Re: introductions

[David Landes <dlandes@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Pen-l folks --
   As a lurker on pen-l for the past year, I'm responding to Michael's
invitation to introduce ourselves.
   I teach econ parttime at a community
college in Silicon Valley with evening students who mostly work fulltime
and tend to be older than those at San Jose State where I taught in the
early 70's.  Most are quite open to hearing a progressive perspective
tho' very distrustful of any solution smacking of socialism due to their
deep resentment of their own governments and the corporate hierarchies in
which they tend to work as well as the East European experience.
  I've been active in the disability rights movement for the past 20
years.  Since 1980 I've coupled that with my interest in Latin American
underdevelopment by helping to organize material and technical support
for disabled organizations in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Cuba.
Currently, I spend days working as a counselor in a Berkeley non-profit
which trains disabled people as computer programmers.
   I appreciate the work that Michael and others have devoted to Pen-l.
Although I lurk, it has been in an invaluable resource reconnecting me
to what people are thinking and doing.

David Landes
Oakland, California