Honoring Pete Panto, in the New York Times

Today’s New York Times features an article by James Barron that details Calandra’s Dr. Joseph Sciorra’s tireless campaign to recognize the life of dockworker Pete Panto by erecting a gravestone for the murdered labor activist buried in the St. Charles Cemetery on Long Island. Read the article here. And please consider attending the commemoration of Panto that will take place at the gravesite on Tuesday, September 26, 2023, at 2:30pm. Click here for the address and further details.

Dr. Joseph Sciorra Wins Studs Terkel Award

Photograph of Joseph Sciorra
Joseph Sciorra

As part of the Working-Class Studies Association Awards for work produced in 2020, this year’s Studs Terkel Award for Single Published Articles or Series, Broadcast Media, Multimedia, and Film in Media and Journalism goes to “Protesta Per Sacco & Vanzetti,” by the Calandra Institute’s Director of Academic and Public Programs Joseph Sciorra. A judge writes that the piece includes “extensive research into the songs related to the men’s arrest, trial and executions,” a case they compare with the death of George Floyd. “The balm for xenophobia is knowledge, but the challenge is to bring people to that table. I’m there.” Also, a judge writes that Sciorra has “preserved a vital record of American anarchist history, giving credit to the working-class reproductions of this period’s emotive sounds and sensations of this historical moment.” The essay’s “focus on Italian language items provides an explicit example of working-class experience across languages, cultures, and people.”

Anthony J. Tamburri and the Calandra Institute Receive Friend of NOIAW Award

Photograph by Italics, Calandra Institute

On Saturday, April 13, Dr. Donna Chirico, dean of York College, CUNY, on behalf of the National Organization of Italian American Women presented Dean Anthony Julian Tamburri and the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute with a Friend of NOIAW Award. In the audience were numerous luminaries including, but not limited to, New York First Lady Matilda Cuomo, Italian Consul Genral in New York Francesco Genuardi, and the two honorees for 2019 Sandra L. Depaolo and Dr. Judith A. Salerno. Incoming CUNY Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez congratulated all the honorees, via letter, saying of the Institute, “I am especially pleased to congratulate Dean Anthony and the Calandra Institute. … The Institute is well-known for its quality research and events that enrich our understanding of and appreciation for all things and people Italian–including the many Italian women and women of Italian heritage who make outsize contributions to society.”