(WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- A Bridgeport café owner says she's traumatized after finding racist graffiti on the walls of her cafe this week.
Sydney Blakely made the discovery Wednesday morning. Someone had tagged the exterior of the building and vandalized a mural.
"As I pulled up, I was seeing ‘BLDM, BLDM, BLDM’ all over the place. And at first it didn't register. I was like BLDM, what is that? And then it clicked: Oh, ‘Black lives don't matter.’”
The 25-year-old opened Cook It Mama Café in September with her life savings after quitting her job with the Secretary of State's Office. Running her café is hard enough, she tells WBBM Newsradio.
"It's so hard for us to get anything. It's terrible for someone to come in and destroy everything that you worked for,” she said.
To help restore murals that were destroyed and pay for a security system, Blakely started a GoFundMe and has already raised more than $7,000.
She says she's also been receiving overwhelming support from community members.
"Waking up and seeing some people comment and seeing the love people sent to me was, like, wow. There's no way I'm letting this stop me.”
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