Fifth Estate 85, August 7-20, 1969 Add to the Bookbuilder

“Your day has come. You may laugh, Mr. Sinclair, but you will have a long time to laugh. I sentence you to not less than and not more than ten years in the state penitentiary.”

—Judge Robert J. Colombo, July 28, 1969

John Sinclair is in the State Penitentiary at Jackson, Michigan, where he is supposed to spend the next decade.

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Recorder’s Court Judge Robert J. Colombo, the pig who sentenced John Sinclair to almost ten years in prison, recently renewed his subscription to this paper for two years. Because of the barbaric sentence he placed on John, we are cancelling his subscription, confiscating his money and donating it to the John Sinclair Defense Fund. Money is urgently needed for legal fees and we hope all brothers and sisters will contribute generously to his defense. Send donations to John Sinclair Defense Fund, 1510 Hill St., Ann Arbor, Mich. 48104.

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Fifth Estate

“To Serve the People”

EDITORIAL GROUP

Alan Gotkin

Peter Werbe

Cathy West

BUSINESS & ADVERTISING

Bill Rowe

DISTRIBUTION

Keep On Truckin’ Co-op

STAFF

Dena Clamage

Rick London

Bill Melater

Bruce Montrose

Claudia Montrose

Dave Watson

Tommye Wiese

Marilyn Werbe

POLITICAL PRISONER

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John Sinclair

Southern Michigan State

Prison Jackson, Michigan

Dear Leni & Everybody:

My letter yesterday from the Wayne County jail should be disregarded in large part since I was transferred up here this morning. It’s really good to get here at last—just like when you’ve been threatened with something for years and find out it ain’t so bad after all.

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1. Andy Warhol would have given his right arm (and probably his left buttock) to have created that epically-dull 2-1/2 hour underground film (starring Neil “Jack” Armstrong and Edwin “Archie” Aldrin) that was shown on American TV under such unusual circumstances a couple of weeks ago.

2. Weird-picture-of-the-Century-Award goes to a three minute TV segment during moonwalk: Nixon intruding (in color) with a pink telephone on split-screen image, talking to Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon; they are standing at military attention, with the American flag-prop reduced to red (and symbolic) black and white in foreground, LEM in background. Very weird unconscious satire. Deep-meaning picture.

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Editors’ note: On July 21 at Central Methodist Church over 200 persons representing the Detroit anti-war movement met to discuss a series of actions against the war that had been proposed at an Independence Day conference in Cleveland.

The proposals included an SDS sponsored anti-imperialist action for October 8–11 in Chicago; an October 15 student strike called by the Vietnam Moratorium Committee; and a “legal, peaceful” March on Washington on November 15. The New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam has appointed two staffs; one each to coordinate the marches in Chicago and Washington.

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Editors’ note: This article is being printed so that we can stop brothers and sisters from being needlessly busted. It was written by a Detroit lawyer who wants to remain anonymous. Don’t be careless! Learn from the way the man is dealing with John Sinclair.

The drug laws are enforced very selectively in this country. Everybody smokes pot, but it is the blacks, the long-hairs, the political movement people, the students, the underground press and the army organizers who get busted for it.

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NEW YORK (LNS)—The Army is planning a heavy vengeance for the June 5 rebellion of over 150 GIs imprisoned in the Ft. Dix stockade. [See “Army Stockades Blow,” FE #84, July 24-August 6, 1969.]

Apparently, 38 prisoners have already been hit with some kind of charge, or to declare the nature of the charges.

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a review of

Earth House Hold by Gary Snyder, New Directions Paperback, 143 pp., $1.95

Liberation News Service — Gary Snyder spoke at a Berkeley teach-in on ecology and politics recently. It was the end of a long afternoon, at the end of two very long weeks, and most of the students had gone on about their business, but those who stayed found their poet.

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Detective Lieutenant,

Detroit Narcotics Squad,

who has been single-handedly responsible

for busting me on two separate occasions

for possessing and selling marijuana

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and who stumbled into my new apartment last night by accident

over a year since the last time he saw me

& two years to the day after he first busted me —

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Ten women from the Detroit SDS summer project invaded Macomb Community College July 31. They filed into a social science class chanting, “Work, study, get ahead, kill.”

