The protests on 7th Street West in St. Paul last year started small, but they prompted some pointed feedback. Across the street at Mancini’s Char House & Lounge, several of the people walking from the parking lot to the building gave a quiet but unmistakable response: thumbs down.
This wasn’t exactly a surprise. One St. Paul native dubbed Mancini’s “the supper club most likely to be chosen for cop retirement parties.” Even people who loved the place were leery of those sorts of associations—not least the protesters across the street.
When St. Paul natives Jeffrey Austin and Emily Goodhue co-founded the West 7th Gardeners of Resistance in early 2025, fascism was on the rise and they wanted to fight it. Their organization, a subset of the activist group Indivisible, was an offshoot of the West 7th Community Garden, which sits on a triangular plot of land that Austin owns next to the Eyes All Over optical shop on 7th Street West and Dousman Streets…