Fifth Estate 57, July 4-18, 1968 Add to the Bookbuilder

EDITORS

Harvey Ovshinsky

Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Cathy West

CIRCULATION

Tommye Wiese

NEWS EDITOR

Alan Gotkin

MUSIC EDITOR

John Sinclair

DISTRIBUTION

Eric Watkins

ADVERTISING

Gunnar Lewis

ART DIRECTOR

Ed Bania

CALENDAR

Resa

STAFF

Laura Straight

Marlene Tyre

Michael Tyre

...

On Tuesday evening, June 4, just one hour before the polls closed in the California primary, I was being interviewed in Washington, D.C. by John Hightower over television station WEAN.

I was asked why Robert Kennedy appeared to accept the findings of the Warren Commission. For some months I had been aware of conversation between emissaries from Robert Kennedy to New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison. (Since the confidence was not originally shared with me, I am not at liberty to reveal the names of the emissaries. However, should Garrison be asked for that information by the press, It is conceivable that he might reveal the names.) Yet I felt that it would be unfair to breach a confidential relationship while the primary campaign proceeded.

...

“Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom...of the press.”

—First Amendment, United States Constitution

“It’s a free country, but it’s their thing.”

—John Sinclair, Detroit House of Correction, July, 1966

Once again censorship has reared its ugly head in the Detroit area. The latest chapter in the campaign of the city’s self-appointed moral guardians to destroy what vestiges of a free press that still exist here was at the Inner City Voice, Detroit’s black revolutionary newspaper.

...

Detroit’s only operating daily newspaper, The Detroit American, today was named “Uptight Honkie of the Month” for June by Detroit Area People Against Racism (PAR). The Detroit American was cited for its flagrant use of the “crime in the streets” issue to produce anti-Negro hysteria.

In announcing the award, Detroit PAR’s Executive Director, David P. Kramer, said, “The media are always in a position to reinforce racist fears. During the month of June, The Detroit American has shown an outstanding ability in this normally subtle role.”

...

On Saturday, June 22, a demonstration expressing support for French workers and students was held in front of the office of the French consulate in the First National Building in downtown Detroit.

The demonstration, which protested the Gaullist government’s recent ban on public assembly and the suppression of French student organizations and revolutionary political parties, was jointly sponsored by the Young Socialist Alliance (Y.S.A.), the Socialist Worker’s Party (S.W.P.), the Inner City Voice, the Arab Student Association, and Black Conscience magazine.

...

John Wayne BIFF! has made a new movie POW! called “The Green Berets” AAP! It’s currently appearing at the Adams Theatre, and I want all you weak-kneed, yellow-bellied draft dodgers out there to double time down to see it.

The real-life John Waynes display their handiwork in Vietnam. The photo was sent to Vietnam GI, an anti-war paper edited by Vietnam Vets in Chicago. Photo courtesy of Vietnam GI/LNS.

...

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

QUESTION: My wife had her first baby about a month ago and a couple of days after they returned from the hospital the baby began crying every night at about nine and usually continued until my wife finally fed him again around midnight.

...

NEW YORK, N.Y., June 15 (Liberation News Service)—Three plainclothes police arrested YIPPEE coordinator Jerry Rubin at his apartment late Thursday afternoon and charged him with possession of dangerous drugs—a felony. From the conduct of the police, it was clear that the bust was politically motivated.

...

This column is primarily concerned with contemporary jazz, relevant jazz, music with not only social significance, but sounds derived from environment, relating directly from experience. The very word jazz to many listeners conjures up stereotyped images. Most common is the movie image, the usual pseudo biographical tale of a musician tormented by the everyday series of musician’s “furies” dope, women and/or booze—not necessarily in that order. There is usually a social hangup or two with the hefty bleached blonde that quickly fades into oblivion leaving tons of grief in her wake. The musician, of course, is portrayed by Sammy Davis.

...

The following is a press release I wrote for the MC5 this week; we’re running it here because we promised to take you behind the scenes in the rock and roll industry, and these events illustrate what bands have to go thru just to do their thing. If you just paid your money and sat and waited for MC5 at the ballroom last Sunday, you deserve to know that it wasn’t the band that kept you waiting in the heat—it was the people who took your money. Be advised.

...

The Trans-Love commune of Ann Arbor (late of Detroit) was plundered by police June 18 when Grand Traverse County Sheriff’s Deputies took into custody Lawrence “Pun” Plamondon on a warrant charging him with “sale and dispension of marijuana” in Traverse City, Michigan, on the 17^th of March, 1968.

Also charged on the same warrant is artist Gary Grimshaw and editor of the Sun newspaper. Grimshaw has not yet been apprehended.

...

Editor’s Note: Ed Sanders, founder and lead singer of the fuck-rock group The Fugs, is a legendary figure on the avant-garde poetry-peace-dope-fucking in the streets scene in the Lower East Side of New York City. A native of Kansas, Sanders made his first splash on the national scene as one of the peacefreaks who boarded the atomic submarine Polaris in 1962. He served 90 days in jail when he was apprehended and later had his account of the scene, “Poem from Jail,” published as a pamphlet by City Lights Books (1963). In New York City in 1962 Sanders founded the mind-shattering magazine Fuck You / a magazine of the arts, which published such American poetry giants as Charles Olson, Michael McClure, LeRoi Jones, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley, et al.

...

Richard Sharvy, an assistant professor of philosophy at Wayne State University, has been indicted by a Federal Grand Jury for refusing induction into the U.S. Armed Forces.

Mr. Sharvy refused induction September 5 of last year after both his student deferment (he was working on a Ph.D. at the time.) and his application for conscientious objector status were denied.

...

Unaccustomed though I may be to giving advice which will earn money for someone other than myself I feel duty bound to give you some information concerning two forthcoming attractions at the Grande Ballroom.

Foremost, by date of appearance only, is the Jeff Beck group. Some of you will probably remember Jeff as being the guitarist in whose shadow stands, and always will stand, Jimmy Page, present “Lead Player” with the Yardbirds, who having now disbanded leaves him as the lead player to Chris Dreja, bassist.

...

On June 19 a group of young men declared their intention to confront the draft. The ceremony, originally scheduled for St. Patrick’s Church had to be quickly rescheduled for St. Joseph’s Church when church authorities declared the meeting would not be of a suitable nature for a church setting.

Father Michael J. O’Hara of St. Patrick’s Church began his talk by denouncing the war in Vietnam. He declared that conscientious opposition to the State is part of his religious heritage. He then read the letters from the Archdiocese of Detroit which had closed St. Patrick’s to the meeting.

...

Jake Frankhouser is a gentle, revolutionary who has good and practical ideas about food. Jake’s good discipline has gotten him an undergraduate degree in landscape architecture and this year, a Masters in urban planning. Beyond all that, Jake’s interest is urban recreation; and he has some fantastic plans for neighborhood recreation facilities, planned and built by the neighborhood.

...

Much attention in the community from now on will be focused on the primary election to be held Tuesday, August 6. Perhaps the largest effort will be that of the McCarthy for President Committee, together with the Michigan Conference for Concerned Democrats, to get their 2,000 candidates for precinct delegates in the Democratic party elected throughout the state. A substantial success in this campaign could effect some changes in the internal structure of the Democratic party, since there are only a total of 5,000 precincts in Michigan.

...

A few days ago a friend of mine asked me to amortize my obligations to RFK’s assassination by rendering a stirring Stars and Stripes article titled something like—Ban the Guns (it occurs to me that we haven’t even Banned the Bomb yet). His idea was that I should create apiece of literary magic that would induce Fifth Estate readers (against their better judgment) to go out and contact their congressmen with personal letters, informing these panderers of democracy that some of their constituents are outraged by the inadequacies of existing gun laws.

...

THURS., JULY 4

INDEPENDENCE DAY CELEBRATION’ International Freedom Festival sponsoring a “Let Freedon Ring” ceremony. Bring your American flags and apple pies. 12 noon, Greenfield Village.

ART EXHIBITS along Washington Blvd. to coincide with the International Freedom Festival.

PARADE—march along the streets or ride your bicycles to Patton Park. Starts at Beard & Dix at 12 noon, for more info call 843–1950.

...

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.

Wanted: Singer for Experienced RadicalRock—Jazz Ensemble. Must be good, versatile, and over 18. Contact Wilson, 14 W. Elmhurst, Highland Park, Michigan.

...