By Illinois Review
Here in Illinois, Dot Foods, Inc. – a family-owned company that employs more than 6,000 people in the US and Canada – is the nation’s largest distributor of food and related products. Headquartered in Mt. Sterling, IL, the company is owned by twelve siblings, including IL GOP chairman Don Tracy, who is very proud of the business and mentions it frequently in speeches and interviews.
In December, Illinois Review reported that during the pandemic, owners of Dot Foods made a $6,193 donation to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.
And just recently, Illinois Review has learned that at the same time Dot Foods owners were donating to Biden in 2020, they were simultaneously launching a #WhyIMask campaign, and encouraging employees to submit photos wearing a mask.
In one Facebook post, the official Dot Foods Careers page encourages employees to submit photos, asking,
“We’d love to know who you wear a mask for!”
The post also encourages employees to submit their photos to the email address “[email protected],” along with a,
“Photo of you wearing your mask OR a photo of you with the people you wear a mask for.
A sentence or two about why you wear a mask.”
Around sixteen submissions were accepted and published on the company’s Facebook page.
One employee,
“wears his mask when social distancing is not possible in order to keep everyone else safe. He hopes others will do the same for him.”
Another employee wears her mask,
“to stop the spread and help get our country back to normal.”
And another one,
“wears a mask for her asthmatic friends, who really appreciate it.”
And our favorite submission goes to an employee who,
“…wears his mask for you. He wants to keep you from being sick if he is sick but didn’t know it.”
In one photo, an employee is sitting at his desk in his office wearing a mask.
The Dot Foods COVID-19 website is no longer available, but the link is referenced in several social media posts.
Wearing a mask should be optional, and it should be up to the individual to make that decision – shaming them into wearing a mask through a dramatic #WhyIMask campaign is totally different.
On February 4, 2022, Sangamon County Judge Raylene Grischow issued a ruling that lifted the mask mandate for children in schools after attorney Thomas DeVore successfully challenged Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker’s mask mandate, arguing that it denied students due process and was an abuse of executive power.
In her ruling, Judge Grischow didn’t hold back.
“Statutory rights have attempted to be bypassed through the issuance of executive orders and emergency rules…This type of evil is exactly what the law was intended to constrain.”
Former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAD) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci – the supposed expert and chief medical advisor to the President was against masking, writing in a private email on February 4, 2020 that they were ineffective.
“Sylvia: Masks are really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection.
The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through the material. It might, however, provide some slight benefit in keep[ing] out gross droplets if someone coughs or sneezes on you. I do not recommend that you wear a mask, particularly since you are going to a very low risk location.”
One year later, Fauci is on national television promoting the wearing of not one mask, but two – even going on the Today Show to demonstrate how to properly wear two masks!
The side effects of wearing masks are just now coming to light, with studies showing impacts on cognitive performance, among other things.
The masking of children has already proven to be a bad idea, leading to emotional, psychological and physical issues. In one study, they discovered,
“Overall, it is likely that masking exacerbates the chances that a child will experience anxiety and depression, which are already at pandemic levels themselves.”
The study also concluded that,
“the long-term harm to kids from masking is potentially enormous.”
Perhaps Tracy can launch a new social media campaign – one that provides counseling to his employees to address the side effects of mask-wearing, now that new studies are emerging.
But don’t get your hopes too high. After all, Tracy did run as a Democrat in 2002, and he did donate to a Democratic judge just months before his election as chairman of the Republican Party of Illinois.
Don’t expect any conservatives keynoting any IL GOP events while Tracy is chairman, but maybe he can invite Dr. Fauci – the two of them certainly have a lot in common.
