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Public
Employee Press Italian Heritage A
proud history in labor As District Council 37 commemorated its 65th
anniversary in October, the unions Italian Heritage Committee celebrated
a full 65 years of Italian-American activism in DC 37.
Committee Chair
Michael DeMarco kicked off the annual dinner-dance Oct. 17 with a salute to the
hundreds of participants from dozens of union locals and thanks to his committee
for their work in organizing the event.
Executive Director Lillian Roberts
addressed the group about the central role Italian-American organizers, activists
and rank-and-filers played in building DC 37.
From our very beginning
in 1944, it was the Blue Collar Division which then included thousands
of Italian-American workers that got this union going and fought for bargaining
rights for all of us. Ever since then, whenever there has been a crisis, they
have answered the unions call, she said. I hope we always continue
to live up to the magnificent heritage they created.
Marylou Romano
and the Coro dItalia folkloric dance ensemble the oldest of its kind
in the United States provided lively ethnic entertainment from the cultural
tradition that a huge wave of Italian immigrants brought to the United States
from 1880 to 1920.
People
of every ethnic background should, Love your heritage. Know your roots,
said Romano.
The costumed dancers presented different versions of the tarantella,
the national dance of Italy, which may represent the wild exercise that farmers
centuries ago believed would sweat off the poison of a spider bite. In the Sicilian
tarantella, dancers carry tambourines and move very fast, while the Neapolitan
is more of a courtship dance and the pizzica comes from Salento, the
high heel of the Italian boot.
Discussing the prejudice and
cruel working conditions the immigrants faced, Romano spoke of Pietro di Donatos
1939 novel, Christ in Concrete. The semi-autobiographical saga tells
of the life, work, religion and communities of working-class Italian-Americans
in the 1920s. In the powerful story, when a gruesome accident on the job kills
his father, a construction worker, 12-year-old Paul braves the danger and the
low pay and picks up his fathers tools to support the family of eight. We
need each other more than ever, before we die crushed, Paul tells his mother
as he becomes a union activist just as so many Italian Americans did at
the time when DC 37 was founded.
Bill Schleicher
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