Sacco and Vanzetti Redux

From today’s Sacramento Bee: 

“Bombings were terrorizing the government. Immigrants suspected of radical political leanings were being rounded up and deported, while others who had recently come to the United States were viewed with suspicion and scorn. Body bags containing dead American soldiers were coming home from war.”

What does this remind you of?  The “war on terror” perhaps.  But that is not what the author, Bruce Dancis, was writing about.  The article continues:

“The year was 1921, and it was in this context of fear, repression and postwar patriotism that two Italian-born anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti — a skilled shoemaker and a fish peddler — were tried and convicted of participating in a payroll robbery and the murder of two men outside a factory in South Braintree, Mass., near Boston. After years of appeals and attempts to secure a new trial, the two men were executed 80 years ago this week, just after midnight on Aug. 23, 1927.”

The Sacco and Vanzetti case still provokes controversy.  For the latest, read Bruce Watson’s new book “Sacco & Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind” (2007) and filmmaker Peter Miller’s  new documentary “Sacco and Vanzetti”, which comes out on DVD today (First Run Features).  In that case, two Italian immigrants were afforded a trial that did not even roughly approximate due process of law.

History often seems to repeat itself.  My point clearly is not that we should ignore the excesses of the “‘war on terror,” including the deportations, torture, round ups, etc.  Rather, my point is that we must realize that governmental excesses — excesses that we come to regret as a matter of history — often come in times of social stress.  And those who suffer generally are the most vulnerable in U.S. society.

KJ