Sacco
& Vanzetti Commemoration Speech from IAMUS
by
Juliet Ucelli of Italian Americans for a Multicultural Society
 On
Friday, August 23, over 500 people attended a rally in Union Square
Park, New York City, commemorating the 75th anniversary of the
execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian-born
anarchists who were railroaded to the electric chair on bogus
criminal charges in Massachusetts in 1927. The following speech
was given by Juliet Ucelli on behalf of Italian Americans for
a Multicultural U.S. (IAMUS).I would like to briefly address the
lessons of Sacco’s and Vanzetti’s lives and deaths for
Italian Americans.
Commemorating
the 75 Anniversary of the Execution of Sacco & Vanzetti
Today,
Italian Americans are integrated into U.S. society as White Americans.
But that wasn’t so in the early years of this century. People
of Southern Italian background were considered non-White well
into the 1920s. We were called aliens, wops--meaning "without
papers," just like today’s undocumented immigrants are
called aliens. Nicola Sacco and Bartomoleo Vanzetti were derided
as "dirty dagoes, reds" and "anarchistic bastards"
(by their trial judge, Webster Thayerof Massachusetts). Anarchists
were considered terrorists. Sound familiar?
When they were arrested and put on trial for murder, Sacco and
Vanzetti got support from radical and genuinely democratic people
of all nationalities and walks of life. Italian Americans who
were poor, working class, new immigrants, much of the lower middle
class, particularly identified with their suffering and stigmatization.
My mother remembers her uncle saying, "Those men were murdered
because they were Italian." [The well known poet, Edna St.
Vincent Millay, wrote her famous poem "Justice Denied in
Massachusetts" to commemorate the deaths of the labor organizers.
She had marched with Edmund Wilson, Mary McCarthy and other progressive
and well informed intellectuals in defense of the two men, but
many turned a deaf ear on their plight.]
Sacco and Vanzetti themselves knew why they were being targeted.
In Bartolomeo Vanzetti’s immigrant dialect he said these
words:
 "I
would not wish to a dog or to a snake what I have had to suffer
for things that I am not guilty of. But my conviction is that
I have suffered for things that I am guilty of. I am suffering
because I am a radical and indeed I am a radical; I have suffered
because I was an Italian, and indeed I am an Italian; I have suffered
more for my family and my beloved than for myself; but I am so
convinced to be right that if you could execute me two times,
and if I could be reborn two other times, I would live again to
do what I have done already."
 Today,
Sacco and Vanzette are long-dead and it's safe to feel sympathy
for them. And, many Italian Americans look back with nostalgia,
from a comfortable position of white Bartolomeo
Vanzetti , 1927
privilege, at this era when we actually were an oppressed national
minority subject to persecution. But when Sacco and Vanzetti were
facing execution and needing support, lots of Italian Americans--the
establishment, some professionals, the wealthy--would have nothing
to do with them. They didn‚t want to be associated with those
radicals and 'terrorists'.
So
I pose this challenge: If you won’t stand up now for the
Arabs, Muslims and South Asians who are being held without any
Constitutional rights for supposed association with terrorists,
you wouldn‚t have stood up for Sacco and Vanzetti either.
If
you won’t stand up for Mumia Abu Jamal, the former Black
Panther, journalist  and
exposer of the crimes of the Philadelphia Police Department who
was railroaded and faces the death penalty for supposedly killing
a Philadelphia police officer, you wouldn’t have stood up
for Sacco and Vanzetti either.
And
if you won’t stand up against Bush’s endless war on
whatever country is not bowing down to the dictates of the U.S.
elite, you wouldn’t have stood up for Sacco and Vanzetti
either.
Nicola
Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti understood well that most wars are
called for by the rich to protect their wealth, their oil wells,
their sources of profit. We shouldn’t forget what they knew.
Long live the memory of Sacco and Vanzetti!
Free the detainees!
Free Mumia Abu Jamal!
Abolish the death penalty!
No to Bush’s war!
----------------------------------------------------------------
--quote from Bartolomeo
Vanzetti, 1927, upon being sentenced to death
Above
speech by Juliet Ucelli, of Italian Americans for a Multicultural
Society,
delivered in Union Square Park, New York City, August 23, 2002,
75th anniversary.
Visit
the Sacco and Vanzetti Online Memorial at:
http://burn.ucsd.edu/~mai/sacco_vanzetti.html
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