Dr. Moe Smith has practiced chiropractic and wellness care in Minneapolis for more than 20 years — and has owned Moe Bodyworks in Uptown for 15 years.
After years of success, however, she’s lost more than 75% of her business since the George Floyd riots in 2020.
While Mayor Jacob Frey and the mainstream media want everyone to believe that crime is down, Smith told Liz Collin on her podcast that she’s experienced a much different story.
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Dr. Smith told Collin that “it’s absolutely undeniable at this point that business is drastically affected by safety issues in Minneapolis. I’ve been here for over 20 years and my business currently is about 25% percent of the volume that it was pre-George Floyd.”
She also spoke about the differing perspectives of Minneapolis residents and suburban residents. “I live in the suburbs and I commute in so I hear both sides of the continuum constantly. I hear what people in the suburbs think about Minneapolis. I hear people in Minneapolis, and quite consistently, the number one reason that people talk about not wanting to go into Minneapolis is safety,” Smith said.
She then explained how she and other business owners were scheduled to meet with a Minneapolis safety officer —but the meeting was canceled.
In a letter that Smith wrote in preparation for the meeting, she detailed some of the crimes and disorder she’s experienced at her business.
She wrote:
“There is virtually no business at this intersection that has not experienced a break-in, attempted break-in, theft, vandalism, property damage, or another serious public safety problem within the past several years. This is not one business complaining about a single unfortunate incident. It’s an entire commercial intersection experiencing repeated crime and deterioration.”
Smith said her clinic was ransacked twice, fires have been started near her building, her car was broken into, drugs and drug paraphernalia have been routinely left on her property, and the front entrance has been smashed during break-ins.
Smith also spoke about an unfortunate coincidence: “After that meeting was canceled, I left to go home for the day and I was taking out the garbage out the back door and here was a person sitting about two feet from my door smoking drugs immediately to the back door,” she said.
Smith’s advice for politicians
“I believe one of the solutions is that they can act, they can stop acting like little kids throwing sand at each other,” Smith said.
“They, I believe, are more interested in adhering to some ridiculous pie-in-the-sky ideology than actually focusing on making coalitions between different groups and functioning on real-world problems,” she added.
Smith also said that she finds it “significantly absurd that they’re so focused on this like futuristic plan of how they want to make Minneapolis this, you know, 2040 plan, 2050 plan, 20-whatever plan, but they don’t even have a six-month plan or a year-long plan. And if they do, they certainly haven’t told us about it.”
In the meantime, Smith said, “It gets harder every day, but I’m pretty stubborn and I don’t want my city to fall. Like I have, I feel a very strong responsibility to my patients. I feel a strong responsibility to this city. I feel a strong responsibility to this state. And there are a lot of us like this, but you can only heap so much on us before we collapse.”
Dr. JC Chaix
Dr. JC Chaix is an editor, educator, and an expert in media studies. He wrote and directed the Alpha News documentary "The Fall of Minneapolis" and "Minnesota v We the People."
Liz Collin
Liz Collin is a multi-Emmy-Award-winning investigative reporter, news anchor, and producer who cares about Minnesota. She is the producer of The Fall of Minneapolis and Minnesota v We the People documentary films, and author of the Amazon best-selling book, They’re Lying: The Media, the Left, and The Death of George Floyd. Her work has prompted important state laws. Yet perhaps most of all, Liz has been giving a voice to the truth—and helping others tell their stories—for more than 20 years.
