Fifth Estate 109, July 9-22, 1970 Add to the Bookbuilder

The Fifth Estate is thinking about expanding operations, so we can get a better paper out to the people.

We particularly want it to be more of a Motor City paper, talking about where this city is coming from and where it is going.

We want the paper to make it a regular thing to cover more of what is happening in the parks, the schools, the factories and the communities. So if there is news happening that you know about, give us a ring and we can try and check it out and get it into the paper.

Jerry Brown, the anti-war GI who exposed the illegal physicals being given at Ft. Wayne, is back in Detroit. The question now is how long he’ll be around.

Spec. 4 Brown, who is a medical technician at the Detroit induction center, was interviewed by this newspaper in May regarding the improper procedures at the base and was transferred to Ft. Harrison in Indiana as a punitive measure. After a month’s stay at the base, the brass decided to ship Brown back to Ft. Wayne because of his continuing GI organizing efforts there.

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Staff

Fifth Estate #109, July 9–22, 1970, Vol. 5, No. 5, page 2

Debby Brentz

David Gaynes

Carol George

Mike John

Keep on Truckin’ Co-op

Resa Jannett

Jim Kennedy

Lee Ann Kennedy

David Levison

Julie Medvecky

Nick Medvecky

Harvey Ovshinsky

Dave Riddle

Bill Rowe

Len Schaefer

Chris Singer

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Five black men face charges of having participated in what Detroit police have called a “plot to ambush officers at random” following a shooting incident in which three officers were wounded.

The department’s Special Investigation Bureau (SIB) has admitted they kept the five, and several other blacks, under intensive surveillance for some two weeks prior to the shootings.

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Two hundred Chippewa warriors seized a lighthouse belonging to the U.S. government at Whitefish Bay in the Upper Peninsula on June 23. The takeover came after a Great Lakes Indians Youth Conference that was attended by 250 Ottawa, Potawatomi, Sioux and Chippewa Indians.

The lighthouse is situated on 62 acres of land that rightfully belongs to the Indians. It was ceded to the U.S. government in treaties of 1836 and 1862, but the pigs in Washington never paid the money.

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This newspaper has taken about enough bullshit from shopping centers and honk suburbs hassling our sales people. We are preparing a law suit that will give people the right to sell the Fifth Estate without pig interference. If at any time in the past you have been arrested, run off or threatened, please contact our office by mail at 1107 W. Warren or by phone at 831–6800 and tell us what happened...

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One time Muhammad Ali and I sat sipping grapefruit juice at the snack bar of a hotel on Richmond, Virginia’s Second Street—the busy, shabby artery which before “integration” had been the Woodward Avenue of that city’s black bourgeoisie.

This was the street Muhammad Ali gravitated to. With its hangers out and hustlers and pimps and junkies and small business men and kids getting ready to drop out and pool halls and barber shops and soul food restaurants and illegal whiskey houses, and shoe shine parlors... this was the street where Muhammad Ali’s people were.

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The people of East Detroit are undergoing a fast and, in many ways, painful awakening process that is cutting through all levels of the community.

On June 8 at a graduation party on Lincoln St., the police pushed 200 kids out onto the street and ordered them to leave the neighborhood. Arguments followed and, when the cops saw that the kids were not going to jump at their command, they called in reinforcements from the neighboring suburbs and Detroit.

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Open City office manager, John Martin, will meet soon with Wayne State University officials in an attempt to re-schedule free concerts on the campus Mall.

Wayne State Public Safety Director, William McDaniels, cancelled the concerts because of alleged “sexual intercourse taking place throughout the Mall.”

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Pete Johnstone-Swartz was returning from the Cincinnati Pop Festival when he was attacked and shot three times by the Cinci Pigs at the bus depot. Pete was hospitalized in serious condition. He was charged with possession of dope, a hash pipe, resisting arrest, and assaulting a police officer. Pete is now held in the Cincinnati Workhouse jail with a $3,800 bond and no bread for legal help.

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High Schools build strong Axle Plant workers twelve ways. Count ‘em:

• High Schools have separate parking lots for teachers and students. Axle Plant management parks just outside the factory gate; the employees park far down the street.

• Many high schools have uniformed guards in the halls. Plant Protection men constantly patrol the aisles of an Axle Plant.

• In High Schools students eat cheap institutional food, 12 to a table, in chrome, stainless steel and plastic cafeterias. They usually have 20 minutes to eat lunch. Axle Plant workers eat cheap institutional food, 14 to a table, in chrome, stainless steel and plastic cafeterias. They have 15–30 minutes to eat depending on their shift.

