Please Don’t Go!

[Valin]

Power Line

John Hinderaker

June 4, 2020

That is what officials in cities that have been devastated by rioters, looters and arsonists are saying to businesses whose investments in those cities have gone up in smoke. Steve touched on this earlier, but I want to amplify the point. The following are just three examples of many that we will see in the coming weeks.

From Chicago: Mayor Lightfoot Pleads With Walmart, Other Retailers To Not Abandon Chicago.

Quote

Mayor Lightfoot said she’s hopeful major retailers will reopen the Chicago stores that were looted or otherwise damaged during protests surrounding George Floyd’s killing by police in Minnesota. But, she’s unsure of one of the biggest.

Mayor Lightfoot said she was on a conference call with Walmart and other major retailers that had stores looted or heavily damaged during the unrest in Chicago. She said she pleaded with them to not abandon Chicago.

(Snip)

Here is another instance, Louisville, as reported in Salon: “As groceries board up amid protests, food inequality worsens for communities of color.”

Quote

This Kroger, which is located in Russell, one of Louisville’s historically Black neighborhoods, is one of the only grocery stores accessible to residents in the city’s West End.

It had been boarded up Monday in anticipation of protests and potential looting. By early Tuesday, a video began circulating of multiple people running through a side door, pushing carts of items. The Courier Journal reported rounds of gunfire can be heard in the background. The nearby Chase ATM was broken into, as well, as the video shows a group pulling money from the damaged machine.

(Snip)

Riots are terribly destructive, but most of the damage does not occur overnight. It plays out over a period of years. Sadly, much of the progress that has been made by minority business owners and by minority neighborhoods in recent decades has been wiped away by rioters, looters and arsonists.

Michael Ramirez summed it up well, if brutally