Op-Ed, By Clifford Jackson
The response to the leaving out of Little Italy on the nyc immigrants map has everything to do with the racism and hatred towards Zohran Mamdani and very little to do with the omission.
The ommission had everything to do with the “tammany like hall” administration of Eric Adams and nothing to do with any sort of discrimination towards italian Americans. Indeed the creation and omission goes back to 2023 under Adams.
Despite conveying this the hatred and racism has been intense. The social media platforms have exhibited hate filled rallies where mamdani has been called an “evil communist that needs to go back where he came from.”
These comments have been articulated at numerous rallies and one in particular headed by Scott Lobaido, where expletives and chants of “deport Mamdani” were a constant refrain. This racism and hatred for Mayor Mamdani was expressed by the talian American Community during a virulent rally on august 25th of last year in staten Island when Mamdani was campaigning with chants of “commie go home,” and “Mamdani is an african piece of shit.”
Mamdani said in response to this “I have never seen this level of hatred in my life.” What i am writing is not a rant but a factual delineation of the racism, hatred and ignorance from the italian-American community that i have seen throughout my life and certainly for 36 years living in Larchmont.
It is the kind of racism that Bruce Blakeman and Nicole Maliatakis have expressed towards Mamdani and Palestinians, where these two have also appeared at these rallies. Chris Gelardi, who is of italian decent, is a journalist who wrote a piece for the Nation recently titled “Little Italy’s fake controversy.” In the piece he mentions the Joe Colombo cosa nostra led Italian American civil rights league that joined forces with the violence and intimidation of Meheir Kahane and the jewish defense league in 1971.
Gelardi talks about how the Jewish defense league and the Colombo run organization were in a ” brotherhood” against the government and espoused far right language against palestinians and blacks. He said that the italian american leaders, who are spewing hate and disdain for Mamdani are doing the same thing. First he writes “founders of descendants of Little Italy were particularly incensed at the omission. Even though New York’s Little Italy’s haven’t housed significant numbers of Italian born residents in decades.”
He also wrote “a 2010 consensus could not find a single resident of Manhattan’s Little Italy who had been born in Italy. Yet members of the local Italian-American establishment complained that the map didn’t pay proper homage to their heritage.” “Good people and good families” are the constant racial code words from these antagonists of Mamdani and people of good will all over this city need to understand that this controversy is just another example of American racism.
Cliff Jackson, Larchmont