Events and Victims (PM Pamphlet)

Vanzetti, Bartolomeo

ISBN 10: 1629635170 ISBN 13: 9781629635170

Verlag: PM Press, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

This work by Bartolomeo Vanzetti, edited and with a detailed introduction by Jon Curley, features a never-before-published short story by this famous anarchist and victim of legal persecution, xenophobia, and condemnation for his radical politics. That fact that Vanzetti, an Italian immigrant, learned to write in English while jailed for a capital crime is remarkable enough. What is even more astonishing is that he chose to use his new language skills to write creatively, inventing a parable about worker exploitation and environmental disaster that is as relevant today as it was almost one hundred years ago when this prisoner took up his pen.

“Events and Victims” allows Vanzetti a new literary and historical voice, an important document that narrates the very injustice that its author suffered and fought. In a time of assault on immigrants, dissidents, radicals, and the environment, “Events and Victims” is as timely as ever.

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Bartolomeo Vanzetti was born in 1888 in Villafalletto, Italy. As an immigrant anarchist, he was at the center of one of the most notorious legal cases of the twentieth century, along with Nicola Sacco, that highlighted American anti-immigrant and anti-radical sentiment during the Red Scare. He was executed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on August 23, 1927.

Jon Curley is a poet and teacher. His poetry collections include Hybrid Moments (2015) and Scorch Marks (2017). He also wrote Poets and Partitions: Confronting Communal Identities in Northern Ireland (2011) and coedited The Poetry and Poetics of Michael Heller: A Nomad Memory (2015). He teaches in the Humanities Department of the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Curley is originally from Bridgewater, Massachusetts, where Vanzetti’s legal persecution began.

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Events and Victims

By Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Jon Curley

PM Press

Copyright © 2018 Bartolomeo Vanzetti
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-62963-517-0

CHAPTER 1

Events and Victims

The events which I am going to relate to you, my reader, took place in New Liberia, where I wandered for many years, working from time to time in many different places and under varied circumstances, as dishwasher, pastry cook, porter, storekeeper, gardener, laborer, fisherman; in short, earning my bread by the sweat of my brow wherever and in whatever way I could.

The western coast of that country, according to the geologists, is being eaten by the tides, and the land slowly but inevitably yields to the restless surges which stir it, submerge and cover it. The eastern coast, too, seems subject to the same phenomenon, at least at certain points with which I am very familiar.

Will this engulfment continue, or will it be stopped by one of the many still unexplained conditions which have determined and facilitated the infinite forms of matter and of life? Will they disappear, those shores so vast, so beloved, and so desperately disputed, each bush, tree, cliff, rock, and hill of which have been so bitterly contested by a handful of men poisoned by greed and folly? What destiny has time in store for that land all possessed by a foolish and feverish human activity; strewn with shanties, slums, and mediocre houses for its idle or ill-occupied rich; with the gigantic creations of human genius and labor interwoven; with the marbles and tombs of its departed poets, sages, learned and proclaimed heroes? Or will the blind seas sacrifice that land to their greedy gorges in order that the fabled Atlantises may raise again their heads, bowed by millenniums but still desirous of the light, to the mighty caresses of the sun? Or will that land be spared to witness the tragicomic auto-destruction of the race; or to become the last receptacle and final grave of degenerated tyrants, deceivers, and ruffians, and from the last hour of the darkest age — to see the clear dawn of sane and free days arise?

The good New Liberians, instead of watching with philosophical inertia the invasion of the sea, think only of their seawalls and busy themselves with constructing great concrete walls along the most dangerously threatened points of the shore.

A gang of workmen — all foreigners, from the engineer to the humblest laborer — had been busy erecting one of these walls since the beginning of spring. They had toiled so through the summer and the fall that at the beginning of winter the work was almost completed.

"Well, in a few days I will be fired; I must look for another job," I told myself one gloomy afternoon, as I watched the fog slowly stealing from me the sea, the sky, and sun.

