I Senza Patria

This chapter focuses on how Paterson became the center of what is probably the most important Anarchist group in the world. Italian anarchists were at the forefront of persistent local labor unrest, including the violent 1902 silk strike and famous 1913 general strike conducted by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). More infamously, a Paterson anarchist assassinated Italy's King Umberto I in 1900. However, by 1906, an exasperated Board of Aldermen threatened to bring charges of libel against publications that continued to equate the Silk City with anarchism. The chapter shows how behind the dramatic episodes that embarrassed city officials stood a dynamic radical subculture rooted in Paterson's Italian population and linked to major transnational revolutionary networks.