Car burning in a commercial district set alight by angry mobs (Image Source: France 24)
Just as the US economy was beginning to reemerge after ten weeks of COVID-19 lockdown across the country, the recent spate of protests, now retailers and restaurants across the country have had to close their doors again for fear of rioting mobs.
With most of country still under ‘lockdown’ orders or just coming out their shutdown – the people were primed for an exposition on the streets.
That perfect storm became a reality following the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department. Initially, protests and demonstrations in the Minnesota capital were relatively peaceful and orderly, but all that changed late Wednesday evening when violent protests kicked off in Minneapolis, before cascading across the country – erupting in dozens of major cities including New York, Washington DC, Miami, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Dallas, Portland, Seattle and many others.
National security fears were also sparked after anarchist and radical left-wing mobs also encircled the White House in the nation’s capital, burning a Secret Service guard station and also setting fire to the historic landmark St John’s Church in LaFayette Square.
Crazed 'social justice' mobs in #WashingtonDCRiots have set fire to historic landmark St. John's Episcopal Church in Lafayette Square, a Greek Episcopal church built in 1816…#GeorgeFloyd #Minneapolis #riots2020 pic.twitter.com/7g1GTY0JkA
— Patrick Henningsen (@21WIRE) June 1, 2020
An additional security perimeter of armored vehicles and personnel was set up around the presidential residence, as arson mobs shot fireworks and threw bottles at capital police and secret service, while gangs of looters ransacked buildings and businesses in the city.
As a result of the threat of mob violence and general disruptions, many businesses across the country have been forced to delay opening with some shutting their doors until further notice. Curfews and roadblocks have been mandated by municipalities over the weekend, as angry marauding mobs wearing their ‘pandemic’ masks continued to terrorize both residential and commercial properties, as well as attacking and burning some government buildings.
Washington Post reports…
IMAGE: An all too familiar scene of looting mobs, tearing apart and emptying retail stores in urban areas across the country (Image Source: France 24)
It had only been two days since Lilliannia Ayers reopened her Queen Hippie Gypsy store in downtown Oakland, Calif., before her front window was smashed and her storefront was spray painted Friday.
On Saturday night, she and neighbors stayed up all night to protect their stores — hopeful the protest movements across the U.S. would not destroy her business so soon after it suffered a devastating hit from the pandemic shutdown.
“It goes beyond the window,” she said. “We’re losing sales every day. We’ve already been impacted by covid. We’ve lost so much more.”
Similar scenes of destruction have created chaos and concern along the path of the nation’s protests over the death of a black man in police custody in Minneapolis. That’s pushed brick-and-mortar retail and restaurant industries, already hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic, to the center.
Retailers and other businesses in cities across the U.S., including the Bay Area, the District of Columbia, New York, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Minneapolis, experienced broken windows, thefts and other violence over the weekend.
(…) Walmart on Sunday closed several hundred stores due to potential protests. Amazon said it had adjusted routes or scaled back delivery operations in some cities, while Apple closed an unspecified number of stores on Sunday. Target said it temporarily closed six stores in California, Minnesota, Illinois and Pennsylvania.
The Mayor of Philadelphia ordered all retailers to shut down Sunday.
The closures come after many U.S. retailers and restaurants already cut back on operations or shut completely in March due to restrictions implemented to protect people from the coronavirus pandemic. Those weeks of closures have already pushed some companies into bankruptcy, including J.C. Penney and Neiman Marcus, plus smaller businesses that couldn’t survive a prolonged downturn.
Continue this article at Washington Post
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