Breaking Through: Where's Marc in the Media?

Vito Marcantonio continues to reassume his place in the American historical narrative as media outlets take a new interest in radical congressman's work and image.

“Politico,” a nationally distributed online product, recently wrote Marcantonio into a “this day in history” piece.

That day was Dec. 31, 1946. The headline read: “House Panel Upholds Rep. Vito Marcantonio's right to take his seat.”

The article, written by Andrew Glass, introduces Marcantonio to an unaware political readership and focuses on the House Campaign Expenditure Investigating Committee's decision “not to challenge his right to take his seat in the new Congress.”

Opponents were out to deny Marcantonio's hard-fought victory in a year when Republicans had swept the nation, but failed to unseat the American left's national spokesman. The Election Day beating death of a Republican ward-heeler in Marcantonio's district gave them the brush they needed to tar him.

Thereafter, his seat was less secured, his reputation tarnished by purported links to mobsters.

Marcantonio held on for one more election before defeat in 1950.

“Politico” highlighted the intensifying Cold War between the U.S., as a reason for his defeat, but avoids mention of his collaboration with communists.

Marc Drops Buy to Lend Red Friend a Hand.

The “Random Radical,” series at Yahoo's “Flickr” was less demure, running a photo of Marcantonio arriving to testify for Communist Party official Eugene Dennis on June 25, 1947.

The uncredited piece discusses Marc's engagement with communists, the American Labor Party and Henry Wallace's Progressive Party, as well as his pioneering work on civil rights at the federal level.

“As one of the most left-wing members ever to serve in Congress, he was never popular with his colleagues,” the article reads. “After his vote to oppose U.S. entry into the Korean War, they painted a target on his back.”

A letter written by New York City “power broker” Robert Moses to Marc's wife Miriam Sanders upon his death, expresses the mixture of personal warmth and political coldness that more likely typified Marcantonio's relationship to his colleagues:

“Mary and I were both very fond of Marc and so were our girls.” wrote Moses in a letter dated Aug. 23, 1954. “We all agreed that he was one of the kindest people we had ever met and, while his philosophy was quite beyond us, we shall miss him.”

(The epistle resides with the “Marcantonio Papers” collection housed at the New York Public Library's main branch on 42^nd St.)

In any case, the writer is correct about the target on Marc's back. The piece takes note of the tri-party coalition it took to defeat him in 1950.

The piece closes with mention of Marcantonio's intention to run again for Congress on the Good Neighbor Party line when he was struck down by a heart attack, thereby finishing up the rare, detailed thumbprint sketch of the Congressman's forgotten legacy.

And finally, Rick Snyder at “Down with Tyranny” recently composed a post introducing the blog's readers to Marcantonio, simultaneously weaving his politics into the 2016 presidential campaign and present-day argot into the East Harlemite's story.

“When Bernie was Growing Up Congress had an Amazing Congressman, A Democratic Socialist from Harlem Named Vito Marcantonio,” notes that Marc was a “champion of Puerto Rican independence, of immigrants and of civil rights for blacks long before that became a thing.”

Taking a hack at Marco Rubio, the blog noted that, in spite of handily winning the Republican primary in Puerto Rico, the callow senator from Florida will never be the kind of friend Puerto Rico had in Marcantonio.

“Rubio is anything but a champion of Puerto Ricans. The last member of Congress who really was, was a Democratic Socialist from Harlem named Vito Marcantonio, one of the most fascinating leftists in the history [of that institution],” wrote Snyder.

That Marcantonio, who died over 60 years ago, was the last congressional friend Puerto Rico had is not good news for the island.

“Down with Tyranny” continues: “My grandfather told me about him when I was a little boy and said he was the best politician in America. He was betrayed by the Democrats when they teamed up with the GOP to run a joint candidate. His kind of principled independence made the rest of them look like the crooked self-serves most of them were.”

After a not-inconsiderable review of Marc's career, “Down With Tyranny,” closes with a further comparison of Marcantonio to Sen. Bernie Sanders (D?), closing with a recent “Seattle Times,” endorsement of the Vermont legislator which, Snyder said, “described him in terms reminiscent of Marcantonio.”

These outlets represent both mainstream packages and niche projects reaching different audiences with varying levels of interest.

Foot-Stompin' Marc.

Gerald Meyer, co-chair, Vito Marcantonio Forum (VMF) noted that the piece embeds "Vito Marcantonio: A Synopsis of a Large Life," which was produced by member VMF member David Giglio.

The post, he observed, made considerable use of “I Vote My Conscience: The Speeches, Debates, and Writings of Vito Marcantonio,” edited by Annette T. Rubinstein.

“The Vito Marcantonio Forum is breaking through the wall of silence,” said Meyer in light of the recent coverage on the radical congressman. “Our work is bearing fruit.”

The VMF will do a presentation of author Nelson Denis' “War on All Puerto Ricans,” April 6 at the Mulberry Street Public Library, 10 Jersey Street, New York City, 5 p.m.
 
The event will be moderated by poet Gil Fagiani ("A Blanquito en El Barrio,” “Logos,” “Stone Walls) and feature actor Roberto Ragone performing dramatic readings from the text.

"The Goodfather (A Novel): The Rising Fall of the Marvelous Marcantonio," can be found at: MARC LIVES!

