Tacoma businesses closing Friday for statewide BLM silent march
Dozens of Tacoma restaurants will close Friday in solidarity with a statewide day of action organized by Black Lives Matter Seattle-King County.
Many businesses announced their decision on social media to support the event, which encourages those who cannot march in-person to abstain from work and instead focus on how to enact “lasting structural change.”
It appears that enough restaurants will be closed all day Friday that it might be hard to find a place to eat or order takeout, exactly one week after Pierce County entered Phase 2 of the state’s COVID-19 recovery plan, allowing for dine-in service.
The businesses believe the cause is worth it.
Though most posted a simple message announcing their solidarity and closure, some mentioned whether it was a staff-wide decision. Others dug in a bit further.
7 Seas Brewing, for instance, posted a few paragraphs on Instagram about the difficulty of this current moment from a financial standpoint as a small business and the consequences of a lost day’s wages for employees. Ultimately, those on the Friday schedule concluded together that “these are extreme times concerning the most essential human rights above all else and those circumstances require extreme support for real change,” the post read.
Inside the Tacoma taproom, 3uilt said it, too, would be closed and that it was “grateful to have the opportunity to use our voice as a company to demand social justice.”
Both the Tacoma and Gig Harbor taprooms will be closed. In fact, most brewery taprooms will be closed in solidarity, as will businesses throughout the city. They range from plant stores to cannabis purveyors, including Mary Mart.
King’s Books, Destiny City Comics, and Jankuland record shop, which all share a building on St. Helens Avenue, also announced they would be closed Friday. King’s Books owner sweet pea Flaherty said the doors would be closed with no curbside pickup, no online orders which may come in would be processed and no orders would be mailed out.
“It’s just a way to show that we support and then if people feel inconvenienced, it’s like, well, who else is inconvenienced?” Flaherty said. “It seems like a good way to send a message to anyone that it isn’t business as usual, and it shouldn’t be.”
Some businesses have indicated they will also support the cause financially. Gather Juice on Sixth Avenue will donate the proceeds it would have likely earned Friday to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Black Mamas Matter Alliance and asked its customers to donate money they would have spent at the store as well.
Cosmonaut Coffee, meanwhile, will remain open but donate all of its gross revenue and tips Friday to the Tacoma Action Collective, Seattle Mutual Aid and the Northwest Community Bail Fund.
The “silent march” intends to “honor lives lost and send a powerful message that Washingtonians no longer tolerate the racism that is built into so many of our institutions,” the BLM chapter wrote on its website.
It comes after weeks of protests against police brutality and systemic racism following the deaths of George Floyd and Manuel Ellis.
Acknowledging the health risks involved with holding an in-person march, which will start in Judkins Park in Seattle at 1 p.m. and move south to Jefferson Park starting at 2 p.m., BLM Seattle said the risk is not new.
“Anti-Blackness is a greater threat to our survival,” the group wrote on its website. It also asked Washington residents to use the day to learn more about their local elected officials.