By Uk Lushi/
(Written exclusively for the oldest Albanian-American newspaper Dielli, November 28, 2010)
Genealogy/
Like other Americans, Albanian-Americans are quite young, but Albanians have a very old history. Albanians descend from Illyrians. The ancestors of Illyrians were Pelasgians who lived in Europe way before the Greeks, Romans, and Slavs migrated to their lands and became their neighbors.
It is believed that the first social organization of Illyrians started somewhere around the 9th or 8th century BC when small groups of them evolved into more complex political units and created their first federations and kingdoms- most important of which flourished between the 5th and 2nd centuries BC. At the same time, Rome was developing on the Apennine peninsula, across the Adriatic Sea. The Romans saw Illyria as a bridge for eastern conquests, so in 229 BC, they crossed the Adriatic and conquered it. Rome ruled the region for the next six centuries, but the Illyrians resisted assimilation and their distinctive culture and language persevered.
In 395 the Roman Empire was split into a western and eastern empire, and the lands of Illyrians became part of the eastern, or Byzantine, Empire.
In the 5th century Visigoths, Huns, and Ostrogoths raided and devastated the region, and between the 6th and 8th centuries Slavic peoples settled in big lots of the north-eastern parts of the Illyrian territories. The Slavs pushed the predecessors of Albanians, the Illyrians, to the west and south of the Illyrian Peninsula- a region now known as the Balkans. They assimilated many of the Illyrians in what is today Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia. However, the southern Illyrian tribes, including those in modern day Kosova, southern Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Republic of Albania and northern Greece, resisted assimilation and acculturation.
In the 9th century the Byzantine Empire’s power began to weaken as Bulgarian Slavs, followed by Norman Crusaders, Italian Angevins, Venetians, and Serbs, invaded the region. During the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century) Albanian cities expanded and commerce flourished, particularly in the Adriatic region and central Kosova. With urban prosperity came the growth of art, culture, and education. The Albanian language survived, but was not used in churches, government, or schools; instead, Greek and Latin remained the official languages of administration and theocratic institutions. It is believed that around the 10th century the name Albania which was derived from a powerful tribe in central Albania called Albanoi appeared for the first time.
By 1430 another invader, the Ottomans, occupied Albanian territories, but not without resistance. During the mid 1440s Gjergj Kastrioti (1403-1468) organized the country’s feudal lords to fight the Ottomans. Kastrioti, popularly known as Scanderbeg, with military help from Rome, Naples, and Venice successfully led Albanians to defy Ottoman subjugation for 25 years. Albanian opposition collapsed after Scanderbeg’s death, and the Ottomans reoccupied the country by 1506. About one-fourth of the country’s population fled to Italy, Sicily, and the Dalmatian coast on the Adriatic.
Throughout four centuries of extensive rule, the Ottomans failed to control all of Albania. In the highland regions, Ottoman power was weak, and the Albanians refused to pay taxes or perform military service. They staged several uprisings, partly in defense of their Christian faith. At the end of the 16th century, the Ottomans began a policy of conversion to Islam as a way of preventing future unrest. By the end of the 17th century, about two-thirds of the population had converted to Islam, the majority of them to avoid the heavy tax levied against non-Muslims. The Ottoman Empire also extended its control through a feudal-military system, under which military leaders who were loyal received landed estates and other benefits. Many Albanians made the religious switch only publicly, while privately they continued to worship two branches of Christianity, Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Although they embraced different devotional traditions, Albanians still take pride in the coexistence of diverse pious practices and inter-religious marriages have been and remain common.
After 372 years of Ottoman reoccupation, in 1878, Albanian leaders met in the town of Prizren, Kosova, where they founded the “Albanian League”, an organization created to promote a free, unified Albania in all Albanian-populated territories. The League also sought to develop Albanian language, education, and culture. Finally, after a long struggle, in 1908 Albanian leaders adopted a national alphabet based on the Latin script. From 1910 to 1912, Albanians waged an armed struggle throughout Albanian lands, with its center around the city of Shkup, today’s capital of Macedonia. The Ottomans were defeated by Albanian, Serb, Greek, and Bulgarian armies in what is known today as the First Balkan War. Albania immediately proclaimed its independence from the Ottoman Empire on November 28th of 1912 in the city of Vlora.
At a conference following the Balkan War, which lasted from October 1912 to May 1913, Britain, Germany, Russia, Austria, France, and Italy (a group of countries known as the Great Powers) agreed to accept Albanian independence, but because of strong pressures from Albania’s neighbors, they gave the Albanian-inhabited region of Kosova to Serbia and much of the Çamëria region to Greece. More than half of the Albanian population and territories were left outside the new country’s borders.
