[Vito Marzullo raw #36]

Raw tape #36 for Vito Marzullo documentary. Ward office #2. Continuation of previous footage of Marzullo in his ward office. Sparks—and eyebrow-raising quotes— fly when Alderman Marzullo and director Tom Weinberg continue their conversation about race relations within the ward. Marzullo rails against Chicago's Latino immigrants and even attacks some of his fellow Italians for their involvement in organized crime.

00:00Copy video clip URL Weinberg tries to clarify Marzullo’s statements about Mexicans in his ward. “These are the conditions that they create themselves,” Marzullo says. “The country is trying to do everything under the sun to educate them, mostly the English, the American system of life, and that’s what they should be interested in.” The conversation heats up as he continues, “When are they going to learn to be Americans under these conditions?” He accuses the Mexicans of listening only to “rabble-rousers” and wanting the “great majority” to buckle to the “great minority.”

01:40Copy video clip URL Marzullo calls the mostly Puerto Rican neighborhood of Humboldt Park “a disgrace” and holds its residents responsible. He says, “Did those conditions ever exist when the Poles and the Irish and the Germans and the Italians were running it? Why do these conditions exist now?” He continues ranting about the Puerto Ricans, saying that the area’s high unemployment rate is no excuse and that “every day” they engage in “destroying life and property.”

03:33Copy video clip URL Marzullo begins to praise his multicultural ward by contrast, but ends up complaining about a group of Mexican citizens who made demands of him that he felt were unreasonable. When Weinberg comments about his uncensored comments on race relations, he responds, “Why should I be afraid to speak the truth?… If you speak the truth, it’s for their own benefit.”

06:03Copy video clip URL Weinberg asks him about his own ethnicity and prejudices faced by Italians. “You have an Italian name, they think everyone belongs to a syndicate. God knows what I had to do in my 58 years in politics to survive,” Marzullo says, emphasizing that he’s taken the honest path throughout his career. He even claims that Italian gangsters once tried to kidnap him.

09:50Copy video clip URL Marzullo pauses to take a phone call. The tape cuts out at 14:04.

15:23Copy video clip URL The video comes back and we see Marzullo meeting with two men. They complain that a local woman is causing building violations and conspiring against their business. “She went to somebody else to help her in the ward, and [said] that you’re on your way out, and that this guy is supposed to take over, and you’re getting senile. And that’s what pissed me off more than anything because I’m a great follower of yours,” the man says. Marzullo laughs off the woman’s threat.

21:59Copy video clip URL Tape cuts to a woman dressed in red meeting with Marzullo. The tape ends before we learn why she has come to the office.

 

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