Our Lady of Mount Carmel Feast Returns to Williamsburg For Its 136th Year

The Giglio stands over the crowd in front of a cloudy sky, facing another structure with a wooden boat on it.

The Giglio stands before the crowd.

 

By Carmo Moniz | news@queensledger.com

Hundreds gathered in Williamsburg on Sunday to celebrate one of the oldest existing Italian American traditions, the Our Lady of Mount Carmel and San Paolino di Nola Feast.

The 12-day-long feast features plenty of food stands, carnival-style games and community traditions, including the lifting of the Giglio — an 80-foot-tall and 7,000 pound structure decorated with statues of saints and flowers.

Anthony Croce, who guided the Giglio through the festival, said that the structure honors an event dating back to 406 A.D.

“It was wonderful, it was one of the greatest days of my life,” Croce said. “It’s a show so I’m glad they’re happy and they’re cheering.”

The festival is a celebration of the return of San Paolino di Nola thousands of years ago after he was taken on a pirate ship. The saint had offered himself in exchange for the freedom of a young man captured on the ship, and was later released when word of his selflessness reached a Turkish Sultan. According to the legend, the residents of Nola welcomed him with lilies when he returned, marking the beginning of an annual tradition.

Just before the event began, Monsignor Jamie Gigantiello, a pastor at nearby Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, led the crowd in prayer, after which a band played the national anthem.

“Summer doesn’t begin in Williamsburg until the opening of the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel,” Gigantiello said in a statement. “The highlight of the Parish of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel is our feast! It is the pulse and showcase of our parish family.”

This Sunday’s celebration involved around 100 men lifting the structure and moving it through the streets of the festival in what is called the “Dancing of the Giglio.” Another, shorter structure featuring a boat was also carried through the crowd, and the two met at the intersection of North Eighth Street and Havemeyer Street.

Nick and Andrew Conte, two brothers who helped lift the Giglio this year, said that they have been taking part in the tradition for many years.

“Our dad grew up around here so we’ve been doing it since we were big enough, and he’s been doing it since he was a kid,” Nick said. “It’s just tradition, family tradition, family, friends, every year it’s a good event to look forward to in the summer.”

Louis Passaro, who was also on this year’s lifting team and attended the festival with his daughter, said that he has been lifting the Giglio for 42 years. He said he had been unable to take part in the lift in the last two years due to a hip injury, but was finally able to return this year.

“My daughter loves it, and we’re going to keep the tradition going,” Passaro said.

A child sits on the shoulders of a man watching the Gilgio's procession. The child wears a headband with a unicorn horn and holds an inflatable mermaid doll in each hand.

A child looks on as the Giglio makes its way through the crowd.

Musicians and singers were aboard each structure, putting on a show for the crowd as they made their way to their destination. The afternoon saw scattered rain hit the festival, but the performers and crowd continued the celebration through the bad weather.

Other attendees were newer to the festival, like longtime Brooklyn resident Gil Moreno. Moreno had never attended the festival before this year, but said that he had been able to see the Giglio before all the way from the highway, due to its height.

“It’s been at least 30 years and finally I made it,” Moreno said. “The atmosphere is good there’s lots of food — too much food I think — it’s definitely a good time.”

Debbie Ferrara, a Williamsburg resident whose grandfather brought the Giglio tradition from Nola, said that she attends the festival every year and that people come from around the world to take part in the celebration.

“It gets better and better as you age, it’s like a fine wine,” Ferrara said. “It’s who we are, it’s our lifeblood. This is our Christmas in July.”

What is the LLC Transparency Act?

Assemblymember Gallagher stands in a neutral-toned room, wearing a blue blazer over a white shirt.

Emily Gallagher is one of the sponsors of the LLC Transparency Act (Credit: NY State Assembly)

By Carmo Moniz | news@queensledger.com

The New York legislature recently passed an act that would require those operating or profiting from limited liability companies, a type of business that shields the owner from personal consequences over debts and other liabilities, to disclose their names, addresses and other information, some of which would be included in a public database.

The new legislation, called the LLC Transparency Act, is meant to target money laundering and other financial crimes by publicly identifying beneficial owners of LLCs. The act was co-authored by Greenpoint Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher and State Senator Brad Hoylman.

“LLCs are used in a variety of ways, and because of their anonymity, they’ve really opened up the door to people not taking responsibility for certain things that their business does, as well as using LLCs as a mask to do illegal activities,” Gallagher said in a recent phone interview. “That’s pretty wide ranging, everything from wage theft, to tenant problems to drug trafficking.”