That night instead of lying down to smoke and read, I did what I always do in such emergencies, I went to the poolroom of my friend Gennarino, a very able, intelligent, and enterprising barber. There the workingmen of the neighborhood spend their winter evenings reading, smoking, playing, disputing about politics, and chatting about work. There one may learn news of the labor market in the vicinity.

"I hear that they are looking for hands in Greenland," a friend told me soon after I entered, "but I don't know anything for sure. Johnny who works there can tell you more about it."

I went out and walked towards the theatre, hoping to see Johnny whom I knew to be passionately fond of moving picture shows. That night they were screening a film, a fragment of one of those romances which distort truth and realities; falsify history; provoke, cultivate, and embellish all the morbid emotions, confusions, ignorances, prejudices, and horrors; and purposely and skillfully pervert the hearts and, still more, the minds. The characters of these morbid melodramas are always of two opposite types, one very good, the other very bad. The good ones are the good folks who are always good, always do good, are always right, and in the end always triumph. The others are always bad folk, who are always wrong, always do evil, and finally pay the penalty. Just the reverse of life!

Thus meditating, I reached the theatre. Of course, it was, as usual, crowded to the doors. The common people, being all heart and no brain, are passionately interested in such senseless stories and not a scene escapes them. They develop a wild and unreasoning affection for the unreal characters of the unreally good, whose hatreds and loves, risks, and triumphs they share — and fervid hatred for and resentment against the unreal characters of the unreally bad gang. They lose their heads, weep, sigh, laugh, smile, fear, hope, and throb, and, forgetting their cross of infamy, leave the theatre more stupid than when they entered it. So in New Liberia.

As the first performance of the show was still going on, I stopped in front of the main entrance of the theatre and stood on the curb of the sidewalk. I felt sure that I would see Johnny come out of the show, or that he would see me, that anyway we would meet. It was still early and men and women were going back and forth doing their shopping or business or taking an evening stroll. Some were alone, some in friendly groups, a mother and her daughters, or sisters together. I silently watched them, exchanging salutations with some — all so familiar to my eyes, though so strange to me.

Beside me on the sidewalk stood a large group of men of all ages — the regular evening habitués of this particular point of the sidewalk. They looked the passing women up and down. They jokingly commented upon the age, walk, figure, face, and family relations of each woman that passed. Feeling uneasy, I turned toward the street and, almost unconsciously, I lifted my head. The fog of the afternoon had disappeared, the air was cold and clear, the sky cloudless. Beyond the foliage and the branches of two fine old trees between which I stood, some stars appeared in vast black concave of the sky. I looked at them thinking, contemplating, sensing my smallness, and, at the same time, the deepness and fullness of life: the small things and noises around my low level had faded from my consciousness.

Just then I felt a hand upon my shoulder. I turned, and there was Johnny standing beside me, looking into my face with a smile — a smile that plainly said: "You fool, to save a few nickels you deprive yourself of such pleasure as I have just enjoyed." We talked for a little and then separated. The next morning I was to start with him for Greenland.

On my way home I was churning in my mind: "What shall I do? The wages are lower than I am getting now, and furthermore thirty cents train fare and an hour longer to work daily. Damn the government! But the winter is long, and there I shall be able to work every day regardless of snow, rain, or wind. I will go."

The next morning I got to the station just in time to get my ticket and board the train. I found a seat beside Johnny, who had arrived in good season. As soon as the train started on its way, my friend began: "You see, Mr. Greenland's two factories were both closed at the beginning of the war. Now he has begun to manufacture cannon shells in one of them."

"Bombs," I interrupted.

"And now," my friend went on, "they are working day and night and turning out great quantities of them. You can't imagine what terrible work it is — water, humidity, steam, smoke, smells, heat, fire, acids: a veritable hell. The wages are good, but there are certain kinds of work that nobody wants to do."

"I understand," I mumbled.

"The factory...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: PM Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1629635170
• ISBN 13: 9781629635170
• Einband: Broschüre
• Anzahl der Seiten: 48
• Herausgeber: Curley Jon
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar