02/24/2025
An extensive and detailed article was published on the Harvard Crimson, by Olivia Pasquerelle last February 13, 2025. She conducted extensive interviews with members of the Sacco and Vanzetti Commemoration Society and the Community Church of Boston, including me.
Interestingly, quite a few things were left out:
1. The main objective of the society, to build and establish a monument to Sacco and Vanzetti in Boston, and why to the day, we have not been able to accomplish that.
2. The role of some councilors of color in the Boston City Council such a Felix Arroyo, Chuck Turner and Charles Yancey in supporting the Society define August 23 as Sacco and Vanzetti Commemoration Day in Boston, with every marche we organized each year.
3. The Michael Dukakis August 23, 1977 proclamation "to 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."
All in all, however, I think this is a good article, which in particular has the courage to look inwards on the conservative role of Harvard University in Massachusetts, and promoting the efforts made to learn from our history. The forces of intolerance that Dukakis mention, however, continue to be active and present in particular in the persecution of radical ideas and immigrants of color.
Please read the article and thank Olivia Pasquerella for her writing. Great accomplishment.
Sacco and Vanzetti are interred, not in a tomb — their bodies were cremated shortly after their ex*****ons — but in an archive, a testament to a radical tradition and the first Red Scare which sought to disrupt it. In the Community Church of Boston, their memory has found a temporary resting pla...