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Title: Mary Nardini Author: Mary Nardini Gang Date: 2018 Language: en Topics: biography, queer, Insurrectionary Source: *Be Gay Do Crime*, December, 2018, Contagion Press
Mary Nardini was an Italian anarchist who lived and organized in
Milwaukee’s Bay View neighborhood in the early 20^(th) century. She was
revered in the Italian anarchist community as the ‘guiding light’ of I
Dilettanti Filodrammatici del Circolo Studi Sociali (Amateur Thespian
Social Studies Club). The Thespians were a group of Italian anarchists
who operated a space that was not unlike many contemporary infoshops.
Members of the group occupied themselves distributing anarchist
literature, hosting discussions, and putting on anti-state and
anti-church plays as fundraisers to support anarchist political
prisoners.
Bay View’s Little Italy, as a community, was known for its general
distaste for the church and the state. Folks in the community were
deemed troublemakers by religious and pro-government Italians who lived
in the Third Ward neighborhood. Among the latter was Reverend August
Giuliani. In 1917, Giuliani began a campaign to convert the largely
secular Bay View Italians to christianity. He and his choir held weekly
revivals, complete with singing and preaching in the streets of Bay
View.
In late August of 1917, Mary Nardini and a handful of other anarchists
confronted Reverend Giuliani in the streets. They declared themselves
anarchists and proclaimed their hatred for the state, the church, laws,
and the pope. Visibly shaken and offended, Giuliani and his band left.
He returned the next week. When he and his choir arrived, they saw Mary
reading a book on her porch. As Giuliani began his sermon, several
anarchists gathered nearby and began singing ‘vulgar’ italian songs that
announced, “We fight the government, we fight the citizens, we are for
anarchy!” Soon a crowd of over seventy-five had gathered and were
heckling Giuliani. One person in the crowd promised Giuliani, “If you
return to Bay View, we’ll kill you. We have the lake for people like
you!” Fearing for his life, Giuliani fled.
On September 9^(th) , Giuliani returned again, bringing several
Milwaukee police officers with him. As he arrived, Mary Nardini was seen
yelling into the front door of a house. Within moments, she marched out
of the residence with a column of over fifty anarchists following
closely behind. The police began roughing up one of the anarchists,
resulting in several of the folks in Nardini’s crew drawing their guns.
What ensued was a shootout between police and anarchists that left two
anarchists dead, several people wounded on both sides, and Giuliani
running for his life.
In the aftermath, Nardini and over a dozen other anarchists were
arrested for rioting. Eleven people, including Nardini, were then
indicted for the incident.
On November 24^(th) , while the defendants were in jail awaiting trial,
a suspicious package was delivered to Giuliani’s church in the third
ward. Fearing a retaliation bombing, church servants brought the package
to the downtown police station. Sure enough, the package held a bomb.
While being inspected the bomb detonated, killing nine police officers,
including several who were involved in the Bay View incident. The
explosion at the police station marks the most cops killed in any
incident in the history of the Milwaukee Police Department.
Though Nardini and her comrades were in police custody at the time of
the explosion, the incident irreversibly tainted the jury, and at trial
she was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.