Letters

To the Editor:

In March of this year, citizens of the Republic of New Africa suffered physical attacks by the Detroit Police Dept., were deprived of their legal rights by the police and the Wayne County Prosecutor, and were the victims of racist hysteria whipped up by the mass media, notably the Detroit News.

What these attacks on free speech, free assembly and due process mean to all citizens. If you agree that constitutional guarantees are in jeopardy, join with us in supporting the legal defense of the black victims involved.

All contributions will be channeled into the Black Legal Defense Fund which is chaired by Attorney Russell S. Brown Jr. A complete report of monies collected and disbursed by the March 29 Defense Committee will be sent to contributors.

Sponsors of the March 29 Defense Committee include: Dr. Henry Hitt Crane; The Fifth Estate; John B. Forsyth, Director of Division of Mission Metropolitan Detroit Council of Churches; Maurice Geary; David Herreshoff, Wayne State Faculty; John Lathers, Executive Board of Detroit Federation of Teachers; Dr. Paul Lowinger; James Saad, Vice President of Michigan Federation of Teachers; David Wineman.

March 29 Defense Committee, 19334 Mark Twain, Detroit, MI 48235

To the Editors:

Thanks a lot for your newspaper. As you know the only other rag we can get here is the Stars and Stripes—one big hunk of Kate Smith. That piece of shit reeks with the goodness of the military.

Reading your paper helps us really find out what is doing back home. Keep up the greatness you’re doing.

And down with the war, the Corps, and the Lifers.

Our motto: stay high in Chu Lai.

Peacefully yours,

David B.

Jeff (Wop)Billone

Edwin J. Cooper

Vietnam

To the Editors:

I am a subscriber to the Fifth Estate, I decided to subscribe when, by accident, I got hold of your paper and read it.

Since that time I’ve been convinced that the so-called newspapers of Detroit, i.e. The Free Press and the Detroit News, print nothing that isn’t slanted to the honky way of life. Nothing they print is the exact truth.

These papers insinuate that the free community is subversive. I’d like to point out that these “subversives” are the New Patriots.

We want America to be all that it’s supposed to be, not the status quo, the stagnant unproductive, middle class suburban jungle it is now. We want a free America, not a pig state dictatorship.

We want life for our people, not the living death of the uncreative honky culture that exists now.

We need peace, not the erosion of our male populace in the wars of prestige, fought in Laos, Korea, and Vietnam. The News and the Free Press are papers of the racist death culture and are against all free change.

I hope Open City sets an- example for other free communities throughout the land, The blacks learned that you have to organize to obtain power and you have to have power to get your rights in the racist USA. The only way we can demand and receive our rights is to get organized.

Robb Smith

Panther

New Patriot

Humanbeing

Dear People:

If you live in the suburbs be careful. You’re surrounded by the poison of prejudiced, closed minds and an uptight society will work on your mind.

I lived in Bloomfield Hills and the “heady” people even have cliques. The kids worry about getting their weekly allowance, wearing the right bell bottoms and getting doped up on the weekends.

It’s becoming very “in” there to grow your hair out, to wear beads, fringe jackets and other psychedelic horseshit.

I don’t mean to get down on anyone, but if this is where your head is at then, baby, you’ve got a fucking lot to learn.

Kathy Ruetenik

Mass.

Dear Alan & Friends,

I have written you a lot of times and have been getting the 5^th Estate on a regular date each month and this is been going on for 18 months and I want to thank you for all the help and joy you have given me.

I also want to say that you have given me a new look at the way of life and the way the States and the Army are.

I think that we are wrong for being here in Vietnam and that we should leave this place and forget about it and yet we are helping in a way that is hard to see if you haven’t been here and seen the joy of a little girl’s face when she gets a full belly of food and a clean bath and a new dress to wear.

They think that all Americans are rich and like to spend money but that’s only-cause we have a little and they have none at all.

Now I want to say I think that it’s wrong the way everybody is protesting this war. I mean to say that the way is wrong, not the protesting.

We read every day that people are in jail for being against the war and that the Judge is against them no matter who or what they are. That’s wrong and I think that if we try and do it in a legal way and see the right people they can help a lot more than any riot that they can hold.

A riot does only one thing and that is to get the Army on your back and they could care less about shooting them as I would of hitting a fly that was bugging me.

I say fight the war and try to help us get home please, for we don’t care a damn bit about this so-called police act and that’s what they call it and we have over 30,000 dead and that’s a hell of a police act. But see people that HAVE the power to do something about it legally and you will see that it will work out better for you and for me.

I am not a lifer in this old timers’ army and I plan to get out and stay out but I am in right now and I have to do what I am told to do so as to stay out of trouble.

But we need an army to protect us and we can do that now but we don’t have to go and fight every goddam war that comes up. All we’re doing is killing our men and that’s a pretty stupid thing to’ do.

I have a lot of people that I work with that have stopped talking to me and sort of think of me as a hippy freak and why? because I read your paper. I will keep reading it as long as you mail it to me no matter what anybody says or thinks.

So if you will let me come home someday I plan to help you and your cause the best way I can and try and stay inside of the law.

Sgt. Richard R.E. Guise

Vietnam

Dear Fifth Estate,

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for covering my courts-martial proceeding of the 20^th of May [“Airman Beats Brass,” FE #80, May 29-June 11, 1969]. I’m sure Alan Gotkin was as surprised as I was by the final outcome.

The verdict as I’m sure you already know was not guilty. This case as I have been told was the first one that has taken place at Selfridge Air Force Base where an airman has turned down an Article 15 (non-judicial punishment) in the place of a courts-martial and was acquitted.

May I also take time to thank my two very brilliant attorneys, Mr. Marc Kadish and Mr. Marc Stickgold. Without the help of these two dedicated men the brass would have had another dissenter in jail.

But thanks to their tireless efforts the military had no choice but to find me not guilty. Thank you once again.

Peace,

Ted Goldflies

P.S. If you happen to be in the military, it is better to lose than to give the brass the satisfaction of kissing their beloved ass.

Dear Fifth Estate,

Some of the heads over here in Vietnam subscribe to your paper. It’s a groovy paper and we ask you to keep up the good work.

By the time everyone gets through reading it, it’s all tattered and torn. Your paper really gives us info on what’s happening in the world.

It’s also a most welcomed change from the lifer propaganda we get in the Stars & Stripes.

The three confirmed heads who are writing this letter are “SHORT.” We plan to take your paper back in the world.

The bulk of our company used to be heads, but the cherries we now have are lacking the balls and are afraid of lifers. The way things are starting to look over here, the lifers are taking over, the propaganda is starting to work.

For all stoned heads, we got to make a stand, we can’t let them run our world.

The Shorttimers

“Raiders”

PS. LIFERS ARE LIKE FLIES, THEY EAT SHIT AND BOTHER PEOPLE!