Fifth Estate Collective

Sanity tests have been ordered for Dave Valler who is facing trial on two counts of sales and possession of grass and for conspiring to dynamite several public facilities.

The police and prosecutor consider Valler to be the ringleader of the eight persons charged with the Detroit area bombings last year which hit police stations and cars, a draft board, the Ann Arbor CIA office and a research institute.

...

The heavy hand of “justice” has fallen on Dave Valler, who was sentenced to 7 to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of possession of marijuana.

Valler is still awaiting trial, along with six other persons, on conspiracy charges in connection with a series of dynamite bombings of a school, a draft board, and a policeman’s car.

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The Vancouver Five are activists from British Columbia who are currently facing 17 counts of sabotage and conspiracy. Besides being charged with destroying an environmentally damaging hydroelectric generator and firebombing a porn shop, they also are accused of a massive bomb attack on a Toronto cruise missile plant.

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The trials of the Vancouver Five are over and their long exiles in prison have begun (see FE #317, Summer 1984). The five pled guilty earlier this year to a series of guerrilla actions and bombings.

For those who missed the results of the sentencing, Ann Hansen was given a life term in prison; Brent Taylor sentenced 22 years; Julie Belmas received a 20 year sentence; Gerry Hannah, 10 years and Doug Stewart, six.

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VANCOUVER BC—A tomato thrown at the Judge sentencing her to life in prison clearly articulated Ann Hansen’s contempt for the “Justice System” that is sending her and four other members of the Canadian guerrilla group Direct Action—the Vancouver Five—to lengthy terms in prison.

A viciously right-wing judge with a lengthy history of anti-labor and antiradical sentiments, Judge S.M. Toy, gave Hansen the life term for her conviction on a charge of conspiring to rob a Brink’s guard in order to obscure the political basis of Hansen’s other charges for which lighter sentences were handed down.

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Every crime in Oklahoma was added to his name.

—Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd by Woodie Guthrie

Seizing five anarchists on 17 charges of sabotage and conspiracy in British Columbia early this year (see FE #312, Spring 1983) gave the Canadian government the excuse it needed to begin “clearing” other unsolved bomb cases by attributing them to the arrested five.

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Six hundred young Americans are planning to show their support this winter for the Cuban revolution by taking to that country’s fields armed with machetes.

They will be members of the Venceremos Cane-Cutting Brigade and will join with Cubans in a battle to harvest 10 million tons of sugar cane.

Venceremos is Spanish for “We Shall Triumph” and is the motto of the Cuban revolution.

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Despite its much publicized popularity, the film “Rambo...Part II”, has been blasted nationwide by many groups and individuals. A San Francisco Vietnam veterans group, calling themselves “Veterans’ Speakers Alliance,” picketed in July in front of a local theater showing the film.

This group of Vietnam vets, as well as others around the country, have been quoted as saying that Stallone’s film misrepresents the realities of the war, glorifies its horrors and exploits the sacrifices of the men who fought it.

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Detroit Area Veterans Against the War will be joining veteran contingents from many other cities in a Memorial Day Demonstration in Washington, DC. The veterans plan to hold memorial services at Arlington Cemetery and also will demonstrate at the Pentagon.

“Veterans can play an important role in the antiwar movement,” said Ed Chalom, chairman of the new group. “It is becoming increasingly clear that the strategy of the Administration is to shift the blame for the continuation of the war onto the shoulders of the peace bloc and further, to discredit peace people as being “unpatriotic.”

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We regret the loss of Germinal Garcia (Victor Garcia). Born in Barcelona August 24, 1919, he died in Montpellier, France May 10^th. He was a member of the Libertarian Youth and Quijotes del Ideal in 1936. Active in the anarchist movement, he was editor of Ruta and Solidaridad Obrera in 1947–48 in Spain, and of Ruta in Caracas from 1962–67 and 1970–80. A prolific writer, he published over thirty books and pamphlets. A more extensive article on the life of Victor Garcia will appear in our next issue. Our sincere condolences to his daughters and his companion.

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Breakfield, Russell, Klug and Catlow, four of the Ft. Dix 38 (Shakedown/LNS)

FORT DIX, N.J.—The court-martial of Pvt. Terry Klug is over. He is the GI who the Ft. Dix brass had singled out as the “ringleader” in the now famous stockade rebellion on that base last June.

