Word: mafiosi
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...Yonkers Herald Statesman (47,852), long dubbed the "Sterile Hatesman" because of its boring and often narrow-minded tone, quickly got Head's O.K. for a series on Yonkers Mafiosi that the previous managers had prohibited. Heavily Italian Yonkers was outraged, and Herald Statesman Editor Barney Walters had his car windshield smashed eleven times, but the paper was suddenly worth reading again. These days Head's papers even endorse Democrats from time to time, which would have been heresy under the Macys, but individual editors must check with him first. To capture suburban readers on weekends...
While no new bodies have turned up, New York's Mafia war, triggered by last month's murder of Mobster Joey Gallo (TIME, April 17), is still as hot as ever. Federal agents have learned that at least eight more Mafiosi have been marked for death. The toll might already have been higher if a massive raid by eight carloads of FBI men and New York state troopers last week had not temporarily disarmed at least part of one of the gangs...
...Attica prison for extortion, he allied himself with black prisoners and once organized a protest against white prison barbers who refused to cut blacks' hair. After he got out early last year, Gallo said he wanted to bring blacks into the Syndicate, an idea that infuriated older Mafiosi. La Cosa Nostra, after all, is the most exclusive men's club in the world...
...efficient that its activities-legal and illegal-are estimated to bring in more than $30 billion a year. The strength of the Mafia is based less on the corporate structure of a criminal organization than on the social organization of Sicily and southern Italy, whence most of the Mafiosi spring. There, notes Sociologist Francis Ianni, the rule of law is replaced by a social structure that is regulated by a code: each man must protect the family's honor and avenge any sullying of that honor. The code, says Ianni, is "an integrative behavioral system which binds families...
...enduring is the web of kinship that only two things can alter it. One is the American value system, which is causing the Old World family structure to crumble and is weakening some of the once-powerful crime dynasties. According to Historian Humbert Nelli, the Mafiosi's respect for authority-a trait that used to cement loyalties-is decaying. For this reason, more and more Mafiosi are deciding to go straight. In one Mafia family that Ianni studied, only four out of 27 fourth-generation Italian-Americans are connected with organized crime. Of the remaining...