Chi è Pete Panto?

Joey Skee (July 15, 2008)
An Italian-American worker who fought the mob that you never heard of.
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Pietro “Pete” Panto (1911-1939), a longshoreman working the Brooklyn docks led a rank-and-file revolt against the corrupt and mob-controlled International Longshoremen’s Association. Headed by the all-powerful president Joseph Ryan (dubbed “King Joe” by dockworkers) and vice-president Emil Camarda, the ILA was rife with corruption, political patronage, and violence. Working conditions on the Brooklyn docks were horrid, with endemic problems such as the “shape-up” hiring system (where men waited daily to be chosen to work), mandatory salary kick backs, extortion, and high rates of work-related injuries. Enforcing the status qua of this corrupt fiefdom, was gangster Albert Anastasia, head of the crime syndicate “Murder, Inc.” and his brother Anthony “Tough Tony.” 

 

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on Anonymous (not verified) wrote

You got to bring more of

You got to bring more of these items. This is so interesting. Just like the item on serpico. Also your idea to created a movie about it is a very beautiful idea.! For sure. Just like many of the proposals on your italianrap site where you lay down a view compelling stories who infact are never brought out as film.....shameful but true....Reading this makes me wanna say; Where is Panto,?????
on destefano (not verified) wrote

Buon Lavoro

Buon lavoro, Joe. The Panto story is one of the lesser known but nonetheless highly significant episodes in Italian American, labor, and radical history. The Mello article you cite is one of the few good sources on Panto and the longshoremen's movement. The former New York State assemblyman Frank Barbaro was a longshoreman himself in the 1950s, more than a decade after Panto's murder. When I interviewed Barbaro for a paper he criticized the film "On the Waterfront" for failing to portray the actual nature of the struggle on the docks, reducing the radical movement to a battle between a punch-drunk ex-boxer and a gangster. It's important to remember that at the non-governmental and civil society realms the "lotto contro la Mafia" generally has been waged by leftists, both in Italy and the U.S. Conservatives in Italy largely have either condoned or collaborated with organized crime, to their disgrace. Italian American conservatives love to complain about Mafia stereotyping, but they approve of, and even support mobbed-up despots like Berlusconi rather than anti-Mafia Italian liberals and leftists. BTW, the screenplay "The Hook" was by Arthur, not Henry Miller. Love the idea of the latter writing this story, though it'd most likely be X-rated
on sciorra (not verified) wrote

sex on the brain

OMG! I wrote HENRY?! that would an interesting tale! :)
on destefano (not verified) wrote

uno sbaglio...

I meant to say "la lotta [struggle]contro la Mafia," not "Lotto," which of course is something else....

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