The surprise verdict: Not Guilty on all counts.

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JACKSON, N.C.—The Army announced May 20 its “final disposition of the cases of the three anti-war soldiers who had been in the Fort Jackson stockade for two months.

There will be no courts-martial for Joseph Cole, Eugene Jose Rudder and Andrew Pulley; they were released from the stockade today and the Army says that they will be discharged from the service in short order.

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When we left the Gandalf Three [“Building A Movement,” FE #351, Summer 1998], Noel Molland, Steve Booth and Saxon Burchnall-Wood, editors of England’s Green Anarchist, they were imprisoned following a guilty verdict for conspiring to incite others to cause criminal damage.

The charges and three year prison sentence stems from GA’s reporting of economic and ecological sabotage carried out by the shadowy animal and earth liberation fronts which have caused millions of pounds of damages to earth rapers and animal killers.

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The man accused of murdering a Detroit policeman at the New Bethel Church last March had his charge reduced from first to second degree murder.

Judge Robert L. Evans, who has presided over the long Recorder’s Court pre-trial examination of Rafael Viera, bound Viera over for trial July 30 on the reduced charge.

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[two_third padding=“0 20px 0 0”]Another window gone at the office of the Detroit Committee to End the War in Vietnam.

RING — RING!

“Hello--Detroit Committee to End the War in Vietnam.”

“You Commie son of a bitch! If you have any more marches, you’re all going to wind up dead!”

Click!

And so it goes at the local office of one of the groups trying to bring about an end to the war in Vietnam. Committee members say this type of harassment increases when the organization is particularly active. Since last week the Committee announced in the FIFTH ESTATE its plans to hold a four — day long series of protests against the war, they are now bracing themselves for the inevitable bricks and phone calls.

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With the Vietnam analogy on everyone’s lips, first for El Salvador and Nicaragua, and now for Lebanon, the signs of similarities arise ever more frequently. One such indication is shown here in the accompanying two photos. The first is from the front page of the January 15, 1967 Fifth Estate showing draftees marching in Ft. Polk, LA, beneath a racist portrayal of orientals exhorting the soldiers to “Bong the Cong.” “The Enemy Viet Cong” turned out to be all Vietnamese, whether soldier, guerrilla, civilian, woman or child, with a resultant one million Vietnamese slaughtered by the U.S. war machine. The second photo is from Lebanon, taken during October prior to the bombing of the Marine headquarters and similar to the Vietnam era, the soldiers are implored to “Kill All the Rag Heads.” All Arabs are reduced to their traditional headgear and all are the enemy. It is the same racism, the same arrogance, the same unquestioning obedience to the state military apparatus which masks another’s humanity in order to turn them into mere objects for murder.

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This past week the D.C.E.W.V. conducted a survey in the segment of the 17^th district in which we intend to concentrate our efforts on the Lafferty campaign this summer.

In order to plan specific strategy we thought that it would be important to know something about the people who lived there. We felt that with a survey we would have more of a concrete estimation of prevailing sentiment than one painfully derived from an endless committee discussion.

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Reprint from Vietnam Report Vol. 1, No. 1, the official newsletter of the Detroit Committee to End the War in Vietnam (DCEWV), April 1966

All the way with LBJ—and Nguyen Cao Ky! (reprinted from Weekly People)

Using the occasion of the Tom Hayden speech during the International Days of Protest. James T. Lafferty, Chairman of the Citizens for Peace in Vietnam, announced his candidacy for the 17^th District U.S. Congressional seat presently held by Martha Griffiths.

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We are all outlaws in the eyes of America...

We are obscene lawless hideous dangerous dirty violent and young...

We are forces of chaos and anarchy

Everything they say we are we are

And, we are very Proud of ourselves

—“We Can Be Together” (Jefferson Airplane, from “Volunteers,” 1969)

And, traitorous.

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“It is time now to meet the escalation of the War in Vietnam with an escalation of opposition to that War. I think the time has come for all people of good will to engage in a massive program of organization, of mobilization. This is the purpose of Vietnam Summer. And I’m happy to join as one of the sponsors of what I consider a most necessary program, a program that may well determine the destiny of our nation.”

—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., at press conference announcing VIETNAM SUMMER, Cambridge, Mass., April 23, 1967

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“There is too much concern about free love and not enough concern about free hate in this society,” stated William Sloan Coffin in an anti-war address at central Methodist Church on May 9, 1967.

Coffin, the Chaplain at Yale University, was speaking on behalf of Clergy and laymen concerned about Vietnam, a new addition to peace and anti-war groups in the city. Coffin is an officer of the national Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam which is co-chaired by Rev. Martin Luther King.

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Shortly after we published our issue with a discussion of the war in Vietnam, [Looking back on the Vietnam War, FE #320, Spring, 1985] an article appeared in the New York Times about studies done by the Vietnamese government and the Switzerland-based International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources concerning the effects of the “ecocide” (a word coined during the Vietnam war to describe the U.S. war there) on the land since the end of the U.S. war. The study traces developments since 1945 in a 97-page document, portraying a rural and agricultural nation devastated by “deliberate destruction of the environment as a military tactic on a scale never before seen in the history of warfare.”

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It was an unheard-of event. For the first time a performer picketing the place he was supposed to play because he wanted to perform there.

Ted Lucas mans the picket line at the Ichth Coffeehouse –photo by Evan Soldinger

On Saturday evening Dec. 28, Ted Lucas put up a one-man picket line outside of the Church of Christ (located next to the Playboy Club); within the Church was the Ichthus Coffee House. Lucas was booked to play a concert there but was canceled out with less than 24 hours notice because of an alleged lack of funds. The booking agent for the Ichthus claimed that because the coffee house had been asked to leave their former home, the Old Mariners Church, they couldn’t afford a higher priced act because their new home held one third the capacity.

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The Vietnam war is exacting a cruel toll in lives and resources, detracting from constructive domestic programs, and threatening to lead to a third world war.

I PLEDGE to support and vote for candidates in 1966 who agree to work vigorously:

FOR U.S. steps to scale down the fighting to achieve a cease fire;

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As Tony Reay says [FE #65, October 31-November 13] “WABX strikes again.” And they did, with ripples from the blow coming all the way back to Detroit from England. The WABX audience was the first, anywhere in the world, to hear the new Beatles” double record album, “Sexy Sadie,” on tapes of the new release that came “from a source close to the Beatles,” according to station manager John Detz.

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Chicago’s famed Waldheim Cemetery, final resting place for anarchists such as Emma Goldman, Lucy Parsons, and Voltarine DeCleyre, has been plundered of its liquid assets and is now in bankruptcy. Waldheim is also the site of the crypt and monument to the Haymarket martyrs, four labor activists and anarchists murdered by the state of Illinois in 1887. The Martyrs Monument, which has often been vandalized by political graffiti, now has suffered the outrage of metal thieves.

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On May 9, 1973, three prisoners of Washington State Penitentiary, Carl Harp, Shane Green and Clyde Washburn seized the Classification and Parole Building with ten hostages, and held it nonviolently for 12 hours. During that time they were in constant communication by phone and bullhorn with media, prisoners and people outside to whom they talked about maltreatment and cruel conditions inside the prison.

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On November 13, 1979 I was snatched out of San Quentin in California and flown back to the Washington State Penitentiary at Walla Walla, for the Court case around the May 9^th take-over of this prison (Wash. State) behind human rights and justice. So far all is well and I’m doing fine. I won’t be here long they say, and will be taken back to San Quentin, but I’ve got no idea when. Logical to assume I will be here for a while for we are making moves to hold me here up to and through our trial.

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During the last five months, the ongoing battle between prisoners and prison administrators over the inhuman conditions at the Washington State Prison at Walla Walla, Wash., has escalated to the savage beatings of hundreds of people by guards after an unprecedented one month lockdown, and 230 prisoners from Eight Wing have been forced to camp out in the “big yard.”

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Some radicals see all “protest” as pointless while others have made public activism a way of life. Others are overcoming the atomization of protest as just another alienated activity.

Another persistent concern is choosing one’s terrain of struggle. Some radical environmentalists say we should all save the wilderness, even if it means making that a single issue. Meanwhile, social justice activists say that radical greens should put aside nature issues and work on labor, race, gender, etc.

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If you have information concerning this person, please contact your local FBI office. Telephone numbers and addresses of all FBI offices listed on back.

Identification Order 4343, December 30, 1969

Lawrence Robert Plamondon, as he is known to the pigs, or Pun as he is called by the people, is White Panther Party Minister of Defense. He is accused of conspiring with Jack Forrest, Detroit White Panther captain, and John Sinclair to dynamite the Ann Arbor CIA office in October of 1968. They were indicted by a Federal Grand Jury late last year on the testimony of imprisoned stoolie Dave Valler. Valler was head of a dynamite ring that carried out a series of bombings in 1968 and is now trying to get out of prison by finking on anyone the government mentions to him.

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1) Subscribe. Send $2.50 for a one year subscription and 26 issues of the paper. Send a gift subscription to a friend.

2) Sell the Fifth Estate at school, on the streets or at public places. Our sales people earn 5 cents on each paper they sell. Call 831–6801 or write to: 1107 West Warren, Detroit Michigan, 48201.

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“a very great revolutionary force latent in the American people”

—Peking Radio, May 9

President Nixon’s announcement of the invasion of Cambodia effectively implemented the old SDS slogan “Bring the War Home!” Millions of people joined the revolutionary struggle, striking out at the war, racism and political repression. Almost 600 college campuses as well as countless high schools joined the national strike, as chaos swept the nation for many days. This sheet represents only the most advanced forms of struggle that have come down during the strike. The struggle continues. Venceremos!

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Almost exactly two years ago, tens of thousands of demonstrators came down on Washington, D.C., to let the Pentagon feel the force of their opposition to the war in Vietnam.

Few of them got inside the Pentagon, nearly a thousand were arrested on the steps outside, beaten with clubs and rifle butts, gassed.

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The nation’s first Mod Wedding will be held at the Michigan State Fairgrounds on Sunday, November 20^th, 1966. Pop-artist Andy Warhol will take the traditional role of father, and give the bride away.

Warhol, The Velvet Underground along with Nico (girl of the year) and Gerard Malanga, “the superstar” will be making their first appearance in Detroit to attend and film the wedding as part of the three day Carnaby Street Fun Festival which opens at the Fairgrounds on Friday, November 18^th, 1966 at 12:00 p.m.

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The bulldozers are coming again to the Warren Forest area.

To complete Wayne University’s plans to obliterate the hip and poor community surrounding the school the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has approved almost $8,000,000 to wreck the area bounded by Warren, Trumbull, Forest and the John Lodge Freeway.

...

Wayne State University is about to be confronted by an angry Warren Forest community.

The University, which has been in the process of destroying the community surrounding it for the last five years, is trying to keep community people from using its gym facilities at Matthaei Building.

The gym complex, on Warren across from the Fifth Estate office, was built on land that previously housed 4,000 local residents. It now includes large areas for indoor and outdoor recreation that is denied to the very people that were removed to allow it to be built.

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In March of 1966 Michigan Bell Telephone sent the following notice to its customers:

“Your telephone bill reflects an increase in the federal excise tax on local and long distance telephone and teletypewriter services.

“The increase is a result of the Tax Adjustment Act of 1966, enacted to help meet the country’s need for additional revenues during the Viet Nam emergency.

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William Bunge, Geography Professor at Wayne State University, last week issued the following statement concerning his own steps in protesting the war in Vietnam. Mr. Bunge’s action was made known immediately after the recent Selective Service decision to draft those students who ranked in the lower quarter of their class:

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A call for ending parking fees at Wayne State University was made last week by the Wayne Provos. The group, fashioned after the Amsterdam Provos in Holland, plans to protest by putting epoxy glue in parking meters and the coin slots in the automatic parking lots.

A Provo leader told the FIFTH ESTATE that parking fees and parking meters served as taxes on Wayne students. Something should be done now. These parking facilities should be free to all students.

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Their Statement:

On Friday, March 4, 1966, Attorney General Nicholas D. Katzenbach presented the subversive Activities Control board with a petition asking them to list the W.E.B. Du Bois Clubs of America as a “Communist front group” as provided under the McCarran Act.” This act would require the Du Bois Clubs to register as a “Communist Front Group.” For every day that we fail to register, we are subject to a $10,000 fine and five years in jail. We will not register.

