Fifth Estate Collective

The Libertarian Book Club offers anarchist books, newspapers, and magazines. 20% discount included with a $5 yearly membership. Send SASE to: Libertarian Book Club, 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012, Room 202.

An anarcho-communist newspaper, Libertarian Workers Bulletin, has recently released vol. 7 no. 1 which includes an extended article concerning “The Anarchist Case Against Terrorism.” The Libertarian Workers for a Self-Managed Society can be reached by writing: P.O. Box 20, Parkville 3052, Melbourne Victoria, Australia.

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We continue to receive a tremendous variety of publications for mention in this column, some of them anarchist and/ or syndicalist and libertarian communist, but many of them uncategorizable. It appears that an anarchic, autonomous underground press is flowering. Whereas the old underground press found its format in the multicolored tabloid, this new movement makes use of the photocopy—undoubtedly many of them printed free on liberated time, materials and machinery at workplaces. Some of the collage work is exceptional as well. We should also mention that they are often published in conjunction with street activities such as spraypainting, disruption and guerrilla theater.

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Librairie Alternative, Canada’s only anarchist bookstore, desperately needs repairs on its Montreal quarters. The state of things were so bad that they were forced to evacuate the premises several weeks and have now begun a North America-wide fund raising campaign. They are able to have some of the needed $45,000 financed, but need an additional $10,000 from movement sources. They are trying to encourage 100 groups to contribute $100 each, but welcome individual donations of lesser amounts. The shop is self-managed and anti-profit. Send donations to Librarie Alternative, 2033 Boul. St. Laurent, Montreal PQ H2X 2T3, Canada.

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The Clydeside Anarchist is a new quarterly publication from Scotland. They can be contacted at Box 3, 488 Great Western Road, Glasgow 12 Scotland. Black Bairn, an anarchist newssheet, can be contacted at the same address.

The May/June issue of Overthrow includes articles on South Africa, Chile, women’s struggles in India, and more. Write P.O. Box 392, Canal St. Station, New York NY 10013.

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An FE staff member currently traveling outside the U.S. wrote to us upon receiving his FE, that while the content and the layout were good, “there were a fair number of typos, which I’m sure you found as well.” We work hard on the paper, trying to catch every detail, to say things as best we can and to present it all in a dramatic, visually attractive format. Imagine our irritation, when we found, on the first page, that the typist had consistently put a typically gringo spelling Sandanista instead of Sandinista (staff members who speak Spanish had not gotten to proofread that page). That would make the Nicaraguan politicos disciples of Augusto Sandano rather than Sandino. Perhaps a niggling point, except that there are those of us who have always found something bothersome about foreign words and names being mangled in English language texts (though mangled English words in foreign language texts often strike us as amusing).

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England’s Green Anarchist magazine is now available as single issues or in bulk from Autonome Distribution, PO Box 79119, New Orleans LA 70179. In GA the Earth First! Journal meets Class War and puts forth an anti-civilization perspective as uncompromising as ours. Their long-range strategy is to support “Revolution on the Periphery,” Third World revolts that deprive mass society of the resources it exploits from the poorer regions. (They don’t support national liberation struggles!) They see this as creating the basis for “self-governing, self-sufficient communities” which will be “easier to establish as the State loses control of the rest of the planet.”

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Detroit’s Black & Red has just released The Story of Tatiana (see description [in Fifth Estate Books] to the right) by Jacques Baynac. A list of titles, including Fredy Perlman’s works, are available upon request from us or, write B&R at PO BX 02374, Detroit MI 48202.

Last issue we mentioned The Anarchist Cookbook along with Dave Foreman’s Eco-Defense as two books despised by the authorities, and were marveling at the 25,000 copies sold of the latter edition. However, the former has just celebrated its 2,000,000^th sale! The Anarchist Cookbook is not a culinary tract, but a how-to text of bombs, guns, booby-traps and incendiaries, and according to the New York Times, has become “a cult classic.” We have heard several times since it was published over twenty years ago that some of its “recipes” could backfire on the preparer. However, we never heard of an accident actually occurring.

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We could spend all day reading here in the basement apartment which serves as the office for the Fifth Estate. Our mailbox gets stuffed with several ‘zines and newspapers a week, and a few hundred each year. The underground press continues to flourish, yet even our favorite ‘zines rarely get mentioned in these pages. We’ve often left such zine-scene surveys to those who do it best: Factsheet Five, Anarchy and Maximum Rock N Roll. For this issue I tried to pick out some of my favorite mags to mention in a completely biased and subjective manner.

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Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkey-wrenching, written by Earth First! founder, Dave Foreman and the probably pseudononymous, Bill Haywood, has sold out of five printings since 1985 and is now unavailable. The book figured heavily in the government’s case against Foreman and other EF!ers in 1991 and was seen by friend and foe alike as a manual of sabotage and destruction to be used against polluters, developers and loggers.

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Writers and Artists: Guillotine Press is seeking poetry, short-short stories, and line art of a social/political/anarchistic basis documenting our struggle against the current implementation of fascist totalitarianism under the guise of Reagan/Bush Republicanism; the unleashing of Capital’s watchdogs, the police, on a brutal (and now thanks to the Supreme Court) legal rampage against personal freedoms; the militaristic nationalism surging through White America’s veins justifying the continued oppression of nature, women and all people of color; and the continued ecologic rape of Earth in the name of profit & progress by the industrial mega-machines of multi-national corporations.

