A Pew Research Center survey in June found that a broad majority of Americans, 63%, said they supported the Black Lives Matter movement, which since the May 25 death of George Floyd has swept the nation with protests in response to police shootings of nonwhites.
The stock of goodwill toward the racial justice demonstrations organized by Black Lives Matter and other activist groups may be threatened, however, by violence, rioting and looting that has at times erupted during events.
Some supporters of police reform have denounced the violence at protests as destructive and self-defeating.
Others have downplayed the severity of the civil unrest precipitated by demonstrations or claimed it is being carried out mostly by white supremacists intent on sabotaging the racial justice cause.
Another response has been to justify looting as a legitimate form of protest.
In her new book, “In Defense of Looting,” writer and activist Vicky Osterweil claims the notion “the small business owner must be respected” and “is part of the community” is in fact “a right-wing myth” that has “crawled into leftist discourse.”
“One thing about looting is it freaks people out. But in terms of potential crimes that people can commit against the state, it’s basically nonviolent,” she recently told NPR’s Codeswitch. “You’re mass shoplifting. Most stores are insured; it’s just hurting insurance companies on some level. It’s just money. It’s just property. It’s not actually hurting any people.”
Osterweil’s argument, while perhaps not a mainstream opinion on the left, echoes oft-repeated sentiments expressed by police reform advocates who claim that critics of looting value buildings more highly than human lives.
But, leaving aside the fact that people have been hurt or even killed defending property against looters, it’s not clear there is no human cost to having your business vandalized or destroyed.
The following accounts, taken from social media posts and news reports, bear out the notion that looting is devastating to real people, many of whom are working class Americans and immigrants.
Anna Barounis, owner of Boston-based The Urban Grape, June 1: “There were 40 people rampaging my business,” she told WFXT. “They came in. They broke everything. They stole cigarettes. I started crying. I felt like I was being violated. You know, it was pretty devastating.”
Korboi “KB” Balla, a Minneapolis firefighter who spent his entire life savings to open up a sports bar in the city, May 29: “I don’t know what I’m going to do. We’ve been working so hard for this place. This is not just for me. This is for my family,” Balla told a CBS affiliate after his business was destroyed by rioters.
Yoom Nguyen, owner of the Lotus Restaurant in Minneapolis, August 26: “They just broke stuff for no reason… You know we work hard, we’re all minorities, just don’t do that stuff and the thought he could have lost his life or someone could have gotten really hurt — it made me question a lot of things,” Nguyenn told a local CBS affiliate.
Mohammad Zahid, owner of “The Find,” a consignment shop in Chicago, August 10: “It doesn’t really look like we are going to make it. There’s a lot of stores that say they are not coming back, just because this is something that has been ongoing… I was begging them. We are a small, family-owned store. We are minorities,” Zahid told local news station Fox 32.
Walid Mouhammad, owner of African Food & Liquor in Chicago, August 10: “If you have something against the officers or whatever, then why you come to break in our businesses, why you destroy us for?” Mouhammad asked on Fox News.
- Mouhammad plans on suing Chicago for the city’s slow response time to his 911 call.
Victor Estill, owner of the Gravity Gaming Lounge in Kenosha, Wisconsin, August 23: “We got looted. Everything in the store was taken and the place was destroyed. For a business that was struggling to get back to normal and pushing through these hard times we will not be able to come back from this. The damage to our building and the cost to replace the exterior damage and to top it off to replace everything stolen is going to be catastrophic. As we look to see the total costs, at this point we will be closing down completely,” wrote Victor Estill on his company’s Facebook page.
- After a successful GoFundMe campaign, Estill announced the gaming lounge would reopen.
Carry Londe, co-owner of Chicago boutique Londo Mondo, August 12: “And as a society, we can’t go down that path where we are all either defending ourselves or stealing from each other. It is just not the way we can survive and evolve,” Mondo told local news station Fox 32.
Jackie Jackson, co-franchise owner of Kilwins in Chicago, August 18: “I just said, ‘Please you can take whatever you want. Just don’t smash anything.’ They took the iPad, the laptop; they even took stuff that doesn’t make sense. I just said, ‘Please don’t take the phone. This is all we have.’ The guy was like, ‘OK. I’m going to need you to make a phone call for me.’ We were scared to give him the phone, but he was nice, so he just called someone to tell him where he was located so they could come around with the car and he could take all of his loaded stuff. It was a free-for-all so it was very scary,” Jackson told Illinois Policy in August.
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported on Monday that many Minneapolis business owners have been devastated to learn the costs to repair damage caused by rioters far outstrips what insurance companies will cover.