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Energies of the West Central Organization, since its formal emergence on the Detroit scene in June,1965, have exploded the myth of “apathy” inherent in the behavior of “poor folks.” Human beings—Negro, white, Mexican, Maltes, and Puerto Rican—who have never fully recognized and used their latent power are doing so now. “poor folk’s” organizations which thrive in one area of Detroit’s poor folk ghetto are merging into a poor folk liberation front popularly known as WCO. Presently, WCO is confronting the common enemy—those persons who by design or inability operate the existing educational, welfare, housing, law enforcement, and urban renewal machines, etc., in a way which conspires against poor people.

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3-f-fe-366-4-40^th-anniv.png

The Fifth Estate is the longest publishing, anti-authoritarian, English language publication in US history. Next year, we will celebrate our 40^th birthday...maybe!

Due to rising printing and postage costs, our future is in jeopardy if we don’t come up with several thousand dollars within the next two months. We are planning a special 100 page bound edition and a national tour to celebrate our fortieth anniversary, but you may be holding our last issue if we don’t solve our financial difficulties immediately.

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DEC. 26–31, WEATHERMAN SDS IS PROCLAIMING A GATHERING OF THE TRIBES—A NATIONAL WAR COUNCIL! WEATHERMAN, MAD DOGS, THE CONSPIRACY, YAWF, YIPPIES, MEDIA FREEKS, JUVENILE DELINQUENTS, AND DOPE CRAZED HIPPIES FROM THE GUTS OF AMERIKA WILL BE THERE! PARTIES, FILMS, BANDS, DANCING AND POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS ON BRINGING THIS MOTHERFUCKER DOWN! PLACE SECRET UNTIL DEC. 24TH, THEN CALL DETROIT: 833–4323, CHICAGO (312) 666–3874.

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CHICAGO, Ill.—An underground “Declaration of War” purportedly issued by the Weathermen warns that the revolutionary group will “attack a symbol or institution of Amerikan injustice” within the next two weeks.

The announcement came in a three-page typed statement said to be a transcript of a tape recording by Bernadine Dohrn, a leader of the Weathermen faction of SDS.

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“President Reagan” was so moved by the presentation of five gallons of drug-free urine by the Citizens for Clean Urine that he dumped the sample over his head.

The lure of a spectacle and the fact that we love a parade made President Reagan’s Sept. 24 Detroit campaign stop-over irresistible to us. A protest had been called by a liberal/leftist/labor/religious coalition and one could only expect the ritual “peaceful, legal picket line” with its predictable slogans and all imagination corralled by official demonstration marshals.

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Until now, I’ve tried to avoid computers at all costs, but now having had this forced upon us, I’ve begun to consider what effect this will have on our publishing efforts and those of us who work on the paper. Upon beginning to learn their use, computers seem like fiendish apparatuses which order you about on their terms, not the reverse.

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“Patrick Murphy is no great shakes as Public Safety Director. He is a poor administrator; he is weak, and he has no rapport with his men.”

—Richard Judd, former aide to Sen. Wayne Morse on D.C. Affairs Committee, U.S. Senate

We wanted to take this opportunity to introduce you to Patrick V. Murphy, Detroit’s new Police Commissioner, one of the first major appointments of Mayor Roman “Sheriff” Gribbs. Murphy was chosen by Gribbs because he says he agrees with Murphy’s philosophy on law enforcement.

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Welcome to our Spring/Summer 2005 and 40^th anniversary commemorative edition of the Fifth Estate (FE). The effort needed to publish the largest and most colorful paper in our history required numerous resources, both creative and financial, from our collective members and our readers. While none of it would have occurred without the incredible vision and demanding effort /expended by the people at our Pumpkin Hollow headquarters, others participated as well, especially our staff in Detroit and those scattered across North America who make up the current FE editorial collective.

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After 691 issues, SchNEWS, “The free weekly direct action newssheet published in Brighton, England since 1994” is no more. A mix of serious reporting and irreverent humor, it was born in a squatted courthouse as part of “Justice?”--Brighton’s campaign against the repressive British Criminal Justice Act.

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By withholding our participation, we are saying ‘No’ to the continuing barbarism of the Vietnam War. We are responsible for our actions. We openly say ‘No’ to conscripted military service.

