Armenian American Community Rallies to Support Homeland Despite Economic Hardship from Pandemic
By: Shant Mirzaians
An economic impact report by Yelp showed that 60% of businesses closed permanently due to the pandemic shutdown. Los Angeles County was listed with the most small business closures in the country, 15,000.
“During COVID, I had to get rid of my team,” said Youra Ghazelian who manages his family owned cafe called Urartu Coffee in Glendale, Calif. He was saddened by the decision, but is optimistic that by the summer, things will return to normal.
“We’re just taking it step by step,” said Ghazelian. “We’ve been doing our best with these restrictions to survive.”
Despite the economic hardship brought on by the pandemic, local Armenian owned businesses within Los Angeles County like Urartu Coffee rallied to raise humanitarian aid for their homeland when Azerbaijan invaded Artsakh, an Armenian enclave, in the fall of 2020.
“Even though I haven't been to the homeland, I just feel like it's part of me,” said Ghazelian who grew up in Glendale which has a population of over 200,000 residents, 40% of which are Armenian.
Armenian owned businesses felt a personal obligation to help war refugees and displaced people they had never met before. Some of the hardest hit businesses within Los Angeles county include restaurants. The Los Angeles county health department imposed a ban on indoor and outdoor dining due to spikes in COVID-19 cases. Despite this, they have donated proceeds from their sales to assist in relief efforts.
“It was kind of hard to just like sit back and watch and let everything happen and not be able to do anything about it,” said Taline Keshishian, the owner of the online clothing boutique, Hokiis.
Keshishian kicked off her business in January of 2020, unaware of the pandemic that would soon change everyone’s lives with a quarantine shutdown that would last for the better part of the year.
Most of her early customers during this period were from the Armenian community, “Thank the Lord I made the name Armenian,” said Keshishian in reference to “Hokiss” which means “my soul” in Armenian.
She was able to keep things running thanks to support from her community and at a point felt that she really didn’t “need” the extra profits, “There are so many more people who are in dire need.” When the war started, she decided to donate 100% of her proceeds towards humanitarian aid.
“All of a sudden, October, November, December, like every Armenian in the world was buying from Hokiis and I was like, ‘I don't know what to do,’ I was overwhelmed.”
From Los Angeles, Chicago, Toronto, New York, New Jersey, Boston, and London, Armenians were buying her products knowing their money would go towards helping families in need.
Artsakh is an enclave that falls within Azerbaijani territory, but is mostly populated by Armenians. The region was put under Azerbaijani administrative authority in the early years of the Soviet Union’s formation. During the fall of the USSR, Armenians there petitioned and held a referendum to reunite with Armenia proper and were met with state sponsored pogroms from the Azerbaijani government.
As a result, a war broke out in the early 1990s which ended after a cease-fire in 1994. Armenians declared Artsakh as independent from Azerbaijan and established their own de facto government. In the decades following, the official status of Artsakh was never resolved while sporadic border clashes continued. In the Fall of 2020, Azerbaijan invaded Artsakh and after 44 days of fighting, Armenians capitulated and ceded territory to Azerbaijan.
As many as 25,000 Armenians were displaced due to the war. The relief efforts were largely focused on providing aid for those families, the families of fallen soldiers, and providing medical supplies for hospitals caring for wounded soldiers.
Ethnic communities rallying together to support one another is not a phenomenon unique to Armenians. Andre Comandon is a postdoctoral scholar and research associate for urban and regional development at University of Southern California. He worked on a study with the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge that examined the impact of COVID-19 on minority businesses within Los Angeles County. The study found that minority businesses were more vulnerable during the shutdown.
He said that communities often come together in solidarity “to create safety nets, create a strength in numbers within the community and do what they can to support each other.” This type of solidarity helps to build economic resiliency during a crisis like the pandemic but also helps to strengthen the community in the long term.
He is currently working on a case study of Little Tokyo in Los Angeles which is a neighborhood that is prone to the adverse effects of gentrification. He is finding that this type of community solidarity is an effective way of supporting local small businesses.
Comandon said they were considering including Little Armenia (which is nestled in Hollywood) in their UCLA study, but decided to keep the sample size small.