World War I, from 1914 to 1918, was one of the saddest sequences in the history of Albanians. During this war, Austrian, French, Italian, Greek, Montenegrin, and Serb armies occupied almost all of Albania; subsequently Kosova and other Albanian territories were formally annexed by Serbia and Montenegro. The carved up country, which is today’s Republic of Albania, was saved only because of the support of the US President Woodrow Wilson. At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Wilson vetoed a plan by Britain, France, and Italy to partition the remaining Albania amongst its neighbors. In 1920 this remnant Albania was admitted to the newly formed League of Nations, thereby gaining international recognition as an independent state.
In April 1939, shortly before the start of World War II, Italy invaded and occupied the truncated Albania, which had been declared a monarchy since 1928. After the Italian capitulation in 1943, Germany took over. Both Italy and Germany allowed most of the Albanian-inhabited lands in the Balkans to be united for more than four years; but nevertheless, nationalists, monarchists, and Communists actively resisted Italian fascism and German Nazism throughout the duration of World War II. The Communists eventually prevailed and gained control over Albania and other Albanian territories.
As Communist rule in Eastern Europe collapsed in 1989, Albanians demanded more freedoms and far-reaching reforms. In December 1990 the government of the Republic of Albania endorsed the creation of independent political parties, thereby ending the Communist monopoly on power. Throughout 1990s, thousands of Albanian citizens tried to flee through Western embassies. A multinational relief operation arranged for the safe evacuation of more than 5,000 people, and 20,000 more sailed illegally to Italy in vessels seized at civilian ports or illegally crossed the border with Greece by foot.
By the late 1980’s relations with the countries of the former Yugoslavia started to tense dramatically, because of the repression of the Albanians in Kosova. In 1989 Serbia abrogated Kosova’s autonomy. As a reaction, on July 2nd of 1991, the Albanian leadership in Kosova proclaimed the land independent from Yugoslavia. Although the international community never recognized Kosova’s independence, Republic of Albania campaigned on Kosova’s behalf and asked the United Nations (UN) to send monitors to the region.
In the mid-1990s the Republic of Albania feared that major unrest and a military crackdown in Kosova could lead to a massive outflow of refugees, destabilizing the entire Balkan region. The Republic of Albania also criticized the treatment of the Albanian population in the newly formed state of Macedonia. Albanians wanted fellow Albanians in Macedonia to have more representation in the government and the Albanian language to have equivalent status with Macedonian. Relations between the Republic of Albania and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia worsened even more in early 1998, when conflict broke out in Kosova over the killing of hundreds of Albanians by Yugoslav and Serbian forces. The Albanians of Kosova responded with the creation of the Kosova Liberation Army. Serbian police and Yugoslav army units attacked civilians and battled members of the Liberation Army, which consisted predominantly of Albanians from Kosova, but also from volunteers from other Albanian lands and the Albanian Diaspora. An all out war erupted following the killing of Adem Jashari (also called the brother of Gjergj Kastrioti), 19 members of his family and 36 relatives and neighbors, by the Yugoslav police and army in a three-day siege in March of 1998. The massacre of Adem Jashari and 55 others, including women, children, and elderly could only be equated to the massacre of Masada in Jewish history.
A year later, in March 1999, after Yugoslavia refused to sign a peace accord for Kosova, NATO began launching air strikes against Yugoslav military targets. In response, Serbian army and militia intensified their attacks on villages in Kosova, driving almost a million Albanians to flee. The Republic of Albania, which had been forced to absorb refugees from Kosova throughout 1998, was flooded with more than half a million people in the weeks after the air strikes began. The remaining refuges either sought sanctuary in Macedonian and Montenegrin camps or were taken into homes by indigenous Albanians of these two states.
In June of 1999, after NATO involvement and a two-year war of the Kosova Liberation Army, the Yugoslav government finally was forced to surrender and agree to an international peace plan. Under the terms of the plan, a peacekeeping force was to be deployed inside Kosova to help ensure the refugees’ safe return. Kosova became a UN protectorate and was on its way to becoming the second independent Albanian state in the Balkans. Independence of Kosova was formally proclaimed on February 17, 2008.
