The economic crisis that has cost taxpayers nearly a trillion dollars in bailouts, effectively socializes the hurt caused by Wall Street’s recklessness efforts to feed the beast. (For a terrific and accessible primer on the origins of the crisis see This American Life’s “The Giant Pool of Money.” But while the crisis has spurred a general reexamination of American life and undermined the consumption that many saw as an entitlement, smaller shock have long gone unnoticed, with devastating effects for those that have felt their sting.
Take immigrant small business owners in Brooklyn. In my beat n community district 14, many shopowners say that their businesses had yet to fully bounce back from the shock of 9/11. Overall the economy did recover, and small business owners were offered government loans through the Small Business Administration. But the necessary focus on Lower Manhattan was to the detriment of affected businesses in the boroughs. As they held on to their businesses after seven lean years, many owners say the larger economic crisis as not a disruption, but a continuation of their troubles.
Yolanda Duchenne runs a women’s clothing store near the Church Avenue stop on the Q train. After 9/11 many of her customers left and did not return she said. The middle-aged office workers Ms Duchenne’s shop caters to left Church Avenue, moving out of state. Her business had not fully recovered when the broader economy downturn hit.
Further down the Q line, near the Avenue H stop in little Pakistan, Asghar Chaudri, a pioneer of the community, and president of the Pakistani American Merchants Assocation, said his associates had not recovered from the economic disruption of 9/11 when the crisis hit.
“When we came here this area was all dirt pushers and prostitutes. We cleared it up,” said Chaudhri. After Homeland Security officials raided small businesses looking for illegal workers, many of the shops could not stay open, with their emloyees gone, and shopowners’ undocumented clientele afraid to shop on the strip.
Now there are boarded up shops in the heart of a once bustling strip. It was not so before Chaudhri was quick to say.