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Every year on March 19th, something happens across Rhode Island. The bakeries fill up; lines form from Federal Hill to downtown Westerly. Neighbors who haven't seen each other since Christmas bump into each other on the sidewalk. The air smells like powdered sugar.

Thousands of people show up, not because anyone required them to, but because it's St. Joseph's Day, and this is what you do. There's something almost stubborn about it — like the community is insisting on itself, refusing to let the tradition fade. What it represents is the value of showing up together. Of saying: we belong to this place, and to each other.

I've been thinking about why that matters. Not just as a cultural tradition, but as a civic one.

The story behind the feast goes back to medieval Sicily. A devastating drought left people hungry and desperate. The community prayed to St. Joseph for intercession, and when the rains finally came, they celebrated by doing something specific: they set out long tables in the streets and fed everyone, especially those who had the least. Nobody ate alone.

That tradition crossed the Atlantic with the families who began arriving in the Ocean State in the late 1800s, settling on Federal Hill and building lives in a city that didn't always make it easy for them. They worked in the mills, the jewelry shops, in construction. And what they did when they got here wasn't just survive. They organized. They founded churches that became the centers of neighborhood life. They started mutual aid societies to care for the sick and struggling. They set up settlement houses to offer job training and services to new arrivals.

In other words, they built community. Not waiting for someone else to do it, but deciding, collectively, that they were responsible for each other.

And that instinct to be together, in public, by choice, is itself a deeply Italian idea. There's even a word for it. The piazza – the public square. DePasquale Plaza is a good example. You go there on a warm evening and people are just there. Sitting, talking, eating. That's not an accident of urban planning. That's a cultural value made physical. The idea that the square belongs to everyone, and that showing up in it together is itself a form of community.

We could use more of that instinct right now.

The families who came here with very little built something lasting. Not just for themselves, but for the whole city and state. What they built wasn't only material. It was a set of values: show up, take care of your neighbors, celebrate together, and when someone new arrives who needs a hand, extend one.

Federal Hill today is more diverse than it was a hundred years ago. The restaurants on Atwells reflect cuisines from all over the world. And that evolution makes sense, because the tradition Italian Americans established here was never about exclusivity. It was about community. It was about welcoming people to the table. The table just got bigger. And I think that's something everyone can recognize, because so many of our communities have their own version of that story. Different foods, different feast days, different languages – but the same instinct to gather, to share, to take care of each other.

In my current role at the Rhode Island Foundation, I see this every day. The organizations and communities we support across this state are doing exactly what those early Federal Hill families did – building the connective tissue that holds places together. That work has never been more important, and it has never been more under pressure.

Because we are in a moment where the things that hold communities together feel strained. People feel disconnected. Public trust is hard to come by.

And when I think about what Italian American culture has to offer in a moment like this one, I keep coming back to the same things. Come to the table. Be in public together. Know your neighbors. Understand that caring for the people around you isn't just a nice thing to do - it's what is required. Those aren't abstract ideals. They're habits.

So, happy St. Joseph's Day. Let's remember that a feast isn't really a feast unless someone who's hungry gets fed, and that a community is only as strong as the connections between its people. Bouna Festa!