FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sacco and Vanzetti Commemoration Society
Boston, May 1, 2008.- The noted historian and activist Howard Zinn will give a lecture on “The Meaning of Sacco and Vanzetti”, Monday, May 12, 2008 at 7:30 pm, Dante Alighieri Society Italian Cultural Center, 41 Hampshire Street, Cambridge, MA.
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were two Italian-born immigrants, workers, and anarchists, who were tried and convicted in 1921 for the armed robbery and murder of two payroll guards. After 7 years of legal appeals and international protest, the two men were finally executed on August 23, 1927 in Boston for a crime that many felt they did not commit and by a judicial system that was patently biased and unjust. In his lecture Howard Zinn will indicate the relevance of the Sacco and Vanzetti Case for America today.
Howard Zinn is a historian, playwright, and social activist. He was a shipyard worker and Air Force bombardier before he went to college under the GI Bill and eventually received his Ph.D. from Columbia University. He has taught as a tenured professor at Spelman College and Boston University, and has been a visiting professor at the University of Paris and the University of Bologna. He has received among others, the Thomas Merton Award, the Eugene V. Debs Award, the Upton Sinclair Award, and the Lannan Literary Award.
The Sacco and Vanzetti Commemoration Society, the sponsor of this event, seeks to preserve the memory of Sacco and Vanzetti and to honor their efforts in trying to radically change the society they lived in. We wish to bring out their place in the history of radical Massachusetts, to help draw useful connections between the struggle of Sacco and Vanzetti and similar struggles today, and to inform our community about their living legacy, We stand against the death penalty, the persecution of political dissidents, as well as the persecution and scapegoating of immigrants. We hope that by raising a monument to Sacco and Vanzetti in Boston’s North End, a bronze bas-relief by the American sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, the same Borglum noted for his iconic sculptures of four American presidents in the hills of South Dakota, we can keep these issues fresh in the minds of our city, our state, and our nation.
Free admission. Discussion and coffee to follow the lecture. Donations for a Sacco Vanzetti Memorial Monument to be placed in Boston’s North End will be gratefully accepted.
The Dante Alighieri Society is conveniently located near Kendall Square, on the corner of Hampshire Street and Cardinal Medeiros Avenue. The Kendall Square / MIT stop on the MBTA Red Line is within ten minutes walking distance from the Center.