Our refusal to participate in the madness of the Vietnam War in no way implies a renunciation of our country.

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If you think the story to the right concerning the death of Hans-Martin Schleyer sounds absurd, then you know exactly how we feel every time we read the equally ridiculous stories of the “suicide” deaths of the three Red Army Faction (RAF) members now filling television screens and the pages of the print media everywhere. In fact, all the statements contained in our Schleyer article are either lifted verbatim from newspaper and magazine accounts of the RAF “suicides” or paraphrased from similar statements in those same accounts. Everywhere the most ludicrous contentions of the state are being taken at face value by the “media” and reproduced as “objective” fact, even when they fly full in the face of any normal human being’s perceptions.

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What a Day!

Hostages Go Free; Reagan Sworn In

—Detroit Free Press Headline, January 21, 1981

“Kill the hostages; Turn them into sausages.”

—from “Kill the Hostages,” punk song by Benedict Arnold & the Traitors

“He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark mustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast!... everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the struggle over himself. He loved Big Brother.”

—George Orwell, 1984

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The “glorious” days of the Ford family empire seem to be numbered as its headcheese, Henry Ford II, finds himself in a swirl of legal, corporate, labor, marital and physical troubles.

Reports have floated into the Fifth Estate office that during his “emergency” press conference of May 1, 1978, the “chairman” not only seemed to be suffering from a bad case of the shakes, but also seemed to be losing his hearing. Oh, the woes of the super rich.

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We put great emphasis on the phrase “the many books available” in our headline since the extent of titles that reflect the anarchist world view are so numerous that even if we were to publish a regularly appearing Anarchist Review of Books, it is doubtful if we could come close to noting them all.

There are many publishers of specifically anarchist literature, but as is mentioned in our article on anarchist fiction in this issue, the desire for freedom without the constraints of the bureaucratic administration of life, and the repression, exploitation, and discrimination inherent in capitalist society, expresses itself in literature internationally.

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People always ask about the meaning of our publication’s odd name. It is odd, and for our purposes over the last thirty years or so, a particularly problematic one. The word Estate in the title refers to the three powerful French Estates of the Realm at the time of the 1789 revolution—the aristocracy, clergy, and common people. A wag in the 1920s quipped that the popular press exercised such power over public opinion, it was literally a fourth estate.

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A book published several years ago purported to define for its readers what anarchism is and what it isn’t. Probably only the writer was satisfied with his definitions since adherents to anarchy come in many varieties.

However, delete the hyphenated suffix (anarchist-communist or anarcho-syndicalist, etc.) and all perspectives agree that the political state and the capitalist economy have since their inception been destructive of human freedom.

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To avoid any confusion over the usage of terms, let us give a brief definition of the way in which Capital or capitalism is used in articles in the Fifth Estate: Capital is based on wage-labor, the production and exchange of commodities, with an agency above the working class extracting surplus value (profits) from the value of goods and services produced, and then re-investing a portion back into the enterprise.

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Let us give a brief definition of the way in which Capital or capitalism is used in articles in the Fifth Estate: Capital is based on wage-labor, the production and exchange of commodities, with an agency above the working class extracting surplus value (profits) from the value of goods and services produced, and then re-investing a portion back into the enterprise.

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Today’s gang quiz question is one that the gangs themselves have often fought over: which of them is the toughest? We’ll give you a few hints. It’s not the Black Killers, the Coney Oneys or any of the other teenage groups you’ve heard so much about in the last few weeks. Mayor Coleman Young has called them the “toughest gang in this city” and has warned the populace of them.

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Earth Day supplement page 8

GM WORLD HEADQUARTERS

W. GRAND BLVD. AT SECOND AVE.

THURSDAY, APRIL 19, NOON

Assemble at WSU Gullen Mall

Call 831–6800 for more info.

1 CHANCE IN 10 MILLION

DIE FROM THE INCINERATOR

38 CHANCES IN 1 MILLION

Demonstrate Against the Detroit Trash Incinerator!

