Fifth Estate 96, January 8-21, 1970 Add to the Bookbuilder

Fifth Estate

“To Serve the People”

FIFTH ESTATE #96, January 8–21, 1970, Vol. 4 No. 18, page 2

EDITORIAL GROUP

Alan Gotkin

Peter Werbe

Cathy West

MANAGING EDITOR

Bill Rowe

DISTRIBUTION

Keep On Truckin’ Co-op

ADVERTISING

Steve Dunn

STAFF

Jane Capellaro

David Gaynes

Jim Kennedy

Rick London

...

As a result of a pre-Christmas anti-war march the brass at Selfridge Air Force Base are trying to bring down a cloak of repression on GI activists.

The Detroit Coalition to End the War Now sponsored a candle light march on the evening of Dec. 23 in support of anti-war GIs and for an end to the war. Approximately 1,200 persons joined the parade in a driving snow storm that soon left almost all the participants with extinguished candles.

...

American Civil Liberties Union 961–4662

Ad Hoc Citizens Committee (Police Brutality Complaints) 872–2828

Creem Magazine 831–0816

Draft Resistance (info on counseling) 874–4334

Detroit Anti-war Coalition 873–4322

Fifth Estate Office 831–6800

Fire Department 962–0400

Grape Boycott Office 825–4811

...

TO SERVE THE PEOPLE. Brothers and sisters all over pigamerika are waging war, making revolution. To so serve the people, the STP coalition has been formed.

As brother Fred Hampton said: “...theory’s cool, but theory without practice ain’t shit. You got to have both of them—the two go together.” He was talking the truth.

...

“THERE IS NO LAW IN AMERIKA TODAY—only the racist power structure and its victims. The revolutionary youth of this weirdo country are an oppressed people—the victims of a calculated cultural repression movement instigated and carried out by the Government and certain monied interests who are committed to maintaining a decadent status quo. They will kill us if they can; they will incarcerate their own children and have them beaten if they can get away with it. They would jail us all if they could—all in the name of freedom, democracy and the unspeakable obscenity they call the Amerikan Way!”

...

OTTAWA, Ont. (LNS)—Canadian Health Minister John Munro has indicated that the Canadian government is considering action within months to liberalize, and possibly abolish, laws which ban possession and use of marijuana.

Munro told a Canadian newspaper that increasingly widespread use of pot showed that harsh penalties were not working as a deterrent. He did not give any indication, however, that the government would change its stiff laws against the sale of grass.

...

Wayne State University is about to be confronted by an angry Warren Forest community.

The University, which has been in the process of destroying the community surrounding it for the last five years, is trying to keep community people from using its gym facilities at Matthaei Building.

The gym complex, on Warren across from the Fifth Estate office, was built on land that previously housed 4,000 local residents. It now includes large areas for indoor and outdoor recreation that is denied to the very people that were removed to allow it to be built.

...

ALGIERS, Algeria (LNS)—Eldridge Cleaver, Black Panther Party Minister of Information, has had his request for a U.S. passport denied.

Conrad Drascher, a U.S. diplomat acting for the State Department, denied Cleaver a passport, offering instead papers good for a one-way passage to the States plus plane fare with immediate arrest at port of entry guaranteed.

...

Editors’ Note: The trial of the Chicago Conspiracy 7 is a trial of one consciousness by another. On December 11, Allen Ginsberg, poet and man of the planet, came to Julius Hoffman’s courtroom to speak in behalf of Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and the Yippie Festival of Life that fell before police clubs in Lincoln Park and on Michigan Avenue last August at the Democratic Convention.

...

Once upon a time there was a large shopping center in a Land to the North, and a plastic store called (1 across). For many weeks long-haired freeks and greasers had hung around with nothing to do but laugh at (1 down) shoppers and hassle pigs.

Kind of a bogue life, but there didn’t seem to be much else to do.

...

