Volunteers sweep up from protest damage
LONG BEACH, Calif. – Carrying brooms, shovels, trash bags and cans of paint, thousands of people from Los Angeles to New York swept up glass from broken store windows, covered over graffiti and organized ransacked businesses Monday after protests over police killings of black people turned destructive again.
Some showed up only hours after taking part in demonstrations over the death of George Floyd, a black man pinned to the ground by a white Minneapolis police officer who pressed a knee into his neck for several minutes. Many said cleaning felt cathartic during a dark period for a nation battling the coronavirus pandemic, the job losses that followed and now the worst racial unrest in half a century.
Bill Stuehler donned a mask Sunday and marched with a fellow nurse and other activists in Los Angeles, later trying to stop young people from breaking into stores and stealing. At home, he kept watching the violence on live feeds and fell deeper into despair.
So before sunrise, the 66-year-old grabbed brooms, a rake and a trash shovel and drove to Long Beach to clean up the mess. Soon, more than 2,000 people were working side by side.
Throngs of people nationwide volunteered to help businesses – from small shops to major chains – bounce back from the damage, though some stores had burned to the ground and another night of unrest was expected.
Countless businesses already had taken a hit from restrictions designed to curb the spread of the coronavirus and were starting to reopen just as the protests led to more expensive setbacks: vandalism and stolen merchandise.
In Sacramento, California, twothirds of the city’s 600 downtown properties took a hit, with more than 200 broken windows, 330 pieces of graffiti, and more than 50 cases of “significant property damage,” said Michael Ault, executive director of the Downtown Sacramento Partnership.
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan said she didn’t recognize downtown when she walked through it Sunday, “but what I did recognize were the hundreds of volunteers and residents who came because they love Seattle.”