Albanians are the oldest people of the Balkans. Yet, they are still the only undone people in this region of the world. Nowadays, almost 100 years after the flag was flown in Vlora, there are more Albanians who live outside of the Republic of Albania, than inside their mother country. Their history is a struggle of resistance to assimilation and perpetuation of their identity.
According to a National Geographic special report from February 2000 to Albanians “Albania” is where they have traditionally lived- in a continuous swath of the Balkans that reaches beyond political boundaries of the Republic Albania into Kosova and other Albanian territories under Serbia, Macedonia, Greece and Montenegro. Priit Vesilind, the author of the article, claims that many Balkan Slavs fear that this territory represents “Greater Albania,” but the goal of Albanians is to unify with their kin in a united Europe where political borders will be a formality.
Albanian-Americans: When and How Did They Come To America?
As one can learn from the brief history of the Albanians in the genealogical introduction, they have not been the coddled and cosseted children of history. In spite of the love for their lands and the continuous fight to defend them, Albanians very often were forced to leave their homes and seek refugee in other countries. In words of Vesilind: “The story of the Albanians has been their scattering- flights from invasion, despair, violence or chaos. Each flight has taken something vital from the nation.”
It is believed that there are at least 10 million Albanians all over the world today: approximately 4 million in the Republic of Albania, 2.25 million in Kosova, another 1 million in Macedonia, southern Serbia and Montenegro, 2 million (the majority of them assimilated) in Turkey, 0.6 million in Greece, 1 million in the European Diaspora-Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands, France, Great Britain and Scandinavian countries as well as at least 0.75 million in the US, Australia and New Zealand. In other words, immigration among Albanians has been as old as their history.
However, throughout their long history, no country has offered to Albanians what the United States of America has offered. In the US they found their freedom, their fulfillment as a people, and, more importantly, their most sincere support and protection. It is no surprise that a large number of Albanians believe that they succeeded to create and preserve the states of the Republic of Albania and the Republic of Kosova as well as their national identity, first and foremost, because of the great effort and engagement of the Albanian-Americans and the backing of the United States of America.
According to Dennis L. Nagi, a scholar on Albanian-Americans and a second-generation Albanian-American, Albanians began to immigrate to America in the late 1800’s, and inspired by the tales of easy wealth to be made in the new land, their number increased by the early 1900’s. Another scholar on Albanian-Americans, Francis Trix, reports that the first Albanian immigrants settled principally in New England, the New York area, and the industrial cities of the Midwest. Nagi concludes that the early immigrants to “the land of the free and the home of the brave” were composed of two groups: immigrants who believed that America would improve their economic position, and immigrants who were politically active and had to flee the oppression of the Ottoman occupiers in their lands. Nagi claims that although there is not enough information about the first Albanian immigrant to America, it is however known that he arrived from Korçë in 1876, but soon left for Argentina. The Albanian-American researcher Nagi states that the second immigrant was Koli Kristofer who was in his mid-twenties when he arrived in the land of unlimited opportunities. Nagi notes that although there is a dispute about the exact year in which Koli Kristofer left his homeland most sources place it between 1884 and 1886.
It is worthy and important to emphasize that although Koli Kristofer may be the first Albanian settler in America, it is very possible that there may have been other Albanians who arrived in the New World many years before Kristofer. Nagi writes for example that, on one hand, an unofficial census of Albanians in Massachusetts conducted in 1907 by Sotir Peci, editor of the Albanian newspaper Kombi (“The Nation”), indicated that 700 Albanians lived in Boston, 400 in Worcester and Southbridge and 200 in Natick, but, on the other hand, he states that the 1910 Federal Census listed no more than 625 Albanians in all Massachusetts. Nagi thinks that this disparity between these two sources may be explained in two ways. One- “[p]rior to 1912, Albania was included within the Ottoman Empire; the Christian immigrants were listed as Greeks because the Christian population was under the jurisdiction of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople” and two- “many of the Albanians had previously worked in migrant lands and so the United States immigration officials frequently neglected to ask if the country they had just left was their homeland.”
The above mentioned reasons may very well explain the current indeterminable number of Albanian immigrants, if one takes into consideration the scattering of Albanians between two formal states- Yugoslavia and Greece after the independence of the Republic of Albania in 1912. Furthermore, many emigrating Albanians may have been in a holding pattern in third countries as they waited for their immigration documents to their destination country, namely America. It is very reasonable to assume that great numbers of the immigrants from Yugoslav republics such as Montenegro, Macedonia, Serbia and perhaps Kosova were and are Albanians, but were or are listed as non-Albanians from Federal Censuses because of their Yugoslav or Greek citizenships.
