Fifth Estate 103, April 15-29, 1970 Add to the Bookbuilder

Facts have come to light that show the Detroit Police Department was involved in a deal with a prosecution witness that involved pay-offs and promises of immunity from criminal charges.

Ronald Tunstall, who testified in court that he and David Valler, convicted bomber, plotted and executed seven bombings in late 1968, has stated in a sworn statement that he received over 20 payments of cash from police and promises of immunity from prosecution. He also was bought a new pair of glasses, given daily witness fees and allusions were made to the financing of college for him.

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As predicted in the last issue of the Fifth Estate [FE #102, April 2–15, 1970], Dave (Mad Bomber) Valler and several other co-defendants pleaded guilty to reduced charges arising from a series of Detroit area bombings in late 1968.

Valler was convicted for possession of dynamite and sentenced to two to five years in prison to be served at the same time he is doing his seven to ten for two counts of possession of marijuana. This is like getting no sentence whatsoever on the dynamite charge.

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FIFTH ESTATE #103, April 15–29, 1970, Vol. 4, No. 25, page 2

STAFF

Debbie Brentz

Steve Dunn

David Gaynes

Alan Gotkin

Mike John

Keep on Truck in’ Co-op

Jim Kennedy

Lee Ann Kennedy

David Levison

Rick London

Nick Medvecky

Bruce Montrose

Claudia Montrose

Harvey Ovshinsky

Dave Riddle

Bill Rowe

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Did you go to the march on April 15? Did you notice that there was lots of spirit on the march down Woodward and that things fell apart after that? The speakers (except for a couple) were mostly boring and the people were frustrated with the whole set-up. So they climbed the Soldier’s and Sailor’s statue, hung flags and then moved around in the street facing off cops for an hour and a half, eventually getting into a trashing set down by Hudson’s, blocking traffic on the Jefferson Freeway for awhile and finally dispersing after losing 18 people in busts.

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BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (LNS)—The Bakersfield City Council recently voted the death penalty for a second conviction for selling marijuana or illegal drugs. But the action is not expected to have any direct legal effect, since felony legislation has been preempted by the state.

Councilman Robert Whitemore, who introduced the legislation said, “Unless severe measures are taken an entire generation will be destroyed by dope.”

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Good news: The Other Section, the Detroit News’ pathetic attempt to suck off the youth culture will be getting the ax pretty soon. The pigs that run the paper are disappointed that it hasn’t tapped the “youth market” like they anticipated and they think its politics are too far out, i.e. to the left of Spiro’s....

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Recently, the Warren-Forest Student Mobilization Committee (SMC) chapter established a program for itself. The people felt that the anti-war movement in Detroit can and should go beyond the demand “U.S. Withdraw From Vietnam Now” to programs and demands which relate to the existence of American imperialism as a system which is oppressing people in other parts of the world as well as in Vietnam.

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Highland Park Junior College and High School students went on strike April 13. They returned to school on the 25^th, vowing to continue their struggle by other means. For two weeks the students and the Highland Park community have engaged in a non-violent demonstration, allowing those who wished to return to school to do so, though less than a quarter of the college attended classes.

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Ralph Nader came to town last week for the Wayne State University Teach-in on Ecology, and left a great number of people wondering if they really know what’s going on after all. Speaking before an overflow crowd at the Community Arts Auditorium, Nader called upon the population to achieve a better understanding of the workings of the large corporations that run this country.

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a review of

Do It! by Jerry Rubin. $2.45, Simon and Schuster, 256 pp.

“Do it!” A lot of people did it at Isla Vista. And there’ll be a lot more doings. Do it! It’s the title of Jerry Rubin’s new book. The slogan “Do it!” is the yippie version of the Panther’s “Seize the time.” “Dig it, Do it, seize the time” in whatever way you know how.

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SAN LUIS OBISPO, CALIF. (LNS)—Huey P. Newton, co-founder and Minister of Defense of the Black Panther Party, has been denied parole by the California Adult Authority. Huey is now in his second year of a 15-year term for manslaughter in the shooting of an Oakland policeman who had shot him in the stomach.

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There’s a lot of garbage down by the freeway.

It was early afternoon, clear and warm. We piled the garbage into the truck and headed towards Wayne State. “We” were about nine or ten brothers and sisters from People Concerned About Urban Renewal and the Young Prides. We were black and white, young and old, students and neighborhood people.

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In the recent controversial challenge to the jury selection process of Detroit Recorder’s Court, Prosecuting Attorney Robert Harrison said that he could not find any evidence of “systematic or intentional exclusion” of persons from serving on juries in the City of Detroit.

Nevertheless, Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Horace W. Gilmore has ruled that 73% of the potential jurors for the Rafael Viera-Clarence Fuller trial were “improperly excluded.”

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The history of black workers in this country and particularly in Detroit has been consistently ignored by the establishment media. Aware of the importance of this section of the working class, several young film makers are producing a film in cooperation with the League of Revolutionary Black Workers that deals with their struggles.

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A recent film critic termed Woodstock “a beautifully filmed record of rampant happiness,” which indeed it is. Michael Wadleigh’s 3-hour phenomenon is filled with enough visual and audio excitement to thrill an audience of heads and turn on all the straights.

Split-screen shots present everything from different views of the same entertainer, to different views of the whole stage, simultaneously, while colored filters instantly change the mood and dazzle the eye.

