Minneapolis awaits Derek Chauvin verdict

President & CEO at Minneapolis Regional Chamber of Commerce, Jonathan Weinhagen, joined Yahoo Finance Live to break down his thoughts on how life will be in Minneapolis and the U.S. following the verdict of the Derek Chauvin trial.

Video transcript

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SEANA SMITH: A verdict has been reached in the murder trial of Derek Chauvin. We are expecting that verdict any second to be read right now. So we, of course, any minute. So we, of course, will bring that to you as soon as it gets underway.

But here to discuss right now how businesses in Minnesota have been preparing for this verdict, we want to bring in Jonathan Weinhagen. He's the President and CEO of Minneapolis's Regional Chamber of Commerce. And of course, Yahoo Finance reporter Melody Hahm joining the conversation. So Jonathan, just big picture here, give us a better sense of what businesses have been doing in order to prepare for this verdict.

JONATHAN WEINHAGEN: Well, good afternoon, and thanks for having me. A tremendous amount of preparation over the course of the last several weeks as we headed up towards the trial. What I'd tell you is, you know, businesses have been reeling from the pandemic, obviously experienced some tremendous unrest over the summer. I mean, as we anticipated this trial, businesses approached this in a very similar way, and this region approached it to many of the large-scale events that we've hosted recently.

In the last two decades, we've hosted a Republican National Convention. We've hosted a Super Bowl and a Final Four. And this trial has been every bit as planful as those events have been. So it's been a combination of offense and defense with regards to the business community. If you walk the streets of downtown Minneapolis or many of our commercial corridors, not an unusual sight to see boarded up and barricaded buildings in preparation for the outcome that we may experience today.

MELODY HAHM: Jonathan, I know you mentioned that last summer the Minneapolis region did see more than 1,500 businesses that actually sustained some sort of damage, right. If you were to quantify, in light of the Daunte Wright killing, in light of all of this year, as you mentioned, with COVID, with this sort of civil unrest, can you quantify the damage that some of these businesses have seen from looting, from protests, from kind of big picture all that's been happening to the city?

JONATHAN WEINHAGEN: Yeah, that's right. You know, over 1,500 businesses in the days following George Floyd's death, May 25, 26, 27. We saw some sustained damage throughout the summer, and then obviously the unrest from Daunte Wright's death in Brooklyn Center. So I would tell you that that damage collectively is approaching, if not exceeded, $1 billion.

And that's really the work ahead as we think about rebuilding and restoring these commercial corridors, but more importantly transforming them. We know that many of the most impacted parts of our community in the midst of the past year have been those that are disproportionately populated by Black, Indigenous, people of color, and immigrants. And that's something that weighs really heavily on us, particularly as we recognize the fact that what we are responding to and anticipating a verdict on is the death of a Black man.

ADAM SHAPIRO: I'm curious, Jonathan, you know, taking a deep breath as we await this verdict, what are you feeling right now? Are you worried? Are you nervous? Describe what you're going through.

JONATHAN WEINHAGEN: You know, I appreciate that question, a tremendous amount of heaviness. We have been living in trauma upon trauma upon trauma in-- in our region and in our city over the course certainly of the last year, but long before that as we think about the economic and racial disparities that-- that we experience. The last several weeks have certainly compounded that.

And I would tell you minute by minute as we await the verdict, as we await what justice looks like in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, there's a tremendous amount of heaviness that all of us are feeling. As I talked to, you know, community activists to public officials to CEOs and business leaders, everybody's feeling that same sense of tension and heaviness.

SEANA SMITH: Jonathan, can you also-- Mel, did you want to go? Oh, sorry. OK. Jonathan, can you give us a sense of what the city looks like today? We know that National Guard troops have been stationed across the city. Are certain areas blocked off?

JONATHAN WEINHAGEN: They are. So you may be familiar with Operation Safety Net, a multi-jurisdictional operation really to think about coordination and planning across our city and our regions. It's the state patrol. It is Minneapolis Police Department. It is the National Guard.

