By COLlive reporter
Photos/Video: Itzik Roytman/COLlive
Small business owners gathered in lower Manhattan Wednesday to demand that Governor Andrew Cuomo allow them to reopen following closures due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The hundreds of diverse businesses that joined together in protest are located in all of New York’s five boroughs.
Speakers told how the lockdown is destroying their livelihoods permanently, as many are in danger of closing their doors for good.
“At the start of this pandemic, and when our city needed it most, we shut our doors to flatten the curve. But today, while the curve has been flattened our requests to reopen our sources of income have fallen on deaf ears. Our businesses are the backbone of this state, and quite literally what we depend on to put food on our tables and is equally vital to our employees, vendors, and local neighborhoods,” said Bruce Backman, CEO of Pesach in the Northeast who is leading REOPEN NY, a campaign pushing for small businesses to reopen.
Also speaking was Simcha Minkowitz, owner of Amor Fine Jewelry in Boro Park, Brooklyn, whose video demanding to be able to reopen her business was widely shared and led to a change.org petition which has garnered over 7,000 signatures.
Minkowitz, along with fellow small business owners Sara C Brafman of Gymies, Sarale Giter of Hair By Sarale and Sara Mund of Mezzo are on the executive committee of REOPEN NY.
Brafman, owner of Gymies, a children’s multi-sport facility in Crown Heights, spoke about the emotional toll the shutdown is taking on many families.
“Children are experiencing negative effects from screen fatigue, and the lack of human interaction is something that I cannot underscore enough,” she said.
Brafman also highlighted the current plight of many single-parent families. “The economic devastation that is occurring to parents that are home with their children with no childcare opportunity is going to be almost impossible to remedy,” she said.
The coalition of business owners demanded that they be allowed to open by Tuesday, May 26th.
They say they are all committed to operating their businesses safely, requiring the wearing of masks and proper social distancing at all times.
“If big-box stores can service hundreds at a time, we citizens should be equally trusted to service smaller numbers of clients in our places of business,” they said. “Common sense dictates that it is obviously much easier to monitor smaller more controlled environments and enterprises.”
They are also calling for a Temporary Sales Tax Holiday to benefit all small businesses that were shuttered during the pandemic.
“As we reopen and work to rebuild, the road to recovery will not be a simple one, specifically for small businesses that were deemed “non-essential” for over 10 weeks. This sales tax holiday would provide all our customers as well as business owners a much-needed boost to spur job creation and economic growth,” they said.
VIDEO
To join the small business association REOPEN NY, Click here
Follow them on social media at
Instagram: instagram.com/ReOpenNY
Twitter: twitter.com/open_ny
Are they also taking responsibility for those that will get sick from reopening?
What type of question is that? Does Home depot taking responsibility or Costco or target?, a smaller store can prevent the spread of a disease better than a big box store where you have 100 people in the store at once. At the end of the day we live in america and we have the right to work to put food on the table for our family, if you are afraid of getting sick than don’t leave your house. Since when does someone ellses fear of getting an illness restrict our right to provide for our families. If you don’t… Read more »
What do you propose? Stay home for a year? There will be nothing tk.come back to…
This commenter either works a government job and is still getting paid for sitting at home, or is 65+ without children and receiving checks every month. They’d be fine continuing until there are no more viruses in the world!
No they are neither, they are simply selfless and no and understand the harm in the virus and rather be safe then sorry!
If they feel that it’s unsafe to leave their house, they should stay home indefinitely (assuming their house is fully paid for). Others who are young, healthy and with young children to support must GO BACK TO WORK!
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Because if that then why not schools and shuls and no social distance and no masks and just regular like it was before? Where do you draw the line? People really suffered, people died, the world really went through a traumatic experience. Look israel opened and they have 24 new cases.
Israel slowly opened up its doors, piece by piece, not all at once, and now all stores are open and the numbers bH keep dropping every day. Stores should slowly be allowed to open, first limiting the amount of customers, and if the numbers keep dropping, then more stores etc. The worst is over, bH, and piece by piece is better than all at once.
In Israel they are open sensitbly – taking various precautions, little
by little – and then seeing what happens, testing it out. Masks, social
distancing isn’t thrown out. People who suffered and their fammilies and friends all say, in the frum world and outside – that be careful with this.
A lawyer said,
The only way to get results with opening stores is to actually open, face tickets and arrest and then have courts overturn the order. That’s what worked in Texas. The Governor may be constricted to keep things closed so opening up all together will work.
People don’t get into danger for open stores, young people almost unaffected, or close stores for strep or the flue.
People still at risk should follow their personal Doctors advice.
Even if a person gets sick or is at risk, they don’t need to get into danger, look at our President he is taking Hydoxycloroquine and Zink according to his personal Doctors guidelines as a precaution.
So there is no medical real reason or halachic text that I know that says to keep closed in such case.