Word: nostrae
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...history's roster of metaphysicians must now be added the Italian-American Civil Rights League. By a bloodless coup-metaphysics instead of machine guns-the league recently declared: The Mafia doesn't exist. In effect, the league lined Cosa Nostra up against the wall and stared right through...
...league's first convert. Attorney General John Mitchell agreed to deport the Mafia-as a word, that is. In a confidential memo the Mitchell kiss of death was to be reserved not for the Mob, but for all Justice Department employees who used the terms Mafia and Cosa Nostra officially. The league subsequently persuaded the film makers of The Godfather, which is about practically nothing but the Mafia, to excise the hated term from their screenplay. That was a feat roughly comparable to composing a history of World War II without mentioning Nazis...
...Causa Nostra...
...found your article on the Italian-American Civil Rights League [April 5] an insult to all our people. You portray our defensive organizations as fronts for "La Cosa Nostra" but ignore "La Causa Nostra" (Our Cause). We are sick of being discriminated against, stigmatized, degraded and oppressed in this country, sick of being called Mafiosi, greasers, dumb dagos, guineas and wops. We will not be scapegoats of the WASP gangster establishment, which sees a cure-all for Yankee problems in the persecution of Italian-Americans...
...American, I say a special thank you to Joe Colombo; what he may be is not certain, but that he is proud of his heritage is. Perhaps TIME will stop printing the words that I have been associated with all my life yet know very little about: La Cosa Nostra and Mafia...