Opinion | We’ve been shoved down. Small business shows how we get back up.

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The crisis we’re living through in the Twin Cities can’t be exaggerated. You can see it everywhere you look. Busy streets stilled. Doors bolted and windows blacked out. Classroom seats are empty. Neon-vested volunteers keeping watch. Cars and homes abandoned, their owners detained.

The weight of this moment is tremendous. We all feel it. And unfortunately, it won’t end when the agents leave.

When the surge moves on, great effort will be needed to rebuild. That work will rightly focus on families and individuals targeted by ICE, who remain vulnerable. We must also tend to our local institutions — schools, houses of worship, social services providers and others — who’ve been stretched to the breaking point.

But in the difficult months and years ahead, I urge us to remember our small businesses. Right now, business owners are bearing extraordinary burdens, especially those run by immigrants and other groups on the economic margins. Before the surge, North Star Policy Action estimated that immigrants accounted for roughly 1 in 7 entrepreneurs in Minneapolis-St. Paul, and that immigrant entrepreneurs and business owners generated $1.4 billion in annual economic output for Minnesota.

Some estimates suggest that revenues at immigrant-run businesses are down 50-100%. These contributing Minnesotans face threats of ICE confrontations in their places of work, and economic violence in the form of lost revenue as fearful employees and customers stay home.

Like the owner of Pimento Jamaican Kitchen, who kept his doors open to weary neighbors the night Alex Pretti was killed, leading them down Nicollet Avenue for a vigil as the Brass Solidarity band lifted their spirits. Like Maya Cuisine on Central Avenue, where the front door is locked, but with a knock, customers are let in the side door to seek sustenance. Local pillars like Modern Times on Chicago and Pho 79 on Nicollet have been caring for their stricken community the best way they know how: free food.

Restaurants are only the most visible examples. We see printers donating their equipment and time to share vital resources. Venues are making space for organizing and collective healing. In Uptown, we see storefronts with signs reading “Please be patient,” determined to keep going knowing that their community and their survival depend on it. During the general strike on Jan. 23, more than 750 small businesses closed to stand in solidarity with the community they love.

These businesses show us the meaning of resilience. Once we lick our wounds, straighten our backs and set ourselves to the task of rebuilding, our small businesses will provide the blueprint. Do not quit. Respond when called. Work around obstacles. Keep kindling the joy and love that this assault has not, and cannot, snuff out.

Just as small businesses are the backbone of our community, they must be the backbone of our recovery. They deserve our full faith and investment — whatever it takes.

Please be patient.