Thread: John Gotti, Vegetables, and Shake Downs

I recently watched the movie "Getting Gotti" about Assistant US Attourney Diane Giacalone who (nearly) jailed John "Dapper Don" Gotti in the mid 1980s. (Gotti bought a juror for $65,000.)

Only a few minutes into the movie is a scene were Diane Giacalone stops at a corner grocery store and talks with a friend. The store owner, standing in front of his sidewalk vegetable stand in front of the store, says:

That John Gotti and those wise guys, they're scum. They came around and told me I have to pay them for protection. They said if I didn't pay, there might be an accident and my vegetables would go bad. I didn't pay. But then my vegetables got smashed. I have to pay. So I pay.


Now, here is an excerpt from a recent NumbersUSA action alert:

The media -- since we beat the amnesty in June -- have been pushing constant scare stories about how crops will rot in the fields and on the trees the rest of the year because the supply of illegal ag workers is dwindling.


This is (essentially) verbatim, word-for-word the exact same tactic that John Gotti's "crew" pulled on Italian store owners in NYC.

Pay up. Eat the crime, just pay... or your vegetables might go bad.


Welcome to America.

If you have the balls to grab a head of lettuce, and squeeze the pulp out of it before the widened eyes of Americans...

they'll cave.

Welcome to America, "land of the free, home of the brave" — until their vegetables are on the line. Then they "know what's good for them".


See why John Gotti's call America the "land of opportunity"?

Bismark-
A post you made but a while back about the movie and tv business-you said that the Sopranos would be replaced with a latino family show, well I saw not too long ago a commercial for one called CANE about a hispanic? family that apparently runs a sugar cane business with Jimmie Smits in it.
I guess what I'm trying to say is it looks like you're probably be right.I say probably because I haven't seen the commercial for a while.




Head 'em up,move 'em out Rawhide!