Fifth Estate 101, March 19-April 1, 1970 Add to the Bookbuilder

“Both police and armed forces follow orders. Orders. Orders flow from the top down. Up there, behind closed doors, in antechambers, in conference rooms, gavels bang on tables, the tinkling of silver decanters can be heard as ice water is poured by well-fed, conservatively dressed men in horn-rimmed glasses, fashionably dressed American widows with rejuvenated faces and tinted hair, the air permeated with the square humor of Bob Hope jokes. Here all the talking is done, all the thinking, all the deciding.”

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Fifth Estate #101, March 19-April 1, 1970, Vol. 4, No. 23, page 2

EDITORIAL GROUP

Alan Gotkin

Peter Werbe

Cathy West

DISTRIBUTION

Keep On Truck in’ Co-op

ADVERTISING

Steve Dunn’

STAFF

David Gaynes

Jim Kennedy

Rick London

Nick Medvecky

Bruce Montrose

Claudia Montrose

Bill Rowe

Marilyn Werbe

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The Black Economic Development Council has moved against the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan demanding that it give $200,000 for use in the black community. This is part of BEDC program that white churches pay reparations to the black community for the damage done to it over the last 350 years.

The National Episcopal Diocese has already agreed to give a large sum to the Council and the local group was demanding a similar show of Christian faith on the part of Bishop Richard Emrich and his church.

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“The pump won’t work ‘cause the vandals took the handles.”

—Bob Dylan

When three bombs, planted by revolutionaries, exploded at dawn Thursday, March 12, inside the New York offices of three major U.S. industrial corporations, they were not acts of mindless destruction.

The explosions at IBM, Socony Mobil, and Sylvania Electric were attacks by serious [word missing in original] who understand that it is these corporations that are marketing death, destruction, and social perversion in mass quantities.

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I remember being carried from the treatment room to a pleasant, sun-filled living room as I regained consciousness. The doctor carefully tucked a blanket around me and presented me with a smile and a cup of tea and asked how I felt.

I could hardly believe that I’d just had an abortion and remember the multiple crash of feelings I experienced at that moment—relief, tenderness, despair. The relief was due to the fact that it was over and that I was free again to make plans, to take up my life where I had left it, and that through the whole thing I had been treated with simple human dignity.

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How much is your long hair worth to you? Eight Ann Arbor brothers who were scalped during a short stay in the Washtenaw County jail think theirs is worth about $200,000.

This is the sum the eight, who were arrested following demonstrations against GE, on February 18^th are suing Sheriff Doug Harvey and two deputies for. They are also seeking a court order restraining Harvey and his men from similar actions in the future.

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Members of the Women’s Liberation Coalition of Michigan staged a protest march in downtown Detroit March 7 to “dramatize the atrocious deaths of our sisters who, in their desperation, have had butcher abortions.”

About fifty women dressed in black with their faces shrouded to symbolize their mourning marched silently through the streets carrying coat hangers, safety pins and other devices often used in illegal abortions. They proceeded to the City Morgue on Brush and Lafayette “where thousands of our murdered sisters have been taken, victims of those who oppose a woman’s right to control her own body and bear the children she wants.”

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The mass anti-war march set for April 15 down Woodward Ave. may have wider support than all previous such demonstrations.

Plans call for the march to begin at the Wayne State University campus at 2:00 pm and march to Kennedy Square for a rally from 3:30 to 7:00 pm. Speakers and rock bands will be featured there.

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It may take two or three years, but beware: Mayor Gribbs has let it be known that he is not adverse to a $1.00 admission fee to the Detroit Zoo, along with plans to raise the Sunday parking fee to $2.00...Detroit Patrolman Richard Worobec, who was shot in the New Bethel Incident nearly a year ago, is back on the job. Worobec, who is presently working at a desk job in the Police Department personnel office is “looking forward to outside duty”....

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Eldridge Cleaver has a rap about how immigration screwed up the unity of the American working class. How the English immigrants came and kicked the Indians off the land and then had to import black people to do the work, so that the Indians and blacks were always at the bottom of the heap. And then how later the Germans, French, Polish, Italians and Irish made the scene, each group starting at the bottom of the white job market and clawing its way up, only when the next immigrant group arrived and was forced into the shittiest jobs.