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SLINGSHOT (700 Eshlecreature Hall, Berkeley, CA 94608) continues to be a thorough and thoughtful anarcho-newspaper from the always radical and socially tumultuous community of Berkeley. The Summer 1992 issue contains several interesting pieces of analysis on the Los Angeles rebellion and simultaneous uprisings throughout the world. Rather than resorting to reductionist cheerleading, the diverse collection of articles on LA provide a patchwork of revolutionary perspectives that reflect the event’s complexity and significance. The informative “News Briefs” about Berkeley and Jack Straw’s essay on psychedelic mushrooms balance out the issue.

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Sorry for such a short column of News & Reviews this issue, but we are short of space this time around. Keep sending us news of your publications and activities—we like to read them and promise to give them more space next issue.

For news of political prisoners in Spain, write to: Associacio de Familiars i Amics dells presos politics, Rda. Sant Pere, 32, ter. E, Barcelona 10, Spain. Information comes in spanish and catalan.

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Bound Together Books is presenting the fifth annual Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair, Saturday, April 15 at the San Francisco Hall of Flowers in the city’s Golden Gate Park.

The fair showcases anarchist publishers, distributors and activist groups with attendance at last year’s event having grown to 3,000. According to its organizers, the idea for the fair is to build an international radical community, exchange ideas and sell literature.

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The always provocative and irreverent The Match! (P.O. Box 3488, Tucson AZ 85722) is currently involved in a raging debate on pornography in which it inveighs against any censorship even by women who maintain they are victimized by it. “No one,” states The Match! “is fit to be a censor!”

Also, Kent Winslow’s serialized novelette, “Dream World,” is worth the price of admission alone.

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We never could figure out which faction was responsible for the auto-destruction of New York City’s Sabotage Bookstore (the pamphlets published by either side casting blame are definitely not recommended reading), but we had the same sensation one does when watching a once loving couple rage at one another. Fortunately, people close to the excellent Shadow newspaper (PO Box 20298, New York NY 10009) have established the city’s only “underground anarchist bookstore” featuring publications, records, tapes and books, as well as pins, t-shirts, posters and the like. A-Central Books is located at 208 E. 7^th St., phone (212) 674–0581, and also contains a People’s Switchboard with information on local, national and international anarchist events.

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In the last issue of the FE, we reported that Cienfuegos in the United Kingdom had closed up shop. What we failed to mention was that the U.S. branch, Cienfuegos/Soil of Liberty, is still going strong publishing their own books and distributing Cienfuegos books. This group has two new publications, the latest Anarchist Review, and a book entitled With the Peasants of Aragon, by Augustin Souchy. Both are available from Cienfuegos Distribution, 3512 12^th Avenue S., Minneapolis Minnesota 55407. Cienfuegos UK will continue under the name REFRAC. For more information, write REFRAC Publications, BCM Refract, London WC1N 3XX, United Kingdom...

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Bound Together Books, 1369 Haight Street, San Francisco CA 94117, a bookstore specializing in anti-authoritarian titles, has copies available of Paul Goodman’s The Black Flag of Anarchism and Other Essays, a 46-page pamphlet from the long dormant Employee’s Theft Press. Essays beside the title include, “A Touchstone for the Libertarian Program” and “Reflections on Drawing the Line.” Although we haven’t seen these essays, Goodman wrote in the dark days of the ‘50s as an individualist anarchist, so much of what he says may be of particular relevance to those isolated from co-thinkers today. Send $2.75 postpaid; also ask for their catalog.

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An anarchist group and bookstore, Impossible Books (Suite 202, 3435 N. Sheffield Chicago, IL 60657) has been formed by a group of friends in the Chicago area. Although their resources are limited and funds low, they have initiated a newsletter and a small but growing booklist, and have put on several public forums and engaged in activities around the city. They also decided to take part as a group in the Chicago peace march on April 10 (attended by some 20,000 people) and distributed a leaflet entitled “Protest Without Illusions,” which is worth quoting here:

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Notice: Books reviewed in the “News & Reviews” section are not available through the FE Bookstore unless specifically stated otherwise.

The Alliance for the Liberation of Mental Patients publishes a newsletter from 1427 Walnut Street 4^th Floor, Philadelphia PA 19102, and sends it free of charge to all current and former psychiatric inmates...

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The Fifth Estate office receives a large number of anarchist and environmental newspapers and ‘zines from the U.S. and the rest of the world. After we look at them, they rarely get much farther than a growing pile under a desk.

We feel this is too dismal an end for publications with so much information and creativity, so we are hoping FE readers would like to see them. We will send them out with book orders or on request if you send postage. Please indicate country of interest or language (including U.S., England, Australia, etc.). If you’re in the neighborhood, the papers can be picked up at our office or the 404 W. Willis space.

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Both this newspaper in our last issue and Bad Attitude, No. 3 (POB 11589, Detroit Ml 48211) failed to give credit for the poem/ritual, “The Appeal of Anarchy.” It was taken from the compelling pamphlet by John Moore, Anarchy & Ecstasy: Visions of Halcyon Day.

The author states that the text “has been adapted from renderings of ‘The Charge of the Goddess’ by Starhawk and Charles G. Leland...Some maintain that it contains sentiments which have been uninterruptedly passed down the ages from prehistoric times, whilst others aver that it derives wholly from the fertile imagination of Leland, who first published it in 1899.”

