Rising Star Workers Union to Host Benefit Show After More Baristas Are Fired

Organizers at the Rising Star Workers Union will be leading a rally this weekend to back recently fired employees.

On Sunday, from noon to 4 p.m., nine artists will be performing in a benefit show at Ohio City’s Kentucky Gardens to aid a handful of baristas who were fired from Rising Star’s Lakewood location in midst of a union drive picking up steam in the past month.

And a timely one this week. Two more workers, Caleb Reese and Katelyn Bishop, were let go for apparently violating a company harassment policy, Reese confirmed with Scene. Five total have been let go since RSWU held a public “sip in” on August 3.

“I’m really upset about it. It sucks,” Reese said in a phone call on Friday. “It was two weeks before my five year anniversary with Rising Star. I’ve never been reprimanded otherwise. To be terminated just like that? It’s really disappointing.”

Earlier this summer, Rising Star baristas at the café’s spot off Detroit Avenue made public their plans to unionize following what they say were months of negligence by management.

In an interview in mid-August, baristas Allison Jeswald and Nia Gatewood told Scene that the root of their organizing efforts lied in the store’s carbon dioxide monitor that was, unbeknownst to them, faulty and in need of replacement.

Gatewood herself even went to the hospital, she said, because of it. Jeswald was fired shortly after, in late July.

Talks amongst baristas at other locations led to Gatewood, Jeswald, Reese and others organizing a “sip in” at the Lakewood spot on August 3, a response to Rising Star higher ups closing the store five hours early that weekend. (Baristas were still paid in full, the company said, save for tips that would’ve been doled out.)

Hundreds showed up throughout the day to support the union, to buy coffee in lines that snaked around the block. By 2 p.m. that day, Lakewood police were called after several attendees were accused of “entering restricted areas.”

“If our employees choose to join or not join a union, that is their choice,” Rising Star said in a statement at the time. “But that is not what happened today. There is no place for harassment in our cafe. There is no place for hate or intimidation.”

Rising Star did not respond to an email request for comment in time for publication.

Sunday’s benefit is co-hosted by the Cleveland Art Workers, a collective of local creatives, and will include performances by RA Washington, Sierra DeLaine and Wish Queen. A suggested donation of $15 will go to the fired workers.

Rising Star’s Lakewood location is not back to its normal hours, two employees told Scene. Reese hopes the benefit show will prove that camaraderie signals to ownership that—above sip ins, unions and protests—the fired baristas care about their jobs.

“I just wish they would meet us halfway, and have a normal conversation about this,” he said. “Instead just reaching out to retaliate.”

Kentucky Gardens is located at 1753 West 38th St.

This article appears in Cleveland SCENE 10/8/25.