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 transformed East Lake Street into a place bustling with restaurants, nail salons and auto repair shops. This week they watched all their hard work smash and burn.
Abdishakur Elmi sat in his car Friday watching flames rage from the building next door to his Hamdi Restaurant, which he opened after migrating 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 East Lake Street mainstays were looted, including a Nordic bakery and meat market. Elmi and his restaurant supplier, Mohammoud Abdi, told the Times the damage reminded them of their younger days in Somalia, where militants ruled.
“We don’t have law and order,” said Abdi, 47.
Some business owners tried in vain to protect their shops from looters by taping soaring messages of solidarity in their windows, the LA Times reported, including “African owned business” and “We support our small diverse and minority businesses.”
Those windows were still smashed.
In Brooklyn, broken glass littered the sidewalk in front of the 88th Precinct stationhouse on Dekalb Avenue in Fort Greene Saturday, as battered police cars were towed.
“People come and go crazy. It’s dangerous. Yes, it’s a lot of work,” lamented Pratt Institute groundskeeper Camilo Basquez, of the cleanup. “People have kids that walk here.”
A block south on Lafayette Avenue, Starbucks had boarded up its broken windows.
Across the street, at Paradise Deli and Grocery, frightened cashier Ali Mohammed said, “Big problem. This street filled up, crazy. A lot of problem.”
Some nearby businesses displayed signs of support for protesters that read, “#Justice for George,” “#Say his name” and “#Black Lives Matter.”
Fresh graffiti covered the front of Barclays Center plaza and its surrounding bollards.
“There is graffiti everywhere all over the main plaza,” said building service manager Douglas Lemberg, who had men trying to powerwash it off.
While they were cleaning, a brazen 25-year-old vandal scribbled “F–k NYPD, f–k cops, let people go! Stop killing innocent human beings” on a nearby fire hydrant.
Additional reporting by Georgett Roberts and Khristina Narizhnaya