 |
Mar 26,2006 - Apr 2,2006 |
7 - More than just a people of opera singers
Italian immigrants flocked to San Francisco during and after the Gold Rush of 1849
By Antonio Maglio
Originally Published: 2002-09-08
 |
|
An Italian-style wedding in New York circa turn of the century
|
New Yorkers still jog along Central Park's paths. They don't smile at strangers any more, though; they stare into space.
September 11 robbed the smiles from this city. The people here have wrinkles cutting across their foreheads as signs of great loneliness and unspeakable anguish. And yet they don't give up, so that their desire for normalcy is an act of courage in itself.
After that day of infamy, and the repeated alarms over new threats, Americans suddenly discovered their own vulnerability, and became oppressed by a dizzying feeling of helplessness. The same happened after Pearl Harbor, to which they reacted. They reacted this time also, but today things are different. After December 7, 1941 they knew who and where the enemies were; they went after them and beat them. Today, who can tell whether the man with Middle Eastern eyes sitting on a bench in Central Park, browsing a bunch of newspapers, is a timid professor of NY University, an innocuous librarian, or a ruthless terrorist?
These questions are often brushed aside by John Ashcroft's men, the U.S. Attorney General who obtained from Congress the approval for measures restricting civil liberties. The stated objective is preventing, or foiling, other terrorist attacks. So, people can now be arrested without explicitly stating the reason - neither to the arrested nor to their families; conversations between arrested and counsel can be recorded; detention can be prolonged indefinitely; and trials will take place in front of secret military courts without juries. Extreme measures for extreme times; that's how the USA defends itself.
They did so in the past as well, following the attack on Pearl Harbor. But then the enemies were clear: Rome, Berlin and Tokyo, the capitals of the Axis that was the "evil empire" of the time. The United States was then full of Italians, but there were also Japanese and Germans. Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared them "alien enemies". That declaration entailed widespread arrests and internment. Civil liberties were congealed, with a sequence of dramatic, and occasionally grotesque stories.
Page 1/...Page 2
|
| Home / Back to Top |
|
|
 |
|
|
</ td>