• A teacher almost always assigns a seat to you, and expects you to be in it; you are questioned and sometimes punished if you leave your seat. In an Axle Plant the foreman assigns you a job and expects you to be on it and working-when the whistle blows. If you leave your work area the foreman comes looking for you.

• If you leave your classroom you have to have a hall pass. If an Axle Plant worker is sick or injured on the job, he has to get a medical pass from the foreman.

• A student returning from an absence must have a letter from his parents explaining and excusing his truancy. An Axle Plant worker who’s been off sick must have a letter from his doctor confirming he was unable to work.

• High Schools emphasize productive effort and competition for grades. The teacher grades your performance, taking into account your attendance record, your attitude (“citizenship”) and your academic output. If he’s satisfied with your work, he passes you on to the next grade and you stay in school. Students with good grades and “high citizenship” get scholarships and good citizen awards from the American Legion, Chrysler Corporation and the DAR. Production output is the main criterion of worth in an Axle Plant. At the end of your 90 day probationary period, and when you quit (or are fired), your foreman grades your performance, taking into account your attendance record, your attitude and your skill in turning out gears and axles. If he likes your work, he recommends you be kept on the job; when you leave the Corporation, he recommends whether or not you should be rehired. Workers with good work records often get the easier jobs.

• College prep. students and athletes get most of whatever extra benefits a High School can offer. Skilled tradesmen in an Axle Plant do easier work and get paid more than ordinary production workers.

• Teachers do not like troublemakers. The best thing to do if you want to get along is keep your mouth shut, do the work the teacher wants you to do the way he wants it done, and pick up an easy passing grade. Foremen do not like troublemakers. You won’t have any trouble in an Axle Plant if you keep your mouth shut and do the work the way the foreman wants you to do it.

• If you’re a classroom troublemaker the teacher sends you to the office to talk to your counselor or the principal. If your Axle Plant work record is poor, the foreman takes you to the Production Office and the General Foreman decides what to do with you.

• Your High School will reprimand you, keep you after school, suspend you from class for a few days or longer, or expel you for breaking the rules. An Axle Plant foreman disciplines an employee by warning him verbally, writing him up, giving him days off, or by firing him.

• If you finish your classroom work early the teacher usually lets you do what you want as long as you stay quiet and don’t disturb the other students. When you make your production in an Axle Plant the foreman doesn’t care what you do until the end of the shift as long as you don’t disturb someone else from getting his production.

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“The nation’s young revolutionaries feel they are modern-day barbarians attacking the diseased Rome of the 1970s”

—Major General Glenn C. Ames (California National Guard Commander) addressing 1,500 pigs from across that state last month.

A couple of weeks ago, narc pigs seized 1,500 pounds of marijuana at a farm in Oakland County. Reports say that it was hauled from Mexico to the U.S. in a camper.

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When students in Isla Vista, Cal. burned down a Bank of America branch in February, it became a symbol of the building revolutionary movement. But they didn’t stop there; a month later they torched the prefabricated unit that was to replace it.

Then, on June 4, word of 17 secret indictments of political activists was leaked (conspiracy, etc.). The city had planned to wait until students had split the town for the summer before handing them down.

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“Shakin’ Street, it’s got that beat; Shakin’ Street, where all the kids meet; Shakin’ Street, it’s got that sound; Shakin’ Street, you gotta get down.”

—by MC 5

VAN NUYS, Cal.—A pack of chopped Hogs growls down the boulevard headed toward a bar for a couple of bottles of Coors beer.

Across the street, the girl in the raised, candy red Comet speed shifts away from the stoplight.

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Lay, Elrod, lay;

Lay in your iron lung for awhile.

Play, Elrod, play;

Play with your toes for awhile.

—Weatherman song to the tune of Dylan’s “Lay, Lady, Lay”

Last October the SDS Weathermen went to Chicago to take on Mayor Daley’s oink city. Many felt the “Days of Rage” were successful despite the heavy toll in busts.

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Joan Bird is a twenty-year-old New York City Black Panther. Before January of last year Joan’s life revolved around serving the people. At night she studied at Bronx Community College. “My ambition was to become a nurse,” says Joan. “I thought I could sincerely help my people.” By day she worked in the Black Panther programs—free breakfast for the children, free clothing for the people. “I was never tired because doing everything possible to help my people gave me the energy to go on.”

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