From Bresciani nel Mondo to Lombardian-American Alliance

After much careful thought, we're changing our approach in this endeavor. "Bresciani nel Mondo - Northern California" was to be a very small group, and partly to encourage the idea of a worldwide Bresciani nel Mondo. However, we believe that it would be much more pragmatic to focus on the Lombardi nel Mondo concept, which would appeal to a larger group of people here locally, and in this country.

Lombardi nel Mondo is a worldwide association for people of Lombardian decent. Their linkup heritage groups are on five continents. In Argentina, there are many Lombardian groups, all over that country. However, in North America, the Chicago-based committee leaves a whole lot to be desired. They make almost no attempt to reach out to those who share their own heritage. Unless they don't really want to reach out to Americans, in which case: "why are they even here in the first place??" They have a very strange website, which 1) is only in Italian; 2) is offline most of the time; 3) is very difficult to navigate; and, 4) changes it's URL every few months. For this North American regional committee: the official languages here (N. America) are English, Spanish, and French. I think, but I'm not positive, that they're funded by the region of Lombardia. I don't get it. What are they trying to accomplish here?

One model for the Lombardi nel Mondo groups, is that they have two groups in one. Lombardi nel Mondo and, for example, Bergamaschi nel Mondo. I think for us here, we need to stick with one name, and that being with the larger quasi-ethnic group. Also, we're hyphenating it to "Lombardian-American." There are, for example, Sicilian clubs with this hyphenation, as they consider themselves, or it's at least put it out there, the concept of a separate ethnic group "Sicilian-American." Of course, they would outnumber us ten, or twenty to one in this country. It would be to our advantage to promote the concept of "Lombardian-American." A Lombardian-American should be a European-American of Lombardian or Italian Swiss decent. Therefore, for example, a person with connections to "The Hill" in St. Louis, with Sicilian and Lombardian roots, may consider themselves a "Lombardian-American." Or, Irish, Polish, Greek, etc., you get the point.

We would still like to associate with "our" (?) regional continental committee, but we don't really need to. It's a little embarrassing that we had set up some blueprints for networking that have quickly become defunct (ex-Camunari Circle - San Francisco Metro). The idea, as it now stands, is to form a national Lombardian-American Alliance, with a Lombardian National Council made up of regional leaders and other important individuals (ex-a professor). This may exist in thought-form only for now. A blueprint. Here, of course, we will be renamed to the "Lombardian-American Alliance - Northern California." Part of our goal is to facilitate this organizing process.