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Last autumn fascists nearly rioted when twelve volunteers, hooded to protect their identities, removed the equestrian statue of Franco from the Plaza del Pais Valenciano in Valencia, Spain. While the National Police looked on, ultrarightists sang fascist hymns, threatened the workers and attempted to disrupt the operation. Finally the cops dispersed the demonstrators.
Later, fascists bombed a statue of the American revolutionary Simon Bolivar in reprisal. The dismantled statue, which had been slated for removal for four years before action was finally taken, has gone to a military museum. (Photo: El Pais)

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The prolific III Publishing group, PO Box 1581, Guala CA 95445, recently released two new books. Saab Lofton’s A.D. is set in 2410 where society is organized according to libertarian principles, but a menace from the past threatens the future. J.G. Eccarius, author of the blasphemous The Last Days of Christ the Vampire, latest book. Resurrection 2027, is a post-apocalyptic thriller set in the year of the title where rebellion is the only way out for children resurrected from the dead. III is also publishing Anti-Christ magazine, formerly The Stake, and wants to exchange ads with other zines.

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Both of the best selling issues of this newspaper, our 1970 Special Women’s Issue, which had to be reprinted three times to meet the demand for it, and our recent Queer Anarchy edition met with high acclaim for their coverage of gender issues. However, each was met with criticism for being “sectoralist” or even “pornography” in the case of the later edition.

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James Koehnline’s inventive collages often grace our pages including this issue. His mixture of the ancient with the modern, sacred idols with the banal, and the improbable alongside the ordinary, are often ominously unsettling. The jarring juxtaposition creates a combination of images which reveals much more than the constituent parts.

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The Poet’s Coven is a relatively new photocopied publication distributed free in the Vancouver, B.C. area. It consciously defies categorization and is open to a wide variety of expression—poetry, collage, fiction, articles. The Coven describes its vision as coming from an “eclectic assortment of inspirations,” and considers itself to be “a propaganda or counter-information project that would like to encourage creativity as well as debate and analysis within the anarchist/ social-ecologist/ ‘primitivist’ milieu.” The Coven seeks contributions from “anti-authoritarians, misfits, earth worshippers, optimistic and social nihilists, and underground rebels,” with a promise that all correspondence will be answered. Contributions in the form of money are also welcome.

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When Cienfuegos Press ceased publishing books several years ago, it left unfilled the anarchist movement’s need for regularly appearing quality titles. Their energetic efforts produced numerous volumes which ranged from the arcane and theoretical (Proudhonist Materialism & Revolutionary Doctrine) to the practical (Towards a Citizens’ Militia) with stops along the way for anthropology, criminology, history, several autobiographies, biographies, and assorted essays on anarchist themes. We thought most of the volumes unavailable, but fortunately they can be obtained through an American affiliate, Cienfuegos Distribution, c/o Soil of Liberty, Box 7056, Powderhorn Sta., Minneapolis, MN 55407. They have a catalog of their titles available, many of which the Fifth Estate Bookstore will soon be ordering.

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A little belatedly we have received The Alternative Press Annual, for 1983 and 1984 published by Temple Univ. Press, Broad & Oxford streets, Philadelphia PA 19122, both of which contain articles by Fifth Estate writers. The 1983 edition has E.B. Maple’s article “The Pain of America and the Tylenol Killings” (FE Winter 1982–3) and the 1984 volume (the most interesting to date) features Lynne Clive’s “Newspeak and the Impoverishment of Language” (FE #315, Winter 1984) as the lead article. Publication price is a whopping $34.95 meaning it was published primarily with library reference sections in mind, where it might be a good place to read it.

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From Coimbra, Portugal comes Pravda, put out by Fenda Editions. Pravda, with its obviously tongue-in-cheek title, describes itself as “a magazine of evil arts” and has just published its third issue. Although it refuses categorization, it could be described as a dada-esque journal of anti-politics and anti-art. It is infused with an impassioned desire to fight against the isolation which consumes us all. It will do this, its editors tell us, “by the undiplomatic unjournalistic communication between individuals who do not recognize themselves in that which the world of practical shit happiness avows and promotes.” They are defiant against this world in which “misery is the vicious synonym of wealth, and submission the frenetic synonym of liberty.”

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The FE bookstore page is more than an advertisement—the actual bookselling part of the project takes time and makes little, if any, money. We like to pass on books that have interested us or that have been “self-published” by friends and comrades, even though we may not agree with everything in them. We also enjoy publishing notices of printing and publishing projects, periodicals and newsletters from around the country, so that our readers can contact each other and battle out their differences or discover their commonalities without having to go through us. Mention of a paper does not imply that we agree with it, just that we think people should check it out on their own. We are also interested in expanding our review section, and welcome contributions from our readers on books, pamphlets and publications that have come their way and had some significance, positive or negative.

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Readers may have noticed that the important content last time limited our reviews sections. But now we are back. This summer, we caught up on our reading and offer the following four pages to comment on some of the many great books and ‘zines that we’ve received in the last several months. And we pledge to continue next time. We love to get mail! Please send us your journal or book to look at. Or send us a short review. If you publish or distribute magazines, please contact us about trade possibilities.

PO Box 6, Liberty, TN 37095

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Several new books of interest have recently come our way. We only have space to mention them in this issue, but hope to review them in the near future.

A new edition of ‘occasional FE contributor Richard Drinnon’s Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating & Empire-Building is once again available, in a new edition from the University of Oklahoma Press. We have recommended Drinnon’s book for years; it is an inspired, encyclopedic counter-history of U.S. colonial-settler culture, connecting the massacres from colonial Massachusetts to My Lai, and the imperial rationales that justified them.

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Friends who attended the second annual Anarchist Book Fair held March 29 in San Francisco say it was a tremendous success. It was sponsored by Bound Together Book Store, 1369 Haight, SF CA 94117 and hundreds showed up for the all-day affair. Our gratitude to Lawrence for setting up a table this year and last to distribute Fifth Estates.

