Bill De Blasio, New York’s Italian from the Street

He did not like the name Warren Wilhelm. He wanted to be called Bill De Blasio, after his Italian mother — from Sant’ Agata de’ Goti — and his grandparents, who moved to New York from their small town in Italy to look after him. Since elementary school, before being able to do so legally, Wilhelm wanted to be De Blasio, and this is what all his school report cards and diplomas say. The new mayor of New York makes it an emotional issue when he speaks on the topic for a minute: It was his mother and grandparents who looked after him, after his father, who was of German origin, went away.

Now that he is mayor of a city that represents America and a sketch of the world at the same time, he accounts for something that, for the new American, was perhaps an instinctive revelation out of his situation growing up among lasagna, hamburgers, many challenges and much affection. He learned that, contrary to appearances, in New York, in order to be on the inside, you have to be on the outside. He had understood that, if you are not in the minority, you are nobody, and that identifying as being in the minority makes you stronger, more equal, and puts you not on the defensive but on equal ground. It reminded me of my own story from my New York years — when I was director of the New York Italian Cultural Institute.

It is the story of Arthur Avenue in the adventurous borough of the Bronx. That street marked a strong boundary. On one side was a gang of black kids with hubcaps, wristbands and clubs, intent on starting the game of intrusion in the Italian neighborhood almost every night. On the other side was a gang of Italian kids with hubcaps, wristbands and clubs, determined to organize revenge raids every time. It was impossible to establish who had started first and when. Nobody, much less the police, could have imagined the solution: theater. When a pizzeria made its basement available, Robert De Niro promptly responded to the call, sending spotlights and gear (he arrived as soon as possible). Vanessa Redgrave, who speaks nearly perfect Italian (and who was a regular at the Cultural Institute), acted as a sponsor for the first few shows. The actors were kids from both gangs, black and white, with roles that were often reversed: the Italians were persecuted, the blacks were intrusive, dangerous and mean police. Another idea (belonging to one of the Italian kids, whose blue-collar grandfather had emigrated because he was against Fascism) was to set the events between the two gangs in fascist Italy, staging in the parlor-theater a great reinterpretation of Mussolini as the inspiration for the hate between gangs.

Now, two characters who are making a mark on the era enter the scene: Bill De Blasio and Katrina vanden Heuvel. De Blasio is exactly the type of leader for minorities who are emerging: representative for those excluded and determined to be part of a revolution already proclaimed by the U.S. Constitution — in other words, following Martin Luther King’s example of inflexibility and nonviolence. In the dangerous neighborhoods of the city, De Blasio did everything one does on the street, always staying away from (and keeping his street friends away from) violence. For example, overseeing schools and keeping children safe from “mobbing,” while also taking it upon himself to succeed in the good public schools and great universities (New York University and Columbia University, where he got his bachelor and master’s degrees) where you do not pay if you have merit. Immediately after that, he worked continuously in the only field that interested him: getting the law on the side of those who would resort to violence if allowed to go astray. He acted as public advocate, a minor elective office in which one fights for the rights of others. He demonstrated through his marriage his personal belief in mingling the minorities because, as he stated, “I am America, and I am the street.”

Meanwhile, on the good side of town, Katrina vanden Heuvel, a wealthy gal and daughter of William vanden Heuvel, a Kennedy administration member and ambassador under Carter, committed her money to buying, saving, re-launching and directing the journal The Nation, the only national weekly of the survived American left which, with Katrina, has become more radical, more on the left and with a weekly distribution of more than 250,000 copies (and rising). The Nation drove De Blasio’s campaign, mobilizing for the new egalitarian mayor Manhattan’s bourgeois ranks who had voted for Kennedy and Obama.

The most important point about The Nation’s chief editor and the new mayor, who was elected by 76 percent of the most agitated people on earth (and by black and white kids in the Bronx) is that their agenda is already all in the Constitution. Democracy does not exist without equality, and equality does not exist without the full recognition of human and civil rights that include children when they are born and couples (any couples) who unite. Women and men who work for this reason become an “added value” to the country, a richness to foster. Not that this is the American credo. However, it is the manifesto of the new mayor, who starts today, regardless of the snowstorm (which he is shouldering alongside the others.) And of that left-wing journal, saved and re-launched by the rich girl, who says, like De Blasio, “I learned from Roosevelt.”

Maybe it is not a coincidence that precisely over these days the wealthiest city in the world has inaugurated a park dedicated to the New Deal president and his tenacious fight against conservatives, powerful and recalcitrant in freeing his citizens from the terror of extreme poverty. Maybe it is not a coincidence that William vanden Heuvel, Katrina’s father and De Blasio’s supporter, is the idea-man behind the memorial park.