Michigan small business owner Jay Allen has had enough of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home order and reopened on Friday to safely accommodate customers.
Allen and his wife own Market 41, a 30-vendor antique shop in downtown Newaygo, a small town about 35 miles north of Grand Rapids.
“We might get 100 people, maybe 200 people a week,” he told Breitbart News, arguing they would be able to meet social distancing guidelines.
Allen said some of the vendors have begun selling cotton face masks to meet the demand and to provide some “essential” items.
He added they were scheduled to open a seven-bedroom boutique hotel in May on the second floor of the building built in 1860. But construction on that $1.6 million project, too, was halted.
Allen is also a local fishing guide, and despite being able to sit several feet away from his clients in a boat outside, that business was deemed “nonessential,” too.
“Staying safely apart has never been an issue,” he said.
“I make a majority of my money March-April-May-June, and then September-October-November-December,” he added, due to steelhead trout runs in the Muskegon River.
Allen said a DNR officer told him he hadn’t yet been ordered to write tickets, but “I can’t do my job looking over my shoulder” wondering when law enforcement officers were told to issue citations for alleged violations.
“We’ve been hit in three different ways,” Allen said of his business closures.
“Small businesses seem to kind have had the last thought in terms of the roll out,” he said.
Allen said he and his vendors had enough of the lockdown and decided to reopen on Friday, May 1 — one day after the original date Whitmer’s stay-at-home order was to expire.
“We decided whether we get a fine or not, we need to stand up for our freedom and our God-given rights and the rights our forefathers died for,” he said.
“We might get a ticket, so be it,” Allen added, “but if everybody just sits there and does nothing, our freedoms are being stripped away and to treat us like we’re children that can’t make decisions on our own about what’s safe for our families and for those around us, we just can’t handle the tyranny of it.”
He said the Friday reopening was met with a positive response from customers.
“It definitely seems like the light is being turned on in people’s minds that this is ridiculous,” Allen said.
Allen told Breitbart News he’s concerned about the reaction from law enforcement, but, “If they wrote us a ticket, we’d probably open the next day and hope somebody covered it.”
In early April, Whitmer authorized citations of up to $1,000 for violating her social distancing rules, Fox 2 reported.
“We’re already losing enough money, bleeding already pretty good,” he said, so a ticket as a cost of being in business might be worth it.
Allen said he an his vendors “are all in this together.”
He said a number of other businesses in downtown Newaygo deemed “nonessential” are following his lead and opening again, too.
Allen said his actions are not intended to seek out trouble, but if given the chance, he would tell Whitmer that it’s not her job “to keep us safe. It’s to inform us” and then let people protect themselves.
“To treat us like we’re just going to make the worst decision possible given our own devices is ridiculous,” he said.
“We’re the people that pay to make their salaries, and they’re going to tell us we don’t know as much as they do about how to stay safe?”
To date, Newaygo County, which has a population of about 50,000, has had 28 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and zero deaths.
Kyle Olson is a reporter for Breitbart News. He is also the host of “The Kyle Olson Show,” found on Michigan radio stations on Saturdays. Follow him on Twitter and like him on Facebook.
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