Carlo Tresca

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Carlo Tresca
labor leader
.
ChildrenPeter D. Martin

Carlo Tresca (March 9, 1879 – January 11, 1943) was an

Mafia infiltration of the trade unions for the purposes of labor racketeering
and corruption.

Born, raised, and educated in Italy, Tresca was editor of an Italian socialist newspaper and secretary of the Italian Federation of Railroad Workers before he emigrated to the United States in 1904. After a three-year spell as secretary of the Italian Socialist Federation of North America, he joined the Industrial Workers of the World in 1912, and was involved in strikes across the United States over the rest of the decade. He was jailed in 1925 after printing a paid advertisement for a birth control pamphlet in one of his newspapers.

During the 1930s, Tresca was a vocal critic of both

Moscow Trials. Tresca also used his newspapers to mount a public campaign criticising the Mafia. He was assassinated in New York, January 1943 allegedly by Carmine Galante
.

Personal life

Carlo Tresca was born March 9, 1879, in

anticlerical atheist.[2]

From 1898 to 1902, Tresca was secretary of the Italian Federation of Railroad Workers.

Philadelphia
.

Tresca had a relationship with Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and Flynn's sister, Bina, and was the father of Bina's son Peter D. Martin.[3][4] He also had a relationship with sculptor Minna Harkavy, whose bust of him was erected in his birth town of Sulmona.[5]

American years

In America, Tresca was elected Secretary of the Italian Socialist Federation of North America in 1904. He remained in that position for the next three years.[1] During this same interval, Tresca was also the editor of Il Proletario (The Proletarian), the official newspaper of the Italian Socialist Federation.[1]

Tresca's political views became increasingly radical and he soon came to identify himself as an

Espionage Act.[1]

Paterson silk strike (1913), and the Mesabi Range, Minnesota, miners' strike (1916). He was arrested several times and jailed for nine months awaiting trial for murder in conjunction with the Minnesota action, ultimately being released without going to trial.[1]

Americans march in a "Sympathy Labor Parade" for Carlo Tresca, 1916

In August 1920, Tresca became involved tangentially in the Irish War of Independence. As Sidney Czira, secretary of Cumann na mBan in New York, and sister of Grace Gifford, later recalled, "Picketing of the British Embassy in Washington had been going on from 1916 onwards and I remember a very successful picketing that was undertaken as a protest in New York against the British arrest of Dr. Mannix in August 1920. This latter picketing was largely the work of an Italian called Carlo Tresca, a personal friend of the well-known Irish-American family of Flynn, who were great friends of James Connolly. Tresca had great influence among the sea-faring fraternity and suggested that we should call out the seamen from the British ships as a protest against the arrest of Dr. Mannix. This was done by pickets walking on the docks with placards, calling on the men to leave the ships. So far as I was concerned, this was rather an amusing incident, because I had a placard which read something like this, "Hear the call of the blood and refuse to work on British ships". I realised that the call of the blood was addressed to Greeks, Italians, Lascars, etc., and when they saw a young woman with a placard they came up to enquire what the strike was about. My efforts to translate "Hear the call of the blood" into Italian were funny, but I found one word which they all seemed to know was "tyranny - Irlanda", and smiling and nodding, they would all walk away. The picketing was extremely effective because when we were holding our meetings it was a thrilling sight when, from time to time, we would hear the march of feet and the crew of some ship would come marching into the room. We found out subsequently that Tresca, who had organised them, was generally supposed to be an anarchist! Of course, there were extremely severe penalties under American law for behaviour of this kind."[6]

In August 1923, Tresca was arrested on charges of having printed an advertisement for a

Atlanta Federal Penitentiary.[1] This sentence was confirmed on November 10, 1924, and Tresca entered prison on January 5, 1925.[1]

Making enemies

Tresca became a prominent figure among Italian-Americans for his opposition to fascism and was reported to

anti-fascist newspaper named Il Martello,[8] where he attacked the myths that undergirded Mussolini's power.[9] Tresca was monitored by the United States Department of Justice, who sought to deport him, and by Rome, where Mussolini feared that Italian-Americans would hurt his reputation with the United States and its banks. With pressure from the Italian ambassador to ban Tresca's newspaper, the American government charged Tresca with publishing obscenities. Tresca was sentenced and subject to deportation, but public dissent led the United States President Calvin Coolidge to commute Tresca's sentence. The fascists turned to violence, with a bombing assassination attempt in 1926, after which the antifascists fought back. Tresca contributed towards stopping Mussolini's ideological spread among Italian-Americans, despite Tresca's lack of reach into Italian-American media and business influence.[10]

During the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, Tresca organized publicity, fundraising, and the defense lawyer Fred Moore.[11]

In the 1930s, Tresca became an outspoken opponent of

Soviet communism and Stalinism, particularly after the Soviet Union had engineered the destruction of the anarchist movement in Catalonia and Aragon during the Spanish Revolution of 1936.[12]

In 1937, Tresca was a member of the

Moscow Trials.[13]

In early 1938, Tresca publicly accused the Soviets of

kidnapping Juliet Stuart Poyntz to prevent her defection from the Communist Party USA underground apparatus. Tresca alleged that before she had disappeared, Poyntz had talked to him about "exposing the communist movement".[14]

Assassination

On January 11, 1943, in

Stalin regime of the Soviet Union.[15]

Bonnano crime family.[16] No one was ever charged in the Tresca murder.[17]

A eulogy at his memorial service was delivered by

Lewis Coser's account of the funeral, "I was sitting near a burly Irish policeman who clearly didn't understand a word of Balabanoff's fierce Italian oratory. But at her climax he burst into tears."[18]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Solon DeLeon with Irma C. Hayssen and Grace Poole (eds.), The American Labor Who's Who. New York: Hanford Press, 1925; pp. 231–232.
  2. ^ a b Aaron, Daniel. "Who Killed Carlo Tresca?". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved March 6, 2017.
  3. ISBN 9781403981097
    . Retrieved December 2, 2017 – via Google Books.
  4. ^ "Guide to the Dorothy Gallagher Research Files on Carlo Tresca". dlib.nyu.edu. Retrieved December 2, 2017.
  5. ^ "Minna B. Harkavy". www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Retrieved December 2, 2017.
  6. ^ Page 48 of Witness Statement 909 to the Irish Bureau of Military History, 1913–21
  7. ISBN 978-1-84935-043-3
    .
  8. ^ Pernicone 2010, p. 135.
  9. ^ Pernicone 2010, p. 136.
  10. OCLC 883502878
    .
  11. ^ Buhle, Buhle & Georgakas 1998, p. 827.
  12. ^ a b Kazin, Alfred (October 2, 1988). "Who Hired the Assassin?". The New York Times. Retrieved July 30, 2010.
  13. ^ Trotsky, Leon. "The Case of Leon Trotsky (Report of Dewey Commission – 1937)". Marxists.org. Retrieved December 2, 2017.
  14. ISBN 978-0-88755-482-7
    .
  15. ISBN 9780199656585
    .
  16. ^ "Assassin Slays Tresca, Radical, In Fifth Avenue". New York Times. January 12, 1943.
  17. ^ Franks, Lucinda (February 20, 1977). "Obscure Gangster Emerging as Mafia Chief in New York" (PDF). New York Times. Retrieved January 13, 2012.
  18. ^ Lewis Coser, "From a Heroic Past." Dissent, Summer 1989.

Bibliography
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