Various Authors
Letters
To the Editors:
We just finished reading your paper “the 5th Estate” dated April 3–16, which couldn’t be classified as good trash. After wasting 4 books of matches we finally got your paper burning so we could heat our C-rations.
You probably are wondering why we are writing this letter to you. Well, we read some articles concerning Vietnam and some of the letters from men in Vietnam which we will call clerks, because we know they haven’t seen any combat by the letters they have written. The rest of the articles were written by the girlish boys back in the world.
We don’t believe anyone who hasn’t experienced the pain and violence of war, and the suffering of small children has the right to cast judgment on our government and what us guys are doing over here.
You are printing all this trash about bringing our men home and peace. Don’t you think we would like to be home with our families and loved ones? We’ll answer that. Yes we would, but we know we have a job to do over here and we’ve accepted it.
Most of the men in this company are leaving in July. Some have spent two years here, others have only a few months of their tour in. We may sound like a bunch of lifers to you, but don’t get us wrong. Ninety percent of us were drafted and will be getting out soon, but we have served our country for two years with pride.
We would like to ask you a few questions.
Have you ever seen small children with the look of hunger in their eyes?
Have you ever seen a young woman who has lost her husband and child, Because of communism? Have you ever seen small children and adults going through a garbage dump to pick up small scraps of food?
We’ve seen this and much more. That’s why we feel we’re fighting for something worthwhile.
True we’ve lost friends and we’ll lose more before this war is over, but we dare you to say these men have died for nothing.
We’re closing this letter now as we leave for night ambush in a short while.
We wonder if you have the guts to print the truth about how us guys feel about being over here. This is the war seen through the eyes of the combat infantrymen.
The men of the Third Plt. B. Co., 1/6 Inf., 5th (mech) Div. APO San Francisco, Cal. 96477
Editors’ Note: Rather than answer your criticisms directly we would like to invite the hundreds of GIs in Vietnam who subscribe to the Fifth Estate to reply instead:
We have seen hunger in the eyes of small children—right here in Detroit. This is one reason why the Black Panther Party is instituting a Breakfast for Children program—because thousands of children go to school hungry each morning in our city.
Again we have seen people going through garbage cans for food right here in our home town. People, both black and white, in rural counties of Kentucky and Mississippi are on the verge of starvation.
Our fight—and yours—is here in America to make our country a decent place to live, not to go 10,000 miles from home and try to enforce our system of government on a people who seem to be willing to fight to the death to resist our domination.
We would finally suggest that all of the unfortunate things you mentioned, including the tragic death and injuries of your friends, would not occur if we would take our troops home and let the Vietnamese people settle their own affairs without our unwanted interference.
To the Fifth Estate of Love, From the Hate of Vietnam.
This is a letter of fact and written from the heads of Vietnam as we are called. And the fact is, we are hated and despised worse than our enemy who has no mind, but holds war and death in his hand.
The Military is the closest thing to Comi. Living as they go on policing and ruining people’s lives.
We are watched, degraded, and policed from the people we are supposed to be doing so much for. When they decide it’s over, their life will have no change, their mind will have no change, their mind will be no different.
They will have U.S. money as a memory of us, as we did in our other money-making wars. It’s no longer Freedom we are made to commit our lives for, but the money and power of military brain washing.
Our case is just one of many. The CIA is a civilian power working with the minds of our military pigs. They have weapons to use on us when we are kept under lock and key in a war zone.
They go thru our mail like little rats, when mail is the only thing we have here, besides a good head, which is almost getting impossible.
I have enclosed some pictures, one depicting the sort of thing they leave laying around to keep your mind in a blank state.
The main forces who kill here are really involved and sick, to the extent of putting their unit’s patch in the victim’s mouth, along with many other bizarre things which would just depress me to write.
The other picture is one of us, the heads of the 172 ENGRS, along with a few of our friends who could be called our egg men. Out of this picture, two are awaiting possible sentence in Long Binh Jail (LBJ) which resembles the Jewish prison camps. The Military Kangaroo Courts will probably kill their life as they always do.
Dangerous Drugs is the rap; we’re endangering our lives with drugs, so we can’t die their way, which is by War of their Military Laws and discipline.
Please let it be known that we will fight the Army all the way. The war has just begun.
Patrick J. Mahon
Vietnam
Editors’ Note: We lost your address. If you see this issue, please send it to us.
Dear Sirs:
I would very much appreciate it if you would take our name off of your mailing list.
I have never seen nor read such a trashy paper. How you ever get this published is beyond me!
And they wonder why the Morals of our young have gone to the dogs. You can surely take your share of the blame.
I can assure you this paper will make one fast trip from our mail box to the trash burner (unread).
Thanks for absolutely nothing.
Mrs. Martin
Royal Oak
To the Editors:
The pigs and dogs who run this country have again attacked a revolutionary brother. [See FE #78, May 1–14, 1969.]
Brother John Sinclair has been convicted of assaulting a pig, a trumped up charge we are all familiar with. This shit can NOT continue!
