Louis Parenti

Louis Parenti was a laborer from San Francisco, California. Louis Parenti was convicted at the mass IWW trial in Chicago, sentenced to five years in prison and fined $30,000. Parenti was imprisoned from September 1917 to June 1919 and from May 1921 to August 12, 1922, when his sentence was commuted on the condition that he would be deported. He had a wife and three children. He served in the Cook County Jail and Leavenworth Penitentiary. During his first fifteen months in prison Parenti was unable to contact his wife, Marie. During that time she gave birth to a baby girl and wrote to the warden describing her condition: Pardon me for taking the liberty to write. Days and nights I have had no rest. Since my husband has been in this prison I haven't received a single line from him.... I am a mother of three poor children and I have suffered all the tortures in the world. And also since my husband has been away we have born a baby girl that my husband has never seen. I had a big operation which I suffered a whole lot and I had to abandon for 4 weeks the children at home. I would beg you to allow my husband... to write a few lines to his wife. At about the same time Parenti asked the warden to approve the following telegram to his wife: " I wish news my wife about you and little daughters. Tell me the truth. Kisses." On May 21, 1921, the Parentis were granted permission to communicate with each other.

From Kenyon Zimmer's Red Scare Deportees index (kenyonzimmer.com, compiled from INS deportation case files): Initially a Christian democrat and completed two years of seminary study in Lucca before abandoning religious training, marrying, and assisting an Italian streetcar drivers’ strike.

He emigrated to the United States with his wife Maria in 1910 and soon became an anarchist, joining the Industrial Workers of the World in San Francisco in 1911. He became a lecturer and organizer for the IWW and was arrested several times for leading strikes and demonstrations. Italian consular authorities described him as “one of the most dangerous propagandists in the anarchist movement across the United States,” calling him “taciturn in character, educated, intelligent, [and] cultured.” A defendant in the mass IWW trial of 1917–1918, he was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment and a $30,000 fine. From September 1917 to June 1919 he was denied permission to communicate with his wife and three daughters, one of whom was born while he was incarcerated. Released on bail pending appeal, he worked as an organizer for an independent Italian fishermen’s union in San Francisco and later as a correspondent for La Voce del Popolo. After losing his appeal in May 1921, he reentered prison, but in 1922 his sentence was commuted on condition of deportation. He “voluntarily departed” with his family on October 26, 1922.

Back in Italy, he settled in Lucca, joined the syndicalist Unione Sindacale Italiana, and attended its illegal 1926 convention. He later withdrew from overt radical activity and worked for a Fascist state-created union and as a reporter. Official reports alternately described him as obedient to Fascist directives (1929), secretly receiving radical publications from the United States (1930), and again demonstrating “good moral and political conduct” aligned with the regime (1932). The true nature of his political beliefs in these years is unclear. Died in 1961.

The March 1920 One Big Union Monthly prisoner roster provides a contemporaneous procedural account. The roster reports that he was out on $5,000 bond pending appeal in the Chicago IWW prosecution. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/one-big-union-monthly/v02n03-mar-1920_One%20Big%20Union.pdf#page=17