Fifth Estate Collective
No War (centerfold poster) Centerfold poster

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NO WAR

NO PRESIDENT

NO AYATOLLAH

NO GOD

NO STATE

NO POPE

NO NATIONALISM

NO MILITARY

NO RELIGION

NO IDEOLOGY

NO LEADERS

NO FOLLOWERS

DESTROY THAT WHICH DESTROYS YOU

Fifth Estate, P.O. Box 201016, Ferndale, MI 48220

Fifth Estate Collective
No War (poster)

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NO WAR ...
NO Ayatollah
NO Shah
NO President
NO Nationalism
NO Militarism
NO Ideology
NO Religion
NO God
NO State
NO Leaders...
NO FOLLOWERS
Destroy That Which Destroys You
Photo-Montage of: **

Fifth Estate Collective
Now We All Know What Matters

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 17th 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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Fifth Estate Collective
N.S.A. Maps ‘Poor Peoples Program’

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Nuclear War Erupts! Millions Dead in Wake of All-Out War

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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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Fifth Estate Collective
Nuclear Weapons

PART ONE:

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Nudes Convicted

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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Fifth Estate Collective
NYPD Attacks APOC Benefit

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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Fifth Estate Collective
NY Women Burn Draft Files

Special to the Fifth Estate

NEW YORK, N.Y., July 1—Five beautiful women, including Kathy Czarnik of Detroit, entered Manhattan’s 44th 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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Fifth Estate Collective
Obedience to the law is freedom

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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

Fifth Estate Collective
“Obscene” Kite Busts Fifth Estate Art Editor

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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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Fifth Estate Collective
Occupy the Future It’s us or them. For almost all of state society, except for a few precious moments, it’s been them.

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Official Israeli Terrorism Continues

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Off the Pigs

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Once again Editorial

“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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Fifth Estate Collective
On (don’t spell it backwards) Anarchist Organization

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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Fifth Estate Collective
On Getting The Fifth Estate

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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Fifth Estate Collective
On Gogol Boulevard Short version

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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Fifth Estate Collective
On Having Nothing to Say

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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Fifth Estate Collective
On Having Nothing to Say reprinted from FE #297, April 18, 1979

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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Fifth Estate Collective
On Organization Fifth Estate history

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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Fifth Estate Collective
On the covers

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Richard Mock (front)

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Open Letter To Judd Arnett & Lou Gordon The Fifth Estate Staff Death Penalty for Newspaper Columnists

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Opera Company Finks Out

The May 28th 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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Fifth Estate Collective
Organizing for Anarchism in Ireland Fifth Estate Interview

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Our 50th! Issue intro

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 50th 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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Fifth Estate Collective
Our Hearts Never Hibernate, Neither Does The State An Update on the RNC 8

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Our Rave Notices

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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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Fifth Estate Collective
Own a Richard Mock original linocut print and support the Fifth Estate

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Panther Hunt

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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Fifth Estate Collective
PAR Benefits at Concept announcement

Benefit performances for People Against Racism will be given by the Concept East Theater on July 7th and 8th. Two plays, Edward Albee’s “A Zoo Story” and Leroi Jones’ “The Dutchman,” will be performed on Friday, July 7th. Laurence Blaine’s “Dark Nights, Angry Faces” will be performed on Saturday, July 8th. “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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Fifth Estate Collective
Partial Victory at Ft. Jackson

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.

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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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Fifth Estate Collective
Participatory Zoo Dance Rescheduled for Oct. 7, 8

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Party Like It’s 1929! Editorial

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Paul Watson held for “Crimes” on High Seas

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Peace Briefs

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-13th district) asking him to investigate the matter. Nothing has been heard from him to date.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Peace Briefs

July Draft
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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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Fifth Estate Collective
Peace Freaks and Hippies Cavort at Halloween Happening

Happy hippies and costumed peace freaks assembled behind DeRoy Auditorium on Wayne University’s campus for the 2nd 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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Fifth Estate Collective
Peace Leader Says Clash with China Near

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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Fifth Estate Collective
People’s Park

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Peoples’ Print Shop

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Periodicals Received

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Philip Levine An anarchist is America’s Poet Laureate

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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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Fifth Estate Collective
Philippines comrades skilling up for the long haul

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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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Fifth Estate Collective
Picket at LBJ Speech

Lyndon Baines Johnson, 36th 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 2nd.

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Piece Now

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Piece Pow-Wow at WSU

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Pigs Beat Teens

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Pigs Bust Panther Chairman

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Pigs get blank check

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Pigs Scalp Sinclair

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Pirates! Issue Introduction

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Planning for Peoples’ Power A major recruitment and fund raising campaign is currently under way as a part of Open City’s winter offensive.

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Plans for Haymarket Centennial Anarchy to Reign Again in Chicago

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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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Fifth Estate Collective
Poland at the Crossroad Solidarity and State Pitted Against Polish Workers

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Poland on the Edge Revolution or reform?

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Poland: Triumphs and Defeats

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Poland under martial law

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Police Lose

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Police Love-in More M-1s

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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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Fifth Estate Collective
Police Roust Meeting

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Police State America book review

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Police Take Lumps

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Police Testimony Cops “Worried” About FE

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Police Vamp on Bikers Clubhouse

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 16th (Northwest) Precinct pig pen.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Police Your Local Support

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Polish Libertarians Under Martial Law

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Polish Workers Face Repression

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Political Prisoner Update

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

—IWW slogan

Geronimo ji jaga

On May 15th 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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Fifth Estate Collective
Political Repression

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Political Scumbag Kicks Off

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Pope Perishes

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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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Fifth Estate Collective
Poster Bust

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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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Fifth Estate Collective
Post-Revolution Technology A Compendium

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Post-war Postmortem How the U.S. Got Away With It

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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Fifth Estate Collective
Pres. Dave Busted

The cops and the Feds are sure Dave Valler is behind the Detroit bombings. They’ve told that to The Detroit News and they have constantly tailed Dave (see last issue).

Their only problem is that they have no evidence to directly connect him with the dynamitings. But leave it to the ever ingenious pigs to get their man.

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Fifth Estate Collective
President Dave Doing Well

David Valler, convicted dope user, accused bomber, ex-candidate for President, and of late, Detroit News feature writer, seems to have pretty well squared things away with his former adversaries—the pigs.

Valler is doing 7 to 10 years in Jackson for two counts of violating the Michigan Narcotics Act and is the Principle defendant in a conspiracy case involving the bombings that took place in Detroit and Ann Arbor last year.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Press Censorship

Subtle and more unsubtle pressure has caused Detroit’s three up front papers to experience difficulties in the last few weeks in getting their papers printed.

The Inner-City Voice, a black revolutionary paper, the Warren-Forest Sun, a freek paper, and this newspaper all have been victims of attempted suppression.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Press Conference Cancelled

The Midwest “Underground” Press Conference originally scheduled for Saturday, May 20, at WSU has been called off until further notice due to the machinations of Dean J. Don Marsh of Wayne State University, who refused the WSU Artists’ Society classroom space for the Conference.

Since neither the FIFTH ESTATE or the SUN has adequate facilities for holding such a Conference, it will have to wait until facilities can be arranged. In the meanwhile, people who wish to publish “underground” or independent newspapers, tabloid or mimeograph format, can consult with the staffs of Detroit’s two community newspapers—the FIFTH ESTATE, 923 Plum Street (3rd floor) and THE SUN, 4863 John Lodge (at Warren).

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Fifth Estate Collective
Prison Attacks Escalate on Remiro and Little

The State of California has recently stepped up its attacks on Russell (Little and Joseph Remiro (imprisoned for the 1973 SLA assassination of Oakland, Calif. school official Marcus Foster) who are currently serving life terms.

In recognition of his two years of non-violent behavior in the maximum security Adjustment Center at San Quentin prison, promises were made to Russ Little that he would be transferred to a less restricted unit in another prison. These promises were made by counselors at San Quentin as well as various administrators in the California Department of Corrections over a period of five months.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Prisoners

Prisoners wanting to read anarchist literature: Black Market will send you a general packet of anarchist literature. If you have requests for specific literature, we will try to get it for you (and probably succeed). All free. To all persons who can help, Black Market has been sending anarchist literature free to prisoners for over 6 months. The costs are getting too much for us alone. We need help in the form of used books & pamphlets & leaflets having to do with anarchism (-ists), or a little cash to buy literature specifically requested. Write or send help to: Black Market, box 306, Cambridge, Mass 02139.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Prisoner Updates The Continuing Cost of COINTELPRO

Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt has been incarcerated in California’s maximum security prisons for almost 20 years. He was recently transferred to Tehachapi, in southern California, far from his growing base of support in the Bay Area.

On July 28, 1972 Pratt—a much-decorated Vietnam veteran and then head of the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP)—was sentenced to a seven-year-to-life term for the “Tennis Court Murder” of a white school teacher in Santa Monica in 1968. FBI infiltrator Melvin “Cotten” Smith, who was then head of Panther security in Los Angeles, has since come forward with details of the FBI/LA red squad plan to frame Geronimo. Now doing a life stretch of his own in Kentucky, Smith described a meeting in which agents and cops sat around trying to figure out which unsolved murder would be the best to pin on Pratt.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Prison Notes

A couple of quick prison notes: Revolutionary prisoners at Washington State Prison in Walla Walla have published Vol. I, No. 4 of the Anarchist Black Dragon, a newsletter. Written by the locked-down brothers from the collective of the same name, the publication features articles of both prison news and general anarchist interest. The Dragon is printed on the outside by supporters and is available from Countdown, PO Box 1163, Madison, Wisconsin, 53701; a small donation would be appropriate. However, the Anarchist Black Dragon Collective may be written directly at Box 520, Walla Walla, Washington, 99362.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Protesters Plead Guilty

Eleven members of the Ad Hoc Committee for the August Days of Protest arrested Aug. 6 at a Hiroshima Day rally in downtown Detroit pleaded guilty to charges Aug. 15 in Recorder’s Court. Those arrested were Harold Greenberg, Ron Landberg, Harvey Robb, James Lipson, Rita Leasure, Howard Harrison (of E. Lansing), Eric Chester (of Ann Arbor), Mark Nowakowsi, Farrell Hamen, and Dena Clamage; all were charged with resisting arrest and obstructing an officer in the performance of his duty. Frank Lovell was charged with assault and battery by Donald Lobsinger, head of Breakthrough, a right-wing hate group.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Protests Planned at 2nd Murray Trial

A weekend of international protest activities has been called to coincide with the opening of the second murder trial of Irish anarchist Marie Murray on April 25 in Dublin, according to the London Black Flag office.

Murray and her husband Noel were convicted last year in a frame-up trial for the slaying of an Irish cop following an unsolved bank robbery in that nation’s capital city.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Pro-War Group Tries to Smear Lafferty, Fifth Estate in 17th District

James Lafferty’s campaign for the Congress from the 17th District on Detroit’s far West side took on a new dimension with the appearance in the district of a leaflet branding Lafferty a “traitor” and calling the FIFTH ESTATE an “anti-Christian, anti-American hate sheet.” Although the leaflet, entitled “HOW DARE JAMES LAFFERTY RUN FOR OFFICE IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD!” is signed by a group calling itself the 17th Congressional District Citizens Associated for Support of Our Boys in Vietnam, with headquarters at 17538 Rutherford, Detroit, it appears as though this is a front for Detroit’s anti-Semitic hate group—Breakthrough. Particularly obvious is the re-use of “evidence” reprinted from past Breakthrough smear sheets and the liberal (excuse us) use of capital letters.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Pura Arcos, 1919–1995 “She never stopped thinking, questioning, and learning.”

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Pura Arcos (1919–1995)

On October 12, 1995, our community lost another elder and member of a generation of anarchist revolutionary veterans now passing into history.

Purificación Pérez Benavent (Pura Arcos), companion of FE staff member Federico Arcos, was born June 26, 1919 in Valencia, Spain. She later moved to Barcelona.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Queer Anarchy reprint of cover, FE #342, Summer 1993

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“We want non-hierarchical community, the post-nuclear extended family, the circle of erotic and social realization. The ‘Movement,’ defined by an emerging les-bi-garistocracy that embraces the socio-cultural assumptions of the heteropatriarchy is not our movement. Queer anarchy loves and fucks and theorizes and shouts and fucks-shit-up in the face of queer consumerism.”

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Fifth Estate Collective
Questions & Guidelines for Responses on Sex Work Article

On Page 4, Aaron Lakoff begins a discussion bearing further conversation. Letters limit: 250 words; ideas for essays should be submitted. See our contact info here.

Things to consider which will expand the discussion:

Can sex work be contained within capitalist wage work as solely another job category or does the nature of it deserve special definition and analysis?

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Fifth Estate Collective
Race, Class & Crime in the U.S. The Goetz case

Before the Bernhard Goetz subway shooting recedes completely from social memory, perhaps a few words can be said about what it suggests regarding race, class and crime in this country.

Goetz, as it will be remembered, was acquitted in mid-June of attempting to murder four black youths he shot who had confronted him, asking for money, on a New York City subway. Although never directly threatened by the four, Goetz testified: “My intention was to murder them, hurt them, to make them suffer as much as possible.” He saw the four ghetto youths as intent on robbing him, an experience he had traumatically suffered once before. Four of the bullets he fired hit the young men, leaving one permanently paralyzed and brain damaged.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Radical Calendar 2003

Please send calendar events to the Fifth Estate keeping in mind our quarterly schedule. We are especially interested in events for the Spring and Summer of ’03 to be published in our next edition.

fifthestatenewspaper@yahoo.com

PO Box 6

Liberty, TN 37095

December 21—(Winter Solstice) Everywhere. You are invited to join a national mobilization of creative, autonomous local acts of resistance to the war at shopping malls around the country on the last Saturday before Xmas. We encourage invasion of shopping malls across the country to disallow business as usual and tell consumers, “Stop the buying! Stop the dying!” For more info: tcap@mutualaid.org

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Fifth Estate Collective
Radical Calendar for 2005

See page 100 for the Fifth Estate “Revolution Everywhere” schedule.

Throughout 2005--The IWW Centenary (1905–2005)

The IWW will be celebrating its first complete century. There are events happening all year throughout the world. Info: centenary@iww.org, 215--222-1905, PO Box 13476, Philadelphia, PA 19101, www.iww.org/projects/centenary

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Fifth Estate Collective
Radicalize Earth Day Profits Rise, Nature Dies

As can be seen in this issue’s “Revolution Against the Megamachine” and past Fifth Estate articles, we support the environmental movement becoming a revolutionary movement. Only through such a transformation can it begin to adequately challenge the ecological and social relationships which threaten this planet. To that end, we endorse the idea of radicalizing the 20th anniversary of Earth Week scheduled for April 16 to 22, 1990. The attempt to fashion it as a domesticated spectacle has already begun with every hack politician, mainstream institution and even notorious polluters declaring allegiance to the 1990s as the “Environmental Decade,” all the while planning business as usual. These fakes are preparing to make it a week of festivities celebrating “concern” for the earth and the system’s ability to fix its problems.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Radio Crazies Plague Police

One of the more astonishing and bizarre developments in the ever-increasing confrontations between revolutionary and establishment elements in our society was leaked to this paper.

A member of the Federal Communications Commission sympathetic to the struggle of today’s youth against their senile oppressors, revealed the incredible and even hilarious details of a hitherto suppressed report circulated in only the highest, innermost governmental circles.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Radio Libertaire Back on Air After Police Raid

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Some of the 5,000 who marched in Paris Sept. 3 to protest the police suppression of Radio Libertaire.
—photo F. Arcos

Shouts of joy greeted the sounds of Radio Libertaire’s return to the airwaves Sept. 3 after having been shut down by a police raid six days previously.

At 5:45 am on Sunday morning, Aug. 28, the Paris premises of the anarchist radio station, Radio Libertaire, were broken into by police, the equipment trashed, the broadcasters arrested and kicked. The forces of “law and order” were experienced at this work, having silenced fourteen other “free” radio stations the previous weekend.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Raid on L.A. SNCC Office

Everybody knows what the cops and the National Guard are supposed to do during a “civil disturbance,” right?

They are supposed to stop Black people from looting, burning, and killing. The only problem with this formulation is that these guardians of law and order usually involve themselves in the very activities they are supposed to be suppressing.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Rainforest Action

Not content to sit by while the Central American rainforests are being bulldozed and burned for cattle grazing land to provide beef for fast food greaseburgers, fifty students and faculty from Macomb County College picketed the Burger King at 23 Mile Road and Van Dyke on June 29th in protest.

The group also plans to participate in World Rainforest Week, September 7 through 13, which has targeted the garbage-food chain for international protest demonstrations. The Detroit-based Earth Community, 19731 Forrer, Detroit, MI 48235, (313) 493–0543, has called for a “picket and boycott (of) every Burger King in the country.” Contact Rainforest Action Network, 300 Broadway, San Francisco, CA 94133, for events in other areas.

Fifth Estate Collective
Read All About It!

“Read All About It!” for this issue consists of those papers put out by and for GIs.

It should be obvious from the number of papers existing, especially the ones from army bases, that the opposition within the armed services to the war and to the military has become increasingly visible in the last six months or so.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Read All About It!

A woman wrote in recently and asked for the addresses of several radical and underground papers. This made us realize that our paper may be the only one of its kind that is known to many of our readers.

Since Liberation News Service just mailed us a complete list of all such papers known to them to be currently operating, we thought we could pass some of the information about them along to you.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Readers’ Ads

We rarely receive enough readers’ ads to warrant grouping them in a column, but we are always glad to assist our readers in communicating with one another.

The Charles H. Kerr Company, the world’s oldest nonsectarian publisher of socialist and labor literature, is putting together a compendium entitled Who’s Who in U.S. Prisons: 1984. The book will gather short sketches of those imprisoned for labor, feminist, environmentalist, anti-racist, peace, anti-imperialist and other such activities. It will also include persons whose offenses are not strictly political but who are victims of racist, sexist and anti-gay prosecutions. The Kerr Co. asks defense committees and civil liberties organizations, as well as prisoners themselves, to write Charles H. Kerr Co., 1740 Greenleaf Ave., Suite 7, Chicago IL 60626 with information on such cases.

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