When I entered grad school, I was already teaching myself how to write database programs.   Four friends and I had each bought simple Atari computers and begun to play with them.  The toy computer cost several hundred dollars, which I had raised in a sham marriage to a Mexicana who needed a green card.  My first computer project had been mailing labels for a movement print shop called Ink Works in Pilsen.   Whenever one of my planning courses gave me a chance to automate some typical query, I was all over it.

I still had an ultra-left outlook on electoral politics.  I didn’t appreciate the role of reform.  Once Professor Hoch assigned me to write a paper on how a diligent urban planner could impact governmental services.  My thesis was that there is no ability for reformers to deliver anything other than what the rich elites require.  The professor recognized it as a cop out and charitably gave me a “B” for my work.

My computer skills got me a job teaching a class in Excel to the other planning students.  It also got me a job at the Center for Urban Economic Development (CUED), an activist think tank associated with the school.  I was comfortable with CUED’s collective style of leadership and discussion.  My days were consumed with banging on a keyboard, learning the mysteries of data basing and analysis.  I wrote a system for placement agencies to match job openings with job seekers.

I told no one about the jail time that was hanging over my head – not even Nick Rieser, my best friend at the time.  When the court date arrived over a year after the arrest, my day of reckoning was at hand.  Would my life be interrupted again by a couple years in jail?  Who would take care of my small family?  To my relief, I was able to plead guilty in exchange for probation and a $5000 fine.  Surely my pale complexion had something to do with getting a break.  After about a year of not paying on my fine, I was able to negotiate a bribe of $500 to get cleared of the debt.

I felt that I needed to be the best. I didn’t want anyone pointing back at the bridges that I had burned.  It had to be, “Bill Drew? We need him.  Don’t mention his past”.  And so it was.  I helped Nick Rieser get hired at a not-for-profit research start up, Metro Chicago Information Center (MCIC).   My plan was to get hired on once Nick was on the inside.  And that is exactly what happened.