Store owners reel from destruction by looters, vandals amid demonstrations

In downtown Chicago, people crawled through the partially shattered exterior window of a Nike store and ran out carrying brightly colored athletic gear and sneakers.

On Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, they ignited garbage cans and broke locks on luxury stores, sweeping up armfuls of designer handbags and jeans.

And as night fell on Minneapolis, the heart of widening protests set off by the death of an African American man in police custody there, business owners stood outside their doors and pleaded with agitators to spare the enterprises that many said they had spent their life savings to build.

“I was outside saying, ‘Please, I don’t have insurance!’” said Hussein Aloshani, an immigrant from Iraq, waving his arms in frustration as he recounted the scene Friday night outside the deli his family owns.

Businesses across the country suffered destruction over the weekend as protesters un

leashed their anger over the death of George Floyd on commercial enterprises — from the offices of major multinational corporations and banks to family-owned restaurants and bars.

In some places, demonstrators scrawled graffiti on storefronts decrying police brutality against African Americans or echoing some of Floyd’s final words: “I can’t breathe.”

In others, they hurled crowbars and hammers at windows and used gasoline to burn buildings to the ground.

Public officials said they were investigating whether political agitators posing as protesters may have led some of the looting. In some cities, peaceful protesters marching against police violence were outnumbered by others, such as white anarchists, who seemed more bent on destruction than messaging.

Regardless of who the perpetrators were, many store owners said they felt like the victims of misplaced aggression. They said their businesses, already ailing from an outbreak of the coronavirus that has been particularly devastating to small and minority-owned businesses, may not recover.

“A lot of people don’t know the blood, sweat and tears that go into being a business owner and the type of sacrifices we had to go through to be where we’re at right now,” said Kris Shelby, who woke around 1 a.m. Saturday to the sound of gunfire outside his north Atlanta apartment, which overlooks the luxury clothing store he manages.

Shelby and his business partner opened Attom in 2016 with the goal of bringing luxury brands more widely available in New York and Los Angeles to their city. They have drawn in celebrity clients such as musicians Migos and Justin Bieber and supplied clothing for the movie “Black Panther.” The store has also been a welcoming space for a diverse group of Atlanta residents, Shelby said.

But when he returned to the store at around 5 a.m. Saturday, Shelby found that all of his merchandise was gone. He watched videos posted on social media of masked young people of all races swarming through the smashed front windows and leaving with pieces of clothing and accessories worth hundreds of dollars each.

Shelby said he shared the pain of people protesting Floyd’s death but did not believe that stealing would stop such incidents from happening in the future.

“It hurt. It seriously hurt,” Shelby said of Floyd’s death. “But as a black man, and this is a black-owned business, it’s just sad. It really leaves a bad taste in our mouths, to be honest.”

In Oakland, Feel more Adult Gallery owner Nenna Joiner said gave her thoughts on the situation.

“I’m tired, but this is something that’s common for my community, to see a gentleman that was killed, and no accountability,” Joiner said on Saturday. “I could stand here and talk about the broken glass or what I think should happen, but this, the issue is about unchecked power. That’s what the people want to see, they want to see power that is checked, power that is placed into the hands of the community, and also with compassion for the community as well. Being a business owner, but being a black business owner I do understand. I remember as a kid I actually was witness to the Rodney King riots from my grandmother’s grocery store in Los Angeles. No one was coming, but the destruction happened. That’s exactly what happened last night in downtown Oakland.”

Kester Wubben’s new mail and printing business in Minneapolis had just been getting off the ground when the pandemic hit. Then over the weekend, it was looted. Televisions, an iPad and a U-Haul truck were stolen.

He had sacrificed greatly — pulling money out of his retirement savings account and working overnight shifts seven days a week at a lead factory — in order to start his Mailboxes Plus outlet.

In less than a year of business, he had developed regular customers. Miss Diggins stopped at the store a few times a month to ship packages to her daughter at college, and the pastor from Wubben’s church strolled in with a smile almost daily to check his mailbox and catch up.

Wubben, who is black, said he grew up five blocks from the site where Floyd was detained. He let out a weary sigh when asked whether his business would be able to recover from the damage, responding, “We might just have to let it go and try again another time.”

At the same time, he said, he understood the frustration over what had happened to Floyd. “That could easily be me. And so that’s how I look at it. That could easily be me. And it’s sad that there’s no humanity.”

He said he thought about the loss he had faced as a business owner compared with the loss of the Floyd family. “So, when you equate the life to the money, which one is greater?” he said. “I can make some money again, I can start another business, but you can’t start George Floyd’s life back over. It’s ended.”

The protests in Seattle were an opportunity for Jordan Davis-Miller to demand a better future for black Americans. But it disturbed him to watch some of the thousands of people gathered downtown seize a different opportunity: to smash windows and loot retail stores. Many of them, he pointed out, were white.

“Looting Nordstrom’s and small stores is not going to do anything for us,” Davis-Miller said as he watched two white people inside the flagship Nordstrom store throw items out a shattered window. “It’s going to cause more flame to the fire, and it’s going to give black people and people of color bad names. It’s not what we are here for.”

At the same time, Davis-Miller said, “It makes sense to be angry. It makes sense to want to destroy things and take things, because that’s all that’s ever been happening with any people of color. Our land, our homes, our livelihoods have been taken from us. It makes complete sense that we’d want to take that all back.”

Some business owners said they have tried to signal support for the protest movement in the hope that it would also help protect their establishments.

Derrick Hayes put up signs Friday night in the windows of his restaurant in downtown Atlanta that identified Big Dave’s Cheesesteaks as a black-owned business.

Hayes opened the restaurant after his father died, naming it in his memory. His “Dave’s Way” cheesesteaks and beef egg rolls often draw lines down the block and are favorites of black and white Atlanta residents alike.

He came in Saturday morning to find that the windows had been smashed, despite the signs he had displayed.

“Honestly, I was in disbelief,” Hayes said. “If we’re all in this together, let’s show that we’re all in this together.”

Joiner said she believes in protesting, but it can’t be at the expense of small business owners.

“I want to see people protesting,” Joiner said. “The beauty of protest is where change happens. We want to consistently and continually continue to protest, but we definitely want to make sure that we’re not damaging property of people who cannot afford it. Not right now. We cannot afford it right now. COVID has hit everybody across this country, definitely in small businesses, especially in Oakland. Now I’m not talking about big businesses, we understand that big businesses were hit the most in downtown Oakland, we’re talking about small businesses that have been closed since probably March 16 in the state of California or in the Alameda County, we want to talk about those businesses that can’t get PPP, we want to talk about those businesses that cannot get idle. They will not survive.”