The following article was taken from “A Handbook for Radicals; Revolutionaries and Easy Riders” published by the International Liberation School. It is available for fifty cents and is an invaluable guide to small arms weaponry. Send to: People’s Office, 1925 Grove St., Berkeley CA.

America has a long tradition of vigilante paramilitary violence. Usually it has been directed against blacks and Third World people, poor whites and dissident political groups.

...

If you are a serviceman in Vietnam receiving a free Fifth Estate subscription the only notice you will get of its expiration is the sudden disappearance of the paper from your life.

We still want to get you guys the news about our culture, the GI movement, and anti-war activity, so if you qualify for a renewal (still in ‘Nam) send us a letter telling us to put you back on our subscription list. If you are short we will be glad to send you papers for your remaining time. If you are still in the service, but not in ‘Nam, a year’s sub is $2; if you’re completely free of the green machine it’s $3.75. Power to you.

HANOI (LNS)—A U.S. Marine has left his unit, has joined up with soldiers of the National Liberation Front (NLF), and has issued an open letter to his former comrades-in-arms inviting them to follow him in this ultimate act of GI rebellion.

A dispatch from Prensa Latina, the Cuban news agency, identified the rebel Marine as Paul M. Sweeney, serial number 2467056.

...

WASHINGTON, DC. (LNS)—An Army officer who sent out Christmas cards last year decorated with photos of stacks of Viet Cong killed by his regiment has been promoted, according to columnist Jack Anderson.

George Patton 3d has received a Brigadier General’s star. Last Christmas he sent his greetings out with a picture of him waving another war trophy—a polished Viet Cong skull, with a bullet hole above the left eye. The skull was a present from men in Patton’s 11^th Armored Cavalry.

...

FT. HOOD, Texas (LNS)—Richard Chase, 26, was sentenced to two years hard labor in a Kangaroo Court-Martial here Dec. 20 for refusing to participate in riot control training.

In Jan., 1969 Chase informed his Company Commander that he was a Conscientious Objector and would not participate in riot control training. He was given unofficial C.O. status and became the company clerk. When Chase asked for the official C.O. application forms he was given only a blank sheet of paper.

...

TACOMA, Wash. (LNS)—The Army has declared the Shelter Half coffee house near Ft. Lewis here “off limits to all personnel serving in the Armed Forces.”

It is the first time the brass has tried this tactic in its campaign to squash GI rights.

The Shelter Half is an anti-war coffee house, and like most of its counterparts across the country, its warmth and lively political discussion has become increasingly popular for the young men trapped in the monstrous machinery of the U.S. military.

...

Three ramshackle, trash-can heated huts on York Avenue between Second and Third stand as mute testimony to a strike against the General Electric Corporation which has gone on in Detroit and across the nation since October 26^th of last year.

Inside these cramped quarters GE workers from Detroit local 947 of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) huddle together drinking hot coffee, between stints on the picket line, in an attempt to fight off the chill of subfreezing Michigan winter.

...

147,000 workers at the General Electric Corporation went on strike October 27, 1969. Today, they’re still out of work with little hope of any rapid change in their bleak situation. General Electric’s (non-) negotiators have refused to budge a comma or penny from their pitiful initial offer of a settlement far below the union’s demands.

...

FORT DIX, N.J. (LNS)—Pfc. William Brakefield has been found guilty of rioting at the stockade here last June and sentenced to three years at hard labor.

Newsmen and spectators looked at each other with surprise when the verdict came in. Having failed to come up with any substantial evidence that Brakefield had taken part in the rebellion in which 150 GIs tore up their cell blocks, throwing footlockers through the windows and setting mattresses aflame, the prosecutor claimed that given the stockade conditions it was “unbelievable” that Brakefield would not have rebelled.

...

Via National Guardian

“This war is, I believe, a war for civilization.”

—Francis Cardinal Spellman

The bodies in the mass graves of Hue are not the victims of the National Liberation Front but of American bombs, bullets and napalm.

The NLF attack on Hue was coordinated with an internal uprising Jan. 31, 1968. The main part of the city was in the hands of liberation forces within hours—hardly a shot was fired.

...

Jan. 24 an

d 25

Saturday January 24 2 p.m.-1 a.m. $3.00 Grande Ballroom

Sunday, January 25 3 p.m.-11 p.m. $3.00 Grande Ballroom

FREE JOHN SINCLAIR

AND ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS!

HELP END MARIJUANA PROHIBITION

Mitch Ryder, Abbie Hoffman, Ken Cockrel, Skip Taube,

SRC, MC5, Stooges, Bob Seger, Up,

...

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

Dear Dr. Schoenfeld:

The other day a girlfriend of mine asked me to see a movie called “Daughters of Lesbo.” Something about this girl disturbs me.

First of all, the boys call her “Big Daddy Linda” and have said some very bad things about her. Although she is a bit domineering and aggressive she always seemed quite friendly with us all. My boyfriend says she’s a “Butch and a Dyke.” Could you please give me a definition for these names?

...

Writing about the Paul McCartney thing, Robert Somma speculates on how willing some people are to believe that a public figure is dead. Whatever future evidence there might be, he says, McCartney will BE dead in these people’s minds because they want him to be. Very true. And given that most people share this trait—a sort of transference deathwish—to some extent, why don’t we capitalise upon it? Let’s say NIXON IS DEAD and keep saying it over and over again until 200 million people have heard it. Some will take it at face value, others will accept it symbolically until eventually even the wire services and The New York Times are forced to deal with it as a mass phenomenon. Tell your friends...NIXON IS DEAD; don’t -explain it, don’t amplify it, don’t justify it. Just say it.

...

With a Lot of Help From His Friends

The object of this column will be twofold. We will act as a community action line where you don’t have to talk to a telephone answering machine and hope that your question or problem is the one in 10,000 they decide to work on. We also make you aware of all the free, inexpensive or unusual groovies available to you. Write us about your problems, questions or suggestions:

...

Here are four records you might want to have:

1. Otis Spann: Sweet Giant of the Blues, Bluestime BTS-9006.

2. Harmonica Slim: The Return of Harmonica Slim, Bluestime BTS9005.

3. T-Bone Walker/Joe Turner/Otis Spann: Super Black Blues, Bluestime BTS-9003.

4. Earl Hooker: Don’t Have to Worry, Bluesway BLS 6032.

...

I managed to get my hands on a copy of the Fifth Estate. Wow, what a paper. I passed it around my section and everyone thoroughly enjoyed it.

I’m a GI and I have been in Vietnam for six months. I despise the military and I believe the same as I did before I came here, that we don’t belong here.

...

Charlie Haden—Liberation Music Orchestra Arrangements by Carla Bley. Impulse AS 9183

ORCHESTRA PERSONNEL

Perry Robinson, clarinet; Gato Barbieri, tenor saxophone and clarinet; Dewy Redman, alto and tenor saxophones; Don Cherry, cornet, Indian wood and bamboo flutes; Mike Mantler, trumpet; Roswell Rudd, trombone; Bob Northern, French horn, hand wood blocks, crow call, bells, and military whistle; Howard Johnson, tuba; Paul Motian, percussion instruments; Andrew Cyrille, percussion instruments; Sam Brown, guitar, Tanganyikan guitar, thumb piano; Carla Bley, piano, tambourine; Charlie Haden, bass violin.

...

in Cooperation with Detroit Adventure

THURS. JAN. 8

FROM SOCIAL DISEASES to the common cold, Open City will cure it, at their free medical clinic. 4425 Second at Canfield. 6:30–8:30 p.m. Call first or come in for an apt 831–2770.

PINK PILLS for PALE PEOPLE: Detroit’s Panaceas, this is another exciting gallery talk at the Detroit Historical Museum. 3:30 p.m.

...