Fifth Estate Collective

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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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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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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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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The late Richard Mock’s linocut art has been featured in the Fifth Estate and other anarchist publications for many years including after his death in 2006 at age 61. His work also appeared on the Op-Ed pages of The New York Times and was the featured art cover for a United Nations magazine with world-wide circulation. Several museums hold his paintings and prints as well. Mock was named the official portrait painter of the 1980 Olympics. Richard left us with the originals of the art that has appeared in these pages since 2002. We’re pleased to offer the 17” by 14.5” original linocut on the previous page for the price of $250 unframed. Richard’s Prints have sold for as much as $2000, but although a signed edition, this is an unnumbered Test Print and marked T.P. as is the custom in such work.

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Editor’s note: The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense is an Oakland, California based militant black organization which believes in armed self-defense of the black community from what they call the “pigs” (police).

The group’s Minister of Defense, Huey Newton, is presently in jail awaiting trial on charges of killing one Oakland cop and wounding two others in a shoot-out last year. The Panther’s claim this incident climaxed two years of police harassment and that Huey shot in self-defense.

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Benefit performances for People Against Racism will be given by the Concept East Theater on July 7^th and 8^th. Two plays, Edward Albee’s “A Zoo Story” and Leroi Jones’ “The Dutchman,” will be performed on Friday, July 7^th. Laurence Blaine’s “Dark Nights, Angry Faces” will be performed on Saturday, July 8^th. “Dark Nights, Angry Faces” consists of two two-act plays: “Prize Fight” and “The Meaning of Time.” Performances begin at 8:00 p.m. at the Concept East Theater, 401 East Adams. Tickets may be obtained by calling the PAR office, 962–3855.

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FT. JACKSON, S.C.—The Army has dropped charges against some GIs affiliated with the group GIs United Against the War in Vietnam at Ft. Jackson, S.C., and will discharge others without ever bringing them to trial.

Of the nine soldiers originally arrested following an anti-war meeting on the base March 20, only three now face charges.

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Detroit’s first Participatory Zoo Dance, originally scheduled for September 16 and 17, was postponed, but an October opening is planned. Russ Gibbs, promoter of Detroit’s Grande Ballroom psychedelic dance, said that the original opening date had been cancelled due to technical problems.

The weekly dance, the first of its kind in Detroit, modeled in the San Francisco style, involves a great deal of electrical lighting equipment, and Russ said We ran into some unforeseen difficulties with the electrical wiring code in Detroit, but that has all been taken care of and we will open October 7 and 8 for sure.” Kicking off the grand opening will be the MC5 and the Woolies. Anyone interested in getting more information should call Russ Gibbs at 834–4904.

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Common radical wisdom suggests that capitalism won’t crumble on its own, so imagine the ironically comforting confidence with which we have watched the system convulse over the last few months. But as Don LaCoss reminds us in “The Disasters of Disaster Capitalism,” it’s not a good idea to expect the system to just wither away. The cruel nature of corporations and the state suggests that the forces of domination will continue to profit from the people’s misery and punish anyone who gets in the way.

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Paul Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, was arrested in the Netherlands April 3 by Dutch police acting on a Norwegian warrant.

The president of Sea Shepherd is being held in Lelystad Penitentiary awaiting an extradition hearing. Norway wants Watson to serve a prison sentence handed down in absentia for the 1992 scuttling of an illegal whaling vessel. They also want to charge him with ramming a Norwegian coast guard vessel in July 1994.

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DETROIT: Six weeks ago the News Editor of the FIFTH ESTATE sent an inquiry to the Defense Department regarding the validity of an article in the VIETNAM COURIER, a paper published in Hanoi, reflecting the political positions of that country. The article in question appears in May 12, 1966 edition and claims that a battalion of the First Infantry Division mutinied and refused to fight on April 24, 1966 at Lai Khe. It further claims that several soldiers were shot by their own officers in an attempt to force them into battle. Also, several suicides by men of the First Battalion were reported. As of July 13 no answer has been received from the Defense Department. In a further attempt to ascertain the truth of the situation copies of all correspondence have been sent to Cong. Charles C. Diggs (D-13^th district) asking him to investigate the matter. Nothing has been heard from him to date.

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On May 15, at the Wayne Campus, the Detroit Committee to End the War in Vietnam and the Students for a Democratic Society marched to demand that Wayne State University stop their cooperation with the draft system. A brief sit-in of 60 students followed.

WASHINGTON, May 6. The defense Department yesterday boosted the draft back up to 26,000 men for July compared to 15,000 in June.

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Happy hippies and costumed peace freaks assembled behind DeRoy Auditorium on Wayne University’s campus for the 2^nd Annual Halloween March the night of Oct. 31. Led by John Schwartz, alias Jacob Odaryan, the march was to bring an absurdist dance of death to the festive evening.

Seventy-five freaks danced around DeRoy and stopped for a WWJ-TV newsman. “Help the poor, stop the war” chanted the marchers. They then danced down Cass Ave. Their chanting visibly disturbed Wayne’s Public Safety fuzz and stopped traffic on both sides of Cass. Black children running alongside the marchers dropped firecrackers in the street and some joined the zany throng.

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NEW YORK—Rev. James Bevel, national director of the Spring Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam, assailed President Johnson for turning a deaf ear to the growing anti-war sentiment in the United States.

Rev. Bevel rebuked the President in connection with the latest U.S. bombing raids close to the center of Hanoi. He said that Johnson was “power mad” and “in a futile attempt to cover up his own mistakes, the President is driving this country closer and closer to a nightmarish confrontation with Red China and nuclear catastrophe.”

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The search for a community park in the Warren Forest area continues.

On a balmy Sunday, June 27, about 60 people met in a vacant lot at the corner of Leota and Fourth. The topic of discussion was the proposed site of a park that the community could use without getting in the way of children at play and that was built by the people themselves.

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The movement in Detroit has a functioning print shop again.

Located two doors from the Fifth Estate office the shop can do leaflets, pamphlets, booklets, brochures, letterheads and small underground papers.

Originally begun by Joel Landy, who has split the city for Ann Arbor, the Revolutionary Printing Cooperative is a joint project of this newspaper, Black & Red magazine, the Printing Coop of Ann Arbor, and the Radical Education Project. Printers at this time include Mike Davis, Mike Gove, Fred Perlman and Dan Wilder.

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Anarchist Studies vol. 16 #1 (2008)

c/o Lawrence & Wishart,

99a Wallis Rd,

London E9 5LN, UK

www.lwbooks.co.uk/journals/anarchiststudies/contents.html

£20.00 subscription

Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed #66 (Winter/Fall 2008)

PO Box 3488,

Berkeley, CA 94703

anarchymag.org

$20 / 5 issue subscription

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Detroit-born and raised, and self-described anarchist, Philip Levine was named the U.S. Poet Laureate by the Library of Congress in August. The post, whose task entails raising “the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry,” may take on a different than usual dimension during Levine’s tenure given his politics.

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Members of Feral Crust, a small DIY ecologically-minded anarchist collective in the mountains of Marilog Davao (Southern Mindanao), Philippines are developing a rural community based on balance with the surrounding environment and social solidarity. Their community is located in a forest home to wildlife and indigenous people.

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Lyndon Baines Johnson, 36^th President of the U-nited States of America; the man who sends troops to Vietnam, Santo Domingo, the Congo, and now our own home town is scheduled to speak in Detroit on August 2^nd.

Peace activists across the country have promised that Johnson will be met with demonstrations wherever he goes as long as he continues the war in Vietnam. And if Johnson is not frightened away by a little rioting the major peace and civil rights groups plan a large reception for him in the form of a giant picket line.

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The following article was taken from “A Handbook for Radicals; Revolutionaries and Easy Riders” published by the International Liberation School. It is available for fifty cents and is an invaluable guide to small arms weaponry. Send to: People’s Office, 1925 Grove St., Berkeley CA.

America has a long tradition of vigilante paramilitary violence. Usually it has been directed against blacks and Third World people, poor whites and dissident political groups.

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The Unified Megalopolitan Piece Pow Wow, a choreographed multi-media presentation will debut Thursday, June 8, at 8:00 p.m. in the WSU Community Arts Auditorium, Cass at Putnam.

The magic circus will feature performances by folksingers Phil Marcus Esser, Jan and Lorraine, and Tony Wright; bands including the MC-5, The Passing Clouds, and the Spike-Drivers; lights by The Magic Veil; poetry by John Sinclair and an astrological reading by Billy Reid. Unexpected sympathetic apparitions are also anticipated.

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The Detroit Police are out of control. From the Algiers Motel to Cobo Hall they have left a trail of broken heads, illegal arrests and even murders.

The most recent example of this state of affairs followed right on the heels of the Wallace demonstration [see “Cobo Hall Creep Scene” in this issue] and found drunken off-duty pigs beating and terrorizing black high school students at a church dance.

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This time it’s Bobby Seale.

With Eldridge in exile, and Huey in jail, the punk-ass power-structure has turned its racist wrath on the Black Panther Party Chairman. Seale’s troubles are simply the latest government attempt to crush the Panthers by ripping off their leaders and vamping on their headquarters.

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Inhaling deeply on his political hookah, Detroit mayor Jerry Cavanagh, leading contender for the August “Uptight Honkie of the Month” award, attempted to justify his approval of the controversial “stop and frisk” ordinance which moments earlier he had signed into law.

Cavanagh stated that he didn’t think that his action would hurt him politically. “The situation is far different than it was in 1960...” Jerry honked, “ ‘police brutality’ is a thing of the past: The climate has changed completely.”

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John Sinclair has had his hair cut twice in the last three years. Both times by pigs.

The first time when he left the Detroit House of Correction in July of 1966 after serving a six month sentence for possession of grass.

This time the White Panther Minister of Information had his shoulder-length black hair cut by a guard in the Oakland County jail.

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It’s a paradox and an irony that in a nation so filled with timid, quiescent conformists, that pirates hold such romantic appeal for so many.

Perhaps, due to the dominant mass psychology of submission, it’s the repressed fantasy of transgression and rebellion that drives so many web sites, festivals, games, movies, histories, and re-enactments devoted to the buccaneers.

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Open City is the service organization for the free community and has already opened a free medical service, a non profit general store, a food co-op, a free University, a counseling center and switchboard that operates twenty four hours a day.

In order to expand it’s operations Open City is scheduling a week of public meetings at the Unitarian Church (corner of Forest and Cass).

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A Thanksgiving weekend planning conference in Chicago, which was attended by some 50 anti-authoritarians and anarchists from the US and Canada, announced a centennial celebration to take place during May Day week, to commemorate the 1886 Haymarket Affair.

Haymarket was an example of the state and capital’s brutal suppression of the workers’ movement in Chicago culminating in the state murder of five anarchists (four by hanging).

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With the endorsement of the Polish Communist Party’s Politburo, on November 10, of a plan that would include the Solidarity union in a new coalition government, it appears that the seemingly endless period of crisis and confrontation in Poland will soon have a conclusion of classic dimensions: A militant working class, as it presses ahead with its demands, will face the combined opposition of both the state and union.

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This article is being written just as the pressure of a Soviet invasion of Poland is being eased and under the assumption that such an attack is not about to occur. Amid an atmosphere of continuing political crisis, growing worker militancy, continuing economic problems, and constant reshuffling of the Polish government personnel, Solidarity, the recently formed “independent” labor organization, looks like it is about to become a permanent part of Polish society.

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On September 1, Lech Walesa, the worker who negotiated the end of the recent Polish strike wave, climbed two flights of wooden stairs to the temporary offices of the new Independent Trade Union which he heads. Walesa carried a two-foot crucifix, a bunch of gladiolas and a pennant from a bicycle club, all to adorn the headquarters of what he and the Western press have hailed as a “triumph” for the strikers—the right to organize a labor organization independent of the government-controlled official union federations.

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As we witness the imposition of military rule in Poland it seems clear it was not something to have been unexpected. However, that realization does nothing to limit our anger and sadness as we helplessly watch tanks and faceless armed men crush at least the public manifestations of a movement that threatened to turn the world upside down.

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A little bit of justice was done in Detroit the other day.

Gene (Reb) Bell, president of the Highwaymen Motorcycle club, and Ronnie Rose, president of the Branded, appeared in Recorder’s Court on charges of running an illegal drinking spot. The charges stemmed from a police raid on the biker’s clubhouse January 11 when Detroit police confiscated property, wrecked the entire premises, beat one person with a pool cue and arrested everyone present.

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photo / The Real Doctor Squat

Detroit Police Commissioner Johannes (The Lover) Spreen has called for another “love in” to improve police relations with the community.

His last love in was pretty much of a flop with the New Bethel shooting coming right in the middle of it, so Jo is trying again.

Spreen is a wonderful public relations man and seems sincere in wanting to ease community tensions. The only problem is that he is not in effective control of his force (the reactionary Detroit Police Officers Association is the real boss) and most Detroit cops are going about their 24 hour a day, seven day a week hate in.

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Detroit’s racist cops apparently unsatisfied at being forced to live in the city they occupy militarily blew their cool at a Detroit Common Council meeting May 17.

Robert Tindal, executive secretary of the Detroit NAACP was speaking strongly against relaxation of the rule requiring officers to live within the city. Several hundred white cops began yelling “racist” and “bigot” at Tindal and then stormed out of the hearing.

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a review of Police State America: U.S. Military ‘Civil Disturbance’ Planning, edited by Tom Burghardt. April 2002 Arm the Spirit/Solidarity: Toronto, Montreal, San Francisco. Contributions by Frank Morales, Michael Novick, Ron Ridenhour, Arthur Lubow, Mitzi Waltz, Douglas Valentine, and Tom Burghardt.

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Is Detroit Police Commissioner Johannes Spreen serious about trying to alter the brutal, racist and corrupt nature of the force he commands?

Some think he is.

He ordered the suspension on Nov. 13 of nine policemen in the unprovoked beating of several black teen-agers after a dance given by the Detroit Pig Officers Association (DPOA) at the Veterans Memorial Building. The youth were attending a church dance.

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The following are excerpts from the testimony of Sgt. Allen Crouter of the Detroit Police Intelligence (Red) Squad taken from him in connection with the lawsuit asking for disclosure of the contents of some 50,000 police files maintained on Detroit individuals and groups.

Crouter, a longtime foe of the Fifth Estate, was being quizzed in regard to the document appearing on this page by one of the attorneys cooperating in the suit The black lines covering names were required by order of the Court which has forbidden the disclosure of identities until final disposition of the suit. See related article, More on Red Squad in this issue.

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Nearly a dozen members of the Blue Flu smashed their way into a private party during a cowardly attack on the Highwaymen Motorcycle Club of Detroit.

The blitzkrieg-like attack was carried out in the early hours of Sunday morning Jan. 11, by police assigned to the Western District Morality Squad. This catchy title is a Spreen-style cover for the old-fashioned Vice Squad. The herd operates out of the 16^th (Northwest) Precinct pig pen.

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Police are always complaining about what dangerous jobs they have.

Some of this is justified; some of it is of their own making. When you are part of an occupying army, the people do tend to get a little uptight and unfriendly towards you.

Still, it’s not as dangerous a job as all that. In New York City (noted crime in the streets center) policemen rank third in hazardous city jobs behind sanitation workers and firemen.

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The following was received by the Fifth Estate as a “Declaration to the Libertarian Movement in the West.”

We are a group of anarchists and anti-authoritarian left-wingers in Warsaw who came together in a discussion circle (Sigma) at the beginning of 1980. We all agreed on a general opposition to the existing political system in our country. Most of us came to anarchism via literature. For example, at the beginning of the 1950s some works of the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin were published in Poland in small editions. All of them were accessible to everyone in the public libraries. Another important source for us was a series called Library of Socialist Thought in which, during the 1960s, along with texts of Owen, Saint Simon, and Fourier, some works of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Mikhail Bakunin were published. In addition, a very badly edited collection of works of the most important Polish anarchist, Edward Abromowski, was published.

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In the last August 1976 Fifth Estate [#275, Polish Food Riots] we gave a sketchy report (all that was then available) of repression against striking workers centering in the Polish cities of Ursus and Radom. This major strike wave which swept Poland in June was the second in six years that resulted from arbitrary government raises in food prices.

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“They’re in there for us; we’re out here for them.”

—IWW slogan

On May 15^th the California State Supreme Court returned Geronimo’s request for a new trial to a lower court. This is good news because at this level his lawyers will be able to present new evidence showing Geronimo’s innocence and the FBI cover-up. A former Black Panther Party member, Geronimo has spent 24 years in prison, making him one of the longest held political prisoners in the world. For more information, contact the Geronimo support committee: PO Box 781328, Los Angeles CA 90016; (213) 294–8320.

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1969 will undoubtedly be a year which brings increased attacks upon the Movement: the HUAC hearings, the Chicago Grand Jury, and Oakland 7 trial, and repressive actions against GI coffeehouses, are only some of the better publicized incidents of repression and attack on the movement.

The Michigan State Legislature has set up its own little committee (as have several other states) to investigate “breaches of the peace and disorders on university campuses.” Indications are that this committee’s intentions are a broad and general attack upon Movement activity in the state; it is likely that the committee will follow the familiar pattern of using closed hearings, manipulation of the press, subpoenaing of Movement people, threats of legal action, etc., to intimidate and harass Movement activities in the state.

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FE Note: The leaflet reproduced on this page was issued following the death late last year of Quebecois nationalist politician and ex-premier of the province, Rene Levesque. It was posted in several locations in Montreal, including Cafe Commune/Comun, a libertarian, worker-run restaurant and gathering place for leftists, as well as anti-authoritarians. Apparently nationalism runs high even in places where one would least expect it, and the leaflet was torn down by persons unknown. Two meetings were held at the Cafe during which the author was asked to explain his motives for publishing rather than to ask who had taken it upon themselves to become the official political censor of the Cafe. As of this writing, the question remains unresolved.

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Like a full moon, like the blazing collapse of a bank in an earthquake, like the comedic sinking of an imperial barge, the death of a pope, and the giddy and liberatory revelation that we are now—if only momentarily—living during a time when there is no pope, is a cause for celebration. Firecrackers, stink-bombs, and rockets should be fired in every aisle and nave, on the steps of every church from Rome to St. Clair Shores! Celebrate! The pope is dead!

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Philadelphia, Penna., April 11—Today, U.S. Postal authorities arrested Steven Kuromiya, a former University of Pennsylvania student, for attempting to mail 1,000 posters to peace organizations throughout the country.

The posters depict a young man burning what might be a draft card, with the words “FUCK THE DRAFT” printed below. The man in the photo is a Detroiter, Bill Greenshields.

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All “modern” technology on the planet today is massive and centralized and demands, by its very nature, centralized political control—authoritarianism is built into those very instruments supposedly designed to free us from the drudgeries of life.

In a revolution that brought about a decentralized, voluntaristic community as the basic mode of human association, technology would become a central question since the operation of it would suddenly depend upon those involved instead of corporations and the state. Unless you want to try to survive in a sub-zero outhouse, technology will have to be re-organized along more human, rational and ecologically sound lines.

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Although death and environmental destruction are continuing in Iraq and Kuwait, the Persian Gulf war is over in America. The remains can be seen in the dirt-streaked, plastic yellow ribbons sagging from trees and lampposts and at half-off sales for Desert Storm commemorative t-shirts and bumperstickers which brag “USA Kicks Ass.”

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The first meeting of the Detroit Chapter of Lemar (Legalize Marijuana) met at the Artist’s Workshop Dec. 19^th, and had a good turn out in spite of a heavy snow.

The purpose of the group is to: 1. Disseminate information concerning marijuana (factual studies as opposed to the bullshit printed in the major daily papers), 2. Gather together people in the Detroit area who are interested in seeing marijuana legalized, 3. Help end or reduce feelings of isolation and paranoia by functioning as an organized group.

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