we will stay together, after this primary, win, lose or draw. If I am elected governor, we will have that network in place, (a) to keep me accountable; and (b) because putting somebody into office is only 10 percent of the battle .. . then comes the real fun. Most of what I am advocating is going to take years of struggle and legislative battles. The special interests are going to oppose most of my platform. It’s not going to be easy. So I have been into the senior community, the veterans’ community, the small business community, solar and energy activists, recyclers, women’s groups ... these are some of. the areas that I’ve been working with as I’ve tried to set up this network statewide. CSQ: I’d like to go to what I think is really the gut issue of this whole election. We’re in as tight a times as we’ve seen. How can the State of Oregon cope with this problem? It might be with us for a while. Rust: First of all, I think that the high interest rates are going to be with us for a while because of our trillion-dollar national debt. That means that the government keeps borrowing money, that means that there is tight money, that means that there are high interest rates. My program is to make Oregon insulated from federal fiscal policies as much as possible. We can create an independent kind of economy here in Oregon that naturally is integrated and relates to the rest of the national economy, but that strikes off on its own in very important ways. I want to establish a state commercial bank. I want the pension funds, the state accident insurance funds and the local investment pool monies, the state tax monies, not new tax monies but the ones that are already collected, I want those dollars to be rounded up and directed back to the communities in Oregon ... our small businesses, our small family farms, our minority community, depressed sectors of the economy. Not only are we now investing our own money out of the state, but the private sector is ripping the capital away by the millions; it’ll add up to billions. It’s not only in the State of Oregon, it’s the whole United States. It’s losing its capital. Our manufacturing base is moving out. I think the public has a right to be involved in directing that capital. I want to say that the State of North Dakota has had a state bank for 60 years; it’s been extremely effective, saved a lot of small farms. It has returned a profit to the State of North Dakota for every year except for four in that 60-year span. CSQ: Would the state bank be willing to lend to any business in the state? Is Teledyne Wah Chang going to get a loan from such a state bank? Rust: All I’m saying is that we ought to direct capital in line with social policies. Naturally I’m talking about solar energy, recycling projects, renewable energy, bringing Rodale out here and setting up a Rodale West, for the Willamette Valley. I’m talking about those kinds of policies, because naturally that’s where I want to see the capital go. But you get on board the train and, by a democratic, decision-making process, you decide where it’s going to go. As far as new industry, I would like us to be the renewable energy capital of the United States. We have the potential, both human and in our natural resources. The Alternative Energy Development Commission, enacted by the legislature in 1979, found that we had almost four million kilowatts, or 4,000.megawatts of energy; that’s four Trojan’s worth, that could be immediately developed. This report has been shelved by the Atiyeh Administration, and instead, we have continued to go deeper into debt behind the WPPSS fiasco. The sales of that energy would be worth about a billion dollars a year. We could export that, on a short-term basis, out of the state. CSQ: Well, what is this? Rust: This is small hydro, without damming up anymore wild and scenic rivers, geothermal, methane, chips, slash, wind, conservation and solar. CSQ: At the same time, however, that the federal government has (Continued on page 6) An interview with the candidate For Portland City Council Joe Uris is running for position number two on the City Council, a seat to which Mildred Schwab has been appointed once and elected twice. This is Uris’s first try for public office but not his inauguration into politics. Shortly after coming to Portland in 1958 to attend Reed College, by Peggy Lindquist he became involved in the civil rights and peace movements. He was a Joe Uris outside his Portland home. highly visible anti-war activist during the '60s and was elected student body president of Portland State University in 1966. Since then he has received a Masters degree in Sociology and a doctorate in Urban Studies from PSU. He has worked as a social worker, college teacher and writer. “I’ve always wanted to be a writer and I’ve always been interested in politics — those two are constants in my life. I’m interested in what I call the situation of human beings and the possibilities. I guess I’m asking for a politics of the possible in a period of time when everybody’s talking about how anything good is impossible.” CSQ: Why are you running for office now? Uris: Because American politics are taking a turn to-everything I don’t believe in. They have become more and more plastic and electronic, less sincere, more fascistic, less concerned about human beings and human values, more angry and rejecting of hope, and have turned toward scapegoating. On the national and international level we’re starting to blame everybody but ourselves for our problems, and we’re going to be making demands of our citizens that they take responsibility for things they can’t be responsible for. Blaming the victims is not the answer to the problems of poverty and crime and sickness. CSQ: Why is a City Council seat a good place to launch a new political program? Uris: Anyplace is a good place to launch it. That’s really the answer. I believe, though, that for us to evolve a new American system, which has to be both democratic and concerned, we have to establish it at the lowest common denominator of the society. In Portland, in Oregon, the lowest common denominator, in terms of meaningful politics, is city politics. I’ve lived here, this is my home, and this is the logical place for me to begin. I’m not playing an ambitious game, I don’t see myself as someone who is going to be moving up through the political process. There are some central concerns that involve people in the city, that are remediable in this city. And they are tied to national and international issues, and state issues, and I want to make those ties clear, but at the same time, I want to work on the local level to deal with them. In that those who have the aggressive, the creative, the intellectual and the physical skills can really flourish. What I see is that our system is socialism for the rich, and capitalism for the poor. If anything, it ought to be the opposite. CSQ: The story we are hearing now is that there are not the resources for that sort of system. Uris: That’s nonsense. The fact of the matter is that 5 percent of this world’s population holds, depending on whose figure you use, anywhere from a third to a half of the world’s resources. Either we’re going to share on some level, or we’ll all probably go down in flames. I don’t think that there’s any problem with working out rational solutions. It doesn’t mean a curtailment of individual freedoms or destruction of the motive of selfinterest, which is, after all, part of human nature. I think they all can coexist. But there has to be some humanity, some civility and just generally, some more enlightened concern for each other. You know, this is a much more selfish time than a few years ago. There are certain economic forces that have compelled people to that selfish view, but those forces aren’t inevitable. It isn’t inevitable, for example, that we all have to go into n economic depression, that we have to go to war. But I think that unless sensible people start taking political responsibility, it’s quite likely that's what’s going to happen. CSQ: How would you change deci- (Continued on next page) I don’t want to do away with free enterprise, destroy individual initiative, end property rights, I don’t want to destroy the family, break up the home, I don’t want to hurt the business community. I guess I'm asking for a politics of the possible in a period of time when everybody’s talking about how anything good is impossible. the long term, I want to see a politics and a social system that offers the carrot without the stick. And I think we can do that. CSQ: What do you mean by that? Uris: Well, in America we have become so dominated by the pressures of our industrial and post-industrial development, that we automatically assume the only reason why people will work for a living, the only reason people will strive, is that they are afraid of starving. That’s kind of the bottom line of Reaganomics. I don’t think that’s true. One of the main reasons why human beings do things is because they get bored, because they’re curious creatures and they have ideas and ambitions they want to carry out. I believe, in our society, that we can afford a structure that makes it possible for the least fortunate of us to survive at the same time Photograph by David Milholland Clinton St. Quarterly 5
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