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DOCUMENTS
Yesterday Sacco and Vanzetti; now Tarek Mehanna30/08/2010 - Speech by Laila Murad from the Tarek Mehanna Defense Committee at the Sacco Vanzetti Memorial 2010
Today many of us have been reminded of the case of Sacco and Vanzetti. Theirs is a case that has been referred to as "the case that never goes away" and it is indeed a case that we saw in the years before it even began and one that we have seen countless times in the 83 years since.
Over the decades we have seen the FBI’s COINTELPRO attack on communities to crush movements of struggle and dissent such as the Black Panther Party, Black Liberation Army, Puertro Rican Independence Movement, American Indian Movement and Earth Liberation Movement.
Over the past 10 or so years, we have seen the War on Terror targeted primarily Muslims and people of Arab and South Asian decent, as well anarchists and radical environmentalists.
How to honor victims of political violence30/08/2010 - Commemoration of Sacco and Vanzetti Speech by Pasqualino Colombaro
It was a very fortunate intuition six years ago to form a Committee for the commemoration of Sacco and Vanzetti. Because the very image that the story of the two Anarchists evokes, is replete with valuable teachings and meanings for all those who today dare to struggle for a free and egalitarian way of life for all.
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were two ordinary human beings, two workers, two immigrants from Italy like millions of others. With one difference: they had the spark of critical consciousness awoken within their hearts. They were self-professed Anarchist labor and community activists who had the misfortune to gravitate around a Massachusetts Italian Anarchist enclave headed by Luigi Galleani, an Italian Anarchist intellectual who passionately and convincingly advocated for the propaganda of the deed, i.e.: targeted violent action against the system of oppression, which included bomb throwing and assassinations.
Howard Zinn: Anarchism Shouldn't Be a Dirty Word08/02/2010 - An interview with Ziga Vodovnik, CounterPunch, May 2008.
Howard Zinn: "I am an anarchist, and according to anarchist principles nation states become obstacles to a true humanistic globalization. In a certain sense the movement towards globalization where capitalists are trying to leap over nation state barriers, creates a kind of opportunity for movement to ignore national barriers, and to bring people together globally, across national lines in opposition to globalization of capital, to create globalization of people, opposed to traditional notion of globalization. In other words to use globalization -- it is nothing wrong with idea of globalization -- in a way that bypasses national boundaries and of course that there is not involved corporate control of the economic decisions that are made about people all over the world."
Saying goodbye to my friend Howard Zinn 31/01/2010 - By Alice Walker, Globe Correspondent
On hearing the news of his death.
Me: Howie, where did you go?
Howie: What do you mean, where did I go? As soon as I died, I went back to Boston.
I met Howard Zinn in 1961, my first year at Spelman College in Atlanta. He was the tall, rangy, good-looking professor that many of the girls at Spelman swooned over. My African roommate and I got a good look at him every day when he came for his mail in the post office just beneath our dormitory window. He was always in motion, but would stop frequently to talk to the many students and administrators and total strangers that seemed attracted to his energy of non-hesitation to engage. ...
Sacco and Vanzetti - Martyrdom of Workers Speech by Dorothea Manuela from the Boston May Day Committee at the Sacco and Vanzetti Commemoration Rally in the North End, Boston. August 23, 2009
Today we commemorate the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, two immigrant working men whose lives were taken by the state because they were radicals and foreigners. Sacco and Vanzetti are part of a long list of working class martyrs who died in the struggle against corporate greed and for workers rights. That struggle in various forms continues today, and we are animated by the spirit of Sacco and Vanzetti and must dedicate ourselves to a continuation of that struggle.
Memorializing Sacco and Vanzetti in Boston ‘WHO WERE THOSE PEOPLE?’ historian Howard Zinn asked a member of the Sacco and Vanzetti Commemoration Society in November 2008. Zinn had just delivered a lecture for the benefit of the Society on ‘The Meaning of Sacco and Vanzetti’ to a crowd of at least 250 people overflowing the Dante Alighieri Italian Cultural Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was taken aback that interest in the case was still alive. ‘I didn’t know what to expect. I thought, how many people are still interested in Sacco and Vanzetti? Maybe seven? Ten? Fifteen? I can’t even—but this place is full!’ Accustomed to smaller crowds composed of all the same familiar radical characters of Greater Boston, I, myself, was surprised at the size of the diverse and intergenerational crowd.
To read the full paper in pdf format click here.
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a painting by Paul Normandia Sacco and Vanzetti were Italian immigrants and anarchists. They were accused of the murder of a shoe factory paymaster and guard and were convicted in 1921 in an atmosphere of antiradical an racist hysteria. In 1927 they were executed in Boston despite widespread belief in their innocence and a huge movement protesting the sentence.
"Never in our full lives could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of men as now we do by accident... That last moment belongs to us. That agony is our triumph." -- Bartolomeo Vanzetti
Original 60x48 inches painting by Paul Normandia for a May First 1999 event organized by Spontaneous Celebrations in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.
How does a child understand? -- Speech by Robert Meeropolon August 23rd, Massachusetts Citizens Against the Death Penalty (MCADP) held a ceremony in Boston’s North End commemorating the 80th anniversary of the executions of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Speakers included former Governor Michael Dukakis, Representative Michael Festa, MVFHR’s Robert Meeropol and Renny Cushing, and David Ehrmann, whose grandfather, Herbert Ehrmann, served as a junior counsel for the defense during the last two years of the Sacco and Vanzetti case. David is now the president of MCADP, which was founded shortly after Sacco and Vanzetti’s executions. Although Massachusetts does not currently have the death penalty, MCADP says that “Sacco and Vanzetti continue to symbolize the inherent defect in the death penalty. Sacco and Vanzetti endure as a reminder that the death penalty is always about politics rather than justice.”
In his remarks during the ceremony, Robert Meeropol drew another connection between Sacco and Vanzetti’s executions and the present day. ...
[PAST] 5 minutes on Sacco & Vanzetti24/08/2007 - (Text of the speech delivered by Pasqualino Colombaro on 8/23/07 at the memorial rally held at the Langone Park in the North End of Boston.)
The North End is where we can still hear the echoes of their steps and where for 7 years the mobilization in their defense was headquartered. A veritable global network of support and solidarity sprang out of here to block their execution and for their freedom. Hard to imagine it today surrounded as we are by a myriad mediocre Italian restaurants...
[PAST] Sacco and Vanzetti: 80 years have passed and new targets of repression have been chosen24/08/2007 - (Speech delivered by Jennifer Dowdell on behalf of Dorotea Manuela of the Boston May Day Coalition who couldn't attend the rally of 8/23/07 due to illness) ... A reporter for the Boston Transcript commented, “theres no story… just a couple of wops in a jam”! Some jurors, during the trial, openly expressed hostility toward the defendants.
In spite of worldwide protest at the unfairness of the trial, these men were put to death.
How strangely reminiscent are today’s events. Arabs are kidnapped from the streets of Berlin and confined in secret prisons or are shipped to Guantanamo where they rot without hearing or trial. We do not even need the sham trials of Sacco and Vanzetti.
[PAST] Italy’s American Baggage
23/08/2007 - Op-Ed by ANDREA CAMILLERI, Published by the New York Times, August 23, 2007.
THE century we left behind us just seven years ago was brilliantly described by the British historian Eric Hobsbawm as “the short century.” But perhaps a more exact definition would be “the compressed century,” for never has a period of 100 years seen so many world wars, so many scientific and technological advances, so many revolutions, so many epoch-making events piled almost one on top of the other. Indeed, the past century seems rather like a suitcase too small to hold everything that happened: it’s too crammed with used clothing, some of which hinders us from closing it and putting it away in the attic once and for all.
To read the full article click here.
City of Boston passes resolution in commemoration of Sacco & Vanzetti At the initiative of Boston City Councillor Felix Arroyo, and co-sponsored by Stephen Murphy and Chuck Turner, the Council passed a resolution declaring "that the Boston City Council does hereby extend its admiration and congratulations to the Sacco and Vanzetti Commemoration Society, and in honor of its many contributions, does hereby declare August 23, 2007, Sacco and Vanzetti Commemoration Day in the City of Boston". The original, sealed document was presented to the Society during the rally at the Langone Park in the North End of Boston.
