Viking_Yearbook_71

64 Graduate I graduated from Lincoln High School and went right into Portland State . I started as a drama-speech major, but I switched to foreign languages my second year. I graduated in six years. While I was going to college I worked in a service station at the lone Plaza by Portland State. Also I was a bus boy at Lydia's Restaurant for four years. In fact, that work led to what I'm doing now. I got my bartending license from Lydia's. Now I tend bar at the race tracks approximately seven months out of the year. I have a pretty soft go of it because I get paid about $6 above scale and I only have to work six hours a day. During the other months I draw unemployment, which gives me time for my other hobbies. I like to gamble. In the winter I make a fairly good living off the football games. I play drums for a group and possibly someday something might come of that. I've had offers from people in Reno to deal craps. So I might go to Reno this summer and learn to be a craps dealer. If I hadn't gone to college I wouldn't have been exposed to certain subjects I have interest in now. I feel the six years I spent at Portland State were beneficial. I wish I had that outlook on my college career then, instead of seeing the six years as just a matter of tenure to get a nice job later. I wish I had put more time into my years there and done more things . When I graduated from Portland State, I had the college graduate's desire to improve myself- get a master's degree . So I went to Europe to go to school. But when I got over there I found the roulette tables more exciting than the classrooms. I spent most of my time on the Riviera gambling. I' m still working on a novelty travel book, an introduction to casino life in Europe , called Round Trip Roulette . .. It may sell. SDS Member I'm a member of the Portland State chapter of SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) because I think it's probably the only organization on this campus that revolutionaries can go into for meaningful attempts at social change . What I mean by revolutionaries are people who want to overthrow the present economic system of capitalism and the political system of the ruling class that is essentially choosing people to run the country. I think that the only way the government can be overthrown is through violence . Any progressive changes in this country have come about through violence. The so-called freeing of the slaves came about through intensive slave revolts. The unionization of workers came about through extensive violence aga inst portions of the ruling class. The Civil Rights campaign which started in 1954 has not really gotten anywhere . In fact, it has caused reactionary feel ings among much of the American public. It has not gotten anywhere mainly because it has not used violence which is the only way to affect social change. When the police used violence aga inst the people in the Park Blocks last May they were essentially doing the only thing which they knew how to do . Some of the police who were involved in that came from the Police Institute on campus which SDS has been working against. The Police Institute is the personification of the liberal myth that if you educate the policeman, give him a college education, he'll be nice and liberal and will not beat you . Educated cops are able to learn methods of putting down ghetto rebellions and other acts of rebellion more effectively. I don't think last year's strike was very effective. It was an attempt to establish some sort of free university on the four blocks where we put up barricades and shut ourselves off from the rest of the city. By shutting ourselves off and setting things up within those four Park Blocks, we set ourselves up for the attack that did happen. Some people may think it's contradictory to be a revolutionary yet be a student in a middle-class, bourgeois university . I certainly don't hope to accomplish many things here, other than harrassment of the more repulsive of Portland State's institutions, such as the CIA-backed Middle East Studies Center and the Justice Department-backed Police Institute. But the colleges and universities can be used as organizing places for revolutionaries. As the left movement and the youth movement grow, revolutionaries will probably begin to move off campus. Th is can probably be seen already, as there is a decrease in so -called student unrest. At this point in time , however, I think universities can be used , not only as excellent places to rip off material and supplies for the movement, but as a base where revolutionaries can try to educate students in the necessity of a violent revolution in the country. This has already been fairly successful. In the last Gallup Poll, 42 percent of the students interviewed said that they thought there would be a revolution within the next 25 years. And 44 percent thought that violence was justified to bring about social change . ~ --· -----------