“I am not a fan of political correctness,” said Andrew Benson, 28, who had traveled from Canada to attend. Wearing a black suit vest, red collared shirt and black cargo pants, he looked more like he’d come to his conclusions as part of a teenage rebellion. “I have always had an odd attraction to things that are taboo.”
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| Benson with Milo Yiannopoulos. Photo first posted on Benson's page July 2016. |
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| "Rub a bald Ludwig von Mises for luck?" |
Earlier that month, on July 3, the woman had been sitting in her living room when she heard a man outside making gunshot noises. She looked out her front window and saw her neighbour, Martin, on the sidewalk making gestures with his hand as if he were shooting a gun at her house.
Nine days later, the woman heard Martin and another man in the parking lot outside her bedroom window. They were loudly singing songs with racially offensive lyrics and yelling, "Go back to Africa."
The woman filed her first police report the next day. Two days later, as she and the 11-year-old girl were walking to the local variety store, they were confronted by Martin and Gill. Martin again made the gunshot noises and the sign of a gun in her direction.
When the men began to spew their racial slurs, the woman and child turned and headed for home. The woman told police Gill was close behind them as they ran inside the house and locked the door. Gill then began to pound on her door.
Once inside, the woman, the young girl and the child's mother moved to the middle of the home for fear that the men would break windows. After police arrived and took a second report, the two women took turns sitting guard on the porch through the night in case of further trouble.
Racists going to jail for taunts
THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR
, Wed Sep 15 2010
A pair of hate-mongers will be sentenced Thursday for threatening behaviour and racially motivated harassment of a young black woman who lived on their street.
She'd seen them around her Westdale neighbourhood over a couple of weeks since the start of July -- two men she did not know yelling racial slurs at her. The last straw was July 16. The two men followed her home and pounded on her door. She called 911.
Hamilton police identified two suspects in their investigation and last week arrested Shane Gill, 38, of no fixed address, at an address in St. Catharines. They also arrested Richard Martin, 23, of no fixed address, at the Hamilton- Wentworth detention centre where he was in custody on an unrelated matter. Both men have been charged with criminal harassment with hate/bias overtones.
The two men appeared in Hamilton court Friday for bail hearings but were remanded until they can obtain counsel.
Though both suspects were of no fixed address, they were apparently living in the woman's neighbourhood at the time of the alleged offences. Police will not identify the nature of the racial remarks or what ethnic community the woman identifies with.
Police Sergeant Terri-Lynn Collings said the case is an alleged hate/bias crime that went beyond the kind of thing usually seen in Hamilton because there was repeated contact.
The incident is relatively rare because it meets the criminal harassment test in that it caused someone to fear for their safety.
Collings could not recall similar charges being laid in Hamilton in recent years.
"We don't often see this," said Collings, adding that could be due to a number of factors including having enough evidence to lay such a charge and having a witness willing to take the case through the court process.
Collings said Hamilton Police victims services and community relations staff will be assisting the complainant each step of the way.
jburman@thespec.comOf course Martin isn't a stranger to the readers of this blog. In March 2009 we posted an article pointing to Martin's involvement in the vandalizing of a Toronto store. Sadly, it doesn't appear that Martin was ever even questioned, much less charged, in that case. In addition to this, it also appears that Martin is aware of other acts of racist vandalism that had occurred in the Toronto area; he either knew of the individual or individuals involved or he was had actively participated in the act himself:
