Whenever I read about injustice and law-breaking tea party Republicans I think of the Sacco & Vanzetti case of many years ago. Nicola Sacco (1891 – 1927) and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (1888 – 1927), a fishmonger and a shoemaker, were Italian-born anarchists who were convicted of murdering two men during the armed robbery of a shoe factory in South Braintree, Massachusetts, United States in 1920. A controversial trial in 1921 resulted in the mens conviction, despite equivocal ballistics evidence and numerous witnesses who claimed Sacco had been in Bostons North End and Vanzetti in Plymouth, Massachusetts on the day of the robbery. Their execution was a judicial assassination. The men were innocent. They weren’t even in Braintree at the time. They were ordered murdered by a Judge Webster Thayer, whose name has since become infamous. Important figures in the United States and Europe became involved in the campaign to overturn the conviction. John Dos Passos, Alice Hamilton, Paul Kellog, Jane Addams, Heywood Broun, William Patterson, Upton Sinclair, Dorothy Parker, Ruth Hale, Ben Shahn, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Felix Frankfurter, Susan Gaspell, Mary Heaton Vorse, John Howard Lawson, Freda Kirchway, Floyd Dell, Katherine Anne Porter, Michael Gold, Bertrand Russell, John Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells. There was an attempt at restitution fifty years later, on 23rd August, 1977, when Michael Dukakis, the Governor of Massachusetts, issued a proclamation, effectively absolving the two men of the crime. Today is the Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti Memorial Day. The atmosphere of their trial and appeals were permeated by prejudice against foreigners and hostility toward unorthodox political views. The conduct of many of the officials involved in the case sheds serious doubt on their willingness and ability to conduct the prosecution and trial fairly and impartially. Simple decency and compassion, as well as respect for truth and an enduring commitment to our nations highest ideals, require that the fate of Sacco and Vanzetti be pondered by all who cherish tolerance, justice and human understanding. In his three-volume novel “USAâ€, Dos Passos states upon the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti: all right we are two nations. That short and simple but unforgettable phrase has to me seemed apt on many occasions in modern American history but never so much as now, with the Fox News, Republican, teaparty ideological lies and thought-horrors today being passed off as political wisdom.
Posted on: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 14:21:25 +0000
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