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Stu Bykofsky: No more Columbus parade snafus, vows Sons of Italy
THAT A FEW bricks were thrown at me after my suggestion that Italian-Americans pay for the (now canceled) Oct. 11 Columbus Day Parade was not surprising.
The surprise was that most agreed with me.
Also surprised were Italian-Americans who said that money for the parade could have been raised had anyone cracked the whip to make it happen. One of those who said so is John Foradora, president, Pennsylvania Lodge of the Sons of Italy, the largest Italian-American organization in the United States with more than 575,000 members. But I am getting ahead of myself. First, I erred Monday when I wrote that Columbus Day Parade Coordinator Kathleen Murray said that state funding would return next year. That did appear in print, Murray told me, but to be precise, state funding could return next year, if the proper paperwork is done.
It was the lack of what are called close-out reports that caused the state to deny funding last year. Amazingly, the Columbus Day Parade Committee neglected to request funding for this year, according to Murray.
Which brings me back to the issue of whether the state should pay for it.
The thrust of my Monday column was that I think expressions of ethnic pride are fine, but that taxpayers should not be expected to pay for them, especially when the state is treading water financially.
You want a parade, I told Italian-Americans (and also Irish, Poles, Jews, African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, etc.), you have to pay for it yourself.
Like Italian-Americans do in New York City.
These days Louis Tallarini is running around like the Energizer Bunny on a sugar high. Tallarini is president of the Columbus Citizens Foundation, which organizes events that promote Italian-American culture and heritage and raises funds for scholarships. CCF runs New York City's Columbus Day parade, always on Oct. 12, the official day of observance.
The CCF has been running the three-hour, 30-block-long parade since 1944. Claiming to be the world's largest celebration of Italian-American culture, the parade draws about a million spectators, he told me the other day. CCF buys TV time to televise the parade, then sells commercials in it. CCF budgets $250,000 for the parade and each year hands out $2 million in scholarships. Now that's an organization.
One thing CCF does not pay for is police and sanitation. Unlike Philadelphia, New York does not charge for ethnic parades, although there are fees for street events, New York mayoral spokeswoman Evelyn Erskine told me.
"Our event brings a lot of money to the city - you can't get a hotel room - it's really an economic generator," Tallarini said.
In researching this, I found a lot of finger-pointing and intramural squabbling, but I'm not going to point fingers. The guilty and inept know who they are.
Pennsylvania Sons of Italy President Foradora was disappointed and dismayed by the cancellation of the Philly parade.
Reports that he was getting - his
real job in out-west Jefferson County is Common Pleas judge - made everything seem fine. Then, shortly before the parade, just like last year, the ceiling caved. This year, the parade was canceled.
"No other option was presented, other than we'll cancel it," he said, glumly.
His group had pledged $7,500 for the parade and he believes a lot more could have been raised, fast, as it was last year, to dodge the bullet of cancellation. But, remarkably, no one asked, he said.
"We are going to make sure our committee is working on it for next year," Foradora told me.
"We don't want to see it go by the wayside."
E-mail stubyko@phillynews.com or call 215-854-5977. For recent columns:
