{"id":21035,"date":"2026-06-02T19:31:59","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T19:31:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/06\/02\/the-work-you-cant-always-see-beer-is-political-part-2-cleveland-prost\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T19:31:59","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T19:31:59","slug":"the-work-you-cant-always-see-beer-is-political-part-2-cleveland-prost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/06\/02\/the-work-you-cant-always-see-beer-is-political-part-2-cleveland-prost\/","title":{"rendered":"The work you can't always see: Beer is political, part 2 – Cleveland Prost"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently I published a piece about <\/span>beer, politics, and the question of who speaks up<\/a> and who doesn\u2019t. I meant every word of it. I still do.<\/span>
And then my inbox opened up.
Cleveland Prost is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
I\u2019ve been writing about beer since 2014. For most of that time, I kept things deliberately light \u2014 taproom profiles, new releases, the people behind the pints. Gradually, over years of building this thing, you gave me something I didn\u2019t expect: permission. Permission to go deeper. To say what I actually saw in this industry and what I actually believed about it. That trust isn\u2019t something I take lightly. It\u2019s why that piece existed at all, and it\u2019s why this one does too.
I\u2019m not walking anything back. But I want to go further.
In that piece, I wrote that beer has never existed outside the system. That immigration policy affects who staffs breweries and harvests ingredients. That labor policy affects taproom workers. That civil rights policy affects who feels safe walking into a taproom. That \u201cbeer does not exist in a vacuum. The idea that it does is comforting. It is also false.\u201d
I believe that as much now as I did when I wrote it.
But one idea came back at me, in different forms, over and over (from reader emails, comments, and conversations): that beer itself isn\u2019t political \u2014 that it only becomes political when someone decides to make it that way. That what we\u2019re really seeing is a choice by individuals to inject division into something that doesn\u2019t inherently require it.
It\u2019s a comforting idea. It\u2019s also wrong \u2014 and I think it\u2019s worth being precise about why.
That framing assumes that breweries operate outside the conditions shaping everything else. That politics is something you choose to bring into a room that was, until then, clean and neutral. That if you stay quiet, you stay clear of it.
But the room was never neutral. It was never clean.
Politics is already in the room. It\u2019s in who walks through the door comfortably and who hesitates. It\u2019s in whether a space can be used for organizing without fear. It\u2019s in whether helping someone quietly might carry consequences you have to think carefully about in advance. It\u2019s in who staffed the brewery, who harvested the grain, who can afford to be a regular. The idea that you opt out of all that by staying quiet is an illusion. You only change how visible your response to it is.
This is, I realize, a hard thing to hear if you came to a beer newsletter for something lighter. I wrote recently that \u201cbeer, for me, has always felt like a refuge \u2014 a third place in an increasingly fractured world.\u201d I meant that. I still do. But a refuge is not an escape from reality. It\u2019s a place to gather strength to face it.
Here\u2019s what I actually missed \u2014 and what I want to correct.
Multiple people in the industry reached out to me. I\u2019m not naming them and I\u2019m not identifying their businesses, because that\u2019s not my call. If and when they want to be loud about what they\u2019re doing, that agency belongs to them. What I can share is the substance of what they said, because it complicated something I presented too cleanly.
The overall message: *You don\u2019t know what we all are doing.* And they\u2019re right. I don\u2019t.
One example involved a collaboration brewed quietly to support another business facing serious challenges in a whole different region, with proceeds directed toward solidarity, community, and keeping operations afloat. No announcement. It could have been broadcast widely. The point was never publicity.
Another example involved logistical support for community efforts: organizing safe transportation, providing space for meetings on otherwise closed days, facilitating gatherings under difficult conditions. All of it happening while balancing real financial pressure and genuine concern for personal safety.
None of what they described is a brewer \u201cdeciding to make beer political.\u201d It\u2019s people responding to the conditions around them \u2014 conditions that are already shaping who feels safe, who has access, who can gather, who needs help, and who has the capacity to offer it. Politics, again, already in the room. Already shaping choices. Whether anyone announced it or not.
