The ‘Little Italy’ feud: What started it and what will end it?
The attacks on the founder of Little Italy, Rochester by antiracist Trump supporters have been over 8 years in the making. GVO examines the earliest arguments in the proper context.
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Updated: Nov. 11, 2024 @ 7:30 AM EST, original article
GREATER ROCHESTER, NY - For over eight years, the founder of the Little Italy Neighborhood Association and the Little Italy Festival has faced persistent accusations of fraudulent charitable activity
Although these allegations have gained some traction, they often raise more questions than they answer, casting doubt on whether those opposing Little Italy’s festival or neighborhood are truly committed to the truth.
According to the September 2016 Town Board minutes, two Gates residents questioned the legitimacy of fundraising for both the festival and the proposed Little Italy District. Present at the meeting was Silvano Orsi, the Italian American founder, who could not provide the requested paperwork at that time. By the next meeting, then-Town Supervisor Mark Assini publicly suggested that Orsi's donations were, at best, questionable.
Orsi, who soon moved the festival out of Gates, was not present at that meeting.
Despite this, Orsi reportedly made food donations after the 2016 festival, supported by itemized receipts totaling $8,000. However, Assini has not only questioned the $8,000 valuation but also alleged that Orsi may have mishandled admission proceeds.
According to the October 2016 board minutes, Assini described the Little Italy festival's donation to the House of Mercy (HoM) as "62 boxes of pasta," while Orsi's receipt indicated a $3,000 value (see below). Before that, Assini also mentioned "an itemized list of the food from the Open Door Mission," for which Orsi presented a $5,000 receipt (see below) to GVO.
The October 2016 board minutes remain the most detailed—yet still abbreviated—account of Assini’s stance, as local media reports provide only vague comments.
"I think the festival was a nice festival," Assini told the Democrat & Chronicle in 2017. "People enjoyed it and had fun… But there was a financial discrepancy."
With Assini not responding to two voicemails and a text message requesting comment, our comparison of both parties' accounts relies on other sources: the Gates Town Board minutes, Orsi's receipts and comments, and local media coverage.
At first glance, those with an analytical eye may notice that Assini’s mention of “62 boxes of pasta” appears to be a paraphrased version of Orsi’s HoM receipt.
The key difference is that the receipt specifies “60 case[s]” of De Cecco pasta, not boxes. De Cecco pasta is typically sold in cases containing 12 boxes each. Without this context, the average person could significantly underestimate the value of the $3,000 donation.
The board minutes do not mention the signatures of staff from the HoM or Open Door Mission (ODM). If one assumes Orsi’s guilt, could this imply that the charity workers were either incompetent or complicit?
This question remains unanswered.
In 2015, Orsi was reported to have donated 54 cases of hot dogs and sausages to the ODM. Christopher Scribani, the ODM official who authored Orsi’s 2016 receipt, told the Democrat & Chronicle that he estimated the 2015 donation provided over 3,500 meals.
The alleged $5,000 donation to ODM in 2016 included 24 cases of the same meats and 30 cases of bread from a local bakery. If Scribani’s 2015 calculation is accurate, the meats alone in 2016 would account for around 1,550 meals, and the bread would increase that number. Valuing a meal at $3.25 or less, even adjusting for inflation, does not seem unreasonable.
This is further supported by Scribani’s “hope” in 2016 that Orsi’s donation would “feed a few thousand mouths.”
Orsi, a Democrat since late 2015, told GVO his belief that the lack of accurate details was part of a larger political strategy.
"Assini tried to discredit me and the festival but was unsuccessful," Orsi said. "I understand the political motivation and hold no ill will… he’s still a friend in my book."
Assini has publicly denied any political motivation since 2016.
Orsi also pointed out the long-standing Republican dominance of the Gates Town Board, which has been in place for nearly 50 years. According to the D&C and Monroe County Board of Elections, only one Democrat has served on the board since the 1970s, and they served just one term.
The Republican Party’s significant influence in Gates may explain why the anti-Orsi group, dubbed “trolls,” still questions the facts surrounding the 2016 Little Italy Festival donations.
