Beyond Columbus

Ferlinghetti Film in NYC!

jamesrtracy — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 05:09:51 +0000

(Ferlinghetti’s poem, Totalitarian Democracy, appears in our anthology Avanti Popolo: Italian-American Writers Sail Beyond Columbus.)

“DOCUMENTED ITALIANS”

FILM & VIDEO SERIES

Tuesday, April 19, 2011, 6 pm Ferlinghetti (2009), 82 min.

Christopher Felver, dir.

John D. Calandra Italian American Institute

25 West 43rd Street, 17th floor

New York, New York 10036

(Between 5^th and 6^th Avenues)

The bestselling poet in modern literature, Lawrence Ferlinghetti has also been a catalyst for numerous literary careers and an influential counterculture figure. In 1953, he founded San Francisco’s City Lights Booksellers with Peter Martin and, two years later, launched the store’s publishing wing. A First Amendment activist, Ferlinghetti’s infamous censorship trial for his publication of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl in 1956 launched the social rebellion of the Beats into national consciousness. In this documentary, director Christopher Felver’s extensive interviews with Ferlinghetti, together with archival photographs, historical footage, and appearances by Billy Collins, Allen Ginsberg, Dennis Hopper, and many others, explore Ferlinghetti’s work as a writer, artist, publisher, and civil libertarian.

Post-screening discussion with the director led by poet Gil Fagiani.

8th Annual Avanti Popolo: Italian Americans Sail Beyond Columbus

jamesrtracy — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 03:28:25 +0000

Monday October 11th, 2010 7pm//City Lights Books//261 “Columbus”//SF CA

The Italian-American Political Solidarity Club’s annual fete of people of Italian dissent turns eight. Jennifer Guglielmo, editor of Are Italians White: How Race is Made in America discusses her new book Living the Revolution: Italian Women’s Resistance and Radicalism in New York City 1880-1945. In a time of anti-immigrant reaction, the IAPSC proposes that Italian-Americans break from the “Columbus Myth” of conquest and embrace traditions in our histories rooted in human solidarity. Guglielmo will be joined in conversation by Berkeley City College professor Laura Ruberto, author of Gramsci, Migration and the Representation of Women’s Work and translator of Such is Life/Ma la vita è fatta cosi and Tommi Avicolli Mecca, editor of Smash the Church,Smash the State: The Early Years of Gay Liberation.Co-hosted by Cameron Mc Henry and James Tracy , co-editors ofAvanti Popolo: Italian-American Writers Sail Beyond Columbus.

Book Review: Fagiani’s Blanquito in El Barrio

jamesrtracy — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 04:26:39 +0000

Gil Fagiani’s “A Blanquito in El Barrio” bursts past easy first impressions and the confines of its own subjects. It complicates issues of a white visitor to a barrio of color and a temporary stay in a rough neighborhood through powerful, unflinching poetry of addiction and redemption.

The book works on several levels. Fagiani is the master of the brief poem—wrapping layers of meaning and imagery into scarce lines as in “Junkie’s Alarm Clock” and “Hands On”. This economy serves him in the longer poems as well—each line bursts with visual imagery bringing characters and neighborhood blocks back to vivid life. There’s also never any question that Fagiani isn’t simply observing addiction—but speaks from a place of experience.

The poems in Blanquito are sharp and compassionate portraits of a complex neighborhood–Harlem during the late sixties. These poems suggest some of the rage and alienation that would later find political voice in the decade’s upheaval. The stories Fagiani has to tell about his stay in El Barrio are rarely uplifting. Yet the stark manner in which he speaks of addiction, infidelity and violence never patronizes or descends into pat political pronouncements.

There are some who may question Fagiani’s license to speak of a El Barrio. Italian-Americans were largely on an exodus from Harlem by the time he arrived. Poems such as the “Litany of Saint Vito” –exaulting Vito Marcantonio, the staunchly anti-racist radical Congressman suggest a yearning for an Italian-American identity that didn’t run for the suburbs. In politics, contradictions are a thing to be ironed out until the crease is gone from the fabric. In this book, these contradictions provide a fantastic read and hard-earned insight into one of America’s most fabled and misunderstood neighborhoods.

-James Tracy

What the World Needs Now…

jamesrtracy — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 06:46:56 +0000

We could sure use some more Italian-Irish against racist bullshit! (Picture of Patrick Flanagan letting the Minutemen know how he felt when they visited our fine city last year.) Kind readers: Beyond Columbus has been dormant as of late–but keep your eyes on this space. In April, we’ll be sending a friendly challenge to our paisans over at the Order Of the Sons of Italy to debate the Columbus legacy and also announce some exciting events on both coasts. Also reviews of new books by Avanti Popolo contributors Gil Fagiani and Maria Lisella.

New Jennifer Guglielmo Book Set For May Release

jamesrtracy — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 06:31:43 +0000

Living the Revolution

Italian Women’s Resistance and Radicalism in New York City, 1880-1945

By Jennifer Guglielmo

Italians were the largest group of immigrants to the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, and hundreds of thousands led and participated in some of the period’s most volatile labor strikes. Yet until now, Italian women’s political activism and cultures of resistance have been largely invisible. In Living the Revolution, Jennifer Guglielmo brings to life the Italian working-class women who helped shape the vibrant, transnational, radical political culture that expanded into the emerging industrial union movement.

Guglielmo imaginatively documents the activism of two generations of New York and New Jersey women who worked in the needle and textile trades. She explores the complex and distinctive ways immigrant women and their American-born daughters drew on Italian traditions of protest to form new urban female networks of everyday resistance and political activism. And she shows how their commitment to revolutionary and transnational social movements diminished as they became white working-class Americans. The rise of fascism, the Red Scare, and the deprivations of the Great Depression led many to embrace nationalism and racism, ironically to try to meet the same desires for economic justice and dignity that had inspired their enthusiasm for anarchism, socialism, and communism.

About the Author

Jennifer Gugliemo is assistant professor of history at Smith College. She is coeditor of Are Italians White?: How Race Is Made in America.

Reviews

“Here is the new paradigm in the history of gender and immigration. Guglielmo’s careful attention to transnational capitalism and diaspora as well as to Italians’ shifting political formations around race make this book as innovative and inspiring as the voices of Italian women anarchists she so vividly documents. A must-read!”
–Nan Enstad, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Columbus Controversy

jamesrtracy — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 00:44:43 +0000

In response to Dr. Marsella’s essay, the Order of the Sons of Italy in America issued a brief rebuttal and circulated this pamphlet: Columbus: Myths and Facts. In OSIA’s worldview Columbus is getting just getting bad rap by people who are out to push their own political agendas by playing fast and loose with history.

Dr. Marsella responds:

October 15, 2009

Dear Dona:

I take exception to your defense of Columbus Day precisely because I
am of Italian ancestry. I found the report you submitted to justify
a Columbus Day holiday to be less than “objective” and factual as
you contend. Indeed, it was characterized by some truths, some half-
truths, and some serious misrepresentations.

It is precisely because I am of Italian ancestry that I reject a
national holiday that honors the name of Columbus. I believe Columbus
was a bold, courageous, and skilled navigator, but the consequences
of his arrival and travels among the Caribbean Islands proved
destructive and genocidal for the indigenous people of these lands
and for many others in the following centuries. There can be no
justification — either then or now — for what occurred.

Even today, the more than 300 million indigenous peoples of the world
are faced with continuing struggles for survival under pressures from
the same abuses and exploitations that motivated Columbus’ voyages
and actions. The celebration of Columbus Day remains an affront to
the identity, dignity, and pride of the many indigenous people of the
world whose ancestors were brutalized and exterminated by the most
vicious of acts. Certainly, we are capable of feeling what they must
feel and of sharing their bewilderment as they ask why do people
celebrate their destruction and pain.

It is precisely because I am Italian and because I know the history
of Italian Americans replete with the many abuses, prejudices, and
stereotypes that we have suffered — and continue to suffer — that I
call for a change from Columbus Day to a national holiday more
appropriately and morally named Diversity Day.

It is precisely because I value traditional Italian cultural and
historical concerns and talents for enduring in the face of suffering
and oppression, and for responding with honor and grace to those
challenges, that I advocate a Diversity Day national holiday. It is
precisely because so many of the indigenous people who have survived
oppression across the centuries are my American fellow citizens and
they deserve recognition for their courage and endurance that
advocate a Diversity Day celebration.

Amidst the current national climate of political, economic, and
cultural fragmentation that has so undermined our rich national
heritage of prizing diversity, I urge you and other Italian-Americans
to step forward and to say our local and national leaders the following:

As Italian Americans who have known both the abuses and the successes
and privileges of life in the United States, it is with great pride
that we call upon you to establish a national holiday honoring our
nation’s diverse populations and cultural traditions, many of which
are disappearing under pressures from cultural homogenization.

Consider this: Who better could call for a holiday rooted in
empathy, sensitivity to others, and respect for differences that
Italian Americans? This call would do much to remind Italian
Americans and others of the nobility of nurturing and respecting the
identities of others.

What does it mean to be of Italian American ancestry? It means to have the integrity, valor, and determination to stand before theworld and to choose to give voice to those who voices have beensilenced, to offer hope to those whose who hopes have been denied,and to extend a supportive hand to all those in need much as we havebeen helped by the kindness and caring of others from all groups.
Diversity Day, Si! Columbus Day, No!

Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D.

Diversity Day, Si! Columbus Day, No!

jamesrtracy — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:01:30 +0000

Diversity Day, Si! Columbus Day, No!

Rethinking Columbus Day in a Global Era

Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D.

ColumbusDay (October 11, 2009) is a recognized national holiday instituted years ago by Congress as a celebration of our nation’s founders and origins. For Italian-Americans, in particular, there is a strong sense of pride in Christopher Columbus’ bold and courageous journey to sail beyond the horizon and to discover a new route to India. Interestingly, however, Christopher Columbus actually was raised in Portugal, and spent much of his time in Spain, and he did not find what he was looking for when he stumbled across the Caribbean Islands in 1492. But, he did end up causing a lot of problems that continue today. Nevertheless, many Italian-American cultural organizations and communities use the day as a celebration of Italian culture — festivals, parades and processions, food vendors, music, and a flying of the green, white, and red Italian flag. Viva Cristoforo Columbo! Every group needs heroes so they must be forgiven if they continue to use the day as a chance for merriment and pride, unwarranted as it may be.

But, for many of the indigenous people of the world (e.g., American Indians, Native Hawaiians), Columbus Day does not elicit a sense of pride, bu t rather a sense of grief and sorrow, because Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the “new world” led to colonization, and to the eventual destruction of many of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Genocides, massacres, torture, rape, pillage, slavery, and other brutalities are the the legacy of Christopher Columbus’ arrival, and this is hardly a cause for celebration for obvious reasons.

I imagine it must be very difficult for the remaining indigenous and native people of our land — our fellow citizens in the United States — to see attention be given to an event that led to their demise and destruction, especially when many still suffer under the from the dominance and oppression of the West. In so many ways, the indigenous and native peoples of the United States have never recovered from the abuse and oppression that followed in the name of religious conversion, resource exploitation, greed, cultural destruction, and the seizing of land rights. I suspect some must even ask, why don’t they have a national holiday that will remind everyone of what occurred rather than playing the “B” movies about Custer’s last stand.

And, to be truthful, I must wonder if the celebration of Christopher Columbus’ arrival as the first contact with the Americas is even justified since Nordic people inhabited the Canadian coast centuries before him, and Asian and Pacific Island people probably landed on the West Coast of the United States long before 1492 when it was still home to Indians and Mexicans

But do any of these things really matter? Are not there more important issues at stake than chest pounding and pretentious ego-boosting claims about who was first to wade ashore, plant a flag, and claim the already inhabited land for a distant country, queen, and god. The undisputed reality of the matter is that Columbus’ contact with the “new” world resulted in the eventual destruction, disease, and death for the indigenous people who inhabited the lands for prior millenia. This reality should not be forgotten, for to do so distorts truth, weakens conscience, and limits empathy.

I am a Sicilian-American. I do not intend to celebrate Columbus Day in any way. Indeed, I intend to use the day to remind myself of the offenses that have occurred in the course of our national and regional history, and to reflect upon the possibility of a better way celebrate the fateful events that marked the arrival and tragic exploitation of what occurred. These tragedies should not be hidden beneath superficial holidays that celebrate historical inaccuracies while denying the realities of the horrors and abuses that are part of the collective memory of so many native people. Rather, if we must celebrate, then I think we should celebrate perhaps the only virtue that emerged from the momentous encounter of the different worlds following Columbus’ arrival — our ethnocultural diversity.

But before I speak to the virtues of diversity to assuage my sense of guilt, I want first and foremost to recall the tragic history of our nation’s emergence at the expense of the indigenous people. I want to recall the horrors of intentionally giving “small pox” to unsuspecting Indians, I want to recall the betrayal of trust as white men gave trinkets for land, I want to recall how white men convinced (with force, of course) native people to live on reservations, I want to recall the “Trail of Tears,” and the massacres that occurred at Wounded Knee and a score of other places where women, children and the elderly fell beneath bullets and lance. I want to recall the decimation of the Native Hawaiian people as their population of 800,000 people fell to less than 50,000 people following contacts that brought them disease, disorder, and cultural collapse in the name of progress and Christianity. I want to recall the enslavement of native populations and African Blacks that was nurtured and sustained across centuries in the name of progress — brutal progress. I cannot know the pain of all these people in the same way they know it, but I can try to keep the reality of what occurred alive, and not buried beneath the yet another national myth that glorifies abuse and exploitation.

I will try after these recollections to understand the lessons to be learned from this tragic history, and what can be done to correct or make amends for the past. I support reparations! How much more moral offering compensation to victims than using the our wealth for carrying out war in distant lands. But for me at the moment, a more enduring tribute to the tragic past, and a more substantive lesson to be codified in a national holiday is the celebration of our nation’s diversity. It is our “diversity” that has given us choices and options. If there is anything of value to be claimed from Columbus’ arrival after the usual cries of progress, commerce, development, and wealth, it has to be the “diversity” that followed and that gave us promise, hope, and opportunity.

I want to recall the courage and brilliance of our early founders — English and German –, I want to recall back-breaking labors of the Italians, Slavs, and Irish who built the cities, I want to recall the endless work and dangers of the Chinese who built the railroads across the West, and the sheer exhaustion of the Latinos who work tirelessly today in the vegetable fields and the poultry factories, I want to recall the Jews whose exceptional contributions in the arts and sciences have brought such joy and comfort, I want to recall the Filipinos who fought and suffered for the US in WWII, and who now are laborers, nurses, and physicians, I want to recall the Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian and Hmong, those refugees from a brutal war, who now are found across small businesses, professions, and the streets of the inner cities. I want to recall Asian Indians, Arabs, Persians, and Afghans — our most recent arrivals whose impressive talents and resiliency have helped them survive in this very distant and different land that has too often vilified them and too seldom recognized the beauties of their cultural traditions. It is this panorama of color, size, shape, and worldview that I want to recall and that I wish to honor with recognition and respect. Yes, “Diversity Day,” not “Columbus Day.”

Thus, I say let us change the name for October 11 from “Columbus Day” — or even “Founders Day” — to a day that deserves admiration and celebration — “Diversity Day.” In fact, why have a single day once a year devoted to our nation’s most important distinction — why not have a day of celebration each month designated as “Diversity Day” in which different ethnocultural groups are invited to celebrate their cultural and historical heritage through media coverage, cultural shows, entertainment, parades, and education? I am not talking here of the ubiquitous “taco day” or “pizza day” at school lunches that are supposed to promote ethnic harmony. No! I am suggesting a major national effort designed to help us become more conscious of the contribution of different ethnocultural groups to our national fabric. One of my friends, Professor Fred Riggs, a political scientist at the University of Hawaii, pointed out that there is an urgent need to acknowledge the overlap of the many consequences of European contacts with indigenous people. He wrote:

There were momentous events worthy of celebration linked inextricably with tragic consequences that deserve to be remembered with horror and penitence. We need a day to combine dreadful with joyful memories as we try to understand the perplexing contradictions of our past.

Perhaps “Diversity Day” can meet this criteria. No one can deny that every ethnocultural group that is indigenous to our land — as well as any group that has come to our land — has offered us the gifts of differences in world views, moralities, and food, clothing, music, dance, art, and entertainment. Each group has also offered us the gifts of labor and the sacrifices of suffering and humiliation. Who were the miners? Who built the subways and railways? Who labored in the mills? Who picked the cotton? Who constructed the skyscrapers? Who picked the fruits and vegetables? Who fought in the wars?

To put on the spectacles of another ethnocultural group liberates us from our own restricted vantage points and opens us to new possibilities and horizons. To put on the spectacles of another ethnocultural group’s reality awakens each of us to our own history and struggles. It helps us to bond by challenging our biases and prejudices.

I am aware that many people might say, “Enough of this diversity stuff, we are Americans.” But to them I would say, “What is America?” It was never a “melting pot” as Israel Zangwill suggested at the turn of the 20th Century — and thank goodness for that. Now, in our global age, an age in which personal and ethnic “identity” has become a major challenge because of pressures to conform to a uniform global consumer culture, it is even more important than ever before to prize and protect our nation’s ethnocultural diversity.

