Fifth Estate 26, March 15-31, 1967 Add to the Bookbuilder

Sidney Peck, one of the National vice-chairmen of the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam and coordinator of the Western Reserve University Circle Teach-in Committee in Cleveland, spoke to a group of over 80 people, Sunday, March 5, at Wayne State University.

Dr. Peck was gathering further support for the April 15^th effort to mass hundreds of thousands of people protesting the war in New York and San Francisco. He made a special plea for unity around the April 15^th action and to broaden support for the mobilization.

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Robert Buckeye, Wayne State University English instructor, falsely arrested along with his wife, Nancy, during the January 24 “narcotics” raid while visiting the home of one of his ex-students, is filing suit against the City of Detroit, Ray Girardin and six policemen.

The suit, based on personal damages suffered by Buckeye both to his person as well as his academic career, was filed last week by Attorney Albert Best, and asks for $350,000 damages.

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On Feb. 26 a holy celebration was held here in Detroit. The stark grey coldness of the Administrative Services Building at Wayne State University was transformed for a few hours into a magic theater and the secret price of admission was your mind.

People came for many reasons that night. Some were there out of curiosity and some, despite the unfortunate lack of advance publicity, came because they heard that the poet Allen Ginsberg was going to be there. Some came with hope and some with contempt.

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Two months ago Detroit LEMAR started planning a Law Day (Law Day is May 1^st) Puff-in for Love. The group has written various LEMAR groups in both the East and West coast suggesting that this could be coordinated on a national level with Puffins taking place in love centers across the country.

Rather than limiting the puff-ins to one area, i.e. marijuana, LEMAR will expand it to human be-ins all across the country taking place on April 30^th, the Sunday preceding Law Day. This would bring the local tribes together and still allow the Detroit Community to share the total love-consciousness of all groups across the country.

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Detroit has been a stubborn place and does not want to be changed, but as I write now and the sun is shining through my window and the spring is with us, the snow is melting, people are getting together, and there are positive forces at work here that will not be denied. Yes. We can not be stopped, no we can’t, and the sooner the people in power realize our strength the better off they’ll be. Change is in the air, the beautiful people are swarming the streets, travelers are coming home at last, flowers will be blooming everywhere, and all who have eyes to see will tell you it will be beautiful. Yes. And you will believe it when you see it.

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A campus-wide referendum on the war in Vietnam will be held at Wayne State University on April 6 as part of Student Vietnam Week in Detroit. Student Vietnam Week, April 3–14, will culminate in a mass mobilization against the war on April 15 in New York.

In the elections last November, 40% of the voters in Dearborn voted in favor of withdrawing U.S. troops from Vietnam. The final vote was 20,667 against withdrawal and 14,124 in favor of it. The high percentage of those voting for withdrawal prompted the Wayne Committee to End the War in Vietnam to decide to hold a campus referendum and compare students’ attitudes toward the war with those of the Dearborn citizens.

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Detroit is a killer city. It is a city in which radicals and reformers of various political stripes have found it nearly impossible to survive.

Internal difficulties of personnel and finance along with external pressure from the police and other elements of the establishment have combined time after time to murder grass roots community organizations, peace groups, civil rights forces and radical religious organizations.

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(Underground Press Syndicate) An inspired madman whose bright blue eyes halt now and then in their rapid pantomime to beam upon you with benevolent love and pity, has rediscovered the ancient secret of the court jester.

General Hershey Bar (an absolute ringer for a great freak-out dancer named Calypso Joe) is the court jester to the War in Viet Nam. For a year and a half now he has appeared at every major protest meeting, on the streets, anywhere a crowd is on hand to listen. He has a strangely ingratiating way of telling the truth to people who would not listen to a serious presentation of the war horrors they would rather forget. And his mannerisms and costume allow you to pretend it’s all a joke. (But later that night, you begin to think, to wonder, and then...)

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Probably no sector of American capitalism displays more cutthroat competitiveness than the recording industry. Entry into the field is, unlike the case in basic industries such as auto and steel, still relatively unrestricted. Any adventurer with a couple of thousand dollars can get an LP produced (even less for a 45 rpm single) and—who knows?—if he is lucky can make it supremely big. Such is the story of Barry Gordy of Motown Records and, on a much reduced scale, of Bernard Stollman of ESP, for whose label the surprisingly red-hot Fugs record.

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MACBIRD by Barbara Garson. The complete text, 75 cents

STUDIES ON THE LEFT. Panel from the Socialist Scholars Conference on The Roots of Slavery, $1

THE LOVE BOOK by Lenore Kandel. Banned in San Francisco, $1

HASHISH COOKBOOK by Panama Rose. Get high on the range, $1 65

ENTRAILS Magazine. Latest issue reads from right to left, comes complete with yamalka, $1

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The Jefferson Airplane arrived in New York for what is probably the beginning of the San Francisco music “explosion-exploitation.” I still can’t believe I heard them on the radio advertising some thing besides music; but since that was the only time I heard them via mass media I guess I shouldn’t put it all down. Its like color TV, the commercials are better than the shows themselves.

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London will be the scene for an International Congress known as the Dialectics of Liberation this coming July 15–30. The purpose of the congress, sponsored by London’s Institute of Phenomenological Studies, is to examine societal influence, conditioning, and control of man and the resulting alienation of his true self within that system.

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The column, “You are a god, live like one” by Timothy Leary that appeared in the last issue of the FIFTH ESTATE [FE #25, March 1–15, 1967] was originally published in our sister underground paper, the EAST VILLAGE OTHER (EVO). The letter that follows is a letter written in response to that column by a New York based group of revolutionary poets calling themselves BLACK MASK.

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Early last week the Denver branch of the American Civil Liberties Union won a complete acquittal for the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s Minstrel Show on charges of obscenity and lewd behavior dating from last November [see “Mime Troupe Busted,” FE #17, November 1–15, 1966].

Bill Linden, Peter Cohon and Earl Robertson were the three minstrels arrested last year when the show started a cross-country tour with performances in Denver. The group performed the same act in Detroit last September without incident. “It was a victory of free speech for all of Colorado,” said an ACLU attorney: “It showed that the vice squad cannot set the standards for free speech.”

“The highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato and Milton is they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought.”

—Emerson, in “Self-Reliance”

Now that the first stage of the Adam Clayton Powell fiasco is over, it is with great humility that I must point a reluctant finger at a young man of potential greatness and leadership who has faltered, not irreparably I hope, and succumbed to the “traditions” of other “men.”

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The Fifth Estate’s Pittsburgh correspondent, Frederick I (Hohenstaufen) reports that the narcotics raid that hit that city 10 February [see “Pitt Pot Bust,” FE #25, March 1–15, 1967] has had a happy conclusion.

All 55 persons arrested have had the charges against them dropped including those against Frank Goldsmith who had been charged with “possession of a dangerous drug.” The “drug” being 5 prescription cold tablets.

Over 100 members of Detroit’s Negro population have banded together to form an Afro-American Museum.

Headed by Dr. Charles H. Wright, founder of the African Medical Education Fund, the group is united in a common interest of Black Men in history. The International Afro-American Museum (I.A.M.) hopes to demonstrate how a knowledge of Negro history will restore a sense of pride and dignity to all black Americans.

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At a 9 March meeting of Detroit LEMAR (Legalize Marijuana) Attorney William Segesta spoke to a mixed group of interested hippies, students and a middle-aged stenographer. Segesta discussed the validities and abuses of “Search-and-Seizure” statutes as interpreted by police and law enforcement agencies. Segesta outlined the two main types of arrests, the legal and illegal, describing what to do until the lawyer comes and basic constitutional rights that most citizens were unaware of, such as your right not to speak when arrested, not to sign papers and demand an attorney.

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Profits are the law and life. If survival carries with it struggling with one’s own values than a movie theater must frequently submit to fourth run showings and nudies. In fact, this vain grasp at subsistence usually takes a downward spiral as the drowning business first revives and then submits, meeting bankruptcy its final reward. Sympathetically the owner is on trial. Curiously his jury is likewise his lifeguard and his sentence often is the road of least respect.

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Editor’s note: Detroit poet John Sinclair talked about marijuana at Royal Oak’s Kimball High School, and Royal Oak hasn’t quite gotten over it yet. Below is a story reprinted from that city’s newspaper, the Royal Oak Tribune:

Royal Oak City Commissioners expressed concern Monday night about a speaker last Thursday at Kimball High School who advocated legalization of marijuana sales.

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Veterans Against the War (VAW) a local group of armed forces veterans formed to oppose the war in Vietnam have been carrying out a program to convince other veterans and those presently in the service of their views.

The group has written to over 500 GIs in Vietnam explaining their position on the war and why they as ex-soldiers oppose it. Nick Medvecky, VAW secretary, said he felt that this has been the group’s most successful activity. “We have found that from the replies we receive from Vietnam there is a substantial amount of opposition to the war among the troops doing the actual fighting.”

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Reprinted from The Berkeley Barb (Underground Press Syndicate).

Did you ever have to

make up your mind?

Pick up on one and leave

the other behind.

It’s not often easy and not often kind.

Did you ever have to make up your mind?

Did you ever have to finally decide?

And say yes to one and

let the other one ride.

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I thank Mr. Kofsky for calling me a major critical figure [“The Jazz Scene,” FE #24, February 15–28, 1967].

I have the feeling that he has rarely read my Voice column because I have often written about the agonies of “abandoning my preconceptions and biases” about the new jazz. I have stated very clearly that I WAS biased but that I realized it and that I was trying to make contact with the new music.

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EDITOR Harvey Ovshinsky

MANAGING EDITOR Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Cathy West

ART Dave Carlin

TRAVEL EDITOR Sheil Salasnek

MUSIC & LITERARY EDITOR John Sinclair

CALENDAR Rhona Whipple

ADVERTISING Leon Brenner

FILM EDITORS: Joe Fineman, Shirley Hamburg

NEWS EDITOR, Frank Joyce

CIRCULATION, Rita Cole, Wilson Lindsey

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Students confront Dow representatives

A determined three-day demonstration against UCLA cooperation with the makers of napalm bombs blossomed out at the university’s Student Placement Center last Monday through Wednesday.

Groups of picketers numbering between 20 and 30 gathered each of the three days inside the building and in front of the office which a representative of the Dow Chemical Company was using for job interviews with students.

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FILM

CINEMA GUILD PRESENTS: a series of films being shown on Thurs., Fri., Sat., and Sun. at 7 and 9:05 p.m. at the Architecture Auditorium in Ann Arbor. Adm. 50 cents.

March 16 & 17: Les Quatre Cents Coups (The 400 Blows) 1959

March 18 & 19: Tirez sur Le Pianiste (Shoot the Piano Player) 1960

March 23 & 24: Nuit Et Brouilard (Night and Fog) 1955, and Let There Be Light 1946

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