It is also key to note that without Mark Assini, the ill-informed conspiracy theories surrounding Orsi’s donations would likely have faded away.
Nonetheless, for those wishing to keep the conversation grounded in the known facts, they may be disappointed.
With the situation dictating, the “trolls” claim the amounts are much lower than the receipts show, while other times the very same will accuse Orsi of simply re-donating, which is far from the original claim of victimizing a charity.
Occasionally praising the group of “trolls” are several board members of the Italian American Community Center (IACC), from which Orsi is banned. The IACC frequently hosts expensive Republican fundraisers, some of which involve bizarre anti-White humiliation rituals.
This questioning of Orsi’s donations is often accompanied by claims of impropriety in the tax forms of the private LLC that runs the festival. Thereafter, what is typically produced are the Little Italy Neighborhood Association’s 990 tax documents, not those for the festival.
Orsi maintains that only Assini, who appears to have misrepresented Orsi’s receipts, has seen them.
This has not stopped other from claiming to have seen the festival’s tax documents.
This past August, Orsi contacted police after receiving what he perceived to be threatening phone calls, allegedly from a man named John Mazza.
One day after being charged with harassment of Orsi for those alleged calls, John Mazza created an anti-Orsi Facebook page, alleging that Orsi "lied about donations" and posts the ‘neighborhood’s’ tax documents (below).
Silvano Orsi has shown GVO a realistic affidavit that appears to be from an employee of a dialysis clinic at the same address as Orsi’s original complaint of harassment against John Mazza.
The affidavit testifies to hearing a man who rang Orsi’s phone say, “I will kick your ass and kill you.”
In the above Facebook post, Mazza appears to be echoing the similar sentiments of the unofficial group’s longest-standing member, Vic "SimonDaGrump" Simonetti.
Recently, Orsi provided GVO with an unverified screenshot of a September 2016 post allegedly by Simonetti claiming to “know [Orsi] donated $3,000 worth of meat products to one of these charities.”
This claim is unsupported by Orsi’s receipts, the Gates Town Board minutes, or local media coverage.
Although Simonetti refused to comment to GVO, the screenshot went unchallenged in a now-discontinued defamation suit against Simonetti and 3 other anti-Orsi extremists.
In the time since this article’s original release, Simonetti has called the legitimacy of the screenshot into question.
“I’d love to see that screenshot altered exhibit he sent with this,” said Simonetti on Mazza’s anti-Orsi Facebook page.
The post appears to match Simonetti’s distinct and profuse utilization of line breaks, however the absolute authenticity could not be verified as the Gates Little Italy Facebook page—the alleged source—has since been deleted.
Simonetti’s earliest known post on the matter appears to be from April 27, 2017.
Assini’s doubts about Orsi’s donations have since spread to others, including Bill Wischmeyer, Michael Stathe, Mary Belding, and as previously mentioned, John Mazza.
Wischmeyer and Stathe were also sued by Orsi for defamation, however the case was discontinued.
Another defendant—Gail Jones—does not appear to interact with Orsi before 2017 and does not appear to actively engage in parsing theories concerning Little Italy’s charitable donations. Therefore, Gail Jones is generally outside the purview of this article.
Belding—who performed notary service on this case for Simonetti—was cited as a possible defendant by Orsi. Months before naming Belding as a potential defendant, Orsi had filed to discontinue the case due to health concerns.
As of late, a day where Belding does not post about Orsi—or engage with Simonetti, Stathe, Wischmeyer or Mazza—rarely passes.
In conversations with GVO, Wischmeyer and Orsi both pointed to Michael Stathe as the man behind the moniker ‘Michael Radisis Stathopoulos.’
A person using that moniker appears to have sent an ominous email in 2022 to the manager of Italian singer, Giada Valenti. At the time, Valenti was set to perform at the Little Italy festival in 2022.
The email cites various examples of alleged homophobia and racism from Orsi before closing with a reference to the Tops Buffalo shooting.
“In the context of the recent racially motivated terror attack on the Tops Supermarket in Buffalo that has shaken the nation to the core,” a man named ‘Stathopoulos’ said in June of 2022, “it's my hope that your organization doesn't affiliate in no shape or form with a racist.”
In 2022, then 18-year-old Payton Gendron allegedly targeted and shot ten Black people dead inside a Tops in Buffalo, NY. Mainstream news articles mentioned that Gendron may have alerted a retired FBI agent to his plans an hour before he carried them out.
Silvano Orsi critics, Vic Simonetti and Bill Wischmeyer often spend their time advocating for non-White immigrant communities, including refugees, in the Little Italy, Rochester area, garnering strong support from their allies.
In a now-discontinued defamation suit, Orsi revealed that this group often invokes issues of homophobia and racism in actions beyond social media, a typically liberal stance. Paradoxically, some core members are staunch supporters of President-elect Donald Trump, even to a fault.
During a phone call, Bill Wischmeyer told GVO his theory that Trump would shut down immigration to ‘repair the system’—a notably contradictory stance given his work with refugees and Trump’s conflicting immigration positions (link below).
In an X post, Simonetti once linked his support for Donald Trump to the Peanut the Squirrel meme. Peanut was recently confiscated and euthanized by the Department of Environmental Conservation.
The squirrel’s owner, Mark Longo, is an OnlyFans performer with the moniker ‘Squirrel Daddy.” Longo appears to be popular among homosexuals.
President-elect Trump himself was known to be mentored by Roy Cohn, a homosexual Jew that died of AIDS. Despite his gay lifestyle, Cohn has been called a “virulent nationalist crusader” and a staunch anticommunist.
Cohn has also been referred to as “the presence of pure evil” by those that knew him.
A 2024 film (below) dramatizes the relationship between Roy Cohn and Donald Trump.
It is for these reasons that GVO previously termed this collective as “a group of left-wing activists with MAGA branding.”
In the eight years since 2016, criticisms of Orsi's donations have expanded to include accusations of fraud related to other projects. His Little Italy, Rochester organization is also accused of gentrification and redlining, continuing allegations of racism in his personal life.
Two of the individuals in the group—Vic Simonetti and Bill Wischmeyer—actively aid in the affairs of refugees in Little Italy, Rochester. The absurdity of those who have a clear interest in the racial dynamics of Little Italy, Rochester calling Silvano Orsi a racist seems to render the term meaningless.
Reliable anonymous sources also confirm that at least one member of the group has a vested interest in the proliferation of the Jewish race.
Racial thinking runs deep in the Jewish community. A 2024 survey by the American Jewish Committee found that 85% of American Jewish adults believe the U.S. should support Israel.
Any Jew worldwide who can prove their heritage is eligible for citizenship in Israel under the Law of Return, which enshrines the Jewish identity as long as the Israeli state can enforce it.
Furthermore, Jewish participation in the destruction of White cultural symbols is not foreign to Rochester. City Councilperson Mitch Gruber once named his own people as responsible for the renaming of St. Joseph Avenue—a clear Christian reference—to Joseph Avenue.
“The Jewish community wielded enough influence that in 1900, the City Council dropped the ‘St.’ from the name,” Gruber said.
In 1900, Jews had only been in Rochester for about 60 years. The city of Rochester itself was founded less than 30 years before that.
Although Orsi himself is now politically unaffiliated, his beliefs align more with a ‘blue dog’ Democrat, emphasizing Italian pride, universal healthcare, and law and order.
While he has expressed doubts recently, he still seems to believe a good faith, multiracial democracy is possible—assuming that Italians and other Whites will have the same rights as their non-White peers.
Namely, the right to honor their heritage free of attack.
For that to begin to happen, it seems essential for a leading Republican from the area to step forward and attempt to resolve this issue. In 2016, the ranking Republican in Gates—Mark Assini—was clearly the first person of reputation to lend his name to the struggle against Silvano Orsi.
The issues raised in this article are matters of simple arithmetic and logic and thusly, should be fairly simple to answer.
Were Christopher Scribani of the Open Door Mission and Charles Earsley of House Mercy duped by Silvano Orsi?
Were the charity workers from different organizations in cahoots with Orsi to save him a few hundred dollars at tax time?
A recorded conversation between Silvano Orsi and either Mark Assini, or a ranking Republican would speak volumes.