Fifth Estate 92, November 13-26, 1969 Add to the Bookbuilder

Fifth Estate

“To Serve the People”

EDITORIAL GROUP

Alan Gotkin, Peter Werbe, Cathy West

MANAGING EDITOR

Bill Rowe

DISTRIBUTION

Keep On Truckin’ Co-op

STAFF

Jane Capellaro

Dena Clamage

Bob Fleck

David Gaynes

Joel Landy

Bruce Montrose

Claudia Montrose

Marilyn Werbe

Tommye Wiese

POLITICAL PRISONER

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Another letter has been engraved on the tombstone of the dying United Auto Workers bureaucracy as 300 members of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers gathered outside Cobo Hall Sunday morning, Nov. 9, to protest the racist practices of the UAW leadership.

The demonstration was to coincide with the UAW special convention to be concluded on Nov. 9. UAW president Walter Reuther, however, in an attempt to avert a confrontation with the militant rank-and-file movement arranged for the convention to be terminated on the previous evening.

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CHICAGO (LNS)—Bobby Seale was sentenced to jail for four years Nov. 5 for repeatedly asserting his right to defend himself before Judge Julius Hoffman. The judge took an hour and a half to intone sixteen counts of contempt of court, each of them containing Seale’s firm insistence on his constitutional rights.

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Editor’s Note: The following note was written by Bobby Seale in his Chicago jail cell, smuggled into the courtroom on Thursday, October 30, and given to Jerry Rubin, who released it later that day.

Section 198, title 42 of the United States Government Code says that a black man cannot be discriminated against in any court in any legal defense matter.

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When revolution is in the air and extremist groups take to the streets, the Establishment smells a conspiracy to commit violence, usually led by outside agitators.

So it was in August, 1968, when 10,000 of us took to the streets of Chicago for six days of protest and eight of us were selected and are being tried for conspiracy to incite riot and crossing interstate lines with the intention to incite riot.

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Rolf Dietrich, the scourge of Plymouth, let loose a barrage of legal fireworks in pursuit of his damage suit against Plymouth officials for confiscating 15 Fifth Estates from him earlier in the year.

Dietrich says that he has won his suit by default when the defendants failed to appear on Nov. 6. A postponement had been ordered by Judge Richard Hammer, but Dietrich insists this was improper and that the defendants were required to appear.

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The Second Coming, a new underground newspaper at Eastern Michigan University, is locked in battle with the administration of that school over its right to distribute on campus.

University president Harold Sponberg (called the Phantom by students) is largely responsible for the hysteria, having freaked out after seeing issue number two of the Second Coming.

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The movement in Detroit has a functioning print shop again.

Located two doors from the Fifth Estate office the shop can do leaflets, pamphlets, booklets, brochures, letterheads and small underground papers.

Originally begun by Joel Landy, who has split the city for Ann Arbor, the Revolutionary Printing Cooperative is a joint project of this newspaper, Black & Red magazine, the Printing Coop of Ann Arbor, and the Radical Education Project. Printers at this time include Mike Davis, Mike Gove, Fred Perlman and Dan Wilder.

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On Halloween eve the Chief of the Plymouth pigs, in what was the culmination of an “extended investigation of the circulation and distribution of the Fifth Estate and the Ann Arbor Argus newspapers,” finally arrested Rolf Dietrich as he “did then and there” show, offer for sale, and sell an indecent or obscene paper(s) to wit: The Fifth Estate and The Ann Arbor Argus; contrary to the provisions of the ordinances of the City of Plymouth...” according to the warrant of the arrest.

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Fifth Estate: First of all, let me congratulate you on your victory.

Roman Gribbs: Thank you.

Fifth Estate: I understand that Mr. Austin issued a statement calling for brotherhood and unity between his supporters and yours.

Roman Gribbs: Yes, Mr. Austin did that. He ran a fine dignified campaign. He has earned the respect, admiration, and adulation of many people in this city. We plan to work together. We must work together to make Detroit the city where we can live together and prosper together.

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WRIGHTSTOWN (LNS)—The GI movement at Ft. Dix is the largest and most advanced in the country, and this is due partly to the Coffeehouse for GIs in Wrightstown.

The organizing efforts of the Coffeehouse bring hundreds of GIs every week to relax, listen to music and talk about fighting imperialism, and they pulled off the first demonstration here when thousands of civilians invaded an Army base last Oct. 12.

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But in two days of court martial proceedings (Nov. 4 and 5), the Army has been able to get only two scared young GIs—both of whom admit having been threatened with charges of their own if they refused to help the prosecution—to testify against Jeffrey Russell, first of the four to come to trial.

The Army’s other two eyewitnesses, Pvt. Alan Farrell and Airman. John Lisk, brought shocked and angry flushes to the faces of the Army’s two ambitious young prosecutors when they refused to testify against Russell.

