Arts - 2 Marzo “Il Sogno e la Ragione da Harlem al BLM”: Interview with Author Daniele Biacchessi "Normally, when you are one step away from a dictatorship or fascism, you see the difficulty of living in a democratic society, and you realize how important it is to be able to maintain a democratic system. However, democracy is fragile in its own way, people enforce it, and as much as there may be rules, they do not apply to everyone. This was demonstrated by the horrific events of the attack on Capitol Hill. The madness of the United States has often shown as they try to portray in myth a model that could apply to everyone, but there’s no such thing."
News - 13 Febbraio Springsteen’s Message of Reconciliation in the Superbowl Video Displeases Everyone The issue of Christian Nationalism - an insidious union of patriotism and Christian belief that ties the two together until it’s impossible to determine where one ends and the other begins – must also be taken into consideration. This underestimated and extremely dangerous phenomenon was thrust into the spotlight on January 6, when a group of insurrectionists invaded the U.S. Capitol with an array of evangelical paraphernalia....
News - 16 Dicembre 2020 There Is Only One Race, the Human Race: Teachers of Italian in the US and Activism In its 13th year, the annual Teaching Italian Symposium at Montclair State University, held virtually via Zoom on Oct. 23 and Oct. 24, was a testament to the commitment of the Joseph and Elda Coccia Institute for the Italian Experience in America and the Italian Program in the Department of World Languages and Cultures that […]
News - 17 Luglio 2020 When the Term “Italian American” Means the Worst of Both Worlds It is no mystery that some segments of the Italian-American community share the rest of the nation's view of African-American's shortcomings as due to "moral flaws": their endemic laziness, the parasitism that makes them dependent on social welfare, the propensity to crime. Paradoxically, these are exactly the same vices that, in Italy, sum up the northern prejudices towards southerners which make up the majority of the Italian diaspora in America.
News - 25 Giugno 2020 Free Speech, Opinions and Ignorance. Where to Draw the Line? With the right of free speech comes the duty of taking responsibility for what is said. The fact that we are free to express our own opinions doesn’t make these automatically right and true. In fact, what is an opinion? We all have the same rights and you can’t discriminate against an individual or a whole category of individuals on the basis of sex, religion, social class, disability or the color of their skin. The human being originated from primates (a gorilla’s evolution to be precise) between 7 and 5.8 million years ago and you know where? In Africa.
News - 22 Giugno 2020 My Reflections as a White Italian Woman on the Protests of Black People in the U.S. For the first time, I heard the narrative of the struggle for civil rights in the United States from the side of the oppressed: when in the course of one's life, every other possible means has been explored, patiently and constantly, if the only way to make one's cry heard is to protest with force, then force it must be.
News - 17 Giugno 2020 In America’s “Novel”, Italian-Americans and Columbus Are “Cheated” and “Beaten” In Italiano It’s almost like a Pirandello play: loves and hatreds, admiration and disdain for a similar situation, but seen from different points of view, simply to remind us that absolute truth does not exist. And this very sick America, angry and instigated, takes it out on its symbols, its memories, its past–but not with […]
News - 12 Giugno 2020 Megalomania and Greed: These Are Trump’s Calling Cards The division that has rent this country in ways that feel unforgivable will have to be forgiven. The country is divided, but not geographically; our neighbors will still be our neighbors, our friends will (maybe) still be our friends. Our family will still be our family. We will all have to work together.
News - 11 Giugno 2020 My Children Explained to a Racist: a Mother Deals With Racism in Italy "The only way is through empathy, putting yourself in someone else’s shoes – the foreigner that risks his life to save his children, or a child that returns silently home because his friend told him, ‘I can’t play with you anymore because you’re black’, and perhaps even replied, ‘I’m sorry’.”
New York - 7 Giugno 2020 Antifa, the American Movement with Italian Roots and the Same Enemy: Fascism Unable to denounce the Constitutionally-granted right to peaceable assembly and free speech (although some have tried), the reactionary forces in America have constructed a straw man in Antifa. The Trump administration is now threatening to classify Antifa as a terrorist organization. Mussolini did the same with Carlo Roselli's Giustizia e Libertà...