Detroit Seen

Bad news for the Ann Arbor Sun. “Detroit’s Hottest Paper” (as they call it) was hit in January with a coordinated wave of vandalism which left 40 of their newspaper coinboxes disabled after a liquid solder was poured in the coinslots. Since the gang from Ann Arbor has offered a $100 reward to bring in the culprits to justice, we thought we could narrow down the list of suspects for them. (1) Any of the 650,000 members of Detroit’s black community who have been insulted by the blatantly racist attempt of a group of white college-town liberals to publish a paper for blacks without the slightest understanding of the dynamics of the situation; (2) Any of the 250,000 members of the UAW who have seen chief union bureaucrat Leonard Woodcock portrayed on the Sun pages as a friend of labor, rather than as the stooge of the auto companies which he is; and (3) Any of the thousands of radicals in Detroit who have seen the Sun try to divert criticism of the political system by uncritically praising every elected hack in the state. Hope that helps you out, fellas...

Good movie bet: “Burn” by director Gillo (“Battle of Algiers”) Pontecorvo, showing at the Cass City Cinema, February 27–28,.8 and 10 p.m., located at the First Unitarian Church, Cass at Forest, admission $1.50; all proceeds going to support the Alternative School System. The film, starring Marlon Brando, vividly portrays a Caribbean rebellion by black islanders against the white colonial masters--a clear Vietnam parallel...

Pigs in the pokey: Sgt. Rudy Davis, convicted in the 10^th police precinct heroin and bribery case, and State Supreme Court Justice John Swainson, guilty of perjury--both scheduled to do some time in the slammer. You can’t help but chuckle at the irony of it all. Both men, pillars of the legal machinery which enforces the inequities of capitalism’s legal system, found the mechanism turning on them. Too bad, fellas. Maybe now you’ll get an idea of what it’s all about...

Things worked out so well at the Fifth Estate 10^th anniversary party (both in terms of fun and funds) that we have scheduled another one for Friday, February 20 at Formerly Alvin’s Deli on Cass. There will be free beer, music by Shadowfax for great dancing, and theatre by Primitive Lust and Acme Theatrical--and all for only $2.50. See details farther back in the issue, and for a preview of the music, come see Shadowfax blow the place apart Thursdays and Saturdays at Cobb’s Bar, Cass at Willis. The guys have never played so well and people can get into it too now that Cobb’s features dancing...

Our financial report in the last issue was a bit over optimistic to say the least and it will take things like this benefit to keep us going. Also, subscriptions and bookstore purchases really help. Many thanks, too, to people who have sent in donations, especially Pat in Warren and Corey in Berkeley, Calif., who each sent in $20 donations!...

Several people have subscribed and included an extra two bucks to buy a sub for a prisoner. So far we have sent them to one prison library and six prisoners...

As of last year Wayne County, and reportedly, other counties in Michigan and other parts of the Useless States of America have instituted a bounty system within the Social Services departments. Under this procedure, ADC mothers get up to a $25 raise per month if they help the Fiend of the Court apprehend and convict fathers who are behind in child support payments. It seems necessary to the bureaucratic cretins who permeate the Fiend of the Court offices (they ain’t no friend of mine!) to institute this bounty system because most ADC mothers have no need to turn in the fathers as they receive the same amount of ADC regardless of whether the fathers pay Fiend of the Court or not. This is because they are two separate agencies, and fathers are expected to reimburse the State for what it pays the mother in ADC payments. Thus our tax money is being used to finance “morality” and to foster distrust among citizens. (Before you know it, they’ll be paying people to sing the national anthem.) This fits in with the odious tendency of tub-thumping Politicians to use Welfare recipients as scapegoats for the inexcusable way they and the vultures in control of industry have mismanaged the economy...

A book of poems, reviews, manifestos and other forms of mental insurrection containing the work of many local writers will appear sometime later this month under the name of FLI-BACK. The FLI-BACK group claims Arthur Bremer as their spiritual advisor and claims to be in contact” with the perpetrators of a mysterious killing in Cincinnati in 1934, where the head of the Ohio Psychiatric Association had his jugular vein ripped out and his body stuffed into the air conditioning unit of a nearby plastics factory...

George (The Mad Slasher) Gullen, President of Wayne State University, who recently brought down the axe on Monteith College, has let it be known that the University does not intend to turn over the school’s alternative radio station, WDET-FM, to a staff collective as had been previously announced. Instead, plans are being made by WSU to sell the station to the highest bidder, which at this point appears to be a church group from Grand Rapids. That Gullet would preside over the replacing of non-commercial, creative programming with a religious station not only testifies to his auto-executive background, but also makes understandable the reason why he has received numerous threats on his life recently (at 577–2230)...

In order to better understand contemporary social relations, some people are attempting to begin a study group in which they will read and discuss some interesting books together. So far the suggested readings are:

The Mass Psychology of. Fascism (W. Reich), Reproduction of Daily Life (F, Perlman), Irrational in Politics (M. Brinton), Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (F. Engels), Reproduction of Human Capital (R. Cooperstein), Sexuality & Class Struggle (R. Reiche). If any of you are interested in studying and discussing some of these (or other) readings, the first meeting of the group will take place at the Fifth Estate office, 4403 Second (and Canfield) at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, February 18^th.