The battle between the Phoenix City Council and Tucson’s Satanic Temple dominated many local pages in the state of Arizona last week and caught the attention of at least one Tucson business owner. After the vote by the Phoenix City Council resulted in removing prayer and replacing it with moment of silence, Anthony Rocco DiGrazia, of Rocco’s Little Chicago Pizzeria celebrated.
DiGrazia let his satisfaction be known on his business’ roadside sign with a simple statement: “Congratulations Satanic Temple.” While the message stayed up for a short of time before being taken down, a long list of people still took notice.
DiGrazia spoke with me briefly Saturday morning about the decision. He decided to put up the sign because he knew someone, who he claimed had been close to the situation for well over 10 to 12 years. He had been following the news from Phoenix with great intent because of that relationship. He said that he was appalled by what he described as “blatant bigotry and discrimination,” at the Phoenix City Council meetings.
The reason the sign came down was not due to any backlash. On the contrary, it was for business and he wanted to promote his restaurant’s upcoming specials for the next week.
“I took it down because I have the Super Bowl coming up and I have a Super Bowl sign up. I took it down because our sign is a symbol. I don’t keep things up there for too long. Sometimes we do – sometimes we don’t. There’s three days till poonch-key day which is a Polish dessert that’s done on Fat Tuesday and we’re serving them on Tuesday morning,” explained DiGrazia. “I had one gentleman on social media seemed very adamant on trying to change the subject and he tried to engage me in conversation and basically he told me that there is no separation between church and state. That was the extent. I just told him I was glad he shared his opinion and that was it.”
This is not the first time that DiGrazia has been in the public eye in response to actions passed by the government. Back in 2014 in February when both Arizona houses of legislature passed Senate Bill 1062 that gave business owners in the state the right to refuse service to homosexuals and others based on religious freedom DiGrazia responded with his own refusal of services scheme. In the window of his business, he taped a laminated sign that read: “We reserve the right to refuse service to Arizona legislators” and followed with a Twitter post that read “Funny how just being decent is starting to seem radical these days”.
Those aren’t the only times DiGrazia has found himself making statements against controversial local policies, and it is unlikely that it will be the last time.
“We have a long, almost 20 years streak, of running our mouth off on our side and it is not going to stop anytime soon…I’m an advocate for civil liberties basically. I don’t have any ulterior motives and I’m glad that the Satanic Temple, whatever their belief is and if you read their mission statement it has nothing to do with Satan except as a metaphor for rebelling against tyranny. I’m not a Satanist. I don’t care what the hell anyone says about anything. It’s just that I think they were in the right on this,” said DiGrazia.
DiGrazia was very kind. He told me that they would be open on the day of the Super Bowl this weekend, and invited me to come in if I wanted a pizza. While the argument could be made that the separation of church and state is getting more blurry as the years go by, I am willing to say this: I can put aside my religious, business, political and personal beliefs aside if the food is good enough. Perhaps DiGrazia feels the same way.
Some say the kitchen is a view into someone’s soul; I just might have to find out for myself if he has one.