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The Work Resister’s Handbook is presently being assembled by John Zerzan and Morgan Feralchilde. The authors want true stories of work resistance, how to do scams, and practical hints for curing consumption blues, e.g. shoplifting, etc. Write: Box 11331, Eugene OR 97440.

Counter-Information is a dynamic bimonthly street sheet from Edinburgh, Scotland with a circulation of 10,000. It’s in the forefront of the struggle against the newly imposed Poll Tax by urging total non-cooperation. They stress “the importance of people directly controlling their struggles, outside the control of political parties, trade unions or leaders.” Depending as they do upon reader support since their paper is free, the production collective has sent out a plea for funds so they can maintain a regular publishing schedule. We have copies we can supply upon request or write them directly: Counter Information, p/h CI, 11 Forth St., Edinburgh, Scotland EH1

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When I compare the straight columns, boxed graphics and even type of the Fifth Estate to the graphic wildness and literary adventure of the ‘zine Babyfish Lost Its Momma, it makes me wonder if the FE hasn’t gotten a little bit too straight-edged. Well, I guess you can’t force it, and Babyfish is tied solidly into a music, cultural, and lifestyle scene in Detroit’s Cass Corridor district where everything comes out a bit jagged and experimental. Issue No. 3 is a walloping 80 pages of Poetry, visuals, collages, music and literary reviews, fiction, communal action, radical sexuality and a lot of undefinables. Definitely for, as the lead editorial says, the “outlaws of Amerika.” A steal at $2.00. Available from: Babyfish at P.O. Box 11589, Detroit MI 48211 plus postage, or through FE Books.

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Issue No. 14 of Open Road is now out. This issue was made possible thanks to the generous response to the OR’s financial appeal. They welcome additional support, of course. The OR now costs $1.00 per issue. The current issue includes an interesting article by John P. Clark, “Anarchism and the World Crisis,” articles on pornography, the democracy movement in China, punk rock, the Amsterdam riots, and more.

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Citizen G of Citizens for a Non-Linear Future (see letter in this issue) has published an educational comic as well as an article and questionnaire on despair. Send a self-addressed stamped envelope to Citizen G at Wallingford Station, PO Box 31638, Seattle, WA 98103...

Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, is an irregular publication of the Columbia (Missouri) Anarchist League looking for readers and correspondents. Subscriptions are $3.00 for six issues, foreign subs are $6.00, and prisoners can receive subs for free. A recent issue (Vol. 1 No. 4) contains articles such as “Anarchy Under Fire,” “Marriage, Screwing, and Free Love,” “Ordinance to Limit Bicycle Right of Way” (?) and more. Write C.A.L., PO Box 380, Columbia MO 65205...

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Within the past several months the FE has received many publications and letters from Greece trying to make contact with radicals and libertarian revolutionaries in the U.S.

At a first glance the literature of the Greek anarchists looks like a collection of American ‘60s radical chic nostalgia, intellectually pureed for an ‘80s Mediterranean audience. Imagine for a moment the anthologies of the hip, the pseudo-hip, and the never-hip, but the always-trying of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s of American radicalism thrown together in a juxtaposition of grainy photos, poetry and prose—a hodgepodge of Buddy Holly, Jerry Rubin, the Who, Detroit’s own MC5, Abbie Hoffman and Zap comics, serving as a model for revolution.

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David Rovics. “Return” (Available from FE books for $10)

reviewed by Ellen Carryout

David Rovics is a dynamic troubadour, an American Billy Bragg, a Phil Ochs for our time, a folk music MC making revolution accessible. A collaboration with Ever Reviled Records, this latest collection contains classic Rovics musical rants focusing on the struggle for an independent Palestine. As the poetic lyrics chronicle the horrors of life in the occupied territories, some listeners will experience a chilling combination of tears and rage. But Rovics touches on other themes as well.

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Want a ‘zine or book reviewed? Want to trade bulk ‘zines between your distro and ours? Contact us!

Down at the Barn, we have a few ‘zines we can always recommend. Many of these are our sister publications in the Allied Press Syndicate (a radical newswire & publishing coalition). These include the Asheville Global Report and Clamor. We also trade copies on a regular basis with revolutionary mags like the Earth First! Journal, Slingshot, Anarchy, and Green Anarchy (an impressive, intelligent, insurrectionary ‘zine that has matured amazingly well since I prematurely dismissed it as macho rubbish in late 2002).

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Wooden Shoe Books, 112 S. 20^th St., Philadelphia PA 19103, is putting together an Anarchist Songbook and needs your favorite anarchist, protest, anti-nuke, feminist, gay, lesbian, animal liberation, Bob Avakian, etc. songs for the first edition to be available in Spring 1988.

And, they remind us, “Don’t forget to plagiarize.”

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After years of wasted time and copy space, the Social Revolutionary Anarchist Federation (SRAF) has decided to exclude anarcho-anti-semite Joffre Stewart from the pages of its free-wheeling Bulletin (P.O. Box 21071, Washington DC 20009). Since the pages of the Bulletin are submitted pre-typed and hence, non-edited, SRAF hoped, and often achieved, a magazine created by its readers, in a truly libertarian fashion. The decision to finally censor Stewart after years of discussion must have indeed been a weighty one, but of the 13 SRAF groups who responded to the production group’s question about the matter, seven abstained, five clearly wanted the Bulletin “to immediately stop printing Stewart and one wanted the open policy to continue.” You could almost feel the reluctance of the abstainers to not be the one to initiate censorship, hoping other affiliates would bring the long standing policy to a close, but enough of the groups apparently had had it with Stewart’s embarrassing connection with their publication and he is hopefully gone from further consideration. The current SRAF Bulletin contains a discussion of the matter...