Let us agree, then, (1) that all ethnocultural groups will be guaranteed their rights under our constitution; (2) that all ethnocultural groups will=2 0be encouraged to preserve and to share their cultural history and practices; and (3) that all ethnocultural groups will assist in developing and sustaining a new sense of moral authority for the United States based on our commitment to ethnocultural diversity and the implications this has for a world in which differences are being suppressed.

As Octavio Paz, the Nobel Prize Laureate, stated: “Life is Diversity. Death is uniformity.” In our diversity, we have choice; in our diversity, we have opportunity; in our diversity we have an insight into life’s greatest mystery — differences — differences among people, differences in all forms of life. And as for business community’s inclination to announce huge sales for any holiday, let us ask them not to commodify “Diversity Day,” but to see the day as an opportunity to help meet community needs through donations and volunteer assistance. And let us all remind ourselves as Americans that we given the abuses, horrors, and tragedies upon which this nation has been built, that we will work for harmony by favoring peace, empathy, respect, cooperation, and justice – in our nation and around the world.

An Italian American Against Columbus Day

jamesrtracy — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:09:20 +0000

NOTE: This article was published in today’s Providence Rhode Island Journal. Brown University canceled its’ Columbus celebrations soon thereafter. Conservative Italians staged protests. Tommi Avicolli Mecca points out that breaking with Columbus should be an act of pride for Italian-Americans. -IAPSC

By Tommi Avicolli Mecca

IT MIGHT BE SURPRISING to learn that I am an Italian/American against Columbus Day. I believe Brown University was right to rename its celebration.

I’m not a self-hating Italian. Quite the opposite. I couldn’t be more proud of my heritage. My family comes from Basilicata and Molise in southern Italy. They came as immigrants still do, to escape poverty and find work. I was born and raised in the working-class streets of South Philly in the ’50s and ’60s, when Italians were still not considered fully white. As a kid, I endured being called “dago” and “grease-ball.” I was told I had a Roman nose; “roams all over your face,” the kids would laugh.

Every Oct. 12, I got to feel proud of my ethnic features and curly hair. I didn’t know much about Columbus, only that he was Italian and had discovered America.

In college, I learned a different story. Failing to find a new route to India, the sailor from Genoa “discovered” a land already occupied by millions of indigenous people. Columbus wrote of them in his journal, “They would make fine servants. . . . With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.” He then claimed their land for Spain. He didn’t claim it for Italy, which was not even a country at the time.

His “discovery” led to the eventual death of 80 percent or more of the native populations from diseases to which they had no immunity. Not to mention the murder of those who dared to resist the will of the conquistadors.

I never felt the same about Oct. 12 again.

I decided to search for real Italian-American heroes. I studied the history of Italian immigration to this country; it was not a pretty picture. Those of us from southern Italy were considered a separate race from Northern Europeans. Experts wrote that we would never amount to anything because we were innately inferior to Anglos. There were NINA (No Italian Need Apply) signs to greet us in store windows, and lynchings in the South (where racists saw us as no different than blacks).

During World War II, President Roosevelt approved a blueprint for internment camps for Italian/Americans. That plan was never executed, but thousands of Italians were relocated, imprisoned and harassed.

In the midst of my digging, I uncovered heroes: Ferdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two anarchists who were found guilty of murdering a pay clerk and security guard in Braintree, Mass. International protests did not stop the execution of those men, despite the fact that the evidence was flimsy and during the trial, the judge called them “dagos,” a derogatory term for Italians.

There were the brave Italian immigrant women who helped organize the female garment workers in the sweat shops in New York. And of course Harlem’s amazing congressman, Vito Marcantonio, who pushed for civil rights for blacks in the ’50s, Carlo Tresca, who was involved in the Italian Railroad Workers Federation and published two progressive newspapers, and Mario Savio, one of the founders of the free speech movement at Berkeley in the ’60s. Even the entertainment industry had its share of giants, such as Frank Sinatra, who produced a music video in the ’40s that promoted multiculturalism, and Tony Bennett, who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in the South.

It’s time for Italian/Americans to say goodbye to Columbus and embrace our proud history. Remember the workers, teachers, writers, artists, families, men, women, straight and LGBT, who give us reason to celebrate.

Let us also remember that in the past, Italian immigrants knew that their own advancement in this Anglo culture would only be achieved in solidarity with other oppressed groups. Today, many of us march with Latino workers, join gay-pride marches, speak out for national health care, and fight against the gentrification and displacement of working-class people. We mobilize for social and economic justice. We see ourselves in the faces of those who are newly arrived in an America that has never welcomed immigrants.

