Todd Eugene Vachon
Todd Vachon is a Salem native who currently resides in Colchester, CT. He was born in New London in 1976, attended Salem Elementary School and graduated from East Lyme High School in 1994. The son of working-class parents he grew up experiencing economic hard times until his father joined the CT Carpenter's Union. Todd, a member now himself, has a great deal of respect for the power and necessity of organized labor. Thanks in part to the union wage and benefits, he was able to become the first family member to attend college- graduating from Marist College in 1998 with a BA in Communications. After spending some time working in media for MTV and Nielsen Media Research he was accepted to the New York City Teaching Fellows program. For the next few years he taught 4th and 5th graders in an extremely underserved part of Brooklyn, NY and received an MA in Education from The City University of New York.
Having met his lovely wife, Genea, in New York the two then spent an extended honeymoon in Europe, residing mainly in Portugal. Here Todd experienced socialized healthcare, abundant and efficient mass transit, numerous political parties and the widespread use of renewable energy. This marked the beginning of his active involvement in politics when returning home to CT.
Seeing the corporatization of the media as an anti-democratic force he co-founded C.R.E.A.M. (Citizens for Reform of Entertainment and Media), attended the National Conference for Media Reform in St. Louis and began working on local activist campaigns sponsored by Free Press to stop further media ownership consolidation.
Furthermore, discovering the root of many of the world's current problems to be the capitalist economic system itself he co-founded and chartered The Socialist Party of CT (an affiliate of The Socialist Party, USA). The party has played an active role in the local anti-war movement and worked to educate people about the terrible side effects of production for profit, including: pollution, wasteful overproduction, mispricing, low wages, unemployment, wars to control resources, inflated military budgets, deflated domestic social budgets and outsourcing of manufacturing jobs to name just a few.
Todd is currently a member of the Fair Rent Commission and the Colchester Colored School Commission. He has been producing independent hip-hop music for over 12 years and currently performs with the band Frequency Activism from New London. He has been married for 4 years, is the father of one with a second on the way and really sincerely hopes to help make another, more sustainable world for all of our children.