I\u2019ve spent decades in taprooms, at barrel releases, at festivals, in back offices and brewing floors, talking to the people who built this industry from nothing. I know how much happens that never makes it onto social media. I know the owner who quietly comp\u2019d a tab for someone having a crisis. The brewer who drove an hour to pick up a stranger who needed a safe ride. The taproom that stayed dark on a Tuesday so a community group could use the space without it becoming A Whole Thing. None of that gets a post. Most of it never will.
So when I wrote recently about silence \u2014 when I said that \u201csilence right now doesn\u2019t feel neutral, it feels like complicity\u201d \u2014 I was writing about what I could see. And I was right about what I saw. The public silence of breweries that have the platform, the stability, and frankly the safety to say something and choose not to? That still troubles me. I\u2019m not softening that.
But some of what I read as silence is actually something else entirely. It\u2019s people doing the work with their hands instead of their phones. It\u2019s people who are genuinely afraid \u2014 not of being canceled, but of real consequences for their families, their employees, their ability to keep the doors open at all.
That deserves more than a footnote. It deserves to be named clearly.
Here\u2019s the tension I want to sit with honestly: <\/span>public statements matter.<\/em> They matter because people can\u2019t rally around something they can\u2019t see. Visibility creates awareness and solidarity. It helps people find each other. It tells someone standing outside your taproom door, uncertain whether they\u2019ll be welcomed inside, something they need to know \u2014 or whether it\u2019s even safe for them to be in public at all. That\u2019s not performative. <\/span>
I wrote recently that the craft beer movement \u201cwas built on collective defiance. It was built on rejecting consolidation. On pushing back against homogeneity.\u201d I believe that too. And I\u2019ll extend it: breweries should be at least as loud about their values as they are when they drop a new seasonal. Your hazy IPA gets a full rollout \u2014 the label art, the tap handle photo, the countdown post. Human dignity deserves the same energy. Be as loud about human rights as you are about your beer. There is no reason those two things should require different levels of courage from you.
But visibility isn\u2019t the only form of courage. And not everyone can be visible right now without real consequences \u2014 financial, personal, sometimes physical. There are people in this industry doing hard, unglamorous, sometimes risky work in the background, and announcing it would compromise it or paint a target on someone who\u2019s already stretched thin. That\u2019s not silence as complicity. That\u2019s operational discipline under pressure.
What I want to push back on \u2014 clearly, not gently \u2014 is the idea that behind-the-scenes action and public visibility are in competition with each other. The person organizing quietly in the back room and the person posting a statement of solidarity on a Tuesday morning are both doing something real. We need both. We need the quiet infrastructure and we need the visible signal. We need people to know that this industry \u2014 at its best, at its most independent, and human \u2014 gives a fuck.
I closed that piece with a question: \u201cReactive and fearful? Or clear and values-driven?\u201d
That question still stands. But having heard from you, I\u2019d add a corollary: the values-driven path isn\u2019t always the loudest one. Sometimes it\u2019s a phone call and a recipe. Sometimes it\u2019s a room made available on a closed Tuesday. Sometimes it\u2019s a drive across town for someone who needed a safe ride home.
All of it is political. All of it was always political. You don\u2019t get to opt out of that \u2014 you only get to decide what you do with it.
I\u2019ve spent more than a decade writing about this industry because I believe it can be exactly that. I\u2019ve been lucky enough to build an audience that lets me say so plainly. That\u2019s a privilege I intend to use.
The work is happening. Some of it you\u2019ll see. Some of it you won\u2019t.
Support it either way.
Cleveland Prost is a reader-supported publication covering beer and brewing across New York state. To receive new posts and support this work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.<\/em>
Cleveland Prost is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
I mean, there are breweries out there whose only \u201cvalue\u201d is profitability (or the tax write-off associated with loss.)<\/span>
Thank you. One thing that I keep seeing: breweries that are definitely family-friendly and kid-friendly places, including same-sex families with kids. It’s a beautiful thing. It gives the old man hope.<\/span>
No posts<\/p>\n

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