Rest In Peace

Tomorrow is the 80th anniversary of the brutal execution (August 23, 1927) of

Nicola Sacco & Bartolomeo Vanzetti


These men did not receive anything close to a fair trail, the judge even went on to call them "anarchist bastards." They were executed because they were Italian Immigrant Anarchists. To understand the climate please read this quote:
When compared with the suppression of anarchy every other question sinks into insignificance. The anarchist is the enemy of humanity, the enemy of all mankind, and his is a deeper degree of criminality than any other. No immigrant is allowed to come to our shores if he is an anarchist; and no paper published here or abroad should be permitted circulation in this country if it propagates anarchist opinions.

President Theodore Roosevelt



SONNET FOR SACCO AND VANZETTI

Justice avenge her dead, and reason flow
into a world where lies and power reign.
We never shall forget: the dry winds blow
across the fading embers of my brain.
It must have been the wind that brought to mind
your faces, as history’s dark wings unfurl,
brood over us, and make us pregnant. We find
your names, our selves, are borne upon its whirl.
In Washington D.C., the cherry trees
have finished blossoming. White monuments
are softened by the scent of rotting blooms.
This wounded orb, scraped raw, can barely see
these petals rend & flutter as they’re spent:
the earth’s back breaks beneath their soft perfume.

Both protests and riots erupted around the world when the two brave men were put to death. They will not be forgotten.


May they rest in peace, and may their dream of a better world come true.

"Well, I have already say that I not only am not guilty of these two crimes, but I never committed a crime in my life,--I have never stolen and I have never killed and I have never spilt blood, and I have fought against crime, and I have fought and I have sacrificed myself even to eliminate the crimes that the law and the church legitimate and sanctify.
This is what I say: I would not wish to a dog or to a snake, to the most low and misfortunate creature of the earth--I would not wish to any of them what I have had to suffer for things that I am not 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 for my beloved than for myself; but I am so convinced to be right that you can only kill me once but 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.
I have finished. Thank you."

-Bartolomeo Vanzetti

"If it had not been for these thing, I might have live out my life, talking at street-corners to scorning men. I might have die unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure. Never in our full life can we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man, as we now do by an accident. Our words - our lives, our pains - nothing! The taking of our lives, lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish-pedlar - all! That last moment belong to us - that agony is our triumph."

-Bartolomeo Vanzetti