The act, which Governor Kathy Hochul is expected to sign into law, is similar to the federal Corporate Transparency Act that will go into effect this coming January. Unlike the CTA, however, which requires all corporations to disclose beneficial owner information to a confidential database, the LLC transparency Act would create a database searchable by the public, with the names and business addresses of beneficial owners.

The public database is likely to be beneficial for tenants, many of whom do not currently know their landlords’ identities if the owner of their building is filed under an LLC. Anonymous LLCs can also be used by landlords to evade code inspections, according to Gallagher’s legislative director.

“It’s insane that we bestow that legal privilege upon people anonymously, but that’s been the norm thus far,” the director said. “We have to adjust expectations of what should be expected of corporations doing business in New York, and I think it was a public policy mistake to let corporations do business in New York with only a P.O. box.”

The legislation would make it easier for tenants to take legal action against their landlords in the case of negligence, according to Yana Kucheva, an associate professor of sociology at the City College of New York and an expert in housing policy. Kucheva said that the act would also allow tenants with negligent landlords to find other buildings owned by their landlord and organize with tenants across properties.

“If something bad is happening to you, chances are that your landlord, if they own another building somewhere else, they might be neglecting that building as well,” Kucheva said. “This type of law would shift the balance in who might have the upper hand in a court if you can actually find your landlord more easily.”

Roberto Rodriguez, a tenant in Williamsburg, said he thinks the act will make it easier for tenants to resolve issues with their landlords and that it is a necessity that tenants know who their landlord is.

“It gives tenants that piece of leverage because now you know exactly who to go after in the courts,” Rodriguez said. “Right now there’s nothing we can do in the court system to protect ourselves, and knowing who owns the building is great.”

The act would also help create better housing legislation, according to Gallagher, as it would give lawmakers a better idea of how many buildings people own on average.

LLCs are relatively new in the United States, with the first one having been established in the late 1970s. Gallagher said that these kinds of corporations have been badly abused, and are currently easier to get than a library card.

“This is not something that is baked into the origins of American business,” Gallagher said. “Transparency is a really good thing that we should be seeking and protecting, and it’s terrible that folks who are cheating, either consumers or other businesses, have had such an advantage for so long.”

Under the act, beneficial owners of LLCs would also be required to disclose their date of birth and a unique identification number, such as from a passport or driver’s license, to the government. A beneficial owner is a person who controls or profits from an LLC, with some exceptions listed in the act. The 23 exceptions to the definition, which are the same as those in the CTA definition of a beneficial owner, include minors, banks, credit unions and governmental authorities.

Many countries outside the United States have long had corporate transparency laws like the CTA and LLC Transparency Act in place. In 2014, the European Union established a transparency rule similar to the CTA, and in 2016 the United Kingdom created a public register for beneficial owners of corporations.

Samantha Sheeber, a real estate attorney at Starr Associates LLP, said that she doesn’t see the act discouraging property ownership under LLCs, but that she thinks it is not clear enough what would count as having a significant privacy interest, which would allow a beneficial owner’s information to remain confidential. She also said she thinks the goals of the act could be accomplished without a public database.

“What they were trying to accomplish here, really could have been accomplished by having this same database, the same requirements, but not on a public scale,” Sheeber said. “They could have done all the enforcement, they could have had all the registration requirements done in a capacity that law enforcement or regulatory enforcement could have been enforced, but it wouldn’t be on a public open domain.”

Gallagher’s legislative director said that the legislation is less specific because the details of what counts as a significant privacy interest are being put under the responsibility of the department of state, and that there will be a period for comment before the agency implements regulations.

The director also said that there are many benefits to the database of beneficial owners being public, including that it would allow the public to flag illegal behavior by beneficial owners and help lawmakers make more informed public policy decisions.

“Among the motivations of the bill is the fact that the benefits that beneficial ownership transparency can bring to the public, to government and to civil society and to the business industry, are dependent upon that information being public,” the director said. “This bill creating a public database is the main motivation, the federal government’s already going to be collecting this information, but it does a disservice to the public to have it be private.”

James Vacca, a former New York City Councilmember and a distinguished lecturer at Queens College, said that he had pushed for LLC transparency during his time in office, but that he was unable to pass anything because LLCs are state entities and were therefore outside of his jurisdiction.

“They’ve been used to circumvent transparency and accountability, so anything that sheds light, anything that gives citizens information and gives sunlight to where there was none before, I think is a step in the right direction,” Vacca said. “The transparency that a law like this provides is invaluable.”

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