This is an utter disgrace. The mayor has simply ruined those proprietors. I hope she can be sued personally or jailed.
We have a liberal mayor and police chief in Houston, but I’ll give them this: HPD let the protesters march around and blow off steam, and the police chief even marched with them and prayed with them, but they didn’t hesitate to make arrests if the protesters even blocked a road.
As a result, we had no serious rioting to speak of, and only relatively minor property damage, and a few minor injuries. We’re certainly the largest city that can say that.
It’s a pretty simple, common-sense formula. You draw a bright line between peaceful assembly, which is constitutionally-protected, and breach of the peace, which is a crime. You permit and even facilitate the former and prevent and punish the latter.