We’ve got no other way of showing people how angry we are,” he said.At least this guy was honest in the anger part of it all.
We’re doing it because we can
We are just trying to provide and take up the opportunity that we are getting right now. That’s all.
Get my portion! Get my portion!These guys seem to be in it just for what they can get.
But soon after looters ripped apart wooden boards and broke through the glass at the store, destroying it within 45 minutes. The pipes, hookahs, souvenirs, T-shirts and snacks inside couldn't be salvaged, even though some were left behind.Poor guy has his business destroyed by his own. Sad.
His father, a Guatemalan immigrant who swept floors and did construction work for decades before saving enough money to open the store three years ago, lost $20,000 worth of merchandise.
The family of activists had put a "Justice For George Floyd" sign in the window of the store before it was ransacked.
“I’m just very angry at the fact that we are a minority-owned business and we stand so much with the movement," Perez said. “It destroyed my trust in the world for that day."
Joe Green, owner of Broadway Wine and Spirits in Santa Monica, said he was lucky that his family-owned store experienced only one broken window. Green fended off looters, aided by his customers and neighbors. When he called the police, he said he was told that no one was coming.Good for this guy and bravo to his customers and neighbors for taking positive action against the looters.
“I think there needs to be stiffer penalties. You have to pay for your actions," said Green, noting that businesses have already been struggling because of the pandemic.
"Peaceful protesting is great. But rioting and looting and vandalizing? No. Burning businesses down? That’s not the answer.”
And the last part of his quote reflects the feelings of many of us both on this forum and elsewhere. Those types of actions are not the answer here. But both here and elsewhere we are called racists for expressing those beliefs. Fucking ridiculous.
The looters were mostly young and male, some of them teenagers and a few of them middle-aged. There were some women in the group, which was mostly black and Latino.So for the usual suspects, is this racist to call out the breakdown of the looters?
One of the looters was questioned on the spot by a friend of one of the merchants: Why was everyone out looting?At least another relatively honest answer stemming from anger and frustration, but flies in the face of those trying to have peaceful protests and those trying to calm the situations down peacefully.
As the camera rolled, the young man — dressed in a hoodie, with a black mask wrapped around the lower half of his face — spoke of long-simmering frustrations, of white people plundering the black community and appropriating their success.
“We’re tired of being killed," he said. "We’re tired of laws being passed while they put drugs and guns in our community. They pass laws to lock us up."
Asked if he was among the demonstrators peacefully protesting earlier in the day, he dismissed the idea.
“Protesting peacefully? We did that in the '60s. That didn’t get us nowhere.”