Inflammatory Words Can Fuel Violence and Hate

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday morning.

0:01 Speaker 2 Well, where’s the Italian community well with us today? Is Angelo Vivilo a good friend and for a long long time, and he’s president of the Columbus Heritage Coalition, which hates hate.

0:17 Speaker 1 He hates hate.

0:19 Speaker 2 Well, Angelo, give us your your feelings from the Italian community for yourself, Angelo Vivilo on how you feel about things going on right now?

0:29 Speaker 1 Well, thanks for this opportunity.

0:30 Speaker 3 You know, the Italian American community and people with common sense feel that words matter, and people talking about.

0:40 Speaker 1 Hate it only gets more hate.

0:43 Speaker 3 So my opinion, and I think the opinion, as I said, of the Italian Maryan community and people who have common sense, is to reduce the talking and watch your words, think about what you say before you say it, because what you say matters. And we’ve seen it, and we’ve seen it in the city, we’ve seen it in the country.

1:03 So I’m a big advocate for saying the truth and not being alarmist and not talking about hate, because, as I said, hate only brings on more hate. It’s inhuman, it’s not it’s not what should be done in our country, in our city, or in the world.

1:21 Speaker 2 You know, when we live among the civilized world and we all work together, we all work together. Talk together. But what happens when the uncivilized world meets the civilized world, whether you know, you talk about Africa, or you talk about Hamas, or you talk about terrorist type organizations, how does the civilized world deal with the uncivilized world. Well,

2:01 by the way, a lot of it comes from uneducation, lack of education. So what the Iranians did in the in the war with Hamas is he paid they those those people in Palestine, Hamas have fourteen children, and they say, we’ll give you twenty thousand dollars to feed the rest of your children if you allow us to take one

2:26 of your one of your children to go out and do damage or kill Israelis.

2:32 Speaker 3 Well, you know, Jo, you just said it the way it is uneducated people, people who who are were influenced by these by the politicians, by the haters. It’s it’s easy for them to do things that are against society, against a group of people. And it’s really very important that people realize that their words matter and that they

2:58 cannot they cannot say things that are going to influence the people that are under fringe, the people who would do harm to other people, religions or countries because of because they just don’t know any better, and they’re under fringe, and they are influenced by these people. And that’s why I’m saying so strongly that words matter, that we must

3:19 be careful about what we say, understand what we say is going to influence other people, and especially especially you know, it’s everyone’s responsibility, but especially our leaders, our leaders in New York City, our leaders in the state.

3:32 Speaker 1 And in the country.

3:33 Speaker 3 We have to be they have to be cognizant that what they say influences how people think, and especially those people who are uneducated and on the fringe who could cause damage and do things like was recently done in the Central Synagogue. You know, it’s terrible. It’s something that unfortunately, in this day and age, people are not not cognizant

4:02 or paying attention to what they say and what the repercussions are for what they say.

4:08 Speaker 2 Understood, anything else you want to tell the American people on a Sunday morning, I mean, we’re all gonna go I’m gonna go to church.

4:15 Speaker 1 You’re gonna go to church in a little while.

4:17 Speaker 2 I mean, uh, I mean, we pray, we pray for peace, We pray for civilization, But what happens when we meet the insert uncivilized people? And that’s you know, when we’re in both at church, let’s think about how Jesus Christ would have handled it.

4:35 Speaker 1 Well.

4:36 Speaker 3 You know, John, I’m a big believer in prayer, and uh, I think that prayer helps everyone. And I think that what we can pray for is common sense, something that you say always and it’s so true, common sense, common courtesy, respect, respect for one another. I have to say, I’m very proud Italian American and Italian Americans believe in respect.

4:59 Speaker 1 That’s that’s part of our culture.

5:02 Speaker 3 We believe in God, country, family, and part of that is respect for others. So when we go to church, when we go to church later today, I hope that we and others in that church will be praying for people of goodwill, to be mindful of what they say, and pray for peace amongst all men.

5:21 Speaker 1 Thank you so much, and have a great Sunday and you as well. Thank you for the opportunity. As always, John,