CAUGHT AMID THE PROTEST UPROAR
Merchants, indigents, innocents all suffer
As protests erupt into fire and violence across the country, merchants, the poor and innocent bystanders are feeling the pain.
In Minneapolis, African and Latino immigrants had transformed East Lake Street into a place bustling with restaurants, nail salons and auto-repair shops. This week, they watched all their hard work burn.
On Friday Abdishakur Elmi watched flames rage from a building next to his Hamdi Restaurant, which he opened after emigrating from Somalia in 1996.
“I don’t see the government,” Elmi, 55, told the Los Angeles Times. “I don’t see the power.”
He noticed other East Lake Street mainstays were looted, including a Nordic bakery and meat market. Elmi and his restaurant supplier, Mohammoud Abdi, told the LA Times that the damage reminded them of their younger days in Somalia, where militants ruled in one of the most consistently tumultuous places in the world.
“We don’t have law and order,” said Abdi, 47.
Some business owners tried to protect their shops by taping messages of solidarity in their windows, the newspaper said, including “African-owned business” and “We support our small diverse and minority businesses.”
Those windows were still smashed.
Eli Aswan, 50, who came to the US from Tanzania 20 years ago, said he lost $17,000 worth of equipment and titles at his car dealership on Tuesday after protesters swept through.
He had boarded up his East Lake lot and stood guard overnight, but couldn’t stop two more looters who came by later in the week.
“It’s too risky,” he told the LA Times as he relocated the vehicles to the suburbs.
In the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta, shop owners awoke to serious damage.
Julia Nguyen’s family business, a nail salon, was visited twice by destructive demonstrators who made their way through the front doors and damaged the sprinkler system, causing a flood so bad water was still flowing Saturday morning.
The family could see what was happening via security cameras.
“They made many attempts to burn down our spa,” she told the
Atlanta-Journal Constitution.
Liquor store owner Nirav Bodiwala found blood and debris on the ground, prized booze stolen and the cash register looted when he returned to his business, which is the ground floor of a large apartment building.
As if that wasn’t enough, protesters tossed burning cardboard inside — but it didn’t ignite anything. “That would have burned the whole building because of the alcohol I have in there,” he said.