Reasons of State
A Memorial to Sacco and Vanzetti Erich Mühsam wrote Reasons of State: A Memorial to Sacco and Vanzetti on the first anniversary of their execution. CR Edmonston has sent us his recent English translation of the play and we are happy to have the opportunity to make it available to you.
Erich Mühsam (6 April 1878 in Berlin, Germany – 10 July 1934 Oranienburg Concentration Camp) (also spelled Muehsam or Muhsam) was a German-Jewish anarchist, writer, poet, dramatist and cabaret performer.
Both a prolific poet, dramatist and a Bohemian intellectual, Mühsam emerged at the end of World War I as one of the leading agitators for a federated Bavarian Soviet Republic. However, Mühsam achieved international prominence during the years of the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) for works which satirized Adolf Hitler and condemned Nazism before Hitler came to power in 1933. (Wikipedia).
To read the full play in pdf format please click here.
The Passion of Sacco and Vanzettiby Joseph E. Mulligan
August 23, 2007 will mark the 80th anniversary of the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. Their story has been told in books, articles, and songs, but perhaps never so engagingly as in the historical novel, THE PASSION OF SACCO AND VANZETTI – A NEW ENGLAND LEGEND, by Howard Fast (New York: Blue Heron Press, 1953).
Comunicato stampa
Sacco e Vanzetti vivono!A fine agosto verra' commemorato a Boston l'ottantesimo anniversario dell'esecuzione di Nicola Sacco e Bartolomeo Vanzetti. La loro condanna a morte nel 1927 e' passata alla storia come una delle piu' obbrobriose farse giudiziarie mai commesse da una corte di un paese democratico. Dagli atti del processo emerge infatti molto mal celato il pregiudizio della corte contro gli immigrati italiani e in particolar modo contro quegli immigrati che erano animati da chiari convincimenti politici di tipo anarchico.
COMUNICADO DE PRENSA
Sociedad Para la Conmemoración de Sacco y Vanzetti
SACCO Y VANZETTI VIVEN08/08/2007 - Para ver el comunicado de prensa sobre las actividades de conmemoración de los 80 años de la ejecución de Sacco y Vanzetti en Massachusetts, por favor pinchar en el título de esta nota.
Press Release
Sacco and Vanzetti Live!To see the press release about the activities in commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti please click on the title of this note. Thank you.
Sacco and Vanzetti on YouTube There is a selection of independent videos posted on YouTube in memory of Sacco and Vanzetti in different languages. The fact that people around the world still remembers the injustice of the so-called judicial murder of the two anarchists is evidence that they didn't die in vain.
To go to Sacco and Vanzetti on YouTube click here.
Poetry about Sacco and Vanzetti The trial and execution of Sacco and Vanzetti moved many, including the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay and novelist John Dos Passos, to express their sense of outrage at the injustice done to these men in verse. A number of these poems were collected by Lucia Trent and Ralph Cheyney and published in 1928 as America Arraigned! This slim volume included poems penned either during the seven years the two men spent behind bars or in the months after their "judicial murders." All the poems selected, with the exception of one, are taken from America Arraigned! We've limited our selections to those written either on the day the executions or soon after. And while Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem, "Justice Denied in Massachusetts", also appeared in the Trent and Cheyney collection, the version reproduced here is from The Buck in the Snow and Other Poems, where it first appeared in book form. To see our selection of poems click here.
Community Church of Boston Sacco-Vanzetti Memorial and Award Since 1976The Community Church of Boston is proud to have one of three existing castings of the Sacco-Vanzetti memorial bas relief by noted sculptor Gutzon Borglum, creator of the Mount Rushmore presidential sculpture in South Dakota. The sculpture is on display in Lothrop Auditorium on the second floor of the Community Church Center at 565 Boylston Street in Copley Square, Boston. To read the story behind this sculpture written by Carol Adams and Rev. David Carl Olson click on the title of this article.
Memorial site eyed for Sacco, Vanzetti Boston Globe, January 17, 1999
North End. A small patch of land in DeFillipo Park on Hull Street likely will be the site of a memorial to Sacco and Vanzetti, Italian immigrants executed in 1927 for the murder of a paymaster and guard during a robbery in Braintree in 1920.
