People Of Italian-American Dissent
October 11, 2009
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).
The Willie Horton Hustle 2009
September 6, 2009
When Bay Area activist Van Jones was first appointed by President Barack Obama as Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the Council on Environmental Quality, I could hear the right-wing pundits sharpening their knives.
To me, it seemed a question of when, not if the knives would plunge in. The chorus of pundits “revealing” to the world what was never hidden in the first place: Jones’ former membership in a Marxist organization, any number of speeches he’d given decrying police brutality, stated support for the human rights of Palestinians, and the list goes on.
I expected that Van’s face would be plastered all over the media sometime in 2010, as the Republicans geared up to take some Congressional seats back. Surprise, election season is here, although a bit early.
In the past, the Republican Party would have left Van Jones alone, and instead find the image of a Black inmate, who managed to rape, rob, steal and scare the suburbs while on furlough. The Willie Horton Hustle worked well in 1988, killing Michael Dukakis’ campaign for the White House and ushering in the reign of Bush I.
That playbook isn’t going to work in exactly the same way. Fanning racial resentment while a Black President is in office is a different beast. The assault on Jones is a new bag: “expose” how Obama is catering to “reverse racists” with “dangerous” socialist ideas.
The image of a Black man sneaking in a (white) grandmother’s house and raping her has been replaced by the image of an angry army of Black professionals (college educated thanks to affirmative action) plotting the economic subjugation of all white folks. The beat remixed, yet the song remains the same.
Those who profit from this demonology are the same people who freaked out when they realized their own children bought Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet not to burn, but to dance to. Twenty-years later, they are far more concerned with making sure that health reform saves private profits, and that the Obama administration stays the course in Iraq and Afghanistan. Stoking white people’s Fear of a Black President, and his dangerous advisors is a tune that has withstood the test of time. With Jones’ resignation, we’re likely to hear it again next year, and for years after.
The knife of white resentment is always one that cuts the hand that wields it. In the end, it isn’t Obama himself that the racist wing of the Republican Party is afraid of. His monumental caution and pandering to their needs should have allayed that fear. What they are afraid of is that the hundreds of thousands of people of all races who bought the Hope and Change product are actually going to get up and demand some, beyond the confines of both major parties.