The first stage of Albanian immigration to the United States which started with Koli Kristofer in the late 1800’s seems to end with the beginning of World War II (1939-1945). Those who were a part of this wave were mainly male immigrants. The majority of them hoped to return to their native soil with money to improve the economic situation back home. Indecisiveness and movement were the characteristics of these first immigrants, or as Trix claims: “[t]raveling back and forth between Albania and the United States was very common among early Albanian immigrants, as was movement from city to city in the Midwest.”
In the early dawn of the 20th century, Albanians all over the world were struggling to create their own country. For many patriots the United States symbolized a safe haven for prosperity and freedom, so that the number of US bound immigrants seeking refuge from political prosecution increased. Since the first immigrants had settled in Boston, this city emerged as the center of Albanian migration to America.
While Boston became the hub of Albanian immigrants, a higher form of organization began to take place. It is here that Albanians of America erected and established their first formal institutions. On June 12, 1906, Sotir Peci published the first known weekly Albanian newspaper called Kombi. The first Albanian Nationalist Organization “Besa-Besën” (Loyalty) followed on January 6, 1907, instituted by Fan Noli who later became the head of the Autocephalous Albanian Orthodox Church in America and Prime minister of Albania in 1924. On February 15, 1909, Fan Noli’s organization began publication of Dielli (The Sun) which was a successor to Kombi and whose first editor was Faik Konitza, a scholar and a patriot, who later became a diplomat and one of the greatest historical Albanian figures.
Although the first wave or scale immigration of Albanians to America consisted almost absolutely of men, this changed in the early 1920’s. Many of the first emigrants returned to Albania only to face a deep disillusionment with the autocratic homeland’s regime. Disappointed, these men came back to America again, this time with their families. Albanian women and children joined the ranks of the first wave of immigrants. The arrival of women and children spearheaded changes in the lifestyle and the attitude of the Albanian-Americans.
The second wave of Albanian immigration to the United States took place from 1945 to 1960. The majority of these immigrants were anti-Communists and had engaged in political activities against the Communists, both in Albania and Albanian territories under Yugoslav occupation. This group of people faced the worst dilemmas as immigrants because they were convinced that they would defeat Communism and never really looked to settle in a new life. Some of them went as far as to receive military training and participate in covert and open activities against Communists.
The third wave occurred from the 1960’s until the early 1980’s. The immigrants of this group came from communities of Albanians outside of the Republic of Albania, mainly from Macedonia and Montenegro, and on a lesser scale from Kosova, regions where they suffered politically and economically because of the discriminating policies of the Yugoslav Communists. As luck would have it, quota regulations by the United States government for immigrants from Communist countries had been lifted during this period, easing the once daunting process of emigration. At this time the Republic of Albania was virtually isolated from the world, resulting in an insignificant number of immigrants from the Republic of Albania during this stage of immigration.
The fourth wave started in the early 1990’s and continued until the fifth wave, which took place in 1999. The fifth wave was marked by the arrival of 20,000 Albanian refugees who had fled the Serbian aggressors in Kosova during the war. Organized by the United States government these immigrants were brought to the military base at Fort Dix in New Jersey and distributed all over the United States.
Statistics are poor and there are no official data on the number of Albanian-Americans in the United States today, but it is estimated that there are between 500,000 or 600,000 Albanian-Americans. Half of this number live in the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut; 100,000 in Massachusetts; 70,000 in Michigan and the rest in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Florida, Texas, California, Ohio, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Missouri, Arizona, Tennessee, Georgia, Maine, Alaska, and in less relevant numbers in other states.
Albanian-Americans: Who They Are And Who Shall They Be?
Since their arrival to America, the common thread for most Albanian-Americans has been their concern for their original countries and relatives back in their indigenous lands. It is indisputable that they have been one of the most successful lobbying ethnic groups, as far as influencing the American government to act in the interest of their kin in the Balkans. Albanians of America have achieved remarkable results ever since they chose America to be their new country; however, in areas of acting as an organized group, such as education, business, politics, culture and entertainment, the success has not been as great as it could and should have been.
Sociologists generally classify ethnic groups into two types: traditional and modern. An ethnic group is considered to be traditional if the group gives priority to ethnic particularism in both public and private areas with services being provided by the people from within the group. The ethnic group is categorized as modern if it recognizes the priority of universalism in the public sphere, ethnic particularism in the private sphere and employment of different services from diverse ethnic groups from within the society. It is not easy to categorize the Albanian-Americans, but their present situation and position in the American life allows one to conclude that if not yet, they are on course to becoming a modern ethnic group.
