From Facebook
Last year, John Dulles posted a sign outside his Dulles Cleaners in Elmhust, IL, that read, “Pray for the Removal of Demonic Chinese Influence In Our Country.”
Andrew Kim, a Korean American man, spoke about the sign at a recent City Council Meeting.
“Because it is racist and hateful, it is dangerous to be communicating that kind of language and belief system in this day and age when hate crimes are so prevalent and specifically when anti-Asian hate crimes are on the rise.” Said Andrew Kim, according to Patch news.
“I’m not a racist. The sign, I made a mistake five months ago and instead of saying Chinese government I said Chinese people. That was a mistake, I admitted that, I took the sign down five months ago.” Said Mr. Dulles according to ABC7‘s report. Teri Litavsky, who adopted her daughter Lili from China when she was two years old, asked Mr. Dulles to remove the sign. Mr. Dulles said this prompted him to take it down.
“My hope for John Dulles is not that he is forced to go out of business. I do not hope that the upshot of this whole incident is that he is incapable of earning a living. My hope is that he would use this moment as a learning opportunity to understand the offensiveness of the belief system he has — a belief system that led to the posting of the racist sign.” Mr. Kim told Patch news.
After photos of the incident resurfaced online community residents gathered for a peaceful protest in front of Dulles Cleaners. The protest occurred on the weekend of March 27th .
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