Business Sacco and Vanzetti

The business Sacco and Vanzetti is the name of a legal Scandale which has occurred in the Années 1920 with the the United States, and whose victims were the anarchistic of origin Italy Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.

Context

As in Europe, years 1919-1920 are difficult in the United States: it is necessary to reconvert the saving in war and to face the Inflation. The end of the official State intervention set up in 1917 and the rise of the trade unionism cause many strikes in all the country. In 1919, one counts 4,1 million strikers who claim better wages and a reduction of the working time. The strikes degenerate into violence and give place to confrontations in several big cities, as with Boston. The year 1920 is remembered by many anarchistic attacks : the political officials are touched, like the mayor of Seattle or that of Cleveland, at which a bomb explodes. The offices of the Morgan bank in Wall Street are puffed up by an attack which makes 38 dead and 200 wounded. The authorities take measures of repression against the anarchists but also against the Communists and the Socialists American. Some are imprisoned, the other constrained ones to exile itself. The public opinion amalgamates the grevists, the foreigners and “the Reds”. She fears progress of the Bolchevism in Europe, the terrorism of left and is wary of the recent immigrants who speak hardly English.

Beginning of the business

The May 5th 1920, Sacco and Vanzetti are stopped; they are suspected of having made two steerings (the December 24th 1919 with Bridgewater and the April 15th 1920 with South Braintree where two conveyers are killed).

Judgment

The August 16th 1920, Vanzetti alone is condemned for the first steering to 15 years of prison. The second lawsuit which closes the July 14th 1921 condemns them both to the capital punishment for the crimes of South Braintree, in the suburbs of Boston, in spite of the lack of formal evidences. Defense committees set up themselves in the whole world to sensitize the opinion on this injustice: the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini takes even their defense. Like Sacco in 1923, Vanzetti is placed beginning 1925 in Psychiatric hospital. The May 12th 1926, their death sentence is confirmed. The May 26th, a gangster called Madeiros, however already condemned to died in another business, acknowledges its prison being the author of the steering of South Braintree, but Thayer judge, who loved neither the Italians, nor the anarchists, refuses to reopen the file. In spite of an intense international mobilization and the carryforward on several occasions of the execution, Nicola Sacco, Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Celestino Madeiros pass on the electric chair in the night of the 22 to the August 23rd 1927, causing an immense reprobation.

The August 23rd 1977, exactly 50 years after, the governor of the Massachusetts Michael Dukakis exonerates the two men, and declares that all dishonors were to be removed their names for always .

Popular culture

The song Here' S to you of Joan Baez their is dedicated. It takes again the words of Vanzetti to judge Thayer (cf below): " Young stags to you Nicola and Bart Rest forever young stag in our hearts/The last and final moment is yours/That agony is your triumph".

The film Sacco and Vanzetti realized by Giuliano Montaldo recalls their history.

Quotation

Vanzetti, condemned with Sacco to electrocution, answers on April 9th, 1927 Thayer judge:

If this thing had not arrived, I would have passed all my life to be spoken with the corner about the streets to scorning men. I could have died unknown, been unaware of: a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never, in all our life, we could not have hoped to do for the tolerance, justice, for the mutual comprehension of the men, which we do today by chance. Our words, our lives, our sufferings are nothing. But how one takes our lives to us, lives of a good shoe-maker and of a poor salesman of fish, it is that which is all! This last moment is ours. This anguish is our triumph.

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