What’s the foundation of this conjecture? Let’s elaborate on the arguments that portray them as a traditional or modern ethnic group.
First, Albanian-Americans today can not be qualified as a modern ethnic group because ethnocentrism permeates their worldview. Albanians of America give preference to their kin more than to members of other ethnic groups. One of the reasons why this occurs is that the majority of them operate small family businesses in areas where ethnic concentration of other fellow Albanian-Americans is numerous.
Second, Albanian-Americans still allow ethnicity and their ethnic traditions to pervade areas of both their public and private life, whereas modern ethnic groups acknowledge a limited sovereignty of ethnic customs and traditions only over the private sphere.
Third, although endogamy is not a must, amongst Albanian-Americans there is still a strong sentiment that one should marry within the group or go back to the Albanian lands in the Balkans to find a husband or a wife. In other words, recruitment of new members is mainly by ascribed status only, but not always because Albanian-Americans have begun to marry members from other American ethnic groups and integrate them into the Albanian-American community.
Four, Albanian-Americans do not place a paramount importance in the geographic base, as one of the three elements that determine ethnic identity, because historically they have lived dispersed and believe very strongly that the other two elements, namely common origin and historical culture, are enough to give them a feeling of community which most of the time is reflected through common socialization.
The above mentioned arguments and the general description of Albanian-Americans might mislead one to think that they are a typical traditional group. However, such an assessment is not a true reflection of their situation and positioning in the American mosaic of ethnicity.
According to the 2000 Census, of the 4,756 Albanian immigrants who were admitted during the 2000 fiscal year- 577 worked as professionals in technological or other specialty fields; 74 worked in executive, administrative or managerial positions; 141 worked in sales; 177 worked in administrative support; 169 worked in precision production, craft, and repair; 66 were operators or laborers; 135 worked in farming, fishing, or forestry; 632 worked in service industries and 2,585 either had no occupation or did not report one.
In 2010 Albanian-Americans, those who immigrated to America and those who have lived here for generations, run and manage a vast array of companies from the construction, trade, and real estate sectors to production and financial industries. Paradoxically, for example, an Albanian-American father sends his daughter to college to acquire a degree and yet concurrently restricts her movement outside the classroom. Similarly, an Albanian-American husband may expect his wife to play the Madonna role by staying at home and caring for children, while he maintains two jobs to support the family. However, on the whole, this nebulous state of being between the traditional and modern type is fading. Albanian-Americans have started to see the benefits of investment in education, especially in the last decade, and many young Albanian-Americans have graduated from or are attending prestigious schools. They have acquired reputable positions with leading American companies from the advertising industry on Madison Avenue to the financial world on Wall Street and are advancing in their careers with respectable speed.Today, a decade into the 21st century, more than ever before, there is a renewed interest in ethnic studies in America. Terms like “the melting pot,” “cultural pluralism,” “acculturation” and “assimilation” are being used frequently. Studies on many small American ethnic groups have begun to surface. As a matter of fact, the anticipated assimilation predicted by the older generation of sociologists and scholars on ethnicity has shown to have been an inaccurate forecast. For instance, Richard Alba, Herber J. Gans and Milton M. Gordon, all have foreseen the end of ethnicity in assimilation; others like Alejandro Portes, Min Zhou and Ruben G. Rumbaut have tried to build new theories of assimilation, and some, like William J. Wilson, Bart Landry and Kathryn M. Neckerman have concluded that eventually in the fight of class against ethnicity it will be the former that will prevail. But reality has proven yet another perspective.
Ethnicity has not only prevailed, but is sprouting in the most unexpected areas, one of which is amongst best educated and first-generation Americans. An illustrious case for the revival of ethnicity in the American life are Albanian-Americans themselves. In 1999, they became the first ethnic group to have ever sent a military formation (Atlantic Brigade) from the American soil to fight in another country. Atlantic Brigade consisted of volunteer combatants who were recruited from Albanian-American communities across the United States to join the Kosova Liberation Army during the Kosova War. They signed up for the struggle of America, NATO and their fellow Albanians to free Kosova from the Serbian yoke. Amid hundreds of the Atlantic Brigade fighters, almost a third of them were first-generation Albanian-Americans born in the United States, thereby substantiating the pro-ethnicity theory. The deployment of the Albanian-American freedom fighters to liberate ancestral lands can not be just symbolic ethnicity.