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SATURDAY

HANOI, Eyewitness Report by Dr. Herbert Apthekar. Central Methodist Church 8:00 p.m. 2/12

FILM: “Beauty and the Beast” (1946), directed by Jean Cocteau. Sponsored by UCAE at WSU Community Arts Aud, Cass and Kirby. 8 p.m. Adm. charge. 2/12

CONFERENCE on China. United Nations Assn. of USA at WSU Community Arts Aud. Cass and Kirby 2–5 p.m. 2/12

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SUNDAY

FILMS: The Bank, The Tramp, A Woman and Police, with Charlie Chaplin (1915). Henry Ford Museum Theater. 2 and 4 p.m Adm. chg. 3/20

MUSIC AND READING: The Detroit Contemporary 4 and reading by David Sinclair. Artists’ Workshop. 7 p.m. 3/20

THURSDAY

CONCERT: Det. Symphony Orchestra. Van Cliburn soloist, Ford Aud. 8 p.m. Adm, chg. 3/24, 26

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FRIDAY

LECTURE: An Evening With Clifford West. Bloomfield Art Association. 6 p.m. Admission charge. 11/19

“A SECOND NIGHT WITH THE WOBBLIES, with Ellen Stekert, folk singer. Sponsored by WSU Labor History Archives at WSU McGregor Mem. Conf. Center. 7:30 p.m. 11/19

COURT THEATER: “archy and mehitabel”--modern musical classic from an original story by Don Marquis; “Children on their Birthdays by Truman Capote, and a cutting from “Death of Bessie Smith” by Edward Albee. Detroit Institute of Arts, Kresge Court,8:30 p.m. Admission charge. 11/19

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No, this is not an astronaut—just a well-prepared demonstrator on his way to a march. photo: Dave Lindquist

The anti-war movement has recently become actively involved in the type of resistance protests that has brought a violent reaction from the forces of law and order. One has only to witness the police terror perpetrated on demonstrators at Oakland, Washington, D.C., and Madison, Wis., to realize that those involved in demonstrations should take some precautions before venturing out’ in the streets for confrontations with the police.

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Pull the window shade. Walk calmly to the nearest telephone and call the Fifth Estate.

We will immediately dispatch a reporter, perhaps even an editor, to the scene.

He will arrive in time to see Detective Walter Scott of the Detroit Narcotics bureau emerge empty—handed from the house which is the living quarters of several hippies and cyclists.

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MILITARIZED POLICE AROUND THE WORLD routinely use what they designate as “riot control agents” against their rebellious civilian populations. Because the substances travel with the whims of the wind and are often used in large quantities, a person does not even have to attend a demonstration to become exposed.

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Birds of a Feather: Flights of the Anarcho-Surrealist Imagination by Ron Sakolsky. Eberhardt Press, 2017 eberhardtpress.org

Anarchists of many tendencies have long fought for freedom of the individual and the realization of solidarity within communities. Surrealists, in and out of formal groupings, have had their own take on modern un-freedom and the potential for subverting it. In parallel, and sometimes together, anarchists and surrealists have fruitfully explored new avenues of revolt.

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Fueled by the massive international antiwar demonstrations of February 2003, people have increasingly turned to the Internet, lured by the hype of a global virtual community, to organize resistance against the murderous plans of the corporate state. Yet in most cases, the results have been demoralizing. Like the empty promise of television’s “global village,” the seductive power of computers is having a destructive effect on human community.

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The White Panther Bike Run and the people’s party at the U-M Arboretum July 6^th turned out to be a quiet get together of freaks and young people without the usual interference by the pigs.

Things started at 1:00 that Sunday afternoon as 50 bikes split from the Fifth Estate office off to Ann Arbor.

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In a session on September 9 the Michigan Supreme Court denied John Sinclair’s request for appeal bond saying he had not “persuaded the Court that he has a meritorious basis for appeal.” This upheld the ruling of Court of Appeals.

John was sentenced to 9-1/2 to 10 years in July for possession of two marijuana cigarettes and is currently in Jackson prison.

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ANN ARBOR, Dec. 5—White Panther Minister of Information John Sinclair announced today that the newly-formed revolutionary organization has named its first Central Committee.

In their first formal meeting the Committee discussed matters of immediate importance to the White Panthers and to the world, including the threatened imprisonment of Brother Eldridge Cleaver, Minister of Information, Black Panther Party, and the arrest and imprisonment of 13 brothers and sisters in Detroit for alleged “conspiracy to place explosives with intent to do damage.”

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