Paul Mielke
Born in 1966Grew up near St. Paul, Minnesota except for 3 years in northern Detroit suburbs in early 1970s (Macomb County where the Reagan Democrats were studied).Grew up in white middle class suburbia, for sure. Lutheran Christian and Scandanavian (yup Minnesota through and through..) Diversity consisted of an Indian (of India) family (middle class systems engineer for Sperry Univac) who lived a few houses down and some early Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian families in my elementary and junior high classes. (Mpls/St. Paul (especially St. Paul) was a haven for Southeast Asian refugees from 1970s-1990s).In college, I had a class in regular micro and macroeconomics and boy what a load of crap that seemed!! My prof was a rare Marxist, though, and he would end the last 10-15min of class with a discussion that was something like 'well, what do you think of this [neoclassical] stuff, it's junk!'Many in class would just nod, keep quiet or put their heads down... well, he inspired me enough to take a class he gave on Soviet economics. That was eye-opening and discouraging... but he was sure there was another way than the bureaucracy... Yugoslavia was another model we went over later in the class... it didn't leave me convinced at the time..Somewhat active in college with nuclear disarmament, campus greens. I was sympathetic to the CISPES (Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador) and the local Minneapolis Honeywell Project a few times. I got to meet Michael Harrington of the DSA in '86 or '87 when he came to Minnesota.Worked on a campaign for a Democratic (DFL in MN) state representative in 1990 but she was unsuccesful.I had several [relatively] low paying, unsteady technician jobs in early 1990s and kept working 2nd job in fast junk food until I landed a decent paying job in later 1990s.
