j Attorney awaits new wave of radicalism
Strike another match.
Supposedly, student radicalism
has died in its sleep, its followers
having broken from the battle lines
when they saw money at the end
of the tunnel. But at least one
former campus radical still serves
his politics.
“We’re at a period between the
waves,” says Mike Goldstein.
“We can’t compare now to the
crest of the wave of a few years
ago. But if people come in and
learn what’s going on now, I think
we won’t be so naive and self
righteous when the next wave
comes along.”
Goldstein is a a bearded
Eugene attorney with slightly long,
curly hair, wire-rimmed glasses
and is 27 years old. In court, he
wears a corduroy jacket, a white
shirt and neat pants. His tie is
knotted crookedly, so that the shirt
shows at the neck, but he adjusts
it before walking into the court
room.
“I guess people would call me a
Story and Photo
By NICK GALLO
Of the Emerald
socialist, a Marxist — I don’t know
which label fits the best,” says
Goldstein. “But you could say I’m
not for capitalism.”
Goldstein was born May 6,
1949, in Passaic, N.J., an old im
migrant town whose population
has been slipping since the
Mike Goldstein
Sex equity conference scheduled
Aileen Hernandez, an urban affairs and management consultant in
San Francisco and former commissioner of the U.S. Equal Employment
Opportunities Commission will speak in Eugene Thursday as part of the
Sex Equity in Educational Leadership (SEEL) Conference slated for the
weekend.
Hernandez’s speech, “Holding Up Half the Sky: Women in Power,”
will be free to the public. It is scheduled for 2 p.m. in the EMU.
Hernandez will also speak at 7 p.m. Thursday. The topic will be
“Double Whammy — Not Double Counting,” a discussion of being
black and female, at the Eugene School District Education Center.
ATTENTION. . .
Prospective Teachers
If you need the University of Oregon’s
recommendation for an Oregon teaching
certificate based on Spring 1977 and/or
prior academic work, please pick up the
application packets now—Room 102.
College of Education.
1920s. He lived in a Jewish-Polish
neighborhood and went to
schools where teachers were beat
up routinely and the vice-prin
cipal’s car stolen and driven into a
nearby river. A minor protest as
early as junior high school
sparked the rebel in Goldstein.
“I had a friend whose father was
a printer,” he says. “We’d sneak
over to his house at night and
counterfeit hall passes. We were
protesting school prayer. It was in
teresting — the greasers and
hoods and I had an alliance. We
all had more detention than there
were days of school."
After high school, Goldstein
attended Cornell University in
Ithaca, N.Y. — the Cornell which
made the cover of Time maga
zine in the spring of 1969 when a
group of blacks strapped with bul
let magazines took over the stu
dent union.
"Cornell was trying to do what
other schools hadn’t attempted
yet,” says Goldstein. “They
wanted to set up black studies
programs but they were such pat
ronizing programs ... After a few
crossburnings in Ithaca, the
blacks had had enough.”
A lesson in politics emerged
during that crisis, says Goldstein.
“The first day, all the whites
wanted the administration to get
the blacks out. But when the crisis
was over, a mass education had
happened. They (the blacks) had
caught people's attention — and
people listened. People learned
how to organize and stood to
gether.”
After marginal involvement with
the Cornell chapter of the SDS
(Students for a Democratic Soci
ety), Goldstein graduated with a
B.A. in government and entered
the University of Oregon Law
School in 1973. By that time, the
University’s radical political cli
mate had cooled, but not long
after, the lettuce boycotts began
on campus.
Goldstein began leafleting and
picketi ng. Then he got a chance to
get his “legal feet’’ wet. A group of
boycotters marched into a cam
pus building, the scene of the
Oregon Press Conference. Two
members of the group, Tony
Gregg and Esawey Amasha, were
brought to student conduct trial for
disrupting a University function.
Goldstein defended the pair.
“It was more a political experi
ence than a legal one,” says
Goldstein. “The authorities really
showed their true colors in that
one. (University Pres.) Bob Clark
blew a gut over that, he turned into
the father of the boycott, he edu
cated more people by being rep
ressive than anything else did.”
Gregg and Amasha were ac
quitted of the charges.
After Goldstein got his law de
gree in 1975, he left Eugene for a
little less than a year before return
ing to start practicing law out of his
house. In the year since, he has
defended political activists, such
as the demonstrators at the inau
guration of University Pres. Wil
liam Boyd, and is now on retainer
with Hoedads, a workers’
cooperative in Eugene. He will
also help people settle simple di
social change, but that it can be a
positive force.
“The laws are only as good as
as the society that produces
them,” he notes. The legal system
is designed to regulate capitalism,
to provide order for its growth, not
to replace it. But it’s a front for us to
struggle on and I believe in using
all the fronts we have.
“The law can’t really solve prob
lems as long as society uses
people's bodies to produce wealth
and then throws them away,” he
says. “That’s why I don’t think
lawyers are bad people, it’s their
role within the system. The prob
lem goes deeper than individual
moral worth.”
And this is one reason why the
dilemma of a lawyer defending a
guilty client is held in perspective
by Goldstein.
“It’s a matter of first things first,’’
he says. “We’re not identifying
any problems the way it is now.
We’re not solving them in the court
room. The ruling class would like
nothing better than to see you and
I slug it out with people like the
pornographers. And you take
“It would be good if you didn’t have to
purchase the knowledge from a specialist. ”
vorce cases with less than the
usual large attorney’s fee.
“I decided to go into practice
by myself to do the cases I
wanted,” he says. “It would be
good if you didn’t have to purch
ase the knowledge of law from a
specialist. I don’t like that the law
is wrapped in all its mystical
bullshit so that people are kept in
ignorance. I try to be reasonable
with my rates, not charitable, but
fair, flexible,” he says, noting that
his rates are a fraction of most
attorneys fees which can easily
run over $1,000 for felony cases.
Goldstein says he doesn’t view
the law as any major vehicle of
these crimes like pornography —
the pornographers aren’t doing
anything different than what this
society wants us to do. Only
they’re doing it well — they’re
making a buck.”
Goldstein, who is a member of
the National Lawyer’s Guild, a
group of “progressive lawyers,”
as he puts it, says he plans to stay
in Eugene and practice law.
“There’s nothing else I’d rather
be doing,” he smiles. As the inter
view draws to a close Goldstein is
asked how the legal profession
will take to his comments on the
law. He shrugs and smiles, “I don’t
care, they hate me now as it is.”
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