FOE Family First Chapter 31 Let's Find a Guide
Tommy Hawke, wearing sportswear, held onto a street lamp post in the southern part of Warwick City and took a few breaths. Then he looked at Melonie next to him and asked:
"Aunt, you are a woman, right?"
Seeing that Tommy Hawke was panting heavily after running only three kilometers, Melonie looked at him with contempt and mocked him, "You have a good eye. How did you see that, Tommy? If you hadn't told me, I would have thought that no one in the world could discover this secret. Keep running! We are still seven hundred meters away from the Basilica of Sant'Ezio."
"I don't know what the point of you suddenly forcing me to run with you every day is." Tommy Hawke asked puzzledly, "I modified my personal information two months ago. It said that I am not good at track and field sports. I prefer table tennis and am an absolute main player of the school's table tennis team."
Melonie lowered her voice to Tommy Hawke in a serious tone: "Don't you think what we are going to do is very risky? You must be fully prepared for this. For example, at the very least, you must have enough physical strength to escape when you are caught by the police."
"I can give you a reasonable explanation. There are no bullets flying, no blood, no gangs or police like in the movies. This is just a harmless small business." Tommy Hawke covered his face with his hands and rubbed them hard. His voice came out dully from his palms: "Melony, you should watch less TV series made by Californians. I found that since I told you about this small business, you have become a little nervous. We are just poor people selling cigarettes, not tycoons selling arms or drug lords selling drugs. We are not qualified to be involved in the big scene you mentioned. The most terrifying scene you can encounter may be that I accidentally looked in the wrong direction when I was driving the fishing boat. I should have gone north to Canada, but in the end we arrived in Cuba."
"Normal people would be nervous." Melonie ignored Tommy's helplessness and turned around to continue jogging forward. "Only freaks like you act as if nothing happened."
After running the last 700 meters and standing outside the main entrance of the church, which was neither grand nor gorgeous, Melonie asked Tommy Hawke, "Why did you come to the church?"
"We're not going to the church, but the institution next to the church. Do you see that low-key and inconspicuous sign?" Tommy Hawke pointed his finger at a two-story building next to the church.
Looking in the direction Tommy pointed, Melonie read the Italian words on the slightly mottled sign: "Ezio Brotherhood."
"Church organization?" After reading it, Melonie looked at Tommy Hawke uncertainly and asked, "Although I have been to Sant'Ezio Church with my parents countless times, I have never noticed this inconspicuous sign."
Tommy Hawke shook his head slightly. "Are you sure you are Italian, Aunt?"
"Just like you are not sure that I am a woman and you are full of doubts." Melonie sighed and said to Tommy Hawke: "Tommy, have your friends reminded you that it is better to speak directly?"
"This used to be a great place, a place of mutual assistance among Italians in the United States. It has lost its glory now, but it shouldn't be difficult to find a guide here," Tommy Hawke said to Melonie.
The Ezio Brotherhood mentioned by Tommy Hawke was an Italian organization that once spanned the east and west coasts of the United States. It was founded in 1942.
The reason for its establishment was because the United States officially joined World War II. The US government was worried that American Italians with a strong sense of family and homeland would be used by Mussolini, posing a huge hidden danger to the United States. Therefore, various restrictive policies on Italians were introduced starting from California, and then spread rapidly like a wave, expanding to the west coast states. Although there were hundreds of thousands of Italian Americans serving the United States at that time and fighting on the battlefield, this could not dispel the US government's suspicion of Italians.
People of Italian descent suddenly found that they were no longer allowed to go to the seaside, their fishing boats, which they depended on for their livelihood, were forcibly seized, and Italians were subject to a separate racial curfew. They were not allowed to go out at night, and they needed to apply for a permit from the police station if they left their home within five kilometers. Most importantly, if any of the above restrictions were violated, the person would be forcibly taken away and labeled as a "hostile foreigner" and sent to custody.
These policies caused tens of thousands of Italian families who made their livings from fishing on the west coast of the United States to become completely unemployed. At that time, in New York and New England on the northeastern coast of the United States, due to the large number of Italian immigrants, the government was unable to carry out large-scale racial control, so the restrictions were relatively mild, mainly based on persuasion and enticement. It can also be seen intuitively that there is a difference between the North and South of the United States in how they treat foreign ethnic groups: Southerners are barbaric and Northerners are civilized.
Italians value family, like to form associations, and especially value family members. So even if they are thousands of miles away, when Italians on the East Coast learn that their relatives or friends on the West Coast are in trouble, they will lend a helping hand.
But rescue work from a distance of thousands of miles was too difficult, so some people suggested that the unemployed Italians on the west coast migrate to the northeast coast. Along the way, they could use the Italian Catholic churches in various states as contact stations, with Italian religious personnel as liaisons, to provide the migrants with food, money and various kinds of help within their capacity.
As this idea was recognized by the Italians, almost all Italian east coast immigrants united together, including gangsters, artisans, factory owners, vendors, fishermen, barbers and even pimps... No matter what their identity or where they were in the United States, they were trying to get involved and provide all kinds of information and help within their capacity to save their fellow countrymen from the dire straits. In this way, an Italian migration line across the United States began to appear on the American map.
A large number of Italians took advantage of this migration route, secretly starting from Los Angeles, California in the southwest, using information provided by their fellow tribesmen to bypass inspections, passing through various states along the way, and eventually arriving in New York, Boston, Portland and Providence in the northeast and even north to Canada.
The idea of using churches along the way as contact stations to provide help and Italian religious personnel as liaisons to slowly complete the Italians' painful migration was first proposed by Rocky Salvatore, a priest of the Church of San Ezio in Providence. Therefore, this Italian organization that provided help in various states along the way was also called the Ezio Brotherhood.
In addition to helping fellow migrants, the Ezio Brotherhood would also promptly communicate with each other about the attitudes of various states and cities in the United States towards Italians, and help fellow migrants find suitable settlements . It was also because of its existence that many Italian children were able to struggle to survive when their parents were under control and avoid starving to death.
Times have changed, and the Ezio Brotherhood can no longer shine as brightly as it did in the past. After all, Italians prefer small circles and cherish family. They have never been interested in large institutions and organizations like the Ezio Brotherhood. They believe that their emotions are limited and can only be given to their closest people.
So when their loved ones were rescued and the storm passed, the once united Italians turned from a red sun into a sky full of stars and returned to their own lives.
The current Ezio Brotherhood is indeed more like a church organization used by Italian churches to maintain communication, but it retains one characteristic, that is, when Italians need to go to a completely unfamiliar city for some reason, you can come to the church with the words Ezio Brotherhood on it to seek help. If there are also Italians living in that city, the brotherhood can help you contact an Italian compatriot who is enthusiastic and good at communication in that city , and provide you with help integrating into the new city. Of course, this service is now paid, just like a sightseeing guide.
After listening to Tommy Hawke's story, Melonie stared at him blankly for a few seconds before saying:
"Tommy, where did you get this information? Your words have made me doubt whether I am Italian. There is no record of this in American history textbooks."
Tommy Hawke looked at the sign and walked over. "Among the Italian immigrants who were forced to migrate, there was a baby girl named Alida Leone. She told me about it. Let's go and find a guide."