Albanian-Americans are the expounding example that ethnicity is not dying out. On the contrary, it is thriving. In spite of this, there is one component that is not flourishing and still is very scarce in the case of Albanian-Americans: the literature concerning them. There are very rudimentary resources about Albanian-Americans and their history in America. Some of the work that deserves to be mentioned includes: “The Albanian Struggle in the Old World and the New” by the Federal Writers Project of the Works Progress Administration of Massachusetts from the year 1939, “Albanians in America” by Constantine Demo from the year 1960, “The Albanian-American Odyssey- A Pilot Study of the Albanian Community of Boston, Massachusetts” by Dennis L. Nagi from the year 1989, “Albanians in Michigan” by Frances Trix from 2001, “The Albanian-American Community in the United States: A Diaspora Coming to Visibility” by Nadege Ragaru and Amilda Dymi from 2004 and “Albanian Refugees Seeking Political Asylum in the United States: Process and Problems” by Bernd J. Fischer from 2005.
Perhaps the ethnic and sociological research regarding the Albanian-Americans is an area which Albanian-American scholars should focus themselves, instead of waiting for others to do it. To say it more succinctly and openly, Albanian-Americans should follow the precedent set by other ethnic groups and document their existence in America because no one will do it for them. The literature is undeveloped and much more research needs to be conducted and recorded.
Modern world’s mantra is technical knowledge, which requires a lot of giving and taking and can be better acquired through specialized training, not only through everyday socialization with people from the same ethnic group. Albanian-Americans, like other modern ethnic groups, need to create formal organizations, such as career centers and/or educational institutes for studying Albanian-American history and culture. What’s more, formal institutions are better suited for managing tasks which require technical knowledge. That does not mean that they do not need informal organizations, such as folklore ensembles and festivals. Informal institutions help ethnic group members maintain personal ties and interact with each other based on internalized commitments. Many studies show that people with strong family and community orientation are most likely to be occupationally successful.
How is this interdependence to be held in balance? There is a mutual need of ethnic groups and formal organizations for each other despite their conflicting structure. Albanian-Americans could pursue a synthesis of formality and informality. It is true, formal organizations are more efficient in a lot respects, however, in situations where there is little need for technical knowledge and there exists a great deal of uncertainty, informal organizations and old structures of ethnic groups are more appropriate and effective.
All in all, modern ethnic groups are characterized by the application of universalism in the public sphere and ethnic particularism in the private sphere in contrast to traditional groups that isolate themselves geographically and socially. The best solution for Albanian-Americans seems to be to continue to work hard and remain open-minded in order to become a modern ethnic group. Jewish-Americans are an example of this approach. Jewish people represent a modern group because they turned persecution and cultural differences into their strength. They segregated the public and private world. They applied efficiency criteria in the public sphere and kept the intimate social ties within the private sphere of their group.
Today, 135 years after the arrival of the first known Albanian on the American soil, Albanian-Americans seem to be on the right path as they are trying to create and establish more and more formal organizations everyday. Six of them are the most distinguished and the strongest: The Pan-Albanian Federation VATRA (“The Hearth”) which was established on April 12th, 1912; The Albanian American National Organization (A.A.N.O.) which was founded in 1946; The Albanian American Civic League (AACL) which was formed in 1989 by the first Albanian-American Congressman from the Arbereshi Diaspora in Italy- Joe DioGuardi; The National Albanian American Council (NAAC) which was created in 1996; The Organization of Albanian American Women which was formed in 1998; and The Albanian-American Professionals and Entrepreneurs Network (APEN) which was launched two years ago, in 2008. But, Albanian-Americans should not leave the support for the informal institutions aside. Albanian-Americans should make an equal effort to strengthen both the informal and the formal organizations. More and more Albanian-Americans are advancing in education. More and more Albanian-Americans are progressing in the business world and more and more Albanian-Americans are closing tight relationships with other communities around them. All of these activities should be evidence to reasonably conclude that in a very near future they will be a modern ethnic group.
Albanian-Americans can be proud of both their heritage and their identity as well as of their new country- the United States of America, which has done so much for them and their original lands in the Balkans. The journey into modernity has already started. The future of Albanian-Americans looks promising and bright. It’s up to the Albanian-Americans to continue carrying the torch of our endeavors into the 21st century.
*(Uk Lushi is an Albanian-American investor and activist of our community in New York)
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*(Written exclusively for the oldest Albanian-American newspaper Dielli, November 28, 2010)