Letters

Dear Sirs,

I have been a subscriber to your paper for a long time and hope to be a subscriber for a long time to come, but that’s not why I wrote.

I wish to congratulate you on your last issue (vol. 3, no. 7), it was great!

I also wish to criticize you on your letting John Sinclair ruin your fine newspaper by printing all of his bullshit on the MC5.

I realize that as manager for the MC5, Sinclair would naturally want the public to know about his group but there are also a helluva lot of other local groups which I feel the MC5 can’t even come close to musically, who are never even mentioned in your paper.

So let’s get on the ball and not ruin a good thing by letting Sinclair use your paper as a cheap means of advertisement as he has done in the past few issues.

C.J. Semon

Dear People,

We tried to become free. We got rid of ties, suits, tight shoes, robot hairdos, fake manners of acting with people, and general American Brain-Wash characteristics. BUT WE ARE STILL NOT FREE. No one is free if he or she still wears clothes! These ridiculous coverings are a HANG-UP. It’s PHONY. Beads, colored shirts (made by machines by the way), funny pants and skirts, long hair, sandals (how conforming!), and other decorations ALL THIS IS PHONY!

You are only Free when you don’t have to dress at all. Why must you force yourself to dress when it’s hot outside (and clothes make you sweaty and uncomfortable).

The best way you could enjoy the REALITY of LIFE and NATURE would be to sail out Totally Free from garments and rags that chain and smother our bodies—concealments and concepts which originated and resulted from stone-age myths, fears and religious prudery.

(Note: I won’t use words like “naked” or “undressed”; for these words IMPLY that we SHOULD be dressed, i.e. like the “normal condition” is “dressed” and the “abnormal” condition is “UNdressed.” Destroy these terms and this kind of thinking. “Uncovered”, “unsmothered,” or “unbound” would be better terms.

“Revealed” implies that certain things should be “veiled”. Get rid of this thinking. Remember: we were born naked—free.

Why does Society want to HIDE the truth? Society is backward. Your clothes were made by MACHINES! We don’t want to wear clothes made from animals either, do we? Because that animal is killed for your selfish body warmth. So the only alternative is NO clothing. FREE YOURSELF. I say: if you really want to be Free, TAKE IT OFF! TAKE IT ALL OFF!

Vincent C. Stuart II

Dear Fifth Estate,

I am a homosexual, and on a recent Saturday night me and another guy were walking around Milwaukee Ave., between Woodward and Cass.

The Pigs told us to leave the sidewalk and not to come back. Knowing our full rights we kept right on walking. We were dragged into the pig car. And told if we ever came back to a “public street”, we would spend the night in the Pig Pen! Also be fined.

Well they let us go, and I wish to say, one Pig said “homosexuality is illegal,” why then do the gay bars still stay open? Or is it because they pay the Pigs to keep them open?

I think the cops are wrong! I am going back to this street, with other friends, I would like to know if you could give me the name of a person to call if the Pigs get them, also, money and shit for my getting out?

Please help.

Luv,

Paul

To the Editors:

Methedrine (methamphetamine) is used in medicine for appetite control, mood elevation and to raise blood pressure when indicated. The drug is usually ingested in 5 milligram tablets one to three times a day. Medical reasons for injecting methedrine are specific and few.

Tolerance to the amphetamines develops rapidly and increasingly large amounts must be used to achieve the same results. When large amounts are used, blood pressure may be raised sufficiently high to blow out a blood vessel in the brain, thus causing a stroke.

True addiction to methedrine also seems to occur. Recently, a patient in a drug abuse clinic stated that it was harder for him to kick the methedrine habit than it was to get off heroin. At the time he was shooting up 200 milligrams of crystals every two hours. He was found dead a few weeks ago, apparently from an overdose.

Both general and student hospitals are seeing increasingly greater numbers of 16 to 25 year old people who have caught hepatitis from a needle used to inject methedrine. Neither boiling water nor soaking in alcohol will necessarily kill the hepatitis virus found in too many spikes.

Speed kills.

Eugene Schoenfeld. M.D.

To the Editor:

I read last week in your paper that your reporter took a “Detroit Book Trip Holiday” to Global Books Inc. and was dejected by the grey melancholy of the place. This reaction is understandable for the Communist Party, which runs Global Books, practices a kind of politics, rooted in a wretched Stalinist past, which could produce nothing more than a depressing effect on any young revolutionary.

But democratic revolutionary socialism has another past, perverted by Russian bureaucrats, lied about and distorted by American schools and media, a path of action, of uncompromising militancy, a past whose traditions have been preserved and whose practices are carried on today by the Young Socialist Alliance.

The YSA too has a book store at Debs Hall at 3737 Woodward. Literature from Marx to Malcolm, from Lenin to Che, literature on the war in Vietnam, the black struggle, on Czechoslovakia, Cuba and France can all be purchased there.

I urge all readers who are interested in radical ideas to come to Debs Hall. And too, they will find that unlike the Communist Party, the Young Socialist Alliance reads well what it sells—and practices well what it reads.

Michael Smith