The PAR Mission is to inform the greater New Haven community about the activities of many progressive groups, so that people may learn about them and become involved in discussions and actions on issues for the common good, such as peace, health, racial equity, justice, clean energy and the environment.
Consider Radical Connecticut: People’s History in the Constitution State, written by Andy Piascik and Steve Thornton.
To get a copy, please send $25 ($20 plus $5 shipping) to:
Andy Piascik
25 Cartright St. PH-C
Bridgeport, CT 06604
“Radical Connecticut: People’s History in the Constitution State” authors Andy Piascik and Steve Thornton will discuss their new book Saturday, June 15, beginning at 5 p.m., at Possible Futures Bookstore, 318 Edgewood Ave., New Haven. This is a free event and the bookstore is wheelchair accessible.
by Andy Piascik, freelance writer and PAR reader
After two years, COVID-19 continues to ravage planet Earth. Over 5.5 million people have died, millions more have suffered major health consequences and millions beyond that have experienced severe economic hardship. In the United States, the official tally is 850,000 and the real toll is probably over one million.
Much media attention has focused on large segments of the population who refuse to get vaccinated and/or wear masks in public. In both cases, millions of people are downplaying the seriousness of COVID-19 and asserting individual rights in a thoroughly irresponsible manner, egged on by reactionary politicians and media figures. According to all data, the roughly 95% of current cases are the unvaccinated.
The pandemic has highlighted the destructive ramifications of a grossly unjust economic system. Domestically, a health care system based on profits led to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths. Millions of workers in the United States lost their jobs and, when normal unemployment benefits proved inadequate, the federal government was forced by popular outrage to provide a short-term supplement. When the pandemic ebbed somewhat, working-class parents faced the terrible dilemma of fearing to send their children back to school while not being able to keep them home because of having to return to work.
Internationally, hundreds of millions in the global South are unvaccinated because elites in control of the vaccines have primarily only made them available on a for-profit basis. Millions of doses remain warehoused in the US because of those who refuse to get vaccinated and as many as 100 million doses will soon expire. The richest of the rich, meanwhile, have prospered so much that 2020 saw the introduction of a new word to the English language: centi-billionaire.
While we will hopefully get a handle on COVID-19, we nonetheless confront a planet more unstable and dangerous. As in every other instance of human progress, organized collective action is key. All individuals, organizations and movements have a role to play. No one in power is going to do it for us.
by Andy Piascik, activist, author
Connecticut’s Fairfield County has cities that, even in their bustling heydays, were places rife with poverty and despair. It is also historically a place where the well-to-do and richest of the rich live. Both have been the subject of much literature, and Richard Yates’s 1961 Revolutionary Road is one of the best novels about the latter.
Set in 1955, the novel is the story of Frank and April Wheeler. Frank commutes from Fairfield County to Manhattan where he is employed at Knox Business Machines. Though well paid, Frank feels diminished by his job and regularly makes fun of it.
Similarly, Frank and April mock their neighbors. They see something hollow at the core of the suburban dream, and it becomes important they believe they are better than their surroundings. Out of their unhappiness comes April’s idea that they move to Paris.
Their neighbors and Frank’s colleagues resent the fact that the Wheelers make clear what they all seem to know: their well-constructed lives in the Connecticut suburbs have not produced happiness. Frank is never as enthusiastic about Paris, however, and the plan soon unravels. Heated arguments and recriminations ensue followed, ultimately, by tragedy.
No Escape From Unhappiness
As is true today, the Fairfield County suburbs are depicted as the ultimate badge of success. Problems are supposed to be absent or at least easily solve-able. While it’s likely no one ever believed that, the toll unhappiness takes is greater because of the promise.
Yates also dissects the emptiness of life in the United States at what is often viewed as its apex. Fairfield County represented all that the country aspired to be in the 1950s, yet the people in Revolutionary Road find it is seriously lacking.
Because not so much has changed, Revolutionary Road is still powerful and relevant. Parts of Fairfield County are wealthier than ever, yet unhappiness, perhaps especially among the young, is an ongoing problem. While those problems are not on the scale of those in Connecticut’s poorest cities, they remain a blight on the American Dream.
What distinguishes Revolutionary Road from contemporary Fairfield County novels with similar themes like Sloan Wilson’s The Man in The Gray Flannel Suit and Laura Hobson’s Gentleman’s Agreement is that it ends in tragedy and defeat. It is perhaps for that reason that neither the novel nor the film adaptation that starred Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, no less, were well-received.
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Bridgeport native Andy Piascik is a long-time activist and award-winning author whose most recent book is the novel In Motion. He can be reached at [email protected].
A version of this article was published at connecticuthistory.org