On Friday January 9, 2015, despite calls for his shows to be canceled due to allegations of rape, Bill Cosby was in Hamilton Ontario to finish his tour of Canada. Cosby on the 2 previous nights had shows in London and Kitchener Ontario before his tour landed him in my backyard Hamilton. At the 2 previous shows Cosby and those who attended were met with protesters.
They braved some fairly nasty weather for their “we-blindly-believe” campaign. The temperatures in the double negatives Celsius, nasty winds and blowing snow.It seemed as if mother nature was trying help those protesters whiteout due process and throw the legal system back into the ice age.
For those of you who have been living in a media blackout at the South Pole and are not aware the allegations of rape by Cosby number around 2 dozen. They are also decades old.
There have also been a number of women who have come forward to defend Cosby.
That’s all there is right now about 2 dozen women have made allegations they were raped by Cosby after he drugged their drinks. No charges have been laid yet which means no trial has occurred and that also means he has not been found guilty.
Some history about Bill. He enlisted in the Navy in 1956 and trained as a hospital corpsman. Cosby then went on to serving on ships before finally ending up at Bethesda Naval Hospital where he worked with Korean war veterans. Cosby also became an accomplished runner while he was in navy.
And even though Cosby was faithfully serving his country, his country was failing him by treating him like a second class citizen.When the navy track team competed Bill was forced to eat in the kitchens of the restaurants the team stopped to eat at.
Cosby was honorably discharged in 1960 and went on to Temple University.
Bill has experienced an ism of hate. Bill lived through a time when racism was still accepted by large groups of Americans.
And now his large groups of people in his country, the country he faithfully served and risked his life for, wants to treat Bill like a second class citizen.
AGAIN
In fact that desire to treat Cosby like a second class citizen has spread like influenza beyond the borders of America into Canada and most of the English speaking world. They want to deny a man, who faithfully served his country, his human right to the rule of law, innocent until proven guilty, and due process.
Cosby is black man but the hate fueled ism which desires to erode the foundation of justice and deny him his human rights this time around is not racism. It’s feminism.
I have no idea what happened all those years ago. Neither does anyone else outside of Cosby and his accusers in all likelihood.
Knowing there would be some protesters at Cosby’s Hamilton show I put together a small team to go down and advocate for due process and the rule of law.
And the most basic of human rights, not to be judged because of how you were born.
Here are a couple of videos of what happened at the Cosby stop in Hamilton. There’s more to come, as some interesting things happened that night.
I would also like to say hi to a guy I only know as “Bob.” He showed up with his own sign which said “innocent until proven guilty.” So it isn’t AVfM alone who recognizes this high-tech lynching for what it is.
There were other folks just walking by or going into the show who also agreed with our message about due process and the rule of law and crazy ideas like “innocent until proven guilty.” I thoroughly enjoyed interacting with them.
Our ranks grew a little more that night.
