https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20190417/nazi-armband-t-shirt-worn-by-pair-in-providence
Everyone in the restaurant turned around, and they were like, 'What? Is that for real?' she said this week.
A beat-up old Cadillac with Massachusetts plates had parked near the front of the restaurant, and a man and a woman wearing Nazi paraphernalia had gotten out.
The man wore a red "Make America Great Again" hat and a red armband with a black swastika on it. The woman wore a matching armband and a swastika T-shirt. The pair crossed the street to the Holocaust Memorial, leaned on the various statues, took pictures and laughed, Pierson said.
″'What the hell do you think you're doing?'" she said she told them. "'How dare you do this?'" The woman responded sarcastically, Pierson said, and the two walked back to their car. Pierson called the police and saw a cruiser drive by a short while later, but didn't think there was much the police could do.
Nevertheless, Pierson said she was horrified by the sight. The man, she said, had swastikas tattooed where his eyebrows should be.
While disturbing, walking around in Nazi paraphernalia is not illegal, Steven Brown, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island, wrote in an email. "It's perfectly despicable and shameful," he wrote, "but also perfectly lawful."
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/wom...-holocaust-memorial-oh-hell-no-234829640.html
"I said, 'Am I actually seeing this?'" Pierson tells Yahoo Lifestyle. "People around me said the same thing. I took their photo almost to convince myself it was happening."
The couple walked into the Rhode Island Holocaust Memorial dedicated partly to the state's last living survivors. "I was furious — I grabbed my coat and said, 'Oh hell no,'" Pierson tells Yahoo Lifestyle. "My friends yelled at me to come back."
When Pierson reached the memorial site, she saw the couple leaning against statues and laughing. "They were taking pictures of each other and giving the Nazi salute," she says.
According to Pierson, she said, 'What the f*** do you think you're doing? How dare you," and the woman sarcastically replied, "Thank you so much, I so appreciate your input...let me guess — you're Jewish?"
"I said, 'I'm not, just a decent human being,'" Pierson tells Yahoo Lifestyle.
Teens who were skateboarding overheard and filmed the couple. "The woman dared them to put the videos on YouTube," says Pierson. "Then they went to the World War II Memorial."