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That old city-planner, Death, caught up with Jack Kerouac this October. Reportedly, it was an ugly death; drunk and despairing, his guts literally busting and bleeding inside the heavy lonely flesh. Kerouac had ruined his great good looks years before and now he had finally ruined his body, his brain, his life and perhaps his very spirit and karma. As Allen Ginsberg, his old friend, recently said, “he threw up his hands & wrote the universe don’t exist & died to prove it.”

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As any kid who plays sandlot baseball will tell you, the kid who owns the ball owns the game. It’s true.

J.J. Scott, of radio station WTAK (“1090 on your AM dial”), is still back there somewhere on that sandlot, and lets no one forget just whose game it really is.

I ran into him a week or two ago rather unexpectedly. I was downtown near Hudson’s selling Fifth Estates when I passed the WTAK trailer in the middle of the Kern block. Just for a goof, I tapped on the soundproof plexiglass front window, smiled my most fetching stoned-hippie type smile, and pointed to the stack of papers I was carrying.

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Open City is the service organization for the free community and has already opened a free medical service, a non profit general store, a food co-op, a free University, a counseling center and switchboard that operates twenty four hours a day.

In order to expand it’s operations Open City is scheduling a week of public meetings at the Unitarian Church (corner of Forest and Cass).

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WASHINGTON (LNS) Look out, Spiro, there’s an effete snob in your very midst!

Spiro T. Agnew had a very unpleasant surprise come Moratorium day. Agnew’s 14-year-old daughter, Kim (after Kim il Sung, famed leader of the Korean People’s Revolution) decided she wanted to do her part in the struggle.

Attending the National Cathedral School for Girls, young Kim wanted to put on a black armband and march in the anti-war procession held in Washington on Moratorium eve. Papa said no.

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In a concerted effort to reform the outdated Michigan abortion laws, Michigan Women for Medical Control of Abortion has launched an all-out action program. The program has been set up to involve as many people as possible in working for the medical control of abortion in Michigan.

“Until there is a concerted effort on the part of hundreds of Michigan women, the legislators will not make changes in our abortion laws,” said Mrs. John H. Tanton of Petosky, President of the state organization. Mrs. Tanton pointed out that in a recent test of the old California abortion law, which was similar to Michigan’s, the Supreme Court of that State recently reversed the abortion conviction of a California physician, ruling that the law was invalid “because it infringed on a woman’s right to privacy without legislative reason.”

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Review of “Medium Cool,” written, directed and photographed by Haskell Wexler, starring John Forster and Verna Bloom.

“Medium Cool” is a loose-jointed narrative about a TV news cameraman in Chicago who begins to lose his professional detachment and drop his plastic lifestyle shortly before the movement’s challenge to the 1968 Democratic Convention. He begins to fight to do stories of some human dimension. He is angered when he finds he has been used as a fink by his station, which has been turning his footage of draft-card burnings over to the FBI and the police.

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Editors’ Note: “Fortune and Men’s Eyes,” a play by John Herbert, will begin its Detroit run Nov. 28–30 and again on Dec. 5–7. Performances will begin at 8:30 p.m. Tickets may be purchased at Hudson’s box office or obtained through the mail at 2717 Montgomery, 48206, care of: “Fortune and Men’s Eyes.” All tickets are priced at $2.50. Performances will be at the Central Methodist House, 23 E. Adams. The proceeds from the performances will go to aid the people of Biafra.

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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 had enjoyed a close personal and sexual relationship with a girl to whom I was engaged. But then I began to vomit whenever I saw or thought of her. The frightening part of the story is that the same thing happened to me again during a casual sexual relationship with another girl.

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A wave of strikes has been hitting Italy, France, and West Germany, in many cases over the opposition of official union leaderships. A recent strike in Italy was conceded by Fiat to have involved 1.3 million men and to have been 75% effective.

The main issue for European workers continues to be wages: for a 48-hour week at Pirelli (tires), the average worker makes $160 a month. A quarter-million coal miners in Germany recently won 14% pay increases:

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The Students for a Democratic Society, the Radical Education Project (REP) and other radical groups in Detroit, were set up for harassment in the Detroit Free Press article of October 30, 1969 which printed one of our names and several addresses. The article implied that we were responsible for the unrest in local high schools this fall.

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We would like to apologize to any of our readers who were fooled by Mike Quatro’s ad in our paper for his Halloween Eve’s shuck at Olympia Stadium. The ad included a number of acts that had not been contracted and intimated that the show would go on as long as there were acts to perform, which of course didn’t happen.

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(in cooperation with Detroit Adventure)

THURS. NOV. 13

OPEN CITY free Medical clinic will cure any hippy disease you’ve picked up lately, or any other medical problem. Clinic-hours 6:30–8:30 p.m. at 4726 Third.-Come an hour early to sign in.

DETROIT SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA with Sixten Ehrling conducting a program of Beethoven, Gutche, and Brahms piano concert No. 1, with Bruno Gelber, pianist. Ford Aud. 8:30 p.m.

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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, per issue. (i.e. 2 lines in 5 issues cost $3.50).

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