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TACOMA, Wash. (LNS)—Over 100 men in the Fort Lewis stockade boycotted meals in the stockade mess hall here April 15^th. They released the following statement:

“We oppose the use of American youth and resources to suppress the Vietnamese and other Third World peoples.

“We also oppose the use of GIs to suppress the Latin American people in ‘ghetto pacification’ and to break strikes like the recent postal workers’ strike. An army should serve the people, not suppress and abuse them.”

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FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (LNS) — GIs United Against the War in Vietnam are sponsoring an anti-war action here on May 16.

The action is part of the “Nine Days in May,” a nationally coordinated program of primarily anti-war and anti-imperialism actions planned on or near military bases around the country. The primary aim of the actions is the organization and expression of GI anti-war sentiment.

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NOTE: Several troopers recently were court martialed at Quan Loi, South Viet Nam, headquarters of the 1^st Air Cavalry Division’s 3^rd Brigade, for refusing to fight. During the last four and a half months of 1969, a total of 109 men in the 1^st Cav faced trial for the same offense.

Division spokesmen point out that men who decide to drop out are a small minority. But some observers feel the number is growing throughout Vietnam as anti-war feeling mounts back home and the U.S. government makes clear its intention to pull out the majority of fighting troops.

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“The decision to win is not a utopian decision! The decision to win is a practical decision, a decision that we carry into the fields every day along with our machetes!”

—Riso, head of the Cuban Delegation, young communists working with the Venceremos Brigade

Special from Cuba — In Cuba, the gun, which used to mean repression and terror as it does in the United States, now symbolizes revolution and its defense. Because the will of the people decides which way the barrel shall point.....

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This is the first in a series on Birth Control, compiled and presented with the aid of the Women’s News Co-op.

In less than 10 years there has been a staggering increase in the availability of contraceptive devices. The most talked about of these has been the pill. The media, drug companies and medical establishment have advanced and profited from the myth that the pill has led to the sexual liberation of women. But nothing of the sort has happened. Women are still denied complete self-expression in this society, are still the second sex—looked at by men primarily as sex-objects. The contraceptive explosion has not extended their possible life choices in many important ways. Families may be smaller but the woman’s place is still in the home. Furthermore, the continuing disclosures of many of the pill’s possible side-effects makes it abundantly clear that whatever “freedom” the pill has given is greatly diminished by the risks and uncertainties involved in taking it.

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NEW YORK (LNS) The FBI has arrested one of the twelve top Weathermen who were indicted for conspiracy to riot in Chicago last October.

Linda Evans, a former SDS organizer in Michigan and more recently a Weatherwoman activist in the Detroit area, was captured by Federal agents on a street in New York’s East Village.

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PNOMPENH, CAMBODIA (LNS)—Several hundred unarmed men, women and children are shot down in the village of Prasauc near the Cambodian border. The bodies of over 400 Vietnamese roped together are found floating down the Mekong River near the Cambodian capital. These are just two aspects of the political program of the new Cambodian regime.

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The following is an interview-rap with Detroit poet and sometime FIFTH ESTATE feature writer Hank Malone, conducted by another F.E. feature writer, Thomas Haroldson.

HAROLDSON: Hank Malone isn’t exactly a household word, but John Sinclair said in one of his articles that you were on the scene long before he was. What was Detroit like back then?

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(Women’s News Co-op) — A state of emergency exists at Cooley High School. Most people who relate to Cooley in any way agree that the situation is very uptight. But it’s not affecting everyone the same way and theories about its causes and solutions vary, depending on who you’re talking to.

Black students have been harassed, beaten up and “excluded” in large numbers for the past two years. In the spring of 1968 and winter of 1969 members of the white racist group Breakthrough beat up black kids at the school but no police action was ever taken. In the fall of 1969 after a clash between black and white kids, some black kids were expelled but white kids were not.

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WASHINGTON—Seaman Roger Priest, who said he felt it was his “duty to speak out on the Vietnam war,” received nearly the minimum court-martial sentence after being convicted of promoting disloyalty with his anti-war newspaper, “OM.”

Priest was convicted April 27 and received a bad-conduct discharge, a cut in rank and a reprimand. He could have received a total of 39 years in prison for the charges facing him.

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

Dear Dr. Schoenfeld:

For the past six weeks or so I have been finding it extremely difficult to get an erection. I have also noticed that one of the testicles is becoming larger and the regular size one appears and feels like it has a growth coming on it. Do you think this would have anything to do with the erection problem?

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To The Fifth Estate:

I ask that you print this letter in the next issue of your paper in order to repair some of the damage I fear has resulted, inadvertently, from an inaccurate report of an interview I gave to a Detroit Free Press reporter, published after the April 15^th anti-war rally.

The article in the Free Press was inaccurate in two regards: First, I never said that members of SDS were responsible for the violence which occurred on April 15. I did not lay blame for the violence on any person or group nor was it the purpose of the interview to do so.

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in Cooperation with Detroit Adventure

THURS APRIL 30

Folksinger DANNY COX folksings and stuff in the University Ballroom, Student Center Bldg., WSU, 7:30–10:30 p.m. Adm. $1.50.

SALESMAN, one of the most highly acclaimed films of the year. Rackham Aud., Woodward at Farnsworth. 8:30 p.m. Students $1.50, others $2.50.

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