Being proud to be Italian has nothing to do with Columbus.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca is co-editor of Avanti Popolo: Italian American Writers Sail Beyond Columbus. Listen to a radio interview with Tommi from 2008 with Matt Dineen from Free Valley Radio, by clicking on the icon below–

Interview with Diane Di Prima

jamesrtracy — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 04:08:35 +0000

In October 2008, the legendary radical Italian-American poet Diane Di Prima was slated to return to the annual Avanti Popolo reading at City Lights Bookstore. Not quite recovered from a recent operation, she had to cancel. Thanks to the miracle of modern technology, she was not only there in spirit, but we taped an interview over the phone. Now you can enjoy it as well.-James Tracy

People of Italian-American Dissent

jamesrtracy — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 02:36:13 +0000

Every October in San Francisco’s North Beach, nestled between the sonic booms of the Blue Angels, the Italian-American Political Solidarity Club stages the Avanti-Popolo: Sailing Beyond Columbus reading at the venerable City Lights Bookstore. Given the bookstore’s tradition of instigating and embracing dissent, the location is a fitting one. It is also the former location of the Italian language bookstore that served the community at the turn of the century.

The event celebrates the history most of us didn’t hear about in school: the accomplishments our labor organizers, free-speech advocates, feminists, sports heroes, actors and poets. What we won’t celebrate every October are lost sailors, stolen land, and the not-so little matter of genocide catalyzed by Columbus’ arrival in a world that was only “new” to those from the other side of the pond.

The Avanti readings stand in a tradition which include groundbreaking events in the 1990s organized by New York’s Italian-Americans for a Multi Cultural US, and the powerhouse San Francisco activist Tommi Avicolli-Mecca at the old Josie’s Juice and Cabaret in SF’s Castro District.

Why, 517 years after the arrival of Columbus is this important? On one hand, it is a simple matter of pride. When the history of our people on this continent is rich with those who acted from a vision of a world radically better than theirs. why laud Columbus, who wrote about how easy it would be to enslave the native population? More importantly, by sailing beyond Columbus worship, we also break with a mindset that justifies war and domination. Potentially, this can alter how we react to today’s wars, occupation, immigration debates, and environmental disasters.

The ways in which we understand history directly impact the ways we see the present and future. Over the past five years, we have received a bit of criticism accusing our humble reading as promoting revisionism and guilt. We have time for neither. We love our heritage enough to remember some of our near forgotten heroes and sheroes. If we ever stand in solidarity with immigrants who are facing the same hardships our parents and grandparents faced, our community will be at its best.

This October, let’s reclaim the memories of some real paesans with a different world in their hearts:

Anti-facist Virgilia d’Andrea who fled from Mussolini, landing in New York, known for her fantastic oration in support of workers and women’s causes, “every time she spoke, she left behind seeded ground.”

Angela Bambace, organizer for the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, the 1930s, led the sit-down strike against Robert’s Dress Company of Baltimore fighting for improved wages and conditions.

Mario Savio, son of a Sicilian steel worker is best known for his “bodies on the gears” speech in support of the Free Speech Movement. However, Savio was also a fervent opponent of racism and had been arrested while demonstrating in support of black hotel workers fighting their exclusion from non-menial jobs in San Francisco.

We have no illusions that an annual poetry reading will change the world nor topple the pillars of racism and war. The events serve as an opportunity for us to unearth hidden histories, and rededicate ourselves to a future when “discovery” might lead us to a truly new world of peace, equality, and worker’s emancipation and solidarity.

Avanti Popolo 2009, October 12th 2009 7pm. City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus San Francisco with Michael Parenti (Author of Democracy For The Few) Giovanna Capone (Avanti Popolo Contributor)Tommi Avicolli Mecca (Editor of Smash The Church, Smash The State) Paola Bacchetta (Smash The Church, Smash The State Contributor) Ed Coletti (No Money In Poetry Blog) Christopher Giovacchini-Ramirez (Author, Poetry In The Whiskey Of The Damned).

Also: Saturday, Oct 24 3:00p to 4:30pm at Temescal Branch Library, Oakland, CA Phone: (510) 981-2922 Presenters include: Michael Parenti, Tommi Avicolli Mecca, Giovanna Capone, and Lawrence DiStasi.

Recommended Reading: The Lost World of Italian American Radicalism, Gerald Meyer, ed.

Posted in Anti-war, Book Review, Italian-Americans, Italy, Populism, Social Movements, U.S. Politics, White Supremacy | Edit | Leave a Comment »