Fifth Estate 87, September 4-17, 1969 Add to the Bookbuilder

Chicago, October 11

“The summary of this nightmare which torments America from one end to the other is that in this continent of almost 200 million human beings, two-thirds of whom are Indians, Mestizos, blacks, those who are discriminated against in this continent of semi-colonies, there die of hunger, of curable diseases, or of premature old age some four persons per minute, some 5,500 per day, some 2 million per year, some 10 million every five years. These deaths could easily be averted, but nevertheless they continue. Two-thirds of Latin America’s population lives briefly, and lives under a constant threat of death. In 15 years this holocaust has brought about twice as many deaths as the First World War and it still rages. Meanwhile there flows from Latin America to the United States a constant torrent of money—some $4,000 per minute, $5 million per day, $2 billion per year, $10 billion every five years. For every thousand dollars which leaves us one body remains—$1,000 per death! That is the price of what is called imperialism—$1,000 PER DEATH! FOUR DEATHS EVERY MINUTE!”

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On Sunday, August 24, a group of men attending the Ever-Seven (Evergreen-Seven Mile Road) neighborhood association picnic in Stoepel Park harassed and beat up a group of young people who were also in the park.

There were a number of off-duty police officers at the picnic, as well as several kegs of beer and “law and order” Common Council candidate Jack Kelly.

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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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The Fifth Estate’s Labor Day benefit at the Grande Ballroom was an overwhelming success. The bands were beautiful and so were the people. Newsreel’s films turned everybody on and a good time was had by all. Special thanks to the MC5, the Stooges, the Gold Brothers, Newsreel, Uncle Russ and everyone who came. It was a real Detroit city evening. Everyone got down.

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Dear Brothers & Sisters,

It was good to hear from you last week. My transfer to Marquette has been postponed at least a few weeks, but they are determined to send me there as soon as they can. A pig from the Corrections Dept. in Lansing came here to talk to me last Friday and told me how much I would like it up there and that they couldn’t possibly send me into the general prison population in Jackson because I would surely organize the prison men to revolt against the prison authorities, and they couldn’t take a chance on that. So I’ll be shipped up to Marquette Prison in the Upper Peninsula sometime next month. Then I’ll be able to have my typewriter and can get some work done.

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The White Panthers arrested in New Jersey after the Woodstock Music Festival have all been released on bond and are back in Ann Arbor.

Although defense attorneys feel there are good chances of the charges being dismissed, the Panthers see this as an enlarging pattern of attempts by the authorities to eliminate their organization.

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“Over North Vietnamese radio the voice of ‘Hanoi Hannah’ constantly harangues the Americans: ‘Don’t be the last G.I. to die in Vietnam.’”

—Ian Brodie, London Express

“Battles for bunkers in the Song Chang valley are merely tactical moves in the President’s strategy of retreat. He is asking Company A to fight for time to negotiate a settlement with Hanoi that will save his face, but may very well lose their lives. He is also carrying on the battle in the belief, or pretense, that the South Vietnamese will really be able to defend their country and our democratic objectives, when we withdraw, and even his own generals don’t believe the South Viet Namese will do it. It is a typical political strategy, and the really surprising thing is that there have been so few men, like the tattered remnants of Company A, who have refused to die for it.”

—James Reston, New York Times

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“Throw back your books and outa your seat—Throw open the door—out into the street!”

—Chuck Berry.

High School has begun. Help us reverse the process it hopes to put you through.

The Fifth Estate will coordinate the news and publicize the actions of high school revolutionaries throughout the Detroit area. If you would like assistance from dedicated “outside agitators” or would like to get in touch with fellow inmates interested in building a movement in your high school, contact me c/o The Fifth Estate.

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This time it’s Bobby Seale.

With Eldridge in exile, and Huey in jail, the punk-ass power-structure has turned its racist wrath on the Black Panther Party Chairman. Seale’s troubles are simply the latest government attempt to crush the Panthers by ripping off their leaders and vamping on their headquarters.

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(by Bob Fleck, with a little help from his friends—Alfie, Acid, Dena, Nancy and Barb)

“Naked Angels” is the worst movie we have seen. It’s a hype, a ruse and a shuck on the audience that only serves to exploit the image of bikers and titillate the over-40s. And what’s worse, three issues back, Art Johnston did a lyrical piece heralding this flick as the vision of our culture’s rise to total freedom.

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Editors’ Note: Linda Evans, from Motor City SDS, was one of 7 Movement people who went to North Vietnam last month to bring back three captured American military men. Along with her were Rennie Davis of the National Mobilization Committee; Grace Paley, writer and pacifist; James Johnson, of the Fort Hood Three, who spent 28 months in the stockade for refusing to go to Vietnam; and three Newsreel photographers, Robert Kramer, Norm Fruchter, and John Douglas.

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Age 90 is very different. A dusty journey has been traveled, a time-tunnel has been penetrated. Her 20^th Century is a vast prismatic blur, a fantasy in which some parts hold up for the Truth.

In 1900, this beautiful woman was 21 years old. So many years ago that what you’re saying, what I’m saying today is a drop of curious mist in the great and sheer storm of human survival. Little more than a grunt, glint, tiny fart, etc., of the 90 year old cosmic voyage of this lady.

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The Air Force admitted in a recent hearing that at least three men with dangerous psychiatric problems had been assigned to guard a super-secret nuclear weapons installation at Hamilton Air Force Base, 25 miles south of San Francisco.

The instability of the guards came out it a preliminary hearing for one of them, Sgt. Robert V. Ballou. He is accused of going berserk with a loaded carbine on the base and holding a loaded gun at the head of another officer.

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NEW YORK (LNS) — Three Newsreel photographers just back from North Vietnam have sued the State Department, U.S. Customs, and Trans World Airlines to recover movie film which was seized through trickery and deceit by government authorities at Kennedy International Airport.

The photographers—Robert Kramer, Norman Fruchter and John Douglas—shot some 12,000 feet of 16 mm black and white film in North Vietnam. In the suit, Newsreel accused the government of trying to “harass and intimidate” them for exercising their “First Amendment right of criticising American foreign policy by the making of a film about the war against the Vietnamese people.”

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Up to 1949 the most important symbol in the ghetto was the knife, from then on it became the needle.

In 1956 the first wave of smack (heroin) hit the young black people of Harlem, an attack on the poor youth of the ghetto that served to “pacify” the oppressed people of the city. In New York over the last ten years smack has been used to break up gangs of poor whites, blacks, and Puerto Ricans.

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Streams of 70 MPH mechanical plankton seethe out from radio nurtured exhaust warmed (”...and the murk index rating today is a low lean keen 50...”) metal sargasso sea. Detroit. FoMoCo Roto Moto get down town.

“Yeah...the people there are all ready to shoot even tho they don’t know what for...”

Detroit—R. Crumb’s furnace fantasy—recedes into a smudge over I-75’s cornfield borders. But childhood flashes born of a vacation packed car bring ghosts of summers past all back home.

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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: I have a problem which is embarrassing and troublesome to me. A few weeks ago, I balled for the first time (incidentally, I’m a girl) and bled an awful lot.

I would like to know: Is the bleeding just because it was the first time? Or is there something wrong with me?

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CHICAGO (LNS)—The coercive machinery of nationwide political repression is high-powered and well-tooled. The use of laws which blatantly restrict the basic precepts of Constitutional democracy-the abstract freedoms of speech, press and assembly—is constantly growing.

While a frame-up on non-political charges (from possession of marijuana to -trespassing) is still the most frequent form of repression, the government is now turning to more direct methods of silencing its opposition.

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Men seek the truth, Fascists deal in words.

This becomes evident early in our lives if we care to see it for what it is.

Remember the teacher that would ask for apologies in front of the class (and hovering principal)? Remember the parents who would politely beseech our repentant words in front of important guests at the dinner table? They didn’t give a damn whether we meant what we said, they just wanted to hear it.

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[by R. Fleck, Little Nancy Goodvibes & Alfie]

What’s worse than watching Walt Disney’s version of Winnie the Pooh? Sitting through “I Am Curious Yellow.” At least Disney is a goof for the kids.

Drawn by the press’s public publicity, the over and under-40s righteously attended their first opportunity to legally dig a skin-flick and feel “real arty” at the same time. Poor fools. Shucked again.

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The idea of getting a lot of great musicians together to work as a back-up band for a featured artist on rock recordings is almost as old as rock itself.

On most of these, the back-up people were lucky to get mentioned conspicuously on the album jacket. But somewhere along the line people began to really care about who played what.

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The U.S. Post Office, which god knows has enough to do just trying to keep the mail flowing, has taken it upon itself to prejudge the contents of private letters. I got a postcard the other day inviting me to the main post office to have a letter to me (from a friend in Denmark) opened in my presence. The letter was stamped “presumed to contain obscene matter” or some such nonsense and also bore an insolent warning that if not claimed within five days “storage charges” would be made.

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FLASH! As we go to press, word has reached us that brother Ken Kelley, editor of the Ann Arbor Argus, has been busted for “distributing obscene and lascivious material.”

The offending material is in the August 13 issue of our sister underground paper that showed a picture of Ann Arbor councilman James Stephenson holding what appears to be a superimposed drawing of a male cock in his hands. He has a broad grin on his face.

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Hot diggity! Free food and good vibes on a Wednesday evening at Royal Oak’s Memorial Park, courtesy of potluck and the Yipfugs.

Tomatoes, rice, guitars and flutes were shared by pretty suburban hi skool frocks who are into turning on their brothers and sisters heads with feed festivals and films instead of TV and pep rallies.

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WHITE LAKE, N.Y. (Good Times/UPS) —The Woodstock Festival was a huge nonviolent explosion of people and music. The New York Times called it a nightmare but it was more of a fantastic dream. True, there were low scenes—three accidental deaths, the drug freakouts, the rain, the garbage and the strong scent of shit. But there were no fences and no riots, and the Fair was less of a disaster than the straight media made it seem.

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Continuation of a review: The Population Bomb, by Paul R. Ehrlich, Ballantine, 223 pp., 95 cents paper.

[For Part I see “Earth Read-Out,” FE #86, August 21-September 3, 1969].

Ehrlich says: “A general answer to the question, ‘What needs to be done?’ is simple. We must rapidly bring the world population under control, reducing the growth rate to zero or making it go negative. Conscious regulation of human numbers must be achieved. Simultaneously we must, at least temporarily, greatly increase our food production.

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I’ve really been digging the stuff that’s been going down in your (no THE it’s for everyone) paper, and I’d just like to mention a few radical things around.

First, I’m surprised that, except for once on ABX, no one in the left media has mentioned the only radical program on nationwide TV at the present. This being “The Prisoner” on CBS/Thurs., 8 pm.

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(in cooperation with Detroit Adventure)

Thurs. Sept. 4

ON A BUMMER? If your head is really messed up, or you want the army to think so, let Open City help with free psych counselling at their clinic, 4726 Third, corner Forest. 6–8 p.m.

CUTGLASS AND ITS COUSINS An exciting gallery talk on cutglass and its family, given by Mrs. Horton at the Detroit Historical Museum. 3:30 p.m. Free

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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.

Amazing opportunity for starting and operating your own successful small business. Free details: B&W Enterprises, P.O. Box 9175F. Boston, Mass. 02114.

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