User:Platners

Born in El Paso County, Texas on February 9th, 1976 to two very young individuals. His father, a native west Texan, and his mother, a native New Mexican. Content in childhood and mastering the required Catholic rites of passage of the Norteño culture, he then graduated from the suburban east-El Paso high school, Montwood in 1994.

Around that time he somehow ended up in an enlisted man's uniform at a very cold New England naval base, where his rank never went higher than an "E-2." Eventually, as with most sailors, he was sent to southern California and helped close a Navy training center. After winning a Navy ROTC scholarship, platners attended San Diego State University and eventually graduated from the University of Southern California (or SC) but not before he was able to witness his beloved Trojans massacre opponents on the football field, was a devoted Texas Republican and enjoyed quite a few Sigma Pi parties. Of his most notable efforts at SC was the energy he spent toward the efforts of the "Viva Bush" presidential campaign in south-central Los Angeles. Closer to graduation, he was deemed as "un-commissionable" by the Navy and never became that Naval officer he wanted to become.

After SC, not only did he follow the typical trend of SC grads and moved to the San Fernando Valley (or as some call the 8-1-8, ((yes, the "eight-one-eight")), he also made his way into Graduate School at California State University, Northridge where he took himself way to seriously. After sitting through a few small aftershocks from the '94 Northridge quake and learned the ways of the Marxist, of which he initially rejected, he eventually received a Master of Arts degree from California State University, Northridge, with honors, (only wishing it was big deal to graduate with such status in Graduate School.) A few years latter he graduated from the University of Texas at El Paso with another Master's degree, only that time it was in Science.

It was also during this time that he worked as a nurse in various hospitals of southern California and border Texas. Because of his experience of working in the American health care industry, he started to believe that the only way to improve the system was through Socialist solutions.

When asked he usually labels himself a Texan Chicano Marxist (or neo-Marxist, depending on the crowd), but more discreetly he is a staunch believer in Liberation Theology. When asked about his political evolution and trajectory, he'll tell you that he proudly cast his first-ever vote for Ann Richards at the tender age of eighteen and maintains voter registration in the Green Party and supports anything that resembles the Socialist Party USA, (he still has a disdain for the "Independent voter")!

If you wanna see him, you'll usually find him in a non-Starbuck's coffee shop drinking the smallest, regular coffee and reading either the Texas Observer, the New York Times or La Jornada. (Don't approach him though as this is his personal "me" time and/or his "thinking" time).

On his spare time he usually tries to figure out whats wrong with the world and how one can change it one arm length at a time, but he mostly daydreams of his retirement to Taos or the anonymity that Mexico City provides.

Recently, he followed his college sweetheart to New York City where he attended New York University. While in NYC, he didn't travel north of 12th Street, west of 6th Avenue, East of the East River nor south of Houston Street (unless it was Chinatown). He now is a college professor at the University @ Buffalo.

He still believes that the world would be better off if it was politically and economically Socialist and can't think of any better place to live than New Mexico.

He also tries to maintain a blog, check it out: THE BLOG