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  • Bettie Johnson outside her restaurant, Taste Bud, which remained open...

    Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune

    Bettie Johnson outside her restaurant, Taste Bud, which remained open on Madison Street. During unrest, Johnson and her two employees quickly pulled the shutters, and she called her husband, who came to the store with a friend. They joined forces with three men from the barbershop next door to guard the businesses. One of them was armed, Johnson said.

  • Walid Mousa sits amid the mess at his looted store,...

    Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune

    Walid Mousa sits amid the mess at his looted store, African Food & Liquor, in the 4100 block of West Madison Street on June 4, 2020.

  • Woody "Pops" Safforld behind the counter of the convenience store...

    Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune

    Woody "Pops" Safforld behind the counter of the convenience store Solid Gold Food Mart in the 4100 block of West Madison Street June 3, 2020. He said he protected the store from looting with "keen vocabulary."

  • Mousa El Haw and employee David Galloway begin cleaning up...

    Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune

    Mousa El Haw and employee David Galloway begin cleaning up the family store, African Food & Liquor.

  • Ronelle Mustin, a resident and longtime community activist on the...

    Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune

    Ronelle Mustin, a resident and longtime community activist on the West Side, stands in the 4100 block of West Madison Street on June 4, 2020.

  • City trucks remained parked at West Madison Street and North...

    Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune

    City trucks remained parked at West Madison Street and North Pulaski Road blocking traffic on June 3, 2020 following the looting.

  • Cleared shelves at African Food & Liquor in the 4100...

    Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune

    Cleared shelves at African Food & Liquor in the 4100 block of West Madison Street.

  • Storefronts in the 4000 block of West Madison Street on...

    Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune

    Storefronts in the 4000 block of West Madison Street on June 3, 2020.

  • A shoe left behind in the debris by looters at...

    Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune

    A shoe left behind in the debris by looters at African Food & Liquor.

  • A smashed cash register inside the mess at looted African...

    Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune

    A smashed cash register inside the mess at looted African Food & Liquor in the 4100 block of West Madison Street, June 4, 2020.

  • Personal Liquors store in the 4200 block of West Madison...

    Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune

    Personal Liquors store in the 4200 block of West Madison Street is demolished.

  • Ash Hawa, manager at Khan's Dollar Station in the 4000...

    Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune

    Ash Hawa, manager at Khan's Dollar Station in the 4000 block of West Madison Street, surveys the damage June 3 done by looters who broke through the metal back door.

  • Bettie Johnson's restaurant Taste Bud remains open in the 4100...

    Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune

    Bettie Johnson's restaurant Taste Bud remains open in the 4100 block of West Madison Street on June 3, 2020, after it was spared from looting on the block.

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Ronelle Mustin walked up to African Food & Liquor on West Madison Street, nodded hello to the owner’s son and peered through a window grate that had been bent back into an angry snarl by looters the day before.

The vandals had yanked out the corner shop’s shelves and left the floor carpeted with food boxes and bottles. Electronic equipment was tipped over and destroyed.

“It feels like rage,” said Mustin, 72, a longtime political and social justice advocate known as the “Cake Man” because he delivers snacks to this stretch of Madison. “A misplaced rage. I think a lot of it is, when you lose hope, nothing matters. You know what I mean?”

Ronelle Mustin, a resident and longtime community activist on the West Side, stands in the 4100 block of West Madison Street on June 4, 2020.
Ronelle Mustin, a resident and longtime community activist on the West Side, stands in the 4100 block of West Madison Street on June 4, 2020.
A smashed cash register inside the mess at looted African Food & Liquor in the 4100 block of West Madison Street, June 4, 2020.
A smashed cash register inside the mess at looted African Food & Liquor in the 4100 block of West Madison Street, June 4, 2020.

It reminded Mustin and others on the strip of the riots after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 that struck a heavy blow on Madison Street in Garfield Park, a stretch that had bustled with movie palaces, hotels and a Goldblatt’s department store.

They are gone but Madison is still “the main vein” of the West Side despite chronic lack of economic investment. It’s a busy strip of destination clothing and shoe shops and hardworking business owners who are now facing a new challenge.

This time it’s from the unrest after a white police officer in Minnesota placed a knee on George Floyd’s neck for about eight minutes during an arrest, killing him.

“I don’t know which way we go from here,” said Siri Hibbler, head of the Garfield Park Chamber of Commerce. “This is the shopping district of the West Side of Chicago. There is no other area that you can go into that has shopping and retail like Madison and Pulaski, all the way down to Kostner. So we really need some support over here.”

