Articles by: Andy Piascik

Forever Young: Staughton Lynd

Forever Young: Staughton Lynd

My dear friend Staughton Lynd died Thursday five days before what would have been his 93rd birthday. It is no overstatement to say that Staughton inspired millions of people around the world and I will always cherish a glorious weekend I spent with him and his lovely wife Alice at their home in Ohio in 2010.  In honor of a[Read More…]

by 21/11/2022 Comments are Disabled Life/Philosophy
The United States After Trump

The United States After Trump

After four nightmarish years, the presidency of Donald Trump came to an end in January. Over 81 million people voted for Joe Biden over Trump, the largest vote total for any presidential candidate in the country’s history. Many of those votes for Biden were the result of the extraordinary efforts of grassroots organizers who rallied people to the importance of[Read More…]

by 10/04/2021 Comments are Disabled World
Grocery Store Workers Take on Billion Dollar Multinational

Grocery Store Workers Take on Billion Dollar Multinational

Note: The UFCW and Stop and Shop announced Monday morning that they have reached a tentative agreement. Details to follow. At precisely 1:00 Eastern time on the afternoon of April 11th, 31,000 workers at 253 Stop and Shop grocery stores throughout Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts walked off their jobs. The strike came after several months of failed negotiations in[Read More…]

by 22/04/2019 Comments are Disabled World
Four Decades of Radical Radio: an Interview With WPKN’s Scott Harris

Four Decades of Radical Radio: an Interview With WPKN’s Scott Harris

Scott Harris has been hosting a show at WPKN, Bridgeport’s independent, alternative radio station, for a remarkable 42 years. He began in 1977 with a music show which he transformed a decade later to Counterpoint, a two-hour weekly program chock full of news, analysis, interviews and discussion not heard in corporate media. Along the way, Harris and his colleagues created a[Read More…]

by 28/03/2019 Comments are Disabled World
Priscilla Murolo

‘Working People Will Make a Better World’: An Interview With Labor Historian Priscilla Murolo

Priscilla Murolo is a professor of history at Sarah Lawrence College, where she formerly directed the graduate program in Women’s History. She also teaches in the Union Leadership and Activism Master’s Program at the University of Massachusetts. Beginning in the 1960s, she has been involved in the women’s movement, labor organizing and many community campaigns and organizations. Murolo is the[Read More…]

by 28/09/2018 Comments are Disabled Life/Philosophy
Looking Back at the Vietnam War

Looking Back at the Vietnam War

Last year marked 40 years since the end of the Vietnam War. At least that’s what it’s called in the United States, the Vietnam War. In Vietnam, it’s called the American War to distinguish the phase involving the United States from those involving other aggressors and colonizers — China, France and Japan most notably. The occasion has been marked by[Read More…]

by 01/09/2018 2 comments Imperialism
Ku Klux Klan

The Ku Klux Klan in Connecticut

    Within months of the Union victory in the Civil War in 1865, a small band of soldiers from the defeated Confederate army gathered in Pulaski, Tennessee, and formed an organization they dubbed the Ku Klux Klan. Very quickly, like-minded individuals—mostly professionals and former plantation owners—joined what was initially a loose network of chapters throughout much of the South. Their[Read More…]

by 06/08/2018 Comments are Disabled World
Jane LaTour on 50+ Years in the Labor Movement (And Still Going)

Jane LaTour on 50+ Years in the Labor Movement (And Still Going)

                                                                                                                       [Read More…]

by 15/06/2018 2 comments Life/Philosophy
Teachers’ Strikes Past and Present

Teachers’ Strikes Past and Present

            Almost out of nowhere, an inspiring wave of strikes by public school teachers has sweept the United States. Teachers in Arizona have just ended a strike on the heels of walk-outs in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Colorado and Kentucky. Similar actions between now and the end of the school year loom in others states. Thus far, unity among teachers in[Read More…]

by 08/05/2018 Comments are Disabled World
The Enduring Importance of Arthur Miller: The Price and The Hook

The Enduring Importance of Arthur Miller: The Price and The Hook

  Seventy years after his initial Broadway success with All My Sons and 12 years after his death, Arthur Miller continues to cast a long shadow over theater in the United States. His plays are staples ofhigh school drama clubs, college and university theater departments and regional theaters around the country, and his best-known works – Death of a Salesman,[Read More…]

by 29/07/2017 1 comment Arts/Literature
Pa’lante: The Young Lords In Bridgeport

Pa’lante: The Young Lords In Bridgeport

Virtually every segment of society was impacted by the democratic upsurge in the United States in the 1960’s and Puerto Ricans were no exception. Puerto Ricans in a number of places came together to form organizations and participate in multiracial coalitions in order to address a number of pressing problems. Among the most popular Puerto Rican organizations was the Young[Read More…]

by 11/07/2017 1 comment World
Witness To The Revolution: Radicals, Resisters, Vets, Hippies, And The Year America Lost Its Mind And Found Its Soul

Witness To The Revolution: Radicals, Resisters, Vets, Hippies, And The Year America Lost Its Mind And Found Its Soul

Witness to the Revolution: Radicals, Resisters, Vets, Hippies, and the Year America Lost Its Mind and Found Its Soul by Clara Bingham is a valuable contribution to further understanding and popularizing the radical upsurge of the 1960s. The book is an oral history and we hear from well-known figures of the time such as Ericka Huggins, Tom Hayden and Robin[Read More…]

by 30/04/2017 1 comment Book Review
The Bridgeport Herald Wages an Important Free Speech Fight

The Bridgeport Herald Wages an Important Free Speech Fight

                                                                                                                       [Read More…]

by 26/04/2017 1 comment Arts/Literature
President Rodrigo Duterte’s Killing Fields And People’s War In The Philippines

President Rodrigo Duterte’s Killing Fields And People’s War In The Philippines

Interview with E. San Juan, Jr. by Andy Piascik 1.) Who is President Rodrigo Duterte and who and what does he represent? For 22 years, Duterte was mayor of Davao City, the largest urban complex in Mindanao island, Philippines. TIME magazine dubbed him “the Punisher” for allegedly organizing the death-squads that eliminated drug dealers and petty criminals via “extra-judicial killings”[Read More…]

by 15/12/2016 2 comments World
Telling Local People’s History: An Interview With Hartford Activist Steve Thornton

Telling Local People’s History: An Interview With Hartford Activist Steve Thornton

                                                                                                                                                                                           Steve Thornton has been an activist in Hartford since moving there in the 1970’s after graduating from the University of Connecticut. He worked for many years[Read More…]

by 11/12/2016 1 comment Life/Philosophy
   The Hills of Connecticut: Where Theatre And Life Became One  

   The Hills of Connecticut: Where Theatre And Life Became One  

                                                                                                                                                                                                                In 1931, a new theater ensemble was formed in New York City. The vision of Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg,[Read More…]

by 04/07/2016 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature