Asian American businesses across the country have been struggling against the pandemic-induced economic shutdown and xenophobia. However, yet another new challenge has become apparent in recent weeks: the looting and devastation that has taken place in the wake of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations.
Fortunately, for some of them, the community has been more than willing to pitch in financially to help some of these businesses get back on their feet.
For three weeks now since the death of George Floyd, activists have been peacefully demonstrating against police brutality and structural racism. However, opportunistic rioters have capitalized upon distracted law-enforcement to loot and pillage unprotected businesses. While these looters may have become national news for looting corporate retailers such as Target, many minority-owned small businesses have also suffered.
A representative tragedy is that of Sunny Optometry, an Asian American small business in Santa Monica. ABC7 reports that, just weeks after Sunny Optometry reopened after closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic, looters ransacked its offices. On her GoFundMe page, business-owner and practitioner Alice Sun recounts that “The looters were so thorough [that] they stole everything, including receipt paper, pennies, and [even the] lint in our drawers before setting it all ablaze… the office must be rebuilt from the ground up as there is very little to salvage.”
Likewise in New York City, the Asian American proprietors of GoldCash Inc. recount a night of violence. Jessalyn Shen described the assault upon her family and their business to NY1: “[They attacked] with crowbars and lead pipes and bricks, and in the process of trying to get my mom back into the car, they ended up breaking her leg… We drove down 188th trying to escape, they got back into their vans, and they tried to ram us off the road…”
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Family matriarch Wendy Shen ended up in the ICU for her fractured femur. Just as New York City beings restarting its economy, the battered Shen family will have to rebuild from what little remains of their business.
Both Sunny Optometry and GoldCash Inc. have appealed to the Asian American community and their communities at large for support. At the time of writing, Sunny Optometry has already crowd-funded $63k of its $250k goal, while GoldCash Inc. has already crowd-funded $38k of its $50k goal.
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