Fifth Estate 38, September 15-30, 1967 Add to the Bookbuilder

Convening in Chicago’s Palmer House, one of America’s plushest (and whitest) hotels, the National Conference on New Politics brought black militants and much of the white left into occasional dialogue and frequent chaos.

The New Politics convention assembled an unprecedented array of strange bedfellows under one roof. Before the convention ended, white Mississippians called for Black Power, Jews condemned “Zionist imperialism,” a couple of nuns endorsed the Newark conference resolutions (which characterized Christianity as a slave religion) and as usual the minuscule Ad-Hoc Committee for a Marxist-Leninist Vanguard in America denounced almost everyone.

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A Detroit Diggers Society has materialized in the Warren-Forest area and is in the process of being “organized” by two neighborhood hippies, Dan Vincent and Cindy Lee. Organization to the Diggers means getting a place to operate out of, scrounging up rent money and donations of money, food, clothing, and housing, all to be distributed freely among the people of the community.

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The worst thing one could say about the Algiers Motel Tribunal is that it was Recorder’s Court upside down.

If the tribunal was biased and weighted against the four white defendants, Detroit Patrolman Robert Paille and Ronald August, National Guardsman Theodore Thomas and private guard Melvin Dysmukes, then it was weighted in exactly the same way that Recorder’s Court proceedings are against Negro defendants.

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There are only two paths open to a country whose internal and external empires are in the state of decay prevailing in the United States. That of the left or fascism.

The trend toward fascism in the United States is accelerating at an incredible rate. It is beginning to acquire the kind of mass base which served Hitler in Germany. The catalyst for tendencies always present in American society, is the equally accelerating struggle for black liberation.

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Five new productions, including three classics and two contemporary plays, will be featured at the Hilberry Classic Theatre during its Wayne State University Centennial season of repertory.

A revival of last year’s record-breaking success, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” will be performed in the fall.

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“White man’s justice” in Detroit courts has again been offered to members of the city’s hip community, the Fifth Estate learned this week in two separate reports from Detroit longhairs.

“White man’s justice” is that peculiar form of legal blindness which punishes black people equally and allows errant white middle-class youths the chance to redeem themselves in the eyes of their society. It is evident usually in marijuana cases, where hippies are offered probation and a fine in exchange for going straight, i.e. cutting their hair, putting on decent clothes, and returning to school or a job. The alternative, of course, is a quick lock-up.

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The National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, which organized the massive April 15 demonstrations in New York City and San Francisco, is now arranging for a mass mobilization to confront the warmakers in Washington, D.C. It will be on October 21, with supporting demonstrations around the world.

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NEW YORK—The national Committee of the Socialist Workers party has announced here that it has nominated Fred Halstead and Paul Boutelle as the party’s candidates for President and Vice-President of the United States in the 1968 elections.

Halstead, a 40 year old cloth cutter from New York, said that the war in Vietnam would be a central issue of the campaign. His running mate, Boutelle, a 35 year old cab driver, said that black power would be a twin issue.

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The Draft Resistance sold its Red Flag, but didn’t make one hell of a big profit. $5 to be exact. Maybe people thought it was contaminated by its previous owner.

Incidentally, there was a bad typo in the article offering the flag for sale (FE #37, 1–15, 1967). The story read “the left join the right in stamping that dirty visionist (sic) flag.” The word should have been revisionist. Big deal.

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

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following column will be a regular Fifth Estate feature. It is published regularly in our sister Underground Press Syndicate paper, The Berkeley Barb. Dr. Schoenfeld is a legitimate medical doctor and all of the questions he answers are authentic ones sent to him by readers of the UPS papers that syndicate his column. Your questions are welcome and may be sent to Dr. Schoenfeld at the Fifth Estate, 1107 W. Warren, Detroit, Michigan.

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OAKLAND—Plans for a four-day siege of the Oakland Induction Center, October 16–21 were announced to day by spokesmen for National Stop the Draft Week Committee. Compulsory conscription was labeled “a criminal conspiracy against American youth that must be stopped.”

“We have picketed, protested, leafleted and argued against the draft and the racist war in Vietnam,” said Terence Cannon, member of the Stop the Draft Week Steering Committee. “There is only one way to keep young men from being shanghaied into the armed forces and that is to stop the draft from operating. We declare that we are opposed to the government’s policy and will do everything we can to bring it to a halt.

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In one of the largest steps in its history, the American Federation of Musicians has drafted plans for a huge apprentice program for teen-age rock musicians which could alter the present music industry considerably.

The program, to be implemented by Detroit’s Local 5 under the supervision of business agent Dennis Day, calls for concerted action by the union on two major fronts: to convince teen musicians to join the union under its new “affiliate membership” plan, and to convince club owners that they should sign “union shop” agreements with Local 5 which would provide for employment only for union bands at union scale.

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It was a muggy, uncomfortable night at the 17^th District Democratic Headquarters in the all-white Redford section of northwest Detroit. Meeting was the “Democratic Forum,” a conservative faction of the District. The speaker was the noted liberal statesman, Councilman Mel Ravitz.

What was he there to talk about? What else but the recent Detroit insurrection (Part I). And it was amazing how one person, a learned Ph.D. in Sociology, could say so little in such a long speech.

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I was speaking of the change taking place in this nation, and would say that in America the change is most evident in two sectors or subcultures of the civilization. In the black stinking ghettoes of the poor and exploited, and in those sections of cities and land where the enlightened young have gathered for all intents and purposes outside the rigid general social framework of this America. These two sectors illustrate the two “major steps” outlined in this column last time.

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Between now and October 9^th the J.L. Hudson Gallery is offering the public a legal trip via the work of Michelangelo Pistoletto.

Pistoletto, a 34 year old Italian artist, has succeeded in opening up an entirely new dimension in art through the relatively simple device of mounting life-size photographs on highly polished stainless steel plates.

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On Sunday, September 3, the Detroit Free Press ran a five page feature entitled, “The 43 Who Died.” It was an in depth investigation into each riot connected death carried out by three competent Free Press staff reporters.

The three, Barbara Stanton, William Serrin and Gene Glotz, compiled evidence on the John Leroy case among the others. Their finding substantially corroborate the Fifth Estate version of his death (see Fifth Estate, August 15–31, 1967 and September 1–15, 1967). They added some new information as to the horror Leroy and his companions suffered at the hands of the National Guard.

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New York—The American Civil Liberties Union has asked for the end of criminal sanctions for homosexual practices in private between consenting adult partners.

In a policy statement released in New York today, the civil liberties group said that while laws penalizing homosexual conduct are “more honored in the breach than in practice” there is widespread “harassment and—intimidation of homosexuals.”

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The San Francisco Mime Troupe, which has earned an international reputation for slaughtering sacred cows, will be performing its anti-war commedia dell ‘arte “l’Amante Militaire” in a benefit performance for the Fifth Estate on Saturday, October 28.

R.G. Davis, the articulate and energetic director of what he has called the ‘guerrilla theatre,’ had this to say about charges of obscene, suggestive gestures, disloyal treatment of the Vietnam War and presidential policies, and shock for shock’s sake in his show:

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The Grande Ballroom, through the goodness of Uncle Russ, will again be the scene of a huge benefit dance/concert for Trans-Love Energies Unlimited, the Detroit hippie / artists coop.

Titled “Homage to John Coltrane,” the concert will celebrate the birth of the late musical giant (Trane was born September 23^rd, 1926, on the first day of Libra) and commemorate his passage from this planet July 17^th, 1967. Music will be donated by the MC-5, the Up, and the Charles Moore Ensemble, Detroit’s first and most forward avant-garde jazz unit. Moore’s original group, the Detroit Contemporary 5, performed in a “Homage to John Coltrane” concert at the old Artists’ Workshop on Forest Avenue in November of 1964.

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The resistance to the Draft Resistance Committee office at 12820 Hamilton in Highland Park has been stepped up into a Mississippi-style harassment campaign.

At 11:20 p.m. the night of August 28 someone shot three slugs from a large-caliber rifle through the front window of the office. Two more shots were fired through the front windows of the office in the dark hours of the morning of September 1.

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THE FIFTH ESTATE

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EDITORS

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John Sinclair

ART

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CALENDAR GIRLS

Karen Kovach

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FORT KNOX — Pvt. Thomas Tuck of Cleveland, a black anti-war GI at Ft. Knox, Kentucky, was given a summary court-martial August 4 and sentenced to thirty days in the stockade at hard labor. His offense was that he refused to pick up a gun twice.

Tuck was notified of the court-martial the day before the trial. At the trial he was told that he would not be permitted a civilian lawyer. The Cleveland Draft Resistance Union has hired New York lawyer Conrad Lynn, who has filed notice of an appeal on this basis. The question is: does a soldier have a right to due process of law?

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The dance/concert, which will be open only to those 17 or over due to local ordinances, will feature the music of the MC-5, the Rationals, the Thyme, the Apostles, Wilson Lindsey’s FDA, the Gang, Our Mother’s Children, and a number of other Detroit bands, with lights by the Pisces Eyes Light Company.

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a review of

• The Scavengers and Critics of the Warren Report by Richard Warren Lewis based on an investigation by Lawrence Schiller. Dell Original 95 cents

• The Truth About the Assassination by Charles Roberts. Grosset & Dunlap, Original Paperback $1

“If I learned anything in Dallas that day, besides what it’s like to be numbed by shock and grief,” says Charles Roberts in his book (p. 13), “it was that eye-witness testimony is the worst kind.”

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Dearest Hippie Editor:

I think you guys at the Fifth Estate are the biggest clot of hypocrites I have ever had witness to. Some people wrote some letters to the Editor in your Aug. 15–31 issue. They called you hypocrites. They were right. So give them this idiot reply “Go back to your bar-b-ques and rock gardens and go soak your head in gravy, and hang yourself on a telephone wire,” and other kindergarten sayings.

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ART & ARTISTS: c/o Mario Arnaya, 16 Buckingham Palace Rd., London SW1, Eng.

AVATAR: 145 Columbia Street, Cambridge, Mass. 02139

BERKELEY BARB: 2886 Telegraph Ave., Berkeley, Calif. 94795

CANADIAN FREE PRESS: Student Co-op, Argyle House, 53 Argyle, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

CONNECTIONS: 22 North Henry Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53703

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UPS—Superpot! To obtain pure cannabis resin—almost colorless, odorless, tasteless: take hash and reduce to a powder. Dissolve in small quantity of petroleum ether. Ordinary lighter fuel will do for this purpose.

Shake and bring to the boil. Take care it does not explode—lighter fuel boils at about 70 degrees. Unwanted mush will settle at bottom. Pour solution into a saucer, flush muck down bog.

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If the once highly-touted, but now quite tarnished “War Against Poverty” has done nothing else, it has provided a new battleground for political bickering-among the poor themselves and among the middle-class citizens who think they’re trying to help the poor.

Probably the greatest boondoggle around here nowadays is the Wayne County Office of Economic Opportunity (WCOEO) program. Designed to serve the “poor” areas in Wayne County outside Detroit, it makes the Detroit poverty program look like a smashing success in contrast.

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UNCLASSIFIEDS cost 50 cents per line per issue. Figure four words per line. (A word is a word, including one and two letter words. A phone number is a word. Street numbers are words. Abbreviations should be sensible).

DISCOUNT RATES: Five runs cost 35 cents per line.

The Fifth Estate, 1107 W. Warren, Detroit, 48201. phone 831–6800

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