The students were in the middle of a final exam and were perplexed by the interruption.

The SDS women barricaded the door with a desk. They proceeded to talk about how America fucks people over, especially blacks, Third World people and women and how people had to get together and fight this.

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Special to the Fifth Estate

OAKLAND, Calif.—1969 has been a year of increasing pig repression in all areas where the movement has been active.

The black movement has many political prisoners already sentenced and the New York 21, the New Haven 8, and other key Panthers are awaiting trials with bails for individuals set up to $200,000 for each of the New Haven brothers and Sisters.

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Patrick Eady, the Lamphere High School teacher who lost his job last March when a White Panther speaker used the word “fuck” at a student assembly, struck back in three broad-ranging court actions.

Eady has filed suit in Federal District Court for $450,000 damages under the Ku Klux Act of 1871 for deprivation of his civil rights against the Superintendent of Schools, members of the Lamphere Board of Education, a police officer who brought criminal charges against Eady, and Madison Heights Municipal Judge Edward W. Lawrence.

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The man accused of murdering a Detroit policeman at the New Bethel Church last March had his charge reduced from first to second degree murder.

Judge Robert L. Evans, who has presided over the long Recorder’s Court pre-trial examination of Rafael Viera, bound Viera over for trial July 30 on the reduced charge.

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The factories of Detroit are the guts of the city. They are a central, common reality in the lives of Detroit people, whether people are working a 10-hour day on the line or just watching from their office windows as factory chimneys fill the air with thick, black smoke.

Most public art in Detroit tries to ignore this centrality. Factories are not pretty places. For the people who work in the factories life is not a pretty matter. So “The Spirit of Detroit” is a jolly green giant.

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Editor’s Note: The following interview with General Vo Nguyen Giap, leader of the People’s Army of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, first appeared in Europeo Magazine in Milan. The Interviewer was an Italian newspaperwoman, Oriana Fallaci. Liberation News Service is distributing excerpts from the interview as published in the Capitol Times of Madison, Wisc.

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The thought of hearing any music played in Olympia Stadium is distressing. There is no acoustical ceiling on the arena and the bare rafters not only echo much of the sound, but also distort it or often trap it. Also, setting up the stage at one end of the narrow stadium makes it difficult, if not impossible to clearly see what’s going on.

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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: Some time ago a doctor injected silicone into my nose just above the left nostril. Then the silicone started to come out.

I went back to the doctor and he removed an inch of hard white substance hanging out of a pore in my right nostril. But he couldn’t remove the rest of it.

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The grass famine’s on in Mexico, too. When I was down there last week many of my friends were also bemoaning the fate of acres of the lush crop supposedly sprayed by poison and napalm. (This may be an evil rumor planted by wishful-thinking Movement purists because nobody seems to have proof of any such destruction).

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This is the stockade. It’s to protect freedom. My freedom to give orders. And your freedom to make money.

Does this sound like your place?

Broken windows, rotted floors, leaking pipes, leaking toilets, garbage all over, or rats and roaches.

If your landlord has consistently refused to fix any of these housing code violations you no longer have to suffer in silence. The State of Michigan has passed new tenants’ rights legislation, which removes the hapless renter from the mercy of the avaricious landlord.

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To the Editor:

Your paper has done so much for our heads simply because it is so meaningful.

We would like to add just one thing for your other readers: “Respect the Revolution and you shall inherit the earth.”

The Iron Butterfly Conspiracy

Danang

I was in your town the past week and got caught up in the action there. I’m from Pittsburgh where there is absolutely nothing happening. And I mean nothing!

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in Cooperation with Detroit Adventure

WED. AUG. 6

THE FROST record their second album at the Grande Ballroom, from 7 to 11 pm. Adm. is only $2 which is well-worth it, considering you’ll finally be able to hear Dick Wagner and the boys do a completely new set.

DETROIT “ROCK” HAPPENING. Free concert at Kennedy Square with Pandora’s Dilemma. 5:30

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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.

I’m sending ... lines at 50 cents per line for a one issue run.

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