"A Blanquito En El Barrio," Gil Fagiani's East Harlem

"A Blanquito in El Barrio" is a parade of fringe urban characters tinged in tropical light (under soot), a borinquen carnival, sexy sometimes, baroque others, festive or nightmarish.

This collection of poems from 1966 through 1969 offers a view of Puerto Rican culture in East Harlem by a white guy (blanquito) from Connecticut, a survey of sixties New York and the drug scene that characterized it, as well as impressions of immigrant life, settled Nuyorica.

The clash of cultures spins sparks over most every page, as in “Reunion,” where an announcement in the doorway that “We are Catholics” contrasts starkly with the commission of adultery beyond its threshold.

The style in “Blanquito” is plainspoken, almost prosodic. There is little that is opaque or requiring contortions of linguistic comprehension. Sometimes this works in poetry, sometimes it doesn't. Here it does, the sparing, but forward-driving narrative possesses the preciousness of verse.

In “Fluteflirting,” the bond between music and sensuality coheres into erotica, without ever employing a hardcore vocabulary:

“He trills at the end of an arpeggio.
Her shoulders shake, nipples harden.

“He flutter-tongues high G.
Her legs tremble, eyes closed.”

The scene between dancer and flautist is literally choreographed through typography, the poet playing at puppeteer. The result is simple and on point, but open-ended rather than pat.
Riffing.

For all his clean lines, sometimes, like a musician who has kept with the beat too long, Fagiani breaks out in a redolent riff, as in “125^th St.” where:

“...girls in straw hats wave at me
with mocha tans
and strawberry fingertips."

Music is very important to “Blanquito,” which generates its own and commemorates much of what was heard on El Barrio's streets in those times. It even comes with a discography, the names of bands and song titles themselves a kind of found art: “Soul Makossa,” Manu Dibango. “Boogaloo Blues,” Johnny Colón...

Not that Fagiani's is a candy-striped, timbale-splashed El Barrio. In “Blanquito,” The Spanish Harlem of the time is rendered in an earthy pallet, bruises and all, without repugnance or even detachment, rather with an intimation that what is ugly is also part of the beauty of the whole.

Fagiani is a founding member of the Vito Marcantonio Forum and “A Blanquito in El Barrio” is dedicated to the unjustly forgotten East Harlem congressman.

Litany of San Vito.

San Vito of East Harlem             Pray for us
San Vito bread of the poor          Pray for us
San Vito crucified by Wall Street   Pray for us
San Vito Martyr of McCarthyism      Pray for us

From the jail cell walls           San Vito deliver us
From the backyard crap game        San Vito deliver us
From the loan shark's vig          San Vito deliver us
From the drunken stupor            San Vito deliver us
From TB and asthma                 San Vito protect us
From the social worker's visit     San Vito protect us
From the immigration raids         San Vito protect us
From the landlord's greed          San Vito protect us”

Read on its own, the piece's rhythm links the people of El Barrio and their congressman, the kindness he showed them, his secular sanctification and their mutual victimization by the same unforgiving forces.

Seen as part of a larger canvas, the poem serves as a kind of reprise, linking Vito Marcantonio to characters come before in “Blanquito.

In “Cuchifrito,” the blanquito finds himself turned on by the salacious way a puertoriqueña he's casing slurps her greasy native treats.

“La Capitana” recounts a childhood social worker hauling her innocent charges to confront the bureaucrats who have cut their summer program funding.

“First Day in El Barrio” has an Italian cop born there, before it went Puerto Rican, mocking the blanquito and his crusading friends for being heavy on book learning and short on street smarts.

“when he began his barrio beat
he was young and idealistic too
and wanted to help people.
But in no time he learned
that except for a few residents
too scared to say a word
mostly he met backstabbers,
sneaks, junkies, welfare bums,
dope addicts and cutthroats.”

Dust Recuperated.

“La Loca,” depicts a straight-playing secretary and mother of three who gets her freak on by hitting some weed and dancing for multiple macho admirers at something called the Hunts Point Plaza.

And there are numerous junkies laying about the streets and alleys of Gil Fagiani's East Harlem, notable among them the “Fashionista” whose journey on junk takes him from dandy to dirtbag.

“Blanquito” dives into an unknown or, worse, ignored world, recuperates the lives of humans treated as something less than human. Without it, the junkies and petty thieves and desperate but honest ones who pass anonymously and without imprint on the collective memory, would be dust.

Gil Fagiani

Much the same can be said for Marcantonio whose life's work was to improve their situation.

The book introduces us to the jail cell walls, the backyard crap game, to the druggy stupors so that, by the time San Vito makes his appearance, these are not single-shot sentences, but markers for full-blown characters.

The yarns in “Blanquito” are woven from ecstatic party vibe, lowdown hangovers or overdoses, stories of people who try hard getting the same raw deal as those who don't do. There is fried food, swampy summers streets with the sewer smell rising up, the final goodbye to someone who had it coming, the whole flawed festival of urban immigrant life.

Binding the tales of misery together with a lighthearted filigree is the incessant push of the desperate, confused, or wronged characters to not just live, but to insist on joy. In amplifying their drive, Fagiani infuses his story-in-poems with that same joy.

Portrait of "San Vito" by Roman O'Cadiz 

"The Goodfather (A Novel): The Rising Fall of the Marvelous Marcantonio," can be purchased here: MARC LIVES!