On Monday afternoon, as dark clouds rushed from the sky to make way for some early evening sun, Mayor Ruthanne Fuller sent an email to the community calling for a compromise in what has escalated into a local culture war over Italian heritage.

“Before the City painted the reflective yellow center lines, we gave permission to the Festa volunteers to again this year repaint the tricolors on Adams Street prior to Festa, just moved over by 12” or 18” next to the double yellow center lines,” the email reads. “Traditions matter. Public safety also matters.”

Outside, a very different tone was struck by a crowd of impassioned Nonantum residents—many carrying Italian flags and wearing “The Lake” t-shirts—gathering near the steps of City Hall to deliver a clear message to the mayor.

“The people behind me, they want their pound of flesh,” Kevin Riffe said to several city councilors who had gathered atop those steps to listen to that crowd’s concerns.

In late June, Nonantum residents awoke in the middle of the night to find DPW workers removing the red, white and green lines from the middle of Adams Street. The lines have been painted fresh each year for the past 90 years, in honor of the village’s Italian heritage, and the city removed them just three weeks before the 90^th St. Mary of Carmen Society’s Italian Festival (also known as Festa), which runs from this Wednesday through Sunday.

Nonantum residents gather outside City Hall to demand Mayor Ruthanne Fuller have the red, white and green lines painted back onto Adams Street. Photo by Bryan McGonigle

To say Festa is a beloved tradition would be an understatement. It’s four days of families and friends gathering for a Carnival and food culminating in Catholic services honoring the Virgin Mary. It’s not just a tradition—it’s a sacred one.

The removal of the Italian flag lines set off a firestorm of outrage in Nonantum that made headlines way beyond Newton. Even Oldies 103, the station that provides music for Festa, issued a statement in support of the aggrieved neighborhood.

Fuller has said that the removal of the lines was about public safety and that state law requires a yellow line down that street due to how much traffic that street sees.

“Our 2024 citywide analysis of traffic volume, vehicle speeds compared to speed limits, crash occurrence and severity, crash rate and pedestrian data resulted in Adams Street being placed as the City’s #1 priority for traffic calming,” she wrote in that email to the city on Monday. “The volume of traffic here, coupled with the road width being greater than 20 feet, requires double yellow center lines per federal and state regulations; this is mandatory, not optional. This section of Adams Street is notable as the only busy road without double yellow center lines in this section of Newton.”

Corey Bohan and his sons, Anthony, left, and Jack, right, attend a demonstration at City Hall to demand Italian flag colored lines be repainted onto Adams Street. Photo by Bryan McGonigle

But former Massachusetts Transportation Secretary Gina Fiandaca wrote an open letter in the Boston Herald calling on Fuller to have the lines repainted.

“The claim that these markings needed to be replaced with yellow lines for safety lacks merit,” Fiandaca wrote. She appeared on Dan Rea’s WBZ radio show “Nightside” Monday evening to reiterate that point.

Fiandaca and other critics have taken issue with the traffic and accident data sample cited, taken the week of All Saints Day when their church services are more heavily attended.

Nonantum resident Fran Yerardi said he believes the mayor’s decision to remove the lines was part of “a vendetta” for Nonantum opposing the Village Center Overlay District rezoning and the mayor’s Proposition 2 ½ override requests in 2023, for Nonantum residents running a candidate against her in 2021 and “for being a neighborhood that calls out bullshit when we see it.”

At about 7 p.m., several city councilors came outside while Riffe took to the microphone and urged them to take action.

“This is not about lines. This is not about the colors,” Riffe said. “This is about 90 years of traditions, 90 years in the Nonantum community. There are people that I knew that were there the whole 90 years, so it’s more than that. And what it did was it cut through the fabric of our community.”

Jordan Wagner, a member of the Adams Street Shul, in Nonantum, talks about the bonds that Nonantum’s Italian and Jewish communities have shared for more than a century. Photo by Bryan McGonigle

And the “pound of flesh” they want?

“The lines go back on Adams Street,” Riffe said to thunderous applause.

“This is about respect!” a woman yelled from the crowd.

“Honor the Madonna!” another woman called out.

“Don’t erase our heritage with fugazi data!” a man yelled.

At one humorous moment, the crowd started calling to “let the rabbi speak,” referring to a man in a yarmulke raising his hand.

“Rabbi, Shalom Shalom!” someone yelled.

“I’m not a rabbi!” the man, Jordan Wagner, replied with a laugh. “I just have a beard and I’m Jewish.”

Wagner, who’s lived in Nonantum since 1981, does attend the Adam Street Shul, Newton’s oldest synagogue which now has its fence lined with little Italian flags in support of its neighbors.

“What I think people maybe don’t understand about Nonantum is we’ve always been a very ethnically diverse first-arrival point for anybody who’s coming in. From Irish in the 1840s and French Canadians 20 years later and then we Jews and Italians in the 1880s. So we’ve been neighbors since the 1880s.”

City Council President Marc Laredo speaks to Nonantum residents outside City Hall to address a controversy over the removal of Italian flag-colored lines from Adams Street. Photo by Bryan McGonigle

Nonantum resident Teresa Sauro speaks to city councilors outside City Hall about the removal of Italian flag-colored lines from Adams Street. Photo by Bryan McGonigleResident Teresa Sauro’s grandfather started the Italian Festival in 1935, and on Monday she spoke about how much the removal of those lines has hurt her family and neighbors.

“Its tradition. It’s 90 years of celebrating the Madonna,” Sauro said, waving a petition calling for the red, white and green lines to be repainted on Adams Street. She noted that an online petition has garnered 3,000 signatures so far.

Council President Marc Laredo said that a formal resolution would take a long time, given the process involved, but he assured the neighbors that he and his fellow councilors were in support of their cause.

“I know I speak for myself and I think I speak for, really, all of my colleagues, particularly the ones from Ward 1, who have been very clear about their views privately and publicly, that we think this was a mistake, that we would never have done it in the first instance, and we would like to see the lines back the way they were,” Laredo said, sparking another burst of applause from the energized crowd.

The St. Mary of Carmen Festa will start on Wednesday and run through Sunday. The annual block party is in its 90^th year and typically sees about 10,000 attendees.

VIDEO: Speakers from Monday’s Rally