We will not allow our brothers to be ripped off and kidnapped in this manner; for everyone of our brothers that you kidnap we will kidnap one of you. If Brother John goes down, Governor Milliken goes down. If any of our other brothers get ripped off we will rip off a like figure from the pig culture,
We have already kidnapped your children, Amerika. You’re next.
Brother Sinclair’s attempted kidnapping is the latest in the series perpetrated by the illegal United States government. The U.S. Government is illegal because it does not represent the poor, it does not represent crazy people.
WE are the people and WE WILL NOT BE FUCKED WITH! Brother Sinclair’s conviction is not legal because he was not tried by a jury of his peers. We know because we are his peers and nobody like us was on the jury. Everyone of the jury was a middle-class honky suburbanite.
Brother Sinclair follows in the heroic lines of Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Hutton, Robert F. Williams, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. You have attempted to rip off or kidnap these brothers but you have only rarely been successful. Your successes will be FEWER in the future.
We declare ourselves part of a conspiracy to prevent John Sinclair from ever going to jail; in fact we are a part of every conspiracy designed to burn down the bastions of the pig.
LONG LIVE HEROIC BROTHER JOHN SINCLAIR
DEATH TO OUR ENEMIES’ ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE
—The White Panthers of Detroit)
To the Editors:
It was brought to my attention that an article appearing in the May 4 edition of the Detroit News mentioned my name and added that I am a White Panther and would be a Black Panther if I were black.
Although this is undoubtedly true, the News wrote the article on hearsay without any attempt at verification from me, without contacting me in any way, or ever interviewing me in any form.
The principle involved here is another instance of explicit lack of journalistic integrity on the part of the Noose.
When a member of the community is involved in any story printed in the Noose, he or she is treated as a second class citizen without any regard to that person’s right to be treated with respect and integrity.
As a newspaper person myself, I often see this occur and have little professional respect for a paper of the News’ nature.
I strongly urge the community to boycott the Detroit News and to continue to demonstrate until the community receives the kind of news coverage it deserves.
C. McCall
Dear Friends,
Just thought I’d let you know of a far-fucking-out incident I was involved in while wandering around downtown a few days ago.
Was walking up Woodward toward Adams when some tall stranger walks up and asks me where he could go to join up with the White Panthers and how he could get a Panther sticker like I’ve got on the back of my coat. Out of curiosity I asked him why he would want to “join” and he comes out with the dumb-ass remark: “I’m sick of all the shit the niggers are trying to pull on us hard working (?) white people and want to help fight ‘em off.” Naturally, this stoned me out and I tried to explain to him as well as I could about what the Panthers are about but before I finished, he stalked away and I stood there wondering what the fuck is this, some kind of laugh-in sequence. I can’t think of a proper way to end this little what-the-fuck-happened story cause I’m still zapped by the absurdity of Mr. White Man’s remark.
Ah, well back to the drawing board.
Sincerely yours,
Robert Iball
To the Editors:
Let’s face it; reviews/criticism is bullshit, the dead product of Western mechanistic society. Objectivity is relative—a logical construct which does not exist.
Critical structures are the after-products used to rationalize/categorize an emotional response: ego games which we all sometimes play. But why play them at all/ Paragoric babies of the world unite! ! You have nothing to lose but your pushers...And they are not necessary” not necessary.
It is not necessary to ‘criticize’ the work/actions of our brothers and sisters. It is necessary to feellll their energy unite with ours, multiply, grow, explode—it is necessary to feeeeelllll, to feel freeeeeeee, to live, to be and to know, to really know that it is good.
Good like cosmic fusion energyburst of orgasm—Good like furious cellular liberation of music, like solar blue sky sunny springlife. Goodlife! try it. you can /must make it work.
For you.
Brother Aaron Duchan
Poet Freak Panther Revolutionist Humanbeing.
To the Editors:
Homosexuals are the second largest and the most openly persecuted minority group in America.
Homosexual acts between consenting male adults are illegal in 49 states, and may be punishable by life imprisonment in 5 states (California, Idaho, Missouri, Montana and Nevada), and by maximum prison terms ranging from 10 to 30 years in 36 other states.
Homosexuals are categorically denied employment in the U.S. Civil Service and the Armed Forces and are fired or given dishonorable discharges if they are discovered in Federal service. Some psychologists and psychiatrists have made the general public in spite of much professional disagreement.
Almost all western religions classify homosexual acts as sinful and either turn homosexuals away from religion or make them regard themselves as evil. The worst persecution by far is that almost all homosexuals have been raised by heterosexual parents and society to hate what they have become.
The open persecution and harassment of homosexuals by the government and the police must end, and the public must be informed about homosexuality so that the prejudice based on enforced ignorance will end. Dedicated to this cause are the organizations of the Homophile Movement, one of which is the Student Homophile League.
The Student Homophile League has picketed NROTC and lectures, discussion groups and information services, as well as distributing leaflets and articles, at Columbia, Cornell and NYU.
Help us get rid of some of the stupidity and ignorance that society condones and even demands.
Write: Student Homophile League 202 Earl Hall, Columbia University, New York, N.Y. 10027
Robert Russell
Secretary
Student Homophile League