by Bruce Shapiro
September 1983
The New Haven Green gets a slice of "dough raising" - community action style.
It was a protest and fund raiser-or, more accurately, a dough-raiser; Banana Republic Creme Pie... Reaganomics crumb cake... pentagon sponge cake... breadline pudding... all were featured at the Let Them Eat Cake Sale, held around the green last weekend. "Let them eat cake," of course, was Marie Antoinette's callous response to concerns that 18th-century French peasants might not have enough bread.
Sponsored by the Coalition for People, Office Workers of New Haven, and the Peace and Justice Action Center, the Let Them Eat Cake Sale was part of a national campaign involving community-action groups in more than 100 cities.
Food and politics mixed freely at a press conference before the sale. Local attorney and flour fortune heir Charles Pillsbury, on the national, Let Them Eat Cake advisory board, said he was making a Pillsbury-mix Bundt cake. "It symbolizes Reagan's 'safety-net,'" he explained, "because it has a big hole in the middle."
Reagan's trickle-down theory is like saying we get the crumbs dusted off the table," said the Coalition for People's Steve Weingarten. "But it is about time we started throwing the crumbs back. We have a right to the food on the top of the table."
One of the nice things about cake explained local food artist Beverly Ritchie [sic] is that unlike the economy "everyone gets an equal piece." Ritchie [sic] baked a Trident Submarine Cake-decorated with pieces of Trident gum (made with saccharin, which is carcinogenic, "just like radiation from the Trident Sub") and edged with bleeding hearts.
Paul Hodel of the Peace and Justice Action Center even found a politico-culinary precedent. "This is consistent with American tradition," he said. "Think about the Boston Tea Party."
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