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THURSDAY, JUNE 4, 2020
LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA (AP)
— Carrying brooms, shovels, trash
bags and cans of paint, thousands
of people from Los Angeles to New
York swept up glass from broken
store windows, covered over
grafiti and organised ransacked
businesses on Monday after
protests over police killings of
black people turned destructive
once again.
Some showed up only hours
after taking part in demonstrations
over the death of George Floyd, a
black man pinned to the ground
by a white Minneapolis police
oficer who pressed a knee into
his neck for several minutes. Many
said cleaning felt cathartic during
a dark period for a nation battling
the coronavirus pandemic, the
job losses that followed and now
the worst racial unrest in half
a century.
Bill Stuehler donned a mask on
Sunday and marched with a fellow
nurse and other activists in Los
Angeles, later trying to stop young
people from breaking into stores
and stealing.
At home, he kept watching
the violence on live feeds and fell
deeper into despair.
So before sunrise, the 66-year-
old grabbed brooms, a rake and a
trash shovel and drove to nearby
Long Beach to clean up the mess.
Soon, more than 2,000 people were
working side by side, scrubbing,
illing trash containers and repairing
what they could in the hard-hit city
south of Los Angeles.
“It was pretty amazing to see
the number of people turn out for
the community,” Stuehler said. “It
restored the faith in humanity that
I had lost last night.”
Throngs of people nationwide
volunteered to help businesses —
from small shops to major chains
— bounce back from the damage,
though some stores had burned to
the ground and another night of
unrest was expected.
In New Jersey, Chris DeLeon,
broom in hand, arrived at 8am with
dozens of other people to sweep
up broken glass in the capital
of Trenton.
The 34-year-old had protested
on Sunday, then decided to help
clean up after seeing videos of
people smashing windows.
“It just goes to show there’s
at least as many good people as
there are other folks out there,”
DeLeon said.
In Wisconsin, volunteers in
Milwaukee and Madison turned
up for a second day to clean up
damage from the night before.
Countless businesses already
had taken a hit from restrictions
designed to curb the spread of
the coronavirus and were starting
to reopen just as the protests
led to more expensive setbacks:
vandalism and stolen merchandise.
The owner of the Laugh
Factory’s club in Long Beach
discovered broken windows and
doors, computers smashed and
memorabilia stolen, including Three
Stooges posters and autographed
photos of Redd Foxx and other
late comedians. Workers boarded
up windows and swept up broken
glass on Monday.
Owner
Jamie
Masada
was offering an unspeciied
reward to anyone who returns
the memorabilia.
“It is not worth anything to them
but it means a lot to me,” Masada
said, because it’s tied to those who
represent “the height of comedy.’”
In Sacramento, two-thirds of
the capital city’s 600 downtown
properties took a hit, with more
than 200 broken windows, 330
pieces of grafiti, and more than
50 cases of “signiicant property
damage,” said Michael Ault,
executivedirector of theDowntown
Sacramento Partnership.
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan said
she didn’t recognise downtown
when she walked through it on
Sunday, “but what I did recognise
were the hundreds of volunteers
and residents who came because
they love Seattle.”
Stuehler found the same
community spirit in Long Beach.
A nurse who had been treating
COVID19 patients, Stuehler took
the month off when he joined
the protest.
He said a small percentage of
people vandalised businesses but
“the horror of the opportunism, the
rage, the disregard for logic and
reason — it was shocking.”
They had an outsize impact
that detracts from the message
of overhauling police agencies,
Stuehler said.
But he said he’s feeling revived
after seeing so many people
work together.
Alycia Barber also was moved
to help after watching from her
Long Beach apartment as people
smashed windows and police
doused the crowds with pepper
spray on Sunday.
The 22-year-old got up early and
joined others organising clothing
andjewellerystrewninsideaForever
21 store, hours after thieves made
off with armloads of merchandise.
Few of the volunteers knew
each other; they just showed up,
she said.
There were parents with
children, senior citizens, college
students. One woman brought
paint and brooms so people could
paint over grafiti on the outside
wall of a parking garage.
“I just feel so helpful today,”
Barber said, adding that she
supports the ight against racial
injustice. “But now we also want
to get up and make the world a
beautiful place for people.”
Brooms in hand, people patch up stores
damaged in US protests
Countless businesses already had taken a hit
from restrictions designed to curb the spread
of the coronavirus and were starting to reopen
just as the protests led to more expensive
setbacks: Vandalism and stolen merchandise.
Volunteers clean graf iti from a store wall in Santa Monica, California a day after unrest and protests over the
death of George Floyd in Minneapolis
Volunteers pick up glass from a damaged The GAP store
Nike store employee Enrique Barajas stands on a window display of the looted store in Santa Monica, California.
PHOTOS: AP