Confrontation at Starbucks over ‘MAGA’ hat erupts

A south Palo Alto activist has been fired from her accounting job at Gryphon Stringed Instruments after chasing a man wearing a Make America Great Again cap out of Starbucks and then posting about the confrontation on Facebook.

Rebecca Parker Mankey, 46, is “beloved by many in our community for her progressive activism. Mankey is an affordable housing activist who was appointed to serve on the city’s North Ventura Coordinated Area Plan Working Group. In November 2017, she unsuccessfully sought an appointment to the Planning and Transportation Commission, winning votes from slow-growth council members Tom DuBois, Lydia Kou and Karen Holman. She also ran for a delegate seat with the Democratic State Central Committee in January, but wasn’t elected.

Palo Alto Human Relations Commissioner Steven Lee said in a statement that Mankey is “beloved by many in our community for her progressive activism, myself included.”

But, Lee said, Mankey’s confrontation at Starbucks showed that she had “allowed herself to be pulled down” into the “muck” of political polarization.

“The MAGA hat at its best represents a distorted and inaccurate view of America, its history and its place in the world and, at its worst, is a symbol of hate and everything that is wrong with America today,” Lee wrote. “We resist intolerance. But we do not resist people. We must resist sinking down to their level. We must hold out our hand and help pull them out of the muck.”

A regular Starbucks customer who declined to give his name said he had seen the man in the MAGA hat at Starbucks and Izzy’s Brooklyn Bagels. He usually sits with a newspaper and talks with a female companion about national politics “loudly enough so people can hear.”

Like most other customers, he said he tries to leave the MAGA man alone because he seems to be “just trying to antagonize people” with his statements about immigration and other topics that the customer described as “typical Fox News.”

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