(Did you know there was a Sacco and Vanzetti opera? Not a bad one, either, I gather. - promoted by Charley on the MTA)
Today the Massachusetts Citizens Against the Death Penalty held a commemoration of the 80th Anniversary of the executions of two innocent Italian migrants - Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.
Former Governor Dukakis read his proclamation, first issued on August 23, 1977 which stated:
...August 23 1977, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti Memorial Day,' and [I] 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 descendents, and so...call upon all 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.
The Sacco & Vanzetti case is still very much relevant. Not just because four Italians were railroaded into prison by the FBI - and two died there before the two survivors were held by Nancy Gertner to be entitled to compensation...but because of the United States remaining a country where the death penalty still happens.
I learned at the Commemoration, on Hanover Street today, that the Governor of Tuscany in Italy is said to have been the first chief executive to outlaw the death penalty. 100 countries, as of this week, have outlawed the death penalty including Rwanda, as part of that countriy making a new beginning.
One speaker today stated that a resolution will be filed in the United Nations in November to outlaw the death penalty. When that happens, he hoped that the United States would stand with the 100 countries who have outlawed the death penalty, not with Saudi Arabia and China. |
| Robert Meeropol spoke; I found this especially affecting as his parents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were executed in 1953. He was three when they were arrested, and six when they were executed. He asked who studies or follows up on the children left behind by the thousands of parents executed by the state?
Perhaps the best words to end my plea for the ending of the death penalty in this country come from Bartolomeo Vanzetti:
?I champion the weak, the poor, the oppressed, the simple and the persecuted. I maintain that whosoever benefits or hurts a man benefits or hurts the whole species. I sought my liberty and the liberty of all, my happiness and the happiness of all. I wanted a roof for every family, bread for every mouth, education for every heart, light for every intellect. I am convinced that human history has not yet begun, that we find ourselves in the last period of the prehistoric. I see with the eyes of my soul how the sky is diffused with the rays of the new millennium.? ? Bartolomeo Vanzetti. |
