Fifth Estate 272, May 1976 Add to the Bookbuilder

Part II of this article appeared in Fifth Estate #273, June 1976.

The American health care system is currently undergoing a barrage of criticism from every corner; particularly, it has become fair game for dissection on the pages of newspapers all over the country. Last month the Detroit Free Press headlined a front page story “Doctors Blamed for Health Costs,” with a subhead running beneath it which read: “Study Cites Monopoly Fees; Hospital Bills Triple in a Decade.”

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If you are one of the thousands of persons hoping to get a look at the information collected on you by the Detroit and State police anti-subversive (Red) squads, your chances may be dimming.

Lawyers bringing suit against police intelligence unit spying have been trying to force both police agencies to open the 50,000 dossiers to those named in them, but legal counsel for the city and state have resisted this at every turn.

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Race war has become a distinct possibility in Boston. Over thirty people have already been hospitalized from racial confrontations since the so-called “Procession Against Violence” called by Mayor Kevin White took place on April 23.

What is happening is the culmination of a series of events that have escalated with mounting fury over the last few months. White racist mobs are becoming more brazen and aggressive. On April 15 an anti-bussing lynch mob assaulted black attorney Theodore Landsmark outside city hall with an all too appropriate weapon--a flag pole draped with an American flag. The police stood by.

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FIFTH ESTATE #272, May, 1976, Vol. 11, No. 8

Millard Berry

Alan Franklin

Ralph Franklin

Pat Halley

Kathy Horak

Colleen Jenson

Pat Kazenko

Bob Nirkind

E.B. Maple

Pat O’Bryan

Algirdas Ratnikas

Dennis Rosenblum

Kana Trueblood

S. Tufts

Mr. Venom

Marilyn Werbe

Peter Werbe

Mark Wenson

The Fifth Estate Newspaper, a non-profit Michigan corporation is published monthly at 4403 Second, Detroit, MI 48201; phone: (313) 831–6800. Office hours are: 1:00–5:00 P.M., Mondays thru Fridays. Subscriptions are $3.00 for 12 issues. Call 842–8888 for retail sales outlets. Second Class postage paid at Detroit, Michigan. No copyright. No commercial advertising accepted.

To Sonny Tufts, Wonder Woman, the Detroit Auto Dealers Association, and all the imbeciles who revere the article “Propagandada Discovered in Detroit,” (F.E. March 1976):

Besides applauding your own impotence and illusory liveliness, propagandada, etc., a kind of mechanical senility, only demonstrates the seemingly unlimited powers of the spectacle--the continuing vanguard of the banal.

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The Fifth Estate benefit on April 10 was one of the best ever with Detroit bluesman Bobo Jenkins and his band turning everybody on to their strong rhythms and FE supporters and friends dancing and drinking the night away. Unfortunately, our paper didn’t reach people early enough and many of the usual revelers missed the festivities. We took in about $400, but that was just enough to make expenses.

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It was the re-match of the week: Michigan Bell’s high-paid legal staff working in tandem with the full weight of the Wayne County Prosecutor’s office, pitted against the Fifth Estate aided by attorney Ken Mogill. In other words--an even match.

Although a Recorder’s Court jury voted 10 to 2 last August for acquittal on the charge that the Fifth Estate published information on a telephone device that could be used to cheat Ma Bell, the phone company, assisted by their toadies in the prosecutor’s office, threatened to drag us into court a second time. Usually such a lopsided verdict in a misdemeanor case means that it would be dropped, but Bell realized that they could blackmail us through manipulation of the courts to get what was clear they couldn’t achieve in open court.

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During the first week of April 1976, Gerald Woltjer, an Ottowa County, Michigan, dairy farmer, shot down his 235-head dairy herd in order to draw attention to the nightmare of PBB--poisoning of Michigan livestock, poultry, and dairy products.

Shortly afterward, the story hit the national news media and within weeks the spectre of a new Minamata-style plague loomed over the heads of Michigan residents. (1) Later in the month, the Michigan House of Representatives approved legislation that will eventually ban the sale of meat from PBB-contained herds for sixty days. A bill is also pending which will result in the liquidation of all tainted animals--virtually every farm animal in the state.

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Social revolutions are not “made” by parties, groups, or cadres; they occur as a result of deep-seated historic forces and contradictions that activate large sections of the population. They occur not merely (as Trotsky argued) because the “masses” find the existing society intolerable, but also because of the tension between the actual and the possible, between “what is” and “what could be.”

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This article is the fourth in a series of counter-Bicentennial pieces dealing with the more sordid and often less-acknowledged incidents in America’s 200year-old history.

As discussed in last month’s issue of the Fifth Estate (see Bicentennial Moment No. 3, “The Ludlow Massacre”), the period beginning in 1865 with the conclusion of the Civil War and continuing through 1919 marked the turning point in America’s economy from individual, agrarian-based capitalism to corporate monopoly capitalism.

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Hungary ’56 by Andy Anderson

Black & Red-Solidarity 138 pp., $1.25

Revolt In Socialist Yugoslavia by Fredy Perlman

Black & Red 23 pp., $.25

Worker Student Action Committees: France May ’68 by R. Gregoire & F. Perlman

Black & Red 45 pp., $.75

The Bolsheviks And Workers Control by Maurice Brinton

Black & Red-Solidarity 86 pp., $.85

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In mid-April Detroit women were invited to participate in the opening ceremonies for the new Detroit Feminist Women’s City Club, paid for by the recently-formed Feminist Economic Network (FEN). The City Club, located in downtown Detroit on Park Ave. across from the Penthouse A-Go-Go Club, and FEN have been the center of heated discussion and have created factionalism throughout much of the organized women’s movement.

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At Blue Bird Food Products, a union plant on Chicago’s South side, thirty-five television cameras mounted on moveable tracks keep constant surveillance on 450 workers on the factory floor. In the monitoring room, an “expert” in time-study keeps detailed charts on workers suspected of talking to their neighbors too often or working too slowly, with the bosses having an instant replay of any of the worker’s actions.

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Though we do not accept commercial advertising, this Unclassified ad space is free for our readers’ use. We do not accept ads over the telephone, so please send your ads in writing to our office at: 4403 Second Ave., Detroit 48201

FOR SALE--Cyclone Fencing. 8 x 4 x 4. Slightly damaged but easily fixed. $80.00 or closest best offer. Call Marilyn between 1:00 & 5:00, Mon. thru Fri. at 831–6800.

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Once again the old Fifth Estate is faced with the nemesis of financial bankruptcy. Our shoestring budget still continues to operate at a rate where production costs inevitably outweigh income generated by the paper, due to our refusal to accept all forms of commercial advertising.

In an effort to maintain the paper and our independence from commercial advertising, we urge our readers to contribute financially to the continuing operations of the paper, to re-subscribe if your sub is running out, to check out Ammunition Bookstore and the catalogue in this issue for reading material, and to pass the word and the paper along to friends everywhere. We at this end will assuredly continue to look for ways to keep the paper going.

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