South Haven Businesses Open Up In Spite Of Governor’s Shutdown

Many business owners in South Haven this weekend might have put up a couple of billboards, proclaiming South Haven is open for business.  But social media posts may have taken care of that for them.  WWMT was among the first local media outlets to report that business in downtown South Haven was booming over the holiday weekend. In stark, and to thousands, memorable contrast to cities remaining shut down across the state, a loosely knit group of South Haven business owners said they’d had it with the Governors shutdown.

And for their benefit, most City leaders and the city’s police department were lockstep with the businesses and apparently are in full support. WWMT reports most every business along Phoenix Street in downtown South Haven was open Saturday and residents and tourists were spending time and money at them. The business owners say the potential legal action from the state far outweighed their need to reopen and work to save their business, and maybe their town.  There are no reports of anyone in the South Haven city government, the town’s police department, or Michigan State Troopers stationed there, interfering or threatening to issue shutdown breaking civil citations, or worse yet, arrests. It did not happen. What did happen was a groundswell of reports and supportive comments across social media platforms applauding the business owners, and the city for taking steps to stay afloat.

Other businesses throughout Michigan, like Owosso barber Karl Manke who’s received national attention, are individually reopening in a direct challenge to the shutdown orders of Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer.  Her latest shutdown extension, ordered without the support of the state legislature, has Michigan locked down through June 12th. Her self-declared state of emergency for Michigan got pushed back to June 19th.

All that, while the US Centers For Disease Control admitted this past week that the COVID-19 virus mortality rate is similar to the flu that hit the US in 1957 when of course there was no thought of a shutdown putting millions of businesses, their owners, and employees, out of work.