That comeback may not include African Food & Liquor, which has been on the block for 30 years.

“Honestly, we are still thinking about what’s going on,” said 24-year-old Ihab Mousa, son of the owner. “We don’t even know what to do.”

‘You tore it down’

Two days before looting hit the West Side, Chicago police officers walked the Madison Street strip to warn business owners about reports that the area was being targeted.

“They walked the street,” said Bettie Johnson, who has owned a fast-food business, Taste Bud, for 30 years on Madison. “They told everybody they (are) expecting a riot on Madison Street this weekend.”

But that still did not prepare Johnson for what she saw Sunday as a caravan of cars pulled up around 12:30 p.m. and people began jumping out. One had a bullhorn and appeared to be directing people. The large crowd — which some say was drawn to the area by social media — had a flash mob feel to it but was dangerous and tense as bricks and debris were thrown at police, witnesses told the Tribune.

A man was shot and killed in an alley nearby, though it was not clear if it was related to the looting.

“I never thought it was going to be like the ’68 riots,” Johnson said. “I thought they would be angry with the police. I didn’t think it would go that far. They was just trying to build the neighborhood up, and now you done tore it down.”

Johnson and her two employees quickly pulled the shutters and she called her husband, who came to the store with a friend. They joined forces with three men from the shop next door to guard the businesses. One of them was armed, Johnson said.

Bettie Johnson's restaurant Taste Bud remains open in the 4100 block of West Madison Street on June 3, 2020, after it was spared from looting on the block.
Bettie Johnson’s restaurant Taste Bud remains open in the 4100 block of West Madison Street on June 3, 2020, after it was spared from looting on the block.

“I’ve been in the neighborhood a long time,” she said. “We have a lot of respect in the neighborhood, but everybody don’t know you.

“You want to get your point across, that’s understandable,” Johnson added. “But don’t tear up the ‘hood you’ve got now. There’s millions of people out of jobs already on unemployment, now you’ve got some more.”

A little farther down at the Solid Gold Food Mart, Woody “Pops” Safforld, 58, saw a swell of people moving down the block. He decided to lock up and stand in front — armed only with the gift of “keen conversation.”

It worked, he said a few days later as he sold bottles of pop and water from the high counter inside. “I ain’t got a lot of stuff,” he recalled telling the passing crowds. “It wouldn’t be worth it. If you’re trying to come up financially, this is not the place to be.”

Woody “Pops” Safforld behind the counter of the convenience store Solid Gold Food Mart in the 4100 block of West Madison Street June 3, 2020. He said he protected the store from looting with “keen vocabulary.”

Around the corner on Pulaski, Reena Davis made it into Mr. B’s Old Fashioned Donuts around 2 p.m. She looked out the front windows to see young men from the neighborhood standing guard outside her store.

“We were very, very fortunate,” said Davis, who took over the shop in January. “They didn’t touch nothing. I was literally looking out the window watching them tear them people’s places up. You could see the anger in the people”

Cheers from looters

Other spots were not so fortunate.

For hours, scores of people walked up and down Madison Sunday afternoon, coming and going through the broken windows of a liquor store, a beauty supply store and a Family Dollar store, among others. People carried off wine, beer, clothes with tags dangling. Some used carts.

A helicopter thrummed overhead and there was constant honking from cars. Scraps of paper, unopened bottles of RC and Squirt, mannequins, broken beer bottles and other debris littered the streets and sidewalks.

A crowd surged around African Food & Liquor. A cheer went up, an apparent signal that someone had managed to break in.

Later that evening, around 6 p.m., the guts of the store spilled out onto the corner of Keeler and Madison, food wrappers and debris blanketing the sidewalk. Inside everything from pasta sauce and onions to bags of chips, bottles of pop, liquor and a cash register was scattered throughout the store.

The next morning, Ihab Mousa stood outside the store as Mustin and others wandered up.

Mousa’s father opened the store three decades ago after emigrating from Ramallah in the West Bank, he said. Mousa and his brothers grew up in the store — and watched others in the neighborhood grow up too.

The ransacking left his father in shock. Mousa was still struggling to understand it too. “This is a neighborhood store,” he said. “And I am close to the people … All we can do is take it one step at a time.”

Jeannette Tolliver, 70, stopped at the corner, tears welling in her eyes as she described her morning taking in the scenes on Madison.

