00:00At the turn of the 20th century, thousands of Italians left their homes in towns and villages
00:04across Italy and journeyed to New York City. They came with hopes, dreams and a belief in
00:11the promise of our nation. But like so many immigrants before and since, they were met
00:15with unrelenting struggle and discrimination. To get by, they took on the most grueling and
00:21dangerous work, including digging our city's subway tunnels, building our bridges and toiling
00:26and cramped sweatshops. Italian immigrants formed some of the city's earliest mutual aid societies,
00:32forced to rely on each other for a social safety net that government had yet to create.
00:37Pope Leo XIII even dispatched a band of priests and nuns to establish parishes
00:42tending to immigrants' needs, including Our Lady of Pompeii, which still stands in the West Village.
00:47Through it all, Italians didn't turn away from New York City. Instead, they organized with the
00:53vision of a better future. This organizing was born, in many ways, in East Harlem,
00:58at the time a deeply impoverished neighborhood of nearly 100,000 Italian New Yorkers. One of them
01:04was Vito Marcantonio, a protege of Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, himself the son of a poor Italian immigrant.
01:11Marc, as he was known, went on to serve seven terms in Congress and became one of the faces of
01:16the
01:16American left in the 20th century. He fought to expand social security and unemployment insurance for
01:23those left out of the New Deal. A lifelong civil rights crusader, he introduced some of the first
01:28anti-Jim Crow legislation into Congress. He was a staunch supporter of free speech and free healthcare
01:34for poor women and families. He served longer than any other third-party legislator of his time,
01:41proof that a different form of politics was not only possible, but popular. Vito Marcantonio's
01:46politics were based around the idea, radical at the time, that the working class had the same material
01:52interests regardless of their race, religion, or ethnic background. That the fight for a life of
01:58dignity was shared, just as the struggle was. Italian-Americans have fed our neighbors, paved the
02:05roads we walk on, and built some of the greatest institutions our city has ever known. All that and
02:11more, as Italian-Americans made New York home to the People's Opera, iconic films like Mean Streets,
02:17and yes, the best pizza outside of Naples. We continue to fight for Vito Marcantonio's vision
02:23of a government that works for all working people. We will forever owe him for his courage and for
02:29expanding our sense of the possible. Italian-American history is New York City history. Their stories are
02:35not simply worth telling, they are worth celebrating all these years later. Happy Italian Heritage Month, New York.
