That was activist Manny Alfano’s most often used exclamation.  No truer words were ever said, as we in the Italian heritage business can attest.  Anti-defamation is the last thing we feel comfortable doing.  Yet, the media set our agenda decades ago.

Manny passed away last week, active to the end in fighting media stereotypes.  His organization, One Voice, will continue as part of a coalition of Italian American groups dedicated to defending and preserving our heritage. 

Not a week goes by that Hollywood or the press doesn’t provoke image-minded Italian Americans with mafia stories.  This year it was about celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Godfather, complete with infamous dialog, behind the scenes revelations, the Paramount+ mini-series The Offer, and the endless loop of cable fare broadcasting GF I, II, III.  This November, Sylvester Stallone of Rocky fame will star in a new TV series titled Tulsa King, in which his character founds a branch of the mafia in Oklahoma.  Will Stallone’s ‘Don Manfredi’ engage in cattle-rustling?  Any wonder Manny used to say, “it never ends!” 

Manny knew that the worst instigators of negative media are Italian Americans themselves:  filmmakers, writers, producers, actors, reporters, editors, and even former mobsters looking to immortalize their rap sheets.  They not only instigate for more mafia stories but add the irresistible “goombah” character flourishes that audiences crave. 

However, Manny’s time was divided the past few years as he dealt with Columbus-bashing.  We all answered the bugle call when academia and politicians began dissing the Great Navigator and relegating the discovery of the New World to Dante’s Seventh Circle of Hell.  These attacks aroused all Italian American activists.  Another was Louis J. Gallo of the Commission for Social Justice.  Lou, also passed away this year.  For a number of years he fought Columbus-bashing in costume, going to schools and feasts dressed as the Navigator answering questions from students and feast-goers.  Lou was a Social Studies teacher during his working years and had a rapport with youngsters.  As far as I know, Lou was the only activist to use this method to defend Columbus.

So far, Columbus Day is still a federal holiday, albeit one that many states, cities, and school districts do not observe or have masked as “Indigenous Peoples Day.”  The Congress has been too busy establishing Juneteenth and re-impeaching Donald Trump to mess with Columbus Day. Its salvation may depend on a Republican Congress in 2023.  Around the nation, statues of Columbus have suffered varying degrees of desecration: in Baltimore a mob tossed one into the harbor; in Philadelphia one has been encased in a box despite a court order to remove the box.  In Chicago, the mayor removed the statue for “safekeeping” to an undisclosed location.  It’s the same story in most other cities – mayors ignoring court orders, Italian American groups suing for relief. 

Last Friday was ‘John Cabot Day’.  On June 24th 1497 Giovanni Caboto arrived at Newfoundland and planted the flags of England and Venice claiming coastal North America for England.  That’s the story as documented, not imagined.  Ben Franklin stated as much in a 1775 essay to the British Parliament.  But John Cabot never got his due in popular lore here. 

The Associated Press distributes “This Date in History,” a daily almanac, to subscribing newspapers.  Last Friday’s edition downgraded Cabot’s feat from planting flags to only “sighting” North America and “spotting land”.  We are to suppose that the crew of a rickety wooden ship, with a charter from King Henry VII, that had traversed the North Atlantic for two months living on salt pork and hardtack didn’t disembark and spend even fifteen minutes on terra firma to stretch their legs.  No flags, no claims, no further exploration, and certainly no mention that Cabot was Italian.  But somehow, England claimed a new continent and established 13 colonies there based on a ‘sighting’.

With a little digging, I found a squib in a 1947 NYTimes headlined “British Mark John Cabot Day” reporting that the city of Bristol (Cabot’s home port) celebrated the 450th anniversary of his departure from there “to discover Newfoundland.” We also know he followed the coast down to Chesapeake Bay.

As history is being rewritten, reinterpreted, and expunged, our heritage goes with it.  Saving Columbus and proclaiming Cabot are all part of the struggle to preserve our Italian legacy.  Manny and Lou knew that fighting for historical truth also “never ends”. -JLM