knockers, and we’ve had students going door to door, educating people in Idaho about this extreme abortion ballot referendum, which sadly many people don’t know about,” Hawkins said, noting her son rallied people online to come meet to form a pro-life group to address the issue.
The coffee shop was the intended gathering place for the group’s first meeting, but that didn’t go very well.
“We had purchased our drinks and our food,” she said. “Some other leaders, community members, came to kind of join the group that I knew from church.”
According to Hawkins, Sheehan came out of his office and told the group they couldn’t meet at the shop and needed to leave. Hawkins took out her camera and started filming the interaction, hoping she could simply convince the owner to let them stay for the first meeting and then pledge not to return.
“I was trying to negotiate with him, just like, let us finish this meeting; we won’t come back,” she said. “And then he just kept going and then compared us to the KKK and said, we were like the KKK, that pro-lifers were like the KKK, which was just beyond the pale. And that’s actually why I decided to release the video.”
Hawkins made it clear that she believes, as an owner, Sheehan has the right to refuse service and was within his rights to ask the group to leave. That said, she also believes in her right to expose his purported comparison between the pro-life activists and the KKK.
The result of the entire escapade was intense media coverage and viral video discussion. Ultimately, both Hawkins and Sheehan reportedly started getting death threats.
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“He was well within his rights to kick us out,” Hawkins said. “I was within my rights to expose his insanity, believing that community members were like the KKK, but neither of us deserves to die or receive death threats.”
Sheehan told Fox News that he pushes back on claims the group was kicked out. He said he had asked via Facebook the day before that the group not meet in his coffee shop.
“Sunday she announced on a local community page they were holding this meeting at our business, naming it — I responded to the post politely asking them not to use our business as the agenda of the organization does not align with us,” he told the outlet. “They showed up anyway.”
