Like the child, Alice, descending through the rabbit hole, I engaged on immigration with Executive-Branch officials, immigration lawyers , members of Congress, including the indefatigable champion of immigration reform, Rep.
At the same time, bloggers, Tweeple and cable-TV bloviators could not stop talking about the separate comments of a current member of the Supreme Court and of a former judge. The ex-judge, once a Virginia magistrate, is Robert Zimmerman , father of the man who slayed year-old, Skittles-armed Trayvon Martin. As the Washington Post reported, President Obama said:.
I can only imagine what these parents are going through. And I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this, and that everybody pulls together — federal, state and local — to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened.
When I think about this boy, I think about my own kids. Also last week, the Director of USCIS, Alejandro Mayorkas, spoke poignantly even more intimately than in his earlier writings of the losses and sacrifices his parents endured as they gave their children unimagined opportunities in America. In fact, Frank Sinatra reminds me of my own father in many ways. Sinatra had a sweet and gentle Sicilian father who immigrated to America.
My paternal grandfather was a kind Sicilian immigrant too. Frank had a strong, courageous and adoring mother like my dad. That love and adoration showed up in Sinatra's music. He was confident, standing on a foundation created by family. My dad had that confidence too. Frank was exemplary with a belief in himself that was beyond the norm.
Natalia Garavente, Frank Sinatra's mother, nicknamed Dolly stands out in my mind. The influential Dolly immigrated to America in at the age of two. By the time she was a young woman in Hoboken, New Jersey her path was set. She became a well-respected midwife like her mother before her, bringing into the world hundreds of babies, and also helping women control their own destinies by performing safe abortions. It was a time when women were dying from illegal "backroom" abortions.
Dolly provided a safe option for women. It would not be until that women would get the right to vote in America while Frank was just five years old. Dolly Sinatra was a magnificent woman, a feminist before the term was used in her community.
She was also very involved with community politics and that charisma her son had seems to have come from her. Dolly helped women with safe abortions in a time when it was against the law. Radical for a woman in those times? Yes, but how do you think the great Frank Sinatra learned to live his life his way with courage and determination.
We see ourselves in Frank's courage to live life on his terms the best he could. Frank could not stand hypocrisy and lived his truth, which brought joy and a lot of pain too.
He was also adored by women all over the world and admired by men. His friends say he was a tender, caring, generous and creative man. He was also a man with clear boundaries, protective of all he loved. I am sure he learned that from Dolly too. Dolly fell in love and married Anthony Sinatra, a Sicilian immigrant, a local prizefighter.
In time Anthony nicknamed Marty would become a respected firefighter and own a local saloon with his wife. Due to prejudice against Italians, the saloon was named Marty O'Brien's, as an Irish name was more acceptable for business in those times. When Frank was nine years old a law was passed that would change the flow of Italian immigration. Why is it so difficult for some Italian Americans to realize that their group reputation is as important as their individual reputation?
Laws that punish the use of ethnic insults and reminders to the media opposing their denigration of ethnic groups do not stop the continuing negative portrayal of Italian-Americans. As an ethnic group, we can either join an Italian American Organization that is dedicated to fighting Italian Defamation and Discrimination and be part of the solution, or just sit there doing nothing to defend our Italian heritage.
CSJ protests Italian-American defamation for several reasons. This was particularly dangerous in the American South, where Italians were the second-most common targets of lynching and, in some areas, were semi-segregated. Following the abolition of slavery, employers in Southern cities recruited Italian laborers to work in the booming agricultural and fishing industries. As the Italian population grew, anti-Italian riots took place, and hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan mobilized to intimidate and, oftentimes, cause physical harm to the immigrants.
Nineteen Italian men were indicted for murder. After a jury delivered not-guilty verdicts in March of , an mob of over 20, people gathered outside the prison where the men were being held. Nine men, including prominent businessman Joseph Macheca, were shot inside the jail. Two victims were dragged outside and hanged from lampposts, their bodies displayed for days following the lynching. In addition to the eleven men lynched, five prisoners were severely wounded in the attack and died soon after.
A grand jury cleared those involved in the lynching, including John Parker, who was later elected governor of Louisiana. In , he was quoted saying Italians were "just a little worse than the Negro… filthier in [their] habits, lawless, and treacherous. Because Italian immigrants and African Americans lived in the same neighborhoods and worked together, Italians were considered enemies of Jim Crow laws.
In , two Italian shopkeepers and three customers, also Italian, were lynched in Tallulah, Louisiana, for refusing to wait on Caucasians before African American customers.
Italian-language newspapers frequently reported the heinous crimes. On April 15, , during the height of the Red Scare, an armed robbery took place at a shoe factory in Braintree, Massachusetts. Two employees were killed. Immigrants Nicola Sacco, a shoemaker, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a fish peddler, were arrested for the crime. The case is commonly referred to as the greatest miscarriage of justice in American history.
Protests against the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti erupted in cities across the globe and throughout the nation, including in Los Angeles.
To preserve American racial homogeneity, the United States passed the Immigration Act of , which established quotas for the admission of immigrants and banned immigration from certain countries entirely. While earlier legislation placed caps on immigration, the law sought to further restrict immigration of Southern and Eastern Europeans and Africans specifically and banned the immigration of Arabs and Asians.
The law reduced Italian immigration by This political cartoon from the era reveals two of the act's primary targets: Italians and Chinese. Thousands more were placed under surveillance. This notice, printed in English, Italian, German and Japanese, instructed "enemy aliens" to register at their local post offices. In the days following the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor on December 7, , hundreds of Italians were arrested.
Individuals who were in the process of becoming citizens, anti-fascist refugees, and others who had lived in the United States for decades and had American-born children were included in the enemy alien classification. Many enemy aliens, such as the individuals pictured here, were elderly immigrants who could not pass the citizenship exam because of their limited literacy.
The enemy alien classification included many ironies, and enforcing the act posed countless challenges.
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