The bottle smashed against the pavement right next to the old man’s foot, startling him. He instinctively spun the shopping cart in the direction of the attack. A bunch of bangers, pandilleros, on the far side of the chain link were already walking away laughing and joking.

With much of the country on lockdown, or preparing to go on lockdown, as part of an effort to stop the spread and rapidly intensifying growth of COVID-19 cases in the United States, small businesses are already feeling the sting of a contracting economy. Chances are, like me, you already know a handful of small business owners that are struggling to figure out how to keep workers paid or even employed, doing the math on whether to take on more debt (in the form of loans) during an economic downturn, or even those that have already made the decision to shutter their operations.