A Massachusetts city abruptly scrubbed the Italian colors off a street ahead of a cultural festival — but outraged residents illegally sprayed them right back onto the pavement, according to reports.
The red, green and white stripes, representing the colors of the Italian flag, have been a fixture of Adams Street in Newton’s Nonantum neighborhood since 1935 and are repainted every year ahead of the annual festival, NBC 10 reported.
The iconic lines were replaced overnight on June 26 with standard double-yellow lines, the outlet reported.
“This is something my parents grew up with,” resident Costanzo Mancone, who lives on the street, told the outlet.
“They came from Italy. They came here and they felt at home, this was their home. And now they’ve taken this away, they’re taking everything away,” he said.
Newton Mayor Ruthanne Fuller claimed the move was a safety decision, citing a 2024 traffic analysis that showed the street as one of the top five areas for crashes, the outlet reported.
But angered residents of the town, where many Italian immigrants have settled, took matters into their own hands.
Locals had covered most of the centerline with their original Italian flag colors by the end of the town’s 90th annual Italian American Festival — which kicked off on July 16 and ended last Sunday, the New York Times reported.
“They could’ve waited until after the festival,” resident Mike Callahan told NBC.
“The festival’s only five days long. They could’ve done it on July 21,” added Callahan, who started a petition with thousands of signatures to bring back the historic lines before the festival. “There was no reason for them to do it now.”
One 54-year-old man was even briefly detained for trying to spray paint green, white, and red lines over the yellow ones in outrage, police told the outlet.
The St. Mary of Carmen Society, which organizes the festival, said its members were never notified of the overnight change, the outlet reported.
“These lines are not just paint, they are sacred symbols of Italian American pride, religious tradition and community identity,” the St. Mary of Carmen Society wrote in a statement.
The group claimed the action was “a slap in the face.”
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