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After looking at the latest jam-packed issue of Factsheet 5, PO Box 170099, SF, CA 94117, “the magazine of record” for zines, it doesn’t seem like anyone should worry about the state of autonomous publishing. Still, a number of stalwart anarchist publications have either ceased publishing recently or are appearing much less frequently (like us?). Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed hasn’t printed an edition since December 1995 and even then didn’t get issues out to all its subscribers.

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The government of the Bahamas has recently instituted a so-called courtesy campaign aimed at making the natives more respectful to the American and European tourists who frequent the islands. The program is, in effect, one of the most fascist official proposals from a government since apartheid became a way of life in South Africa.

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The cause of criminal justice in Detroit received a setback with the appointment on May 23 of Roman S. Gribbs as Sheriff of Wayne County.

Gribbs, who is presently a Traffic Court Referee, will replace ticket-fixing Peter Buback who resigned from the post after removal proceedings had been begun against him by State Attorney General Frank Kelley.

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Buenos Aires, Argentina—Members of the Argentine National Liberation Front (ALF) bargained on March 25 over the exchange of two government-held political prisoners for their own political hostage, the Paraguayan Consul to Argentina.

If the release was not made, the ALF pledged to assemble a firing squad and off the diplomat.

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BOSTON—Fuzzy the pig is going to be alright. Fuzzy is, fittingly, the mascot of the National Patrolman’s Association, and underwent a weekend operation for an intestinal disorder at the Angell Memorial Animal Hospital last week.

Richard MacEachner, president of the association, said the patrolmen picked a pig for a mascot because, “We believe pigs are beautiful. We’d rather associate with Fuzzy than some of the degenerates who run around referring to policemen as pigs.”

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Two wild Detroit theatre groups combined to open a cozy little theatre on the Southwest side on January 8 and 9. Somebody Else presented their raving, anarchistic “Double Coupon Day Afternoon,” plus other electrifying shorties, and the Acme Theatrical Agency threw in a few firecrackers by way of black-outs, satiric sketches and character assassinations (everyone’s favorite pastime).

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A student prominent in the recent student power demonstration at Wayne State University and a contributor to the Fifth Estate has been named Editor of the Daily Collegian, the WSU school newspaper.

Art Johnston, who will assume duties as Editor next September, was selected by the WSU Publications Committee and the Student-Faculty Council over the Collegian staff’s choice, Associate Managing Editor, John Gagnan.

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Over 70 major multi-media artists, poets, dramatists, dancers, happening and event producers, scientists and musicians will be involved this summer in an extensive inter-arts collaboration near Woodstock, New York.

Participating intermedia artists include Lindsey Decker, Dean Fleming, Daniel Larue Johnson, Peter Forakis, Allan Kaprow, Mike Kirby, Jay Milder, Marta Minujin, Charles Ross, Carolee Schneeman, Michael Snow and Phyllis Yampolsky. Other representatives include Dizzy Reece (jazz musician and European critic), Steve Reich (tape composer), John Vacarro and the Playhouse of the Ridiculous. Directors of the poetry and film projects at St. Mark’s Church In-the-Bowery, Joel Oppenheimer and Stanon Kaye. Editors Dick Higgins (the Something Else Press), Alan Katzman (The East Village, Other) and Richard Schechner (Tulane Drama Review).

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As part of Vietnam Week, April 8–15, there are activities taking place in hundreds of communities across the nation. Everything from teach-ins to demonstrations have occurred giving evidence of increased opposition to the war in Vietnam.

Locally, Vietnam Week began early with a scheduled debate between the Wayne Committee to End the War in Vietnam and Wayne University Young Republican Club on April 5^th.

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Last summer at Goddard College, social ecology luminary Murray Bookchin denounced the FE as “toilet literature flooding into the ecology movement and polluting it,” and a “manifestation of a middle class, petit bourgeois yuppie perspective.

AK Press recently published Bookchin’s diatribe, Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm, which excoriates this paper and others for—among other crimes—being both lumpen rebels and privileged yuppies. and even (horror of horrors), accomplices of a “Neo-Heideggerian reaction.”

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In a 1905 letter from prison, Alexander Berkman wrote: “None of us are ready for anarchy, though many are for anarchism.” In this letter, Berkman defined anarchism as a philosophy, and anarchy as a social state, the end goal of anarchism.

The next issue of Fifth Estate will explore visions of anarchism and anarchy through fiction. From fictional struggles of anarchists in the past and present to stories of an anarchist future, we will explore the many facets of anarchism as a philosophy, anarchy as a social state, and anything and everything else in between. We will be open to any style of fiction that carries this theme. Be creative. Tell us a good story, but don’t just entertain, inspire us! Challenge us to see anarchism from a new perspective, or in a different light.

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“Nicaragua’s continued efforts to subvert its neighbors, its rapid and destabilizing military build-up, its close military and security ties to Cuba and the Soviet Union and its imposition of Communist internal rule.”

Such were Ronald Reagan’s reasons, as he left for his visit to honor the Waffen SS at Bitberg, for placing a U.S. economic and travel embargo on Nicaragua. It little mattered to President Bonzo that all of what he said was either a fabrication or a result of American interventionist policy in Central America. Nor did he seem to appreciate the irony of placing trade restrictions on a country at the same moment he was scheduled to embark on a journey which would also include a conference where the concept of free trade between nations would be affirmed.

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Adam Keller, editor of The Other Israel (newsletter of the Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace) was arrested April 15 while on reserve duty in Israel. According to the May-June issue of the newsletter, he is accused of painting slogans opposing military service in the occupied territories on 117 military vehicles (tanks, armored personnel carriers, and trucks) and of posting “Stop the Occupation” stickers and distributing leaflets in the military base. On May 11 Keller was found guilty of “insubordination and of publication and distribution of written propaganda liable to undermine army discipline.” He was sentenced to 9 months imprisonment, fined, and demoted from corporal to private.

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Endless philosophical or ideological battles have been fought for years attempting to define political identity. In the case of this publication, we have self-identified during the last 40 years as, progressive, socialist, ultra-left, council communist, nothing, anarchist, and anti-authoritarian. To many, it may be only an exercise in scholasticism, but sometimes much can depend on self-identity, as illustrated in the exchange of letters reprinted below.

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President Reagan came into office with an understanding apparently lacking in the two previous administrations which had been still reeling from the egregious defeat of the U.S. imperial forces in Vietnam: If U.S. capital was to continue to function successfully as a permanent war economy (as it has since 1942), a corresponding war psychosis was going to have to be created to justify programs of economic austerity for the working class and poor while making enormous expenditures of state funds for armaments.

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No Borders! is an easy slogan to put forth, but difficult to achieve since the modern world is constructed on them.

We put out the call in general to act as a challenge to what exists, and in our organizing, and, hopefully our lives, as consistent with our vision and as a model of the new world we want to bring into being.

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Borders are authoritarian by their nature. Nation state borders are formed by men with weapons; those in our heads by fear and conditioning. Each creates suffering, and even death, as at the boundaries between the U.S. and Mexico, those demarking the European Union, and borders and other divisions in the Middle East. Borders protect states and the elites that rule them, not the rest of us.

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The fact that there is a grass famine in Detroit is not news to local smokers.

It appears, however, that the phenomenon is nation wide with reports received of similar situations in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco.

The causes, although speculative, appear to be two-fold. The first holds that the Mafia has completely stopped large shipments of marijuana into the country in an effort to drive independent dealers out of business and bring the entire scene back under their control.

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Above: 1,000 demonstrators at an anti-war, anti-draft rally in front of the White House. Other demonstrations included 5,000 in Los Angeles at a Carter fund-raiser Feb. 8; 2,500 Feb. 2 at Boston’s City Hall; 1,000 at Berkeley Feb. 11; 300 to 400 in Columbia, Mo., Feb. 1; 2,500 at the University of Arizona on Feb. 12 and endless smaller demonstrations and rallies. A March 22 national anti-draft rally is scheduled with actions planned for around the country. Photo / Phantasm Photography

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We know that sterilization was used as a technique of genocide by Nazi doctors. Today in the U.S. welfare mothers are being punished by forced sterilization. Often in New York, women must choose between sterilization or loss of welfare payments. Elsewhere, poor women must agree to sterilization before they can receive an abortion.

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The Fifth Estate has joined with a group of people from Detroit’s Grinning Duck Club to organize an anti-nuclear war conference at the club in March. Following is the text of the conference’s first call for participants. If you would like more information on the conference, please write NUKE FEAR, c/o P.O. Box 02455, Detroit MI 48202 or call (313) 831–6800, 3–5 pm. Preparations for the conference are still in the planning stage and weekly meetings are held each Sunday at the Grinning Duck Club, located on the southeast corner of W. Willis and Third Ave., just south of the Wayne State University campus. All individuals are invited, but no political parties need apply. Meetings are at 1:00 a.m.

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Come and join us in an anti-nuclear war conference at Detroit’s Grinning Duck Club the weekend of March 5, 6 & 7 and add your voice to the growing resistance to nuclear madness. No admirals, no policy experts, no political candidates hopping on the latest bandwagon—just a lot of ordinary people tired of living in a world where our lives and the lives of our loved ones can be snuffed out in a moment by people we’ll never even see—and who will never see us. For further information and details on how you can participate, write NUKE FEAR, P.O. Box 02455, Detroit, MI 48202, or call (313) 831–6800. Better yet, come to a planning meeting, every Sunday at 1:00 pm at the Grinning Duck Club, southeast corner of Willis and Third, just south of the Wayne State University campus. We’ve all grown up under the threat of nuclear annihilation and we’d like to be the last generation that does—and we refuse to be the last generation.

The FE staff and friends have begun discussions again about moving to another building, one which would provide public access to our book shop, serve as a meeting space and perhaps a performance space, and which would encourage the participation of more people who have expressed an interest in working on the paper. For the last two years we have been located in a secluded warehouse with water problems, a very poor heating situation, and space barely large enough for five people. This is a major factor in our less frequent publication over the last two years. We are trying to stay in the same general area, since much of the activity which interests us goes on here and several of us have lived in this neighborhood for many years.

For those who may argue an “appropriate,” “soft” technology characterized by solar, wind and water power against the massive nuclear and coal-burning forms taken by “hard” technology, the photograph below should raise some problems. Pictured is a machine designed and built by Sharp-ECD Solar, Inc., a joint venture of Japan’s Sharp Corporation and the Troy, Michigan based Energy Conversion Devices. The machine mass-produces rolls of one-foot-wide solar cells, which will be used in Sharp solar-powered calculators. ECD describes the machine as a breakthrough in reducing the price of solar Cells, which could lead to wider use of solar power.

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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.

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With the horrible invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq threatening to expand to one or more of the other fifty-nine countries on the White House hit list, it’s tempting to compare the imperialist lust of the Bush-Cheney regime to that of the Roman Empire in its earliest days.

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A national conference was held in Cleveland Sept. 9–10 to plan for a united nationwide peace action this fall.

The conference was called by the University Circle Teach-In Committee of Cleveland, with the assistance of the Inter-University Committee. The meeting was attended by a wide range of Peace, Civil Rights, and religious groups.

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The summary execution of George Floyd by a defender of white supremacy has its antecedents in the contact of Europeans with Africans in the early 17^th century. Since then, black people have been killed when any resistance was offered or even suspected.

In villages in Gambia, on slave ships, in Charleston Harbor, on plantations, in small towns and on back roads of the South, on the streets of any city in America today at the hands of police, unchronicled violence was and is practiced as terror and punishment against black people for not accepting their assigned lowly status. Few ever had their names said the way George floyd’s has all over the world.

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The National Student Association’s Poor People’s Corporation Personnel Program is recruiting sales representatives to work in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, and managerial aides to work In cooperatives in Mississippi. Sales representatives will be Working in programs designed to increase the sales of the Poor People’s Corporation by establishing marketing agreements with retail stores and student stores on college ‘campuses, and by working to establish P.P.C. stores. They will be working on a commission basis, with a guaranteed income of $45/week, and an allowance for certain operating expenses.

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UPI—The dream of “containment” of a limited nuclear exchange to the European theater collapsed utterly today when the Reagan administration’s demonstration air-burst over the Baltic Sea touched off a rapidly-escalating series of events which culminated in all-out nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the West.

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What they do...

“It was in Hiroshima, that morning of August 6. I had joined a team of women who, like me, worked as volunteers in cutting firepaths against incendiary raids by demolishing whole rows of houses. My husband, because of a raid alert the previous night, had stayed at the Chunichi (Central Japan Journal), where he worked.

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University of Florida co-ed Pamme Brewer was found “guilty,” Feb. 11^th, of “indiscreet and inappropriate behavior” by a Faculty Discipline Committee after the above photo appeared in an off-campus humor magazine, The Charlatan. The Committee’s finding’s triggered student protests with calls for “nude power.” Miss Brewer said she consented to be photographed nude and felt that she had not committed any indiscretion. —photo courtesy The Charlatan and Underground Press Service.

MONTEZUMA, Iowa (LNS)—Eight Grinnell College students have been convicted on charges of “open and indecent exposure.”

The eight, five women and three men, took off their clothes during a talk given by a representative of Playbody magazine at Grinnell College, on Feb. 5. (See Fifth Estate, Feb. 20, 1969).

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Up to 100 people attending a private benefit for APOC attendees in Brooklyn were shocked early on the morning of November 16 [2003] by an unprovoked and violent assault at the hands of the NYPD. Attendees were indiscriminately sprayed with chemical agents, beaten with nightsticks, and harassed by a throng of police officers.

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Special to the Fifth Estate

NEW YORK, N.Y., July 1—Five beautiful women, including Kathy Czarnik of Detroit, entered Manhattan’s 44^th Street draft board and destroyed 2,000 1-A files. They also broke office equipment and scattered other records across the office.

They were able to leave the office without detection and appeared July 3 at a noon rally in Rockefeller Center of 2,000 persons to explain their actions to the public.

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Graphic: photo of US Army installation with overhead sign reading Obedience to the law is freedom.

Text superimposed on photo reads:

Rather than inanely repeating the old formula ‘Respect the law’ we say, ‘Despise law and all its attributes!’ In place of the cowardly phrase ‘Obey the law,’ our cry is, ‘Revolt against all laws!’ — Kropotkin

The local gestapo ended their celebration of National Police Week Sunday, May 21, by staging a tiny raid on the offices of the FIFTH ESTATE’S brother newspaper, THE SUN, at 4863 John Lodge, and took SUN editor Gary Grimshaw into temporary custody for “exhibiting an obscene drawing.” Grimshaw is also Art Editor of the FIFTH ESTATE.

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They’ve wrecked the earth, destroyed her treasures, and inflicted misery on the many, all so they can golf or set up their lawn chairs on some clear cut forest. It’s over whether we do anything or not, but if we fail to act, the future will metastasize into the wreckage colonization always leaves in its collapse.

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In recent months Israel has been dismaying even its closest imperialist allies with its policy of retaliation against southern Lebanon for a single act by a small group of Palestinian guerrillas. The Israeli assault on Palestinian and Lebanese civilian villages has left the world press filled with horror shots of dead women and children at the hands of U.S.-made Israeli planes in what has become the modern equivalent of the Nazi’s ten-for-one policy of retribution.

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Editors’ Note: The so-called “riot manual” described on the opposite page [FE #84, July 24-August 6, 1969] should be seen for what it is—a battle plan for the subjugation of the black community, demonstrators, and anyone who challenges the way this system is run. Its ruthlessness and cynicism should be ample evidence that the police are not an agency to protect the people, but rather to terrorize them.

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“It seems all too frivolous to try listing the litany of atrocities visited upon the powerless by the powerful.”

—Editorial, the Fifth Estate, August 1, 1968

Tensions were running high in Inkster, an integrated suburb, on August 8 because of the closing of a teen center run by militant black youths.

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FE Note: There continues to be a sometimes rancorous debate within the anarchist movement about how best to combat the system. What follows is meant to be critical but comradely. We in no way doubt the spirit of those we criticize in this article, only their judgment.

Unfortunately, even for a small number of those who espouse the ideas of anarchy, the modern form of organization (which both the left and the right employ) holds an allure as a seemingly efficient manner in which to confront the state and capitalism. However, when adopted by anarchists, the formal organizational mode has been no more successful than it has for leninists.

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Do you have trouble getting the FIFTH ESTATE? You can find it at the Merit Book Center, 14365 Harper; Bookworld, Woodward at Warren; the news stand at Campus Martius and Woodward; Debs Hall, 3737 Woodward; Detroit Committee to End the War in Vietnam, 1101 W. Warren; Facing Reality Publishing Co., 14131 Woodward; Global Books, 4829 Woodward, upstairs; Mixed Media, 5704 Cass at Palmer; Mona’s Restaurant, John Lodge at Forest; Monroe Music, 18981 Livernois at 7 Mile Rd.; Paperbacks Unlimited; 14145 Woodward; Paramount News in E. Lansing; and Bob Marshall’s Books in Ann Arbor. We need more distributors. Know of any stores that would carry the paper?

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Due to the incompetence of the Post Office bureaucracy the subscribers did not receive their FIFTH ESTATES until a week after they were mailed. This is a double drag since our office staff really busted their asses trying to see that the mailing got to the subscribers before the papers hit the streets. Well, have faith, God and the old P.O. willing you should have this in your paid subscriber’s hands the day after we get it back from the printers.

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Numerous problems prevented a full version of our feature, On Gogol Boulevard, from appearing in this issue. Look for its return. In the meantime, important events continue to be played out in Ex-Eastern Bloc countries and the Third World. Contact OGB at 528 Fifth St., Brooklyn NY 11215 or on the web at flag.blackened.net/agony for updates. Items prepared by the Fifth Estate staff.

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The long delay between this issue and the last one published at the end of January resulted from our being confronted by a bout of cerebral paralysis which left us feeling empty of words and ideas. We mostly articulated this feeling to one another by stating rather aimlessly that perhaps “we no longer had anything to say,” which carried with it the vague suggestion that maybe we should even close up shop.

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The long delay between this issue and the last resulted from a bout of cerebral paralysis which left us feeling empty of words and ideas. We mostly articulated this feeling to one another by stating rather aimlessly that perhaps “we no longer had anything to say,” which carried with it the vague suggestion that maybe we should even close up shop.

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The question of whether to combine in organizations, associations, federations, etc., has become a subject of some debate and much interest. Many feel that the only obstacle to organization is the relative weakness of the small numbers of persons who identify with a libertarian perspective, while still others feel organizations in and of themselves are bureaucratic and are incapable of producing the desired goal.

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I contribute my social commentary linocut images to the FE to add weight to the humanist argument against fear and power mongers taking over the world. The activities of large collective organizations like corporations and governments create a constant barrage of false information and phantoms to justify their controlling structures and systematic programmed removal of the earth’s natural resources that in truth are the outer body of all of us who are on this planet.

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EDITOR’S NOTE; Timothy Leary, high priest of consciousness expansion, spoke in East Lansing Nov. 17^th. His talk was covered in our last issue by Michael Kindman, editor of THE PAPER, a sister Underground Press Syndicate publication [see Kill, Leary, Kill, FE # 20, December 15–31, 1966]. The following was written after Kindman and several others interviewed Leary after his speech to a Michigan State University audience.

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To: Judd Arnett, The Detroit Free Press

Lou Gordon, The Detroit News

Lift up a rock in Detroit these days—more correctly, in one of its outlying suburbs—and out will crawl a newspaper columnist.

Regarding your respective columns of August 25 in the Free Press and the News on the subject of street gang violence in the city: In general, when we have been forced to think about you at all, we’ve been inclined to think of you as just two more transparent apologists for the status quo. We’ve always felt it symptomatic of your distorted self-perceptions that you should think your banal and witless observations deserving of the least attention, and symptomatic of this sick society that it should pay you to make them public. We have thought of you, in other words, as fit only to be ignored.

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The May 28^th performance of “Lysistrata and the War” at Community Arts Auditorium was permanently canceled, due in part to the war which the opera opposes: one of the leading male singers was drafted.

The people in charge of the production postponed the performance until June 14, to be held, with a new singer, in a room with much smaller seating capacity.

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The Fifth Estate sat down with Andrew Flood from the Workers Solidarity Movement (WSM), an Irish anarchist group, who was on a 43 city speaking tour of North America. Walker Lane conducted the interview April 16 at the Baile Corcaigh Irish Pub in Detroit’s Corktown district.

The talk Andrew gave later in the evening described the group’s involvement in anti-war and abortion rights organizing, opposition to a gas pipeline, and participation in community based movements. Descriptions of these struggles and more information are at their web site, www.wsm.ie

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Welcome to our Spring 2015 issue, with the murderous U.S. war against Vietnam as its main theme. The essays and fiction describe the conflict itself, while next issue will feature accounts of the resistance from the anti-war movement, mutinous GIs, and the Vietnamese.

The Fall edition will mark our 50^th anniversary of radical publishing and will include essays commemorating the paper’s history. Plans for a celebration, a staff reunion, and museum exhibits in Detroit are on the next and back pages.

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The RNC 8 are eight activists from Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota charged with four felony counts of conspiracy, two with “Terrorism Enhancements,” in the first known use of the Minnesota Anti Terrorism Act of 2002 (dubbed the MN PATRIOT Act), for their organizing in response to the 2008 Republican National Convention (RNC).

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While pondering over the November 14, 1977 issue of Newsweek magazine, we came across mention of the ole Fifth Estate in their article “Businessmen and Terrorism;” a fine representation of that mystical horseshit that makes us want to bring it all up—“objective journalism.”

How these seeping sacks of parrot droppings dare write such vacuous, pig-ignorant articles and pass them off as truth is beyond us. Why we wouldn’t even spit on the rotting carcasses of these slithering slugs, for fear of offending our saliva!

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