MINNEAPOLIS: Black Business Owner Sobs As Looters Burglarize His Restaurant

Brittany M. Hughes | May 29, 2020
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Black lives might matter, but black businesses sure don't. At least, not to rioters complaining of discrimination against black Americans while destroying the livelihoods of the very people they claim to support. 

As progressive celebrities donate and raise money to bail looters and arsons out of jail following a third night of violent riots in Minneapolis, small business owners – many of them black – are spending each morning cleaning up the ashes of their torched stores and restaurants. 

RELATED: Minneapolis Police Chief: Intel Suggests Many of Those Rioting, Looting Were Not City Residents

Local news outlets caught up with one devastated black man who owns a local sports bar, which was ransacked and vandalized during the unrest that left multiple buildings across the city burning. 

“Today, we found Korboi Balla, who invested his life savings into opening this sports bar, cleaning up. While our camera was there, looters came back to try to steal his safe,” the report explains, cutting to footage of two black men trying to make off with what little Balla had left following the destruction of the night before.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” a sobbing Balla told reporters as he cleaned up the mess. “We’ve worked so hard to get here. So hard.”
 


A GoFundMe campaign to rebuild the sports bar has already raised more than $35,000 as of 10:30 a.m. on Friday. The attached story explains the sports bar was set to hold its Grand Opening in the spring, but was delayed thanks to the economic shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, just before finally opening its doors as shutdown measures were lifted, the restaurant was looted by rioters.

The GoFundMe says Balla is a local firefighter and that his wife, Twyana, is a member of a local black choir.

 

 

 

 

 

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