Members of the Saco and Vanzetti Memorial Committee met recently with Parks Commissioner Justine Liff, who told them she had no objections to a memorial in the city-owned park that includes basketball and handball courts and a playground. The next step for the committee, said parks department spokeswoman Mary Hines, is to submit a written proposal, or concept paper, to the Parks Commission which has final approval.
The Monument to Sacco and Vanzetti that Never Saw the Streets of Boston Boston, July 15, 2007. In 1997 (exactly August 23) a 10-years younger Thomas Menino received as Mayor of Boston a relief of Sacco and Vanzetti sculpted by the famous author of the Mt. Rushmore National Memorial depicting the first 150 years of independent history of the U.S. with the likeness of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln. The artist's name was (John) Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum. The massive project in Mt. Rushmore sharply contrasts with the 7-foot size of the Sacco and Vanzetti relief that reads:
"What I wish more than all in this last hour of agony is that our case and our fate may be understood in their real being and serve as a tremendous lesson to the forces of freedom, that our suffering and death will not have been in vain."
What happened to that monument?
La Salute é in Voi: the Anarchist DimensionBy Robert D'Attilio
William G. Thompson, the chief counsel for Sacco and Vanzetti during the final three years of their legal struggle, has told us in a very moving memoir that he had been asked by Vanzetti to come to Charlestown Prison just hours before their execution. Vanzetti had come to respect the integrity and the tremendous efforts that Thompson-a Brahmin, a conservative, a lawyer -had made against the legal system he believed in and upheld, to defend two anarchists who had been trying to bring that very system down. Before dying, Vanzetti wanted to thank Thompson for his efforts and to assure him that, though they had not succeeded, they were deeply appreciated. In the course of his remarks Vanzetti strongly reasserted the absolute innocence of Sacco and himself in the Braintree affair, and he also told Thompson that ... he now realized more clearly than ever the grounds of suspicion against him and Sacco ... but that no allowance had been made for his fear as a radical and almost as an outlaw and that in reality he was convicted on evidence which would not have convicted him had he not been an anarchist, so that he was in a very real sense dying for his cause. He said that it was a cause for which he was prepared to die.
Proclamation by Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti Memorial Day Therefore, I, Michael S. Dukakis, Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
hereby proclaim Tuesday, August 23, 1977, "NICOLA SACCO AND BARTOLOMEO VANZETTI MEMORIAL DAY";
and declare, further, that any stigma and disgrace should be forever removed from the names of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, from the names of their families and descendants, and so
call upon all the people of Massachusetts to pause in their daily endeavors to reflect upon these tragic events, and draw from their historic lessons the resolve to prevent the forces of intolerance, fear, and hatred from ever again uniting to overcome the rationality, wisdom, and fairness to which our legal system aspires.
Boston accepts Sacco and Vanzetti memorial (1997) Others, too, felt a sense of closure in the rare book room at Boston Public Library on Saturday when the city's Italian-American mayor and the state's Italian-American acting governor removed a red cloth from the seven-foot sculpture.
With that gesture, acting Gov. Paul Cellucci and Mayor Tom Menino (see photo) formally accepted the piece. Menino talked about fairness and about learning, and Cellucci talked about tolerance.
Sacco and Vanzetti by Howard Zinn Fifty years after the executions of Italian immigrants Sacco and Vanzetti, Governor Dukakis of Massachusetts set up a panel to judge the fairness of the trial, and the conclusion was that the two men had not received a fair trial. This aroused a minor storm in Boston.
One letter, signed John M. Cabot, U.S. Ambassador Retired, declared his “great indignation” and pointed out that Governor Fuller’s affirmation of the death sentence was made after a special review by “three of Massachusetts’ most distinguished and respected citizens—President Lowell of Harvard, President Stratton of MIT and retired Judge Grant.”
The mexican newspaper La Jornada printed an Spanish translation of this article on August 23, 2007. On the same article they announced that Howard Zinn's book, "A Power Government Cannot Suppress" will be published in Spanish in Mexico by La Jornada in the near future.
Para ver la traduccion de este articulo publicado por La Jornada pinchar aqui.
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