The-- the courthouse and city hall have been fortified since the beginning of the trial. We've seen that perimeter expanded over the course of the last couple of days as we've approached the end of the trial. And there's a heavy military and law enforcement presence across our city and concentrated in specific commercial areas and certainly around specific venues like our police precincts, both in the city of Minneapolis and across our suburban communities.

So just a really heavy presence to ensure that we can do a couple of things. One and most importantly, is protect people's First Amendment rights to demonstrate. I talked earlier about the grief and the trauma and the pain that our community has experienced. We want to make sure that there is a space for them to do that safely. But then also making sure that we just generally protect people and property in the aftermath of whatever the verdict is that we're going to hear here shortly.

MELODY HAHM: And Jonathan, of course, Minneapolis-based retail giant Target is the largest employer in the city's downtown. They have talked about communicating very openly and constantly with their employees leading up to this trial in the same way that you have with your members. But they've had the privilege of many of their corporate folks at least to be able to work from home.

When we've spoken to some of the smaller business owners in downtown Minneapolis, they don't have that opportunity, right. They don't have that privilege. What are the ways that you, perhaps in the long run over the next year, would be able to buoy their businesses perhaps through grants or any future kind of funding?

JONATHAN WEINHAGEN: A great question. I think, like all major metropolitan areas and all communities, we are rallying behind our small business community. We've long talked about small businesses being the backbone of our economy. I think what we've experienced and in real time over the course of the last year is that they truly are. And it's now our time to really pay them back for the contributions that they've made.

In the Minneapolis-St. Paul marketplace, 47% of employment exists amongst our small business cohorts. So as we think about return to work, as we think about supporting small businesses, there's absolutely a component of grants and what is that near-term increment of resource, whether it's through the American Rescue Plan or private sector dollars that we can bring to bear to help support our small business ecosystem, but more importantly, a market-driven response.

As we talk to business leaders and CEOs, we talk about choosing the future that we want in the city of Minneapolis and in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region. And part of that-- that future that there is, you know, unanimous consensus is that we want to continue to see a level of small business engagement and small business success. So we're doubling down.

And as a region, we've pulled together a small business team to really begin strategizing what does it look like to put the collective resources of an entire region, particularly one that has a heavy Fortune 500 presence, but what does local supply chain look like? You heard me reference Target earlier, you heard a commitment to drive upwards of a billion or two in-- in spend to BIPOC-owned businesses, a similar approach as we think about localizing that spend in our marketplace into the economic recovery.

ADAM SHAPIRO: What kind of questions have you been getting from those small business owners, not only in preparation for the moment which is about to happen with this verdict, but regarding the week, the two weeks, the month afterward?

JONATHAN WEINHAGEN: I think everybody, as you would expect, wants to know what my crystal ball says. And there's not enough Windex in the world to anticipate what we're going to hear in the next 20 minutes. As we headed up to the trial, a lot of logistical questions related to how do I protect my physical property? What can I anticipate? When should I be open? When should I be closed? When should I bring people and employees back, a real priority around the safety of people that has been ever present.

I think a lot of trepidation and anticipation for the weeks ahead. What does downtown look like? What does our commercial corridors look like as we see whatever the aftermath of a verdict might be? You have to remember that it was less than a year ago that we saw the aftermath of the death of George Floyd and literally stood and saw our city and various corners of it on fire.

What we've had in this instance is the advantage of preparation. We had the opportunity to spend weeks really thinking about how we prepare for this moment. Again, how we create that space for people to exercise their First Amendment right, but also make sure that we fortify and can-- can ensure the protection of people and property and businesses? And we've been doing that.

And at every step of the way, we've been talking to and communicating with businesses. Great credit to the mayor who's been in partnership with the chamber hosting a weekly forum to brief business leaders in real time on what we're hearing and seeing in the courtroom, but also what we're hearing and anticipating on the ground in the city of Minneapolis and across the region. So we'll continue to do that. Again, the trepidation is real. The heaviness is real. And we have a lot of work to do ahead of us.

SEANA SMITH: Jonathan Weinhagen, President and CEO of Minneapolis Regional Chamber of Commerce.