Portland Store Owner Laments Business Suffering From Violent Protests on Fox News: ‘We Can’t Hold On Much Longer’

Fox News’ Sandra Smith held an interview with a Subway franchise store owner who provided some sobering perspective on how violent riots in Portland have taken a toll on city residents.

Stacy Gibson spoke to Smith on Wednesday, and she began by explaining the challenges of keeping her store functional between break-ins, the ongoing fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, and incidents of intimidation against her employees and customers. When asked what she wants to see done about the protests, Gibson answered “we just want to see some action here.”

“This is just so hard for so many of us: trying to recover from the pandemic and then this continued violence. We need to come together and find a way to stop the violence without additional violence here,” she said. “Everybody needs to work together. That’s the main thing here. And at this point it’s just a big fight between everybody and we just need to put egos aside and come together and just get this resolved so we can all move forward as a country.”

Gibson went on to say that she does support peaceful protesting, but “when you start adding the violence and everything else, the messages are lost.” She further elaborated that violence is “a distraction” which takes away from efforts to address America’s problems.

We just want to see an end to it. That’s the main goal right now: stop the violence. Make it end today so that we can just all move on and recover from all of this. This is so not necessary…There is a lot of the businesses down here that are never going to reopen for a variety of reasons. It is a huge challenge. People are afraid to speak out down here because of fear of attacks or somebody not agreeing with that. We can’t hold on much longer. Some of us are already gone. We’re doing the best that we can, but why would we want to stay in Portland when things can’t be controlled and we can’t feel safe and we can’t provide a safe environment for our employees?

Watch above, via Fox News.