Asian American Businesses Looted Across the U.S. During Riots

Asian businesses in six locations across the U.S. were struck by looters and vandals days after his death.

NextShark has compiled a small list of some of the spots hit, which has since grown over the weekend.

City Pages reported minority businesses being ransacked on Thursday, the morning after the protests. One being Saigon Garage, a Vietnamese-owned auto repair shop.

Others included Midori’s Café, El Nuevo Rodeo, and Addis Ababa, and various other “mom-and-pop restaurants” and those with “plywood barricades” reading “Minority owned.”

Good Samaritans gathered in the Minneapolis neighborhood to clean up the broken glass littering the streets, with one man, Derek Vander Vorste, saying, “If we do this, we should clean it up. Places like [Walgreens], it’s a national company, I don’t really think too much of it. Places like [Saigon Garage] over there, it’s sad to see this happen especially to the people that are being hurt, that the whole protest started around. But I mean, that’s what happens when stuff gets carried away.”

Midway also faced destruction on Friday. Twitter user @Piexelxilla took screenshots from PBS NewsHour to showcase 20-year business owner Kyung Park who “tried to hold back tears as he talked about the business he’s had for 13 years.”

One Bangladeshi-Indian restaurant owner in response to protestors burning his building down said, “Let my building burn. Justice needs to be served.”

In downtown Chicago, David Choi’s Korean-Mexican fusion storefront for Seoul Taco was also plundered. Choi wrote his support for the movement but also admitted his frustration as a business owner.

“Bottom line there are lives in our Black and minority communities, that on a way too regular basis, are NOT REPLACEABLE…” he said. “We will clean up and live another day, and fight another day. Please see the bigger picture of this.”

In a Facebook video posted yesterday, user Lisa Ling Liu documented the violence occurring in Chinatown where she’d grown up.

Her relative’s small T-Mobile store was about to be ransacked by looters, hurling rocks to smash the glass in, until the NYPD arrived on their motorcycles. The looters fled on their bicycles.

In a later clip, various fires were lit on the streets amid blaring sirens.

“JUSTICE should be [served] for George Floyd. But how will looting help,” she wrote. “Violence will not justify the situation.”

Another video originally posted to a Facebook group, CHINESE Uniting Towards Equality (By QueenieHO) from the Northeastern Queens, NYC page yesterday, also shows a crowd of looters and vandals running through Chinatown, knocking over trashcans, and gathering in front of Asian stores.

Eventually, they are seen dragging a wooden pallet to throw on top of an already lit street fire.

An admin for the Northeastern Queens page later stated that the fire occurred on Mott St., “in front of the supermarket where there was [an] altercation over not wearing PPE.”

Dion Lim, an anchor and reporter for ABC7 News, posted a clip of the aftermath on Oakland’s Chinatown on Saturday.

Sent to her by a viewer named Joanna, an elderly Chinese man dejectedly narrates what happened in Cantonese. The store he briefly passes with the destroyed window belongs to Yung Kee Restaurant. Several of the nearby stores have been burglarized, including an AT&T.

Dion Lim, later posted a clip of a store in San Franciso’s Chinatown yesterday, facing the same treatment as the T-mobile store above. The clip was sent anonymously to her by a viewer, where looters attempt to kick the glass door in.

ABC7 News uploaded photos of the aftermath, with damage done mainly to jewelry stores.

One shows A & K Jewelry on Grant Ave. with its gate ripped open and the inside barricade torn through.

Rafu Shimpo reported businesses on Second Street in Little Tokyo were looted on Saturday morning during protests in downtown Los Angeles. Some of them being Clayson, Little Tokyo Pharmacy, Oomasa sushi restaurant and Maneki Neko gift shop.

JapanLA, a Japanese pop culture shop also wrote a statement on Saturday about their incident.

George Floyd’s younger brother, Terrence, in an interview with ABC News, denounced the violence to erupt out of his brother’s death.

“George stood for peace,” the media outlet stated.

“I’m outraged too,” Terrence said. “Sometimes I get angry. I want to go crazy. My brother wasn’t about that. You’ll hear a lot of people saying, ‘He was a gentle giant.'”

San Francisco Mayor London Breed also tweeted, condemning the looting.

Feature Image via Getty