yeah I find this article pretty clueless overall. The protestors are silly poseurs basically complaining about a metaphorical South Bronx has changed some in composition from the "burning" days and certainly is not the Fordham Plaza neighborhood they are protesting in. The commentators are clearly clueless about the neighborhoods involved.

Fordham plaza is like 5 blocks of shopping in older buildings with some national chain stores like Best Buy. Near Fordham University main campus! No fancy ones. Centered around a big building that was once Macy's or some other department store. It was the only place in the West Bronx that had such a strip of stores until the new Yankee Stadium was built to replace the old one in the Southwest Bronx. It had a hard time keeping chain stores there just because the buildings are not choice modern, there are new developments where they can go in the Bronx and many have done so.

The Yankee Stadium shopping area one is now much more convenient to the South Bronx and nicer than the old Fordham Plaza shopping area.

At that time of Yankee Stadium replacement the city required building of a shopping mall in the same area so there would be more chain stores in the west side of the Bronx but further south to service the poorest hoods. The Yankee stadium one is more popular now because it has better stores and is more modern (and  also has no little mom and pop places, which were looted it's like a real suburban type shopping mall with a  Target and everything, though small.  It wasn't looted. People of the South Bronx are grateful to have it and it was forced to be there with tax incentives. They're not gentrifying types, they like their chain stores and don't want them taken away.

The looting occurred at night after protests were over and mostly one night. It really had nothing to do with protests, it was crooks taking advantage of police being busy with protestors in Manhattan and stores being unprotected after months of lockdown.

Real protests of any size didn't even start happening in the Bronx overall anywhere until several days after the looting. Except for the one seeming to be organized by outsiders coming from Manhattan and they were mostly very much peaceful family events, people with little kids who wanted to do something kumbaya style.

And the south Bronx is not burning and angry like those protestors (once again, they are pretending that Fordham Plaza is the south Bronx) want to portray. Rather, if I would chose a way to describe it,it is eternally hopeful that there will be more corporate investment and real estate investment in the area, when there's not enough. They want more like the Yankee Stadium development. They want artsy types like rappers building recording studios and museums to rap. They have been successful lately at attracting immigrants from places like Africa and  India who are going to like art school in Manhattan or training to be a dentist on scholarship at Columbia Dental school--only place there is cheap rent!

It's actually some of the poorer neighborhoods in the far reaches of Brooklyn that have more of remnants of the "ghetto" thing going on.

South Bronx is not anti-corporate over all! Wants more corporate interest, not less.

better response than mine above and better than the professor's, too: