Fifth Estate 62, Sept. 19-Oct. 2, 1968 Add to the Bookbuilder

The Black Panthers have begun a campaign for the immediate admission to bail of their Minister of Defense, Huey P. Newton, who was convicted Sept. 8^th of voluntary manslaughter in the shooting death, Oct. 28^th of last year, of an Oakland, California policeman.

Eldridge Cleaver, Panther Minister of Information and Peace and Freedom Party candidate for President, said in San Francisco, that the verdict in the eight week trial was “totally unacceptable...a compromise verdict,” and stated that petitions were being prepared for circulation demanding that Newton be allowed to post bond.

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Steve Wildstrom, managing editor of the Michigan Daily in Ann Arbor, Mich., was recently beat to the ground and roughed up by deputy sheriffs attempting to keep him from covering a welfare rights demonstration that the regular press was allowed to cover freely.

On Wednesday, Sept. 4, Steve went to the local Washtenaw County courthouse where welfare mothers were attempting to talk to the county board of supervisors about a needed change in the welfare program after reporters from the Michigan Daily had been harassed for two days. As he placed his hand on the courthouse door to enter, he was ordered away by deputy sheriffs. When he asked rhetorically if it wasn’t a public building and if it wasn’t open, he was told that orders had been given to let no one in.

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A reader spoke to us about a letter that appeared in the last issue from a homosexual named Paul who was being harassed by the police. We didn’t ignore this letter, but wrote him back and suggested that he contact the American Civil Liberties Union. We don’t know how he made out.

Those new subscribers who took advantage of the free offer of an ESP record with their subscription will have them sent as soon as possible. There may be a delay of a few weeks, but you will get them.

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Fifth Estate, A Newspaper Of Detroit

EDITORS

Harvey Ovshinsky

Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Cathy West

CIRCULATION

Tommye Wiese

NEWS EDITOR

Alan Gotkin

MUSIC EDITORS

Tony Reay

John Sinclair

OFFICE MANAGER

Debbie Quigg

PHOTO EDITOR

Mike Tyre

ART DIRECTION

Blallen

ADVERTISING

Gunnar Lewis

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Identify the three weird dudes pictured here and win two free tickets to see the San Francisco Mime Troupe. The winner will be drawn from correct entries received at the Fifth Estate office by October 10^th. Send entries to 1107 W. Warren, Detroit 48201. Be sure to include your name and address.

Fifth Estate staff members and former staff members not eligible.

Liberation News Service — That a hard rain (of some kind) is agonna fall on America soon is a fact apparent to mystics and rationalists, to leftwing political scientists and to rightwing economists, to European money speculators and to your local police, who’ve probably already ordered their tanks. The Hopi Indians can tell you all about it and so can the Black Power cats and the Brown Berets, not to mention Yippies, Provos, Zenarchists, and the rock group of your choice.

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PORT HURON—Two unidentified teenagers hurled broken concrete through two large plate glass windows of the Wallace Campaign Committee headquarters in Port Huron, according to state vice-chairman, James Hall.

Dean Cunningham, who is the chairman of the American Independent Party in St. Clair County, reported that police called him September 12 just after the vandalism had occurred.

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By the time the narcotics squad pinpointed him last month, Dick Swafford, 28, had probably stashed two or three hundred thousand dollars away in Swiss banks. Once a week he’d leave his home in L.A. and drive to San Diego to meet the incoming grass supply from Mexico. After a bit of business in California he’d fly across country, sometimes stopping at Chicago long enough to stuff a suitcase full of shit into a parcel locker (leaving the key to the locker for his contact there to pick up later in the day.

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Making a bid for the Wallace vote, Spiro Agnew (sic), allegedly the Republican Vice Presidential candidate, has been sounding like Rip Van Winkle just waking up from the ‘40s. Particularly astute analysis of what’s happening on campuses, was offered at a New York press conference Saturday, September 7.

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Approximately 150 white off-duty patrolmen and detectives, and civilians attacked and beat a small group of Black Panthers and white sympathizers in the Brooklyn Criminal Court Wednesday, Sept. 4^th. The attackers, many shouting “White Power” and wearing George Wallace for President buttons, were responding to a pamphlet distributed by the Law Enforcement Group of New York which urged “all patrolmen and loyal Americans” to “stand up and be counted in court.”

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Several Detroit women, members of the “Women’s Liberation Movement,” a group of radicals working on their own thing, joined women from New York, New Jersey, Florida, and Iowa in a twelve hour demonstration against the Establishment’s Miss America Contest in Atlantic City, New Jersey, September 7.

Approximately seventy women protested the “mind-less boob symbol” of Miss America behind two police barricades. About 200 hecklers taunted the women, three of the honkies staying for five hours—the cops turned to face the crowd—they were the more violent.

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a review of

The Diary of Che Guevara, edited by Robert Scheer, Bantam Books, Inc., NYC, $1.25 paperback.

The recently-captured Bolivian diary of Dr. Ernesto “Che” Guevara has now been published on the heels of his death. Since his canonization is nearly in full swing, it will probably be a long time before an objective un-handwringing account of the broad “meaning” of the diary will be apprehended. So before I wax into his charisma myself, I should like to make a few remarks I consider important about the diary.

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Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley has strongly defended the actions of his police department during the Democratic National Convention. A specially prepared 77 page report issued Sept. 6 by the mayor’s office stated that the disturbances and police actions were provoked by demonstrators led by out-of-town “revolutionaries.” The report also stated that police used the minimal amount of force necessary to control the protesters and added that demonstrators were encouraged by the news media to prolong confrontations with the police.

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To get some idea of what “Poor Cow” is like, one need only imagine what “Elvira Madigan” would have been like if it had been filmed in the slums of London.

The two pictures are remarkably similar: both deal with impractical young lovers; both use the same impressionistic film techniques; both employ many short, carefully composed scenes; and both follow a visual, rather than a narrative, plot line.

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A plainclothes policeman who infiltrated the Youth International Party has claimed that Yippies planned in advance to riot and provoke police attacks on them during the Democratic National Convention.

Robert L. Pierson said he was given a leave to serve as an investigator for the state’s attorney’s office, won the Yippies’ confidence and became bodyguard for Jerry Rubin.

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LONDON, England—Liberation News Service—Europe’s left, new and old, has been brutally unanimous in its criticism of the Soviet military intervention in Czechoslovakia.

The Communist Parties of England, France, Italy and other nations issued long statements describing the Soviet action as an unjustified interference in the internal affairs of a Communist Party and socialist state.

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

QUESTION: Could you please tell me how and where I can get a convenient contraceptive?

Unfortunately, it is impossible for me to get any by prescription as I am 17, single and living with my parents.

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In regard to the events of Chicago during the convention week, I would like to submit the following information:

On August 26, 10:30pm, a friend and I went to Lincoln Park. At this time a large group of people, mostly young, was gathered in the park listening to different speakers, chanting and sitting near fires talking. Soon some of the people began “antagonizing” the present police with name calling.

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LONDON (LNS)—Millions of Catholics all over the world already staggering under the blow of the Pope’s controversial encyclical on the pill, are in for a new shock.

In a new edict published today by the Vatican press entitled “De Constipatone” the Pope slams down on the use of artificial laxatives to relieve constipation.

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PHILADELPHIA—The police state atmosphere legitimized at the Democratic Convention continues to grow. The arrest of four people here September 9 dramatizes the fact that the “authorities” will no longer tolerate any form of dissent.

The four arrested were among those seeking to make a peaceful protest at the opening of Hubert Humphrey’s presidential campaign in Philadelphia. Three of the four were members of the Philadelphia Resistance. The fourth, Ronald Whitehorse, is a member of People for Human Rights (PHR), the Philadelphia affiliate of National People Against Racism (PAR).

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It’s really good to see that Brother Ear is hearing the Detroit bands and digging them, especially since people around here have to be told how heavy the bands are. The Frost and the Thyme aren’t the only together groups working in this area, either—there are a number of bands whose music is consistently interesting and moving, and these bands are improving every day.

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And here we have a new album! Recorded right here in the Motor City before your very eyes and with living audience reaction.

Teagarden and Van Winkle, as many of you may know, consists entirely of two people who play organ and drums and occasionally drawl and sometimes sing. They do all of these things simultaneously and very well, as this album ably demonstrates.

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Wes Montgomery—“March 6, 1968” (Riverside)

Wes Montgomery is simply one of the two greatest jazz guitarists of all time, the other being Charley Christian. A writer may go on and on and on about the innovations, contributions, and prestige this man gave to jazz but it may suffice to say that he undoubtedly was the best. This album was previously released on the old Riverside label and definitely doesn’t possess the clarity and forcefulness of his later Verve performances. (Due only to dated recording techniques.) But newly converted Wes Montgomery fans may find his old recordings a source of knowledge and a chronicled account of a great artist’s transition and maturation.

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The Beatles have finally dealt directly with the American radicals, politicos, and activists of the student movement who have been demanding that they say something.

The Beatles have said something and what they have said is not going to be popular with a great many. The more political you are, the less you will dig the Beatles’ new song, “Revolution.”

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I think that it is about time that the people in this town stopped paying vast amounts of money to see out-of-town groups purely because they are an out-of-town group, and start to take some notice of local people, who are generally putting out music and shows as good, if not better than, many of the top imports. I have been of this opinion for some time but I have generally left the criticism and appraisal of local talent to my learned co-editors, who, having been in the area somewhat longer than myself, are more adept in the local scene. However one group in particular I have seen twice within the space of two weeks and I feel duty bound to give them some of the praise and publicity that they deserve.

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“Let the politicos with their deals, their puerile ambitions, their desperate greed, their advance division of the spoils, not meddle with the revolutionary process. Let the hack politicians become revolutionaries if they will! But let them not transform the Revolution into degenerate politics, because too much of our peoples blood is being spilled today, and too many enormous sacrifices have been made to deserve such a worthless deception tomorrow.”

—Fidel Castro

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Reprinted from the National Guardian [New York City]

It is ironic to find the Pope’s recent encyclical on birth control to be in line with the statements of many black militants. The Pope, of course, tries to place his opposition to birth control on moral grounds-that is, he argues that to prevent a life from coming into being is as much an act against moral law as willfully to take a life. Some black militants oppose birth control because they see it as a genocidal weapon against the black community, which, in those instances of forced sterilization of welfare mothers, it is. However, both the Pope and those militants who oppose birth control are giving allegiance in their own ways to an old principle: there is strength in numbers.

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Wed. Sept. 18

LUMBERJACK DAYS. Here’s your big chance to stock up on firewood for the winter. You can even pretend you’re Paul Bunyan in East Tawas, Michigan. And don’t forget your blue ox.

HOLIDAY ON ICE show at the Cobo Hall arena.

Thurs. Sept. 19

DETROIT SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA at Ford Aud. Soloist: Gary Graffman, pianist. 8:30 pm.

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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.

Send to: THE FIFTH ESTATE, 1107 W. Warren, Detroit, 48201

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