“I left home at 8:30 a.m. to come up and see here what had happened,” said the 45-year resident. “And I have cried twice. I went down (to the grocery) and I started crying. They’re closed. I started walking down here and I just started crying again. It’s just breaking my heart.”

The Rev. Marshall Hatch, whose New Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church is down the street, said the looting was a result of “vast income inequality … This is what people do when they’re at the bottom.

“They don’t see authority as legitimate. They’ve been screwed, and they’re quite clear on that,” he said. “They’re at the bottom of the empire. It’s almost predictable that you’ve got all of this pent-up anxiety, anger, desire.”

‘Hell yeah, I’m worried’

By Wednesday, Madison Street was spotless as community members hit the streets with bags and brooms. City street sweeps were also in the neighborhood.

Hulking Streets & Sanitation trucks blocked the street from oncoming traffic between Keeler and Karlov avenues. The sound of buzz saws filled the air as the boarding up started.

Ald. Jason Ervin said he had no estimate of how many stores were hit and what the financial loss was. But the destruction stretched from Hamlin west to almost Kildare and south along Pulaski.

“I talked to some business owners who are over a couple hundred thousand, some are over a million,” said Ervin, who said rebuilding will take major resources from the city, state and federal governments. “I need a place for people to buy milk and bread. It’s all of us. Not just for the mayor, it’s something our state officials, our congressmen. … I am worried. Hell yeah, I’m worried.”

Hibbler, who grew up in the area, and her husband, Milton, walked down Madison, recalling how one abandoned building was once a movie theater, how another one, now surrounded by a vacant lot and overgrown weeds, was once a Burger King and a bank.

Siri Hibbler bristled when she saw a Divvy bicycle station with a big hole in a partition. “Why’d they tear this up?” she asked incredulously. “Some of this stuff doesn’t make any sense.”

Hibbler said she had been working with Madison business owners and the city on a plan to beautify the area prior to the unrest. Standing outside African Food & Liquor, Hibbler said the businesses had already taken a financial hit, like others around the city, because of the stay-at-home order during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The looting left Hibbler worried about the staying power of some of the businesses.

“Our business owners, property owners, have lost even more money,” Hibbler said. “So it’s going to be probably quite difficult for us to get them, after this traumatic incident, to invest and basically allow their taxes to be increased to beautify the area.”

Ash Hawa, manager at Khan's Dollar Station in the 4000 block of West Madison Street, surveys the damage June 3 done by looters who broke through the metal back door.
Ash Hawa, manager at Khan’s Dollar Station in the 4000 block of West Madison Street, surveys the damage June 3 done by looters who broke through the metal back door.

At Khan Dollar Station, looters busted into the shop through the back door and ransacked the place, according to the store’s manager, Ash Hawa. On Wednesday, he and others were still cleaning up. Items from shelves littered the floor. Thousands of dollars were taken from a safe, Hawa said.

“Two, three weeks, I think,” he said, estimating how long it will take to rebuild. “There’s a lot of damage.”

He said he’s been working in the area for about a decade because it’s a bustling business strip. “But after this,” he said, standing amid the debris. “Maybe no one reopen.”

Mike Gluck, owner of Luigi’s Pizza down the stretch on Madison, was spared from looting. But still, he wonders if people will return after this. “What’s going to happen now? What’s it going to take to bring people back down here?”

‘I spent my life over there’

The owner of African Food & Liquor, Walid Mousa, 55, couldn’t bear to visit the store early in the week after viewing pictures on his son’s phone. He finally returned Thursday morning.

Chicago police officers gingerly stepped in and out of the store to complete an incident report. An appraiser stayed inside with Mousa to assess the damage.

Known in the neighborhood as Wally, Mousa became so distressed at the carnage that a son came outside to get an inhaler from the car.

What happens next remains uncertain, Mousa said, standing amid the remains of his store. He is even considering a return to his homeland, which he left in the late 1980s.

“I don’t even know. Right now, what happened makes me upset. I am mixed up. I don’t know what I am standing at”‘ he said, struggling for words. “It’s hard to make a decision. … I spent my life over there.”

Mustin, the activist, said he hasn’t given up hope that Madison will recover — or that society can resolve problems like economic injustice.

“We got to figure how to let people know that the future can be better,” Mustin said. “They have to figure out how we can pull together to make it better for everyone. Until you figure out how to solve all this income inequality, they ain’t gonna have nothing.”