This is nothing short of blackmail, and pure thuggish rule, plain and simple. The streets of Louisville continue to be victim to a ongoing wave of destructive behavior and outright lawlessness.
As if the good citizens, and small business owners haven’t already been through it all, now it is reported that there is also supposed racial justice advocates who have been literally shaking down local businesses like they are mobsters! They are making illegal demands of the business owners in a blackmail scheme. Those who refuse to make their demands have been met with threats, and attacks including arson in at least one case reported.
A local restaurant operator was confronted just outside his establishment on Thursday proceding his refusal to adhere to the list of demands activists had given to him and at least a dozen other businesses. The protesters (terrorists) are claiming the business owners have benefited from years of gentrification after the demolition of a public housing complex that allegedly displaced black families.
The demands they made of the business owners were revealed during a demonstration last week, in which they called for the owners to employ more black people, purchase more inventory from black retailers and register to undergo diversity training.
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Some owners have welcomed the demands stating that they recognize the area’s history and want to do what they can to pay the debt of past mistakes of others to be more inclusive.
Others however, including Fernando Martinez who is a restaurant owner say that they have an issue with demands being made of them in such an aggressive and illegal manner. He dubbed them as “mafia tactics” that Black Lives Matter advocates are using to intimidate and threaten people.
It’s not activism, it’s mob mentality. It is ILLEGAL.
Private citizens cannot mandate policies for licensed businesses, and then take agressive lengths to enforce them. The correct way is to go through legislators, and put it to vote, period. But now days it seems that more and more people are wearing their ‘lawlessness’ as a badge of honor.
Some of the demands that are being made are absolutely ridiculous, busines owners are being told that they must “acknowledge their complicity” in the harm that has been done to the Black community because a low-income housing project was demolished DECADES ago.
The business owners didn’t demolish those buildings, they invested in the community and created jobs for people… yet they have to acknowledge their complicity in something they had nothing to do with? These are threats, and they are being issued as such with the promise that if they do not comply there will be repercussions. These threats have already become reality for some of the business owners.
New York Post reported:
One owner of a local shop named Fadi Faouri has had to live inside his business property for months. And a new property he purchased to move his shop to was burned down last week.
“Stuff is being damaged on a nightly basis, people are shooting at each other every night,” said Faouri, who’s had the shop for eight years. “Every night we have a new store that got looted. They break in, they take whatever and go. They walk away.”
Business is so bad right now because of the protests, Faouri planned to move his shop a few blocks away starting Monday.
The new location was torched Thursday night.
Faouri, himself an immigrant from Jordan, doesn’t feel he is in need of any diversity training and won’t be forced to mouth the words of others under threats. Since no companies are offering insurance to businesses in Louisville during this crisis, he’s stuck paying for the losses at his new location himself. Denny Burk recently asked the pertinent question on this subject on Twitter. Why isn’t this guy’s story a national headline already?
Why is this man’s story not everywhere? In all this time – more three decades – I never thought I would see a day when journalists were so afraid or unwilling to do their jobs and the media would willingly abandon the integrity that made it worth something https://t.co/bx7dmrMefX
— Lara Logan (@laralogan) September 29, 2020
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