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“Sympathy for the Devil,” Jean-Luc Godard’s first film since his masterly “Weekend,” is full of radical rhetoric, Black Power, white fascism, graffiti, pornographic novels and rock music. Watching it is often difficult and demanding because Godard poses questions while denying us answers. Yet it is an impressive visual and aural orchestration of incredibly diverse parts, and its appearance is a cinematic event of the highest order. “Sympathy for the Devil” is about, among other things, the experience of artistic creation.

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BOSTON—Fuzzy the pig is going to be alright. Fuzzy is, fittingly, the mascot of the National Patrolman’s Association, and underwent a weekend operation for an intestinal disorder at the Angell Memorial Animal Hospital last week.

Richard MacEachner, president of the association, said the patrolmen picked a pig for a mascot because, “We believe pigs are beautiful. We’d rather associate with Fuzzy than some of the degenerates who run around referring to policemen as pigs.”

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Yesterday we were in your station.

it was not what we had in mind,

that morning—to be pulled over at gunpoint

& shoved upagainstthecar / motherfucker.

surrounded

by five or six cars

with pigs jumping

out of each pigcar

like clowns at the circus do &

their cars too were gaudy with

ads from their sponsors

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At first he just wanted us to pull our car over to the curb.

Deciding to milk the scene for all it was worth, he changed his mind—“Just get out of the car right here—hands up! Put your mother-fuckin’ hands on the roof and don’t MOVE!!”

His partner jumped out of the wagon and walked down the road a few feet to talk to one of the undercover state troopers that had been harassing the entire neighborhood for a month and who had undoubtedly set us up for the bust that morning.

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The League of Revolutionary Black Workers has been participating in elections of UAW locals and found itself confronted with vote fraud when it was clear the union bureaucrats could win in no other way.

At the Chrysler Eldon Avenue gear and axel plant four white company hacks won a recent election although the plant employees are 85% black, as is the local president, who won last year with League support. League leaders attribute the loss to the fact that the ballot box was locked in a police station overnight for “safekeeping” while waiting to be counted the next morning. The group plans to contest the election.

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FT. LEWIS, Wash., Feb. 28 — 300 people rallied to the defense of Pvt. Bruce McLean, an American Servicemen’s Union (ASU) member who was shanghaied to Vietnam Feb. 19. The rally was held at American Park, just off Ft. Lewis.

Speakers at the rally were Denny Leonard and Stan Hoffman both members of the Ft. Lewis local of the ASU. They called for the military to immediately return Pvt. McLean from Vietnam, where he was taken illegally. The rally was organized by Seattle Liberation Front and ASU Shelter-Half.

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A caucus of anti-war GIs meeting at the Feb. 15 Student Mobilization Committee conference in Cleveland decided to call for a national anti-war GI meeting. GIs at the conference represented bases from Alaska to Texas, and from Ft. Dix, N.J. to Ft. Lewis, Wash.

Some of the thinking behind the call for the GI conference was indicated by Tim Karney of Ft. Bliss GIs for Peace:

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Over the past year, 58 GI antiwar newspapers published by and for GIs have sprung up on bases around the country and overseas—substantially augmenting the quality of news and analysis for GIs who previously had access only to such military publications as Stars and Stripes—the official mouthpiece of the brass and lifers.

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from The Rat/UPS — Let’s run it on down. White males are most responsible for the destruction of human life and environment on the planet today. Yet who is controlling the supposed revolution to change all that? White males (yes, yes, even with their pasty fingers back in black and brown pies again). It just could make one a bit uneasy. It seems obvious that a legitimate revolution must be led by, MADE by those who have been most oppressed: black, brown, and white WOMEN with men relating to that the best they can. A genuine Left doesn’t consider anyone’s suffering irrelevant or titillating; nor does it function as a microcosm of capitalist economy, with men competing for power and status at the top, and women doing all the work at the bottom (and functioning as objectified prizes or “coin” as well). Goodbye to all that.

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Remember what happened when you came home from the Chicago Democratic Convention in 1968? Things started blowing up around here—things like police stations, draft-boards and recruiting stations—even the war-crimes building at U-M and the Ann Arbor CIA office.

A dude named David Valler was coming on the set in a big way around that time. Called himself “President Dave” and meant it. He was so far out on his ego trip he was appointing his future “cabinet” from off the street. One street brother was tapped for “Postmaster-General” because he delivered mail.

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The following appeared in the March 15 issue of the Black Panther, official organ of the Black Panther Party.

CONCERNING: The pre-planned political murder of Bobby Seale, Chairman of the Black Panther Party, in the electric chair in the state of Connecticut.

The Primary Task of the American Revolution, at this point in our history, is to defeat the Number One maneuver of the fascist power structure, which is to make an example of Bobby Seale by putting him to death in the Electric Chair in the state of Connecticut.

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Note: The Hog Farm is an apolitical commune which has set up shop in New Mexico. A few innovators who had been involved in People’s Park and Woodstock got together with the Hog Farm and kindred spirits and have recently come up with a groovy idea—why not stake out an “Earth People’s Park” in some vast wilderness territory, move in about 20,000 of the beautiful people, and live together in love and harmony, taking good care of each other and the natural environment. The Earth People’s Park developers are trying to collect $1 million to buy about 100,000 acres in New Mexico on which to settle their 20,000 people. Twenty thousand who are not Mexican, not Spanish-speaking, not Indian. Ecology-minded people really dig the idea. Those who can’t stand the rat-race of city life, those who feel they’ve struggled long enough and want to drop out, those who feel they could somehow build a better life away from the repression of the cities, groove on the idea. The Governor of New Mexico, reassured that the Earth People plan to “obey all the laws of the state,” grooves on the idea. The Chicano and Latino and Indian people of New Mexico don’t groove on the idea at all. The following article is from El Grito del Norte, the Chicano paper that comes out of Espanola, N.M. It explains the position of the people who already live on the land that the Earth People want to buy. Earth People’s Park has a mailing address at 1230 Grant Ave., Box 313, San Francisco, Calif 94113, where they expect to receive donations. People might want to write to them to tell them what they think of the idea of setting up their “liberated zone” in an area already brutally “liberated” from its original inhabitants. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ The basic message is: PLEASE DON’T COME! At least not now. Stop and think about a few things that you may not have heard about or thought about. Think about the fact that, much as you reject your middle class Anglo society and its values, you are still seen here as gringos. Anglos. Think about the 120-year old struggle by Chicanos and the even older struggle by Indians to get back millions of acres of land stolen from them by Anglo ranchers with their Anglo lawyer buddies. Think about what it means for a new influx of Anglos—no matter how different their purpose from those others—to come in and buy up land that the local people feel to be theirs and cannot afford to buy themselves. Think about the fact that a real estate agent in Taos reports having sold almost $500,000 worth of land to longhairs. Think, on the other hand, about how people have sometimes reacted to hippies who get welfare payments and food stamps. Even though this takes nothing away from poor Raza people, they have felt resentment. It seems like a false identification, when the hippies involved can get money from home or a decent job if necessary. Think about the water problem. Longhairs usually come from the big city, not knowing that water is precious and often hard to get. They see a stream and wash their feet or dishes in it. Hey! That’s our drinking water. We are used to being abused, ignored, scorned—but that’s too much. Think about not only the land and water, but also the culture. Longhairs come, often deliberately unwashed and ungroomed in their rebellion against a sterile, hypocritical middle-class society. They don’t see that, for the Spanish-speaking people, cleanliness is a weapon of cultural self-defense against the oppressor. It is not a symbol of hypocrisy but part of the little pride and self-respect left to them, preciously guarded. So is conventional morality: the tight-knit family is everywhere a source of strength and unity against a hostile environment. Longhair values might sometimes be better—but they cannot be imposed. Especially when you are not joining the struggle of the people against the oppression which is the source of many Raza values. Think about the educational advantages that you often have—whether you wanted to have them or not. You can come here and start a little business, and you will often succeed where Raza people fail (or would not even try). “Son muy vivo.” Raza people say—the hippies are very bright. It is often true, it is not your “fault,” but it is important to remember how many millions of times the Anglo’s education and technology helped to make him a successful oppressor. If you say, “I’ve come to learn from the people,” excuse us if we sometimes remember: that’s what the Anglos said when they came to Sierra Nevada, learned from us how to mine—and then drove us out, even murdered us. Think about yourself, and just how clear you are about rejecting your own society’s values. Recent events here have shown that, when things get heavy, the longhairs sometimes act very much like the society they have fled. When a hippie woman in Taos was raped by a Chicano youth (because the Chicanos don’t understand free women and because they have been taught not to see hippies as human beings) the longhaired men called the cops—THE COPS! In another case, the longhair went out and shot the Chicano dead for supposedly raping “his” woman. And he got off, with a hung jury. Think about this: the longhair has opted out. Most of the Chicanos and Indians have no option—except revolution. People here cannot flee to islands of peace in their nation of horrors, this is their nation. It cannot be said too often that there is a long, hard political and economic struggle in these beautiful mountains, a struggle for land and justice. That struggle calls for fighters and supporters, not refugees with their own set of problems. You may see the scenery as relief from an oppressive America. We see a battleground against oppression. You (rightly) condemn your own society, your own culture strongly, but why not go where it is, and change it? And if your answer to that is “I can’t” or “I won’t” then think about what this answer implies—and whether you are then a person needed by people here, who can be useful here. Now, finally, please think about this: if you must come, wait a while. Wait until things cool off for longhairs, wait until the speed freaks have hopefully left, wait until the longhairs who are already here can develop a better climate—if they can. While you wait, READ and LEARN about this part of the country. Read what has been done to the people here by the white man; find out why they see Kit Carson and those other frontier types as murderers—not heroes; find out what the U.S. Forest Service and Smokey the Bear represent here. Don’t just put on long skirts and beads, and think you understand “the Indians;” too many rich tourist ladies do that too: Learn Spanish, learn about the every day culture, hang around some poor Spanish-speaking families. Learn about the tradition of courtesy, and why you must not presume on it. Learn some humility; look in yourself for unconscious arrogance and selfishness. Ask yourself, what do I know? Do you know how many Mexican-Americans there are in this country? Do you know that, in terms of education and jobs, they are worse off even than the blacks? Can you imagine what it is to speak one language as a child and then suddenly be dumped into a classroom where another is enforced on you—and fall behind in class, then be told you are stupid? Can you see the difference between being poor and being without money? Can you go to a demonstration by poor people and let them run it their way, and not impose your style as did some longhairs in Santa Fe recently? Can you show respect for another people’s culture and not be disrespectful simply because that’s the way you feel toward your own culture. Can you in other words, do some hard thinking? If you think, you won’t come. Not now. And when you come, come as a revolutionary.

BUFFALO, New York (LNS) Students at the State University of New York at Buffalo pulled off a series; of actions for nearly a week in support of black athletes’ demands and to get police off campus in late February. They fought with police, attacked ‘political targets on campus and finally shut the place down on March 2.

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“The beauty parlor’s filled with sailors, the circus is in town.”

—Dylan

Bill Rowe, alias Desolation Rowe, radical accountant and financial wizard for the Fifth Estate, Argus, numerous rock groups and conspiracies far too numerous to mention here, was raided in his plush Northwest Detroit apartment, March 6^th.

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A high school diploma. Whether it’s meaningful or not is your own trip, but I think you’ll have to agree that it’s often an essential ingredient in getting a job or going to college in this bizarre country we inhabit.

If you’re a dropout and have been putting aside the idea of going back because of the hassles involved then read on brothers and sisters, it’s a whole lot easier than you’d think.

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Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

Antoinette Dishman was a 17 year old Barnard College freshman who died January 31^st of a heroin overdose. She had sniffed heroin at a party and was found dead the next morning. Hers wasn’t an exceptional case. Heroin overdoses killed more than 200 teenagers in New York City alone last year. The drug is made even more dangerous when used in combination with alcohol or barbiturates.

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This letter is in reply to the article by Tom Haroldson entitled, “Vote No On Survival” which appeared in FE #99, February 19 — March 4.

Mr. Haroldson makes some very good points in regards to Nixon’s bullshit maneuvers regarding the ecology issue, and also by pointing out that the “...ecology movement is endorsed by the very people who make the movement necessary.”

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in Cooperation with Detroit Adventure

THURS MARCH 19

POWER TO THE PEOPLE and other assorted revolutionary politics will be discussed by the citizens of the Woodstock Nation sponsored by the Free University and conducted by the White Panther Party. All persons, hippies, yippies, Commies and other facsimilies thereof are welcome. 8 p.m., 4867 John C. Lodge at Warren.

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