Fifth Estate 29, May 1-15, 1967 Add to the Bookbuilder

Paul Krassner, editor of the Realist and Society Editor of Ramparts magazine, will speak on Friday, May 12 at Wayne State University.

Krassner describes himself as the “court jester of the new left.” His talks usually range from soft core humor to hard core reality. His latest Realist features excerpts from the Manchester book on Kennedy, relating how, during the flight from Dallas, Johnson humped the wound in Kennedy’s neck.

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Up to one hundred young people from South Oakland County have spent three nights of the week of April 17 at the Elias Brothers’ drive-in, at Woodward and Normandy in Royal Oak, informing their elders that they are tired of being pushed around.

The drive-in has recently blockaded their parking lot to make it impossible for cars to cruise through, and soon plans to add a fifty cent cover or minimum charge. As one picket put it, “They have forgotten that we are the attraction here, not the lousy food or the lousy service or their SS guards. If the kids aren’t here, they have nothing to sell.”

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THE FIFTH ESTATE and Translove Energies will sponsor a day-long Mid-West Underground Press Conference in Detroit on Saturday, May 20.

The purpose of the conference is to bring together the already established underground papers and discuss each paper’s techniques and experiences. Hopefully the conference will be the impetus for underground papers to begin in other cities, primarily Cleveland, Windsor, Ann Arbor, and Toledo.

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On Saturday, April 15 between 400,000 and 500,000 people marched in New York City and in a single voice demanded the end to mass murder in Vietnam.

The Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam described the demonstration as “the largest of any kind ever held in the history of the U.S. for any reason.” In San Francisco another 40,000 marched the same day.

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Detroit High School students are being sought for a special summer seminar on Racism in America being sponsored by People Against Racism (PAR).

Dubbed “Freedom Schools in White America,” the seminars will attempt to supplement and in some cases counteract the effect of regular school teaching about Negro and white history.

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People seem not to believe me when I say the Artists’ Workshop needs money to operate, or Trans-Love needs money, or the Sun needs money—but it’s true. I know it shouldn’t be that way, people, but this is America and you don’t even get a place to stay without paying some property-owner for it. Month after month we scuffle and hassle to get enough money to pay the rent ($200), the gas and electric (although not the gas any more, since it’s been shut off), the telephone bill ($75 or so), and hundreds of little bills which mount up every time we move to expand the operation in another direction.

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April 28 marked the opening of a new theatre in Detroit. The Tropic Theatre in the Wolverine Hotel began its first season with Harold Pinter’s “The Lover,” directed by John Kinney, and on the same bill, “The Man Upstairs” directed by Edith Carrol Canter.

The new theatre, located at 55 East Elizabeth was organized by three Detroit theatre veterans, John Kinney, Robert Heiple and Robert Jones. Kinney and Heiple have performed at the Un-Stabled and other Detroit theatres. Both are in the art supply business in Royal Oak and Jones is an assistant professor of Philosophy at Wayne State and has appeared with the Irish Hills Playhouse and Greenfield Village players.

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Green peppers, bananas, peanuts and now STP.

This latest addition to the armamentarium of the underground messiah has become a legend almost before it was made available. Reputed to have been named STP by the Grateful Dead “because it lasts so long” this new drug is capturing the imagination of hippies everywhere.

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Ed. Note: Wilbert McClendon is one of the most talented and important “grassroots” leaders in Detroit’s Negro community. He is a past Chairman of the Adult Community Movement for Equality (ACME).

We print, with pleasure, his comments on the student peace movement and invite readers to comment.

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A benefit for the Be-In was one of the most beautiful events I’ve ever participated in in my life. The Grande was just full of loving people all dancing together in circles, under the strobe, individually, or in all kinds of freaky numbers, showing that in the end when someone asked how many people came it was obvious that everyone was one. The Family Medicine Chest, Billy C and the Sunshine and the Back and Back Boo Funny Music Band supplied sounds that I couldn’t believe. Energy just pulsating all over, people hanging on to each other, falling together, laughing, screaming, what can I say. It was just beautiful.

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A national meeting of anti-war student groups will take place May 13–14 in Chicago to evaluate the results of the Spring Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam that brought 500,000 demonstrators to New York and San Francisco.

The meeting was called by the Student Mobilization Committee, which is a broad coalition of student groups that participated in the April 15 action. Interested students or organizations can get further information on the conference by writing the Committee at 1101 W. Warren, Chicago 60612. Housing for the conference will be provided.

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An incident involving a Wayne State student and the University’s Security Police touched off a controversy when the student, MacArthur Binion, described his treatment as “outrageous.”

On April 6 Binion was approached, in the Wayne library, by a uniformed Security officer who demanded identification from him. Binion said he refused to do so since the officer gave no reason for his request. The officer attempted to forcibly remove Binion from the building, but the student pulled away and went to a reading area and began studying.

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Joseph Strick’s film adaptation of Ulysses is rather like a high-minded comic-strip version of Stephen Hero or Dubliners.

On the few occasions when a bit of genuine Joycean complexity is allowed to survive in the midst of all that jolly, naturalistic Irishry, it strikes one as self-conscious and out of place. To make the film less expensive to produce, it has been updated, so that all the Celtic Twilight and Irish revolutionism had to be dropped, and much that is left (like the references to England being taken over by a Jew) is out of keeping.

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Thronging pulsing Central Park thousands strong—some in trees viewing the love-in—march. Begin in Sheep Meadow near the vendor of fat crunchy pretzels. Twenty cents and that’s a pretzel. It fills you up after 3 salami sandwiches, an orange and lots of turnpike coffee.

Not a baby crying here. Babies and kids love marches and turn on to parades. They help the love thing along. The daffodils helped and so too, the painted faces. A huge yellow submarine in paper mache. A suit, a tie and flowers in the hair. An army jacket, a robe and flower-wreathed halo. Flower power, flower power, Psychedelic bells and Viet Cong flags ring and wave. Sing and beat. Drum beating militants and prayerful Quakers are one. A baby on his mother’s back; a child hiding under a skirt and only the sneakers and dungarees to show on the warm ground.

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A possible pleasant alternative to the traditional “tweedle-dum—tweedle-dee” characters bound to run from the two major political parties in 1968 is a combo of Rev. Martin Luther King for President and Dr. Benjamin Spock for Veep on a 3^rd party “peace” ticket.

It would be interesting to know how some of our “radical” Young Democrats would react to this slate.

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When “The Best of Second City” comes to Detroit, May 8, feature sketches will include those originally written and performed by Second City alumni: Alan Arkin, Barbara Harris, and Joel Grey.

The troupe, which specialized in satirical and topical humor, is being brought to Detroit by the Grosse Pointe Unitarian Church. The performance will be held at the Detroit Institute of Arts Auditorium, 5200 Woodward on May 8, and will begin at 8:30 p.m.

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Doc Greene is confused. So are 170 million other white Americans, including Hubert Humphrey and Roy Wilkins.

It all started when they were born white in a society which told them all their lives that they were better because they were whiter. And which then organized itself to make it come true.

In a column he writes regularly for a newspaper which calls itself The Detroit News, Doc Greene spoke for most Americans when he condemned Dr. Martin Luther King for finally coming out against the war in Vietnam.

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During the last few months an increasing number of FIFTH ESTATE subscribers have complained to us that they receive their mailed issues either very late or not at all. Others complain that they receive their copy in a mutilated condition.

This is particularly disturbing since our office staff makes every effort to get the paper out to subscribers as soon as we get it back from our printer. We publish a paper for people to read not to lay in a back room of the post office.

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Nancy Sinatra is Wall Street’s answer to the hippie. She’s a facially beautiful broad that plays the almost fetish sex role to shake up her record sales and overall public appeal; and yet she never seems to really overdo it.

She borders on the absurd in her prolific poses, yet she doesn’t really try as hard as she could to ‘sell’ herself. You know, that Mansfield coax that is so exaggerated it’s comical. But that’s because Papa’s got coin. It’s because of this that she can skyrocket to the top of almost any music survey any time she’s in a mood to bellow out.

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a review of

Johnny Got His Gun: A novel by Dalton Trumbo. York: Bantam Books, Inc., 150 pp.

Let’s make America nauseous!!!

In 1939 Dalton Trumbo published a novel calculated at times to send the reader scurrying to the commode to brace his arms against the bowl and retch.

The book is Johnny Got His Gun. It was released in paperback last month by Bantam Books.

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EDITORS: Harvey Ovshinsky, Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT: Cathy West

NEWS EDITOR: Frank Joyce

ART: Gary Grimshaw

MUSIC & LITERARY EDITOR: John Sinclair

CALENDAR: Rhona Whipple

FILM EDITORS: Joe Fineman, Shirley Hamburg

ADVERTISING: Leon Brenner

CIRCULATION: Wilson Lindsey

TRAVEL EDITOR: Sheil Salasnek

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Aaron Mitchell was an American black man who killed a cop. In retribution the state of California asphyxiated Mitchell with cyanide poison gas fumes in San Quentin prison on April 12.

California’s first execution in four years took just 30 seconds after Mitchell’s limp body was dragged by guards into the green death chamber and strapped to the same chair in which Caryl Chessman died seven years before. The execution was witnessed by 58 persons, while over 350 members of Californians Against State Execution picketed outside.

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Web Archive note: John Wilcock’s usual column heading is “Other Scenes”.

Every time somebody steals a masterpiece from a museum or fakes a Renoir or mutilates a Rubens the cause of art is served. Because we are reminded that art, like us, is mortal.

But the screams that arise from the culture vultures remind us of something else, too; that art today has less of an aesthetic value than an economic one.

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