Anthony DiPierro remains defiant, unremorseful and arrogant in the wake of repeated calls for him to resign.
DiPierro has been found out to be a closet racist – that is – greeting Blacks and Browns as though they are friends, and then when walking away, sending out racist, anti-Black memes and Internet messaging to friends and city hall colleagues for fun.
That’s the disturbing part of the DiPierro saga which is not going to end any time soon.
“Everett is in the news for all the wrong reasons,” Everett realtor Sandy Juliano said to DiPierro in remarks asking for his resignation Monday night at the council meeting.
Juliano is right.
DiPierro’s failure to take responsibility for his actions and to come clean on who he really is and what he is all about, cannot be hidden from the public – not in today’s hyper sensitive environment.
His claim to be taking therapy and talking with religious leaders in an effort to change are suspect.
He did what he did enjoying what he did.
Sending out racist memes and messages, and having fun doing it, and finding similar people to share the fun with, is detestable. If he had an ounce of remorse, he’d resign, take a bit of a leave, discover who he is and make amends so he can move on. DiPierro is now a tainted, stained, and dirtied politician. He has fallen and he doesn’t know it.
He has crashed, and he is unaware of it.
He is a bit like airliner that has fallen out of the sky and exploded into a ball of flames when it hit the ground.
That’s the suave, smooth talking, mayor’s cousin.
His political career is at an end.
He has gone as high as he will ever go.
But he doesn’t know this.
In the years to come, DiPierro will learn how his racist acts will follow him like the smell of garbage emanating from a garbage truck.
No one wants to be around such a smell.
DiPierro is a young blind man, too arrogant to understand how he has hurt himself, and too big feeling to acknowledge how he has hurt Blacks and Browns struggling to carve out their identities in this working class city without being degraded because of the color of their skin.
Whether Di Pierro resigns or not, there will be many residents determined to run him out of office.
Eventually, this will happen.
For now, he will take his orders from his cousin the mayor and he will live or die with them.
DiPierro is now damaged goods – and that’s a bad thing in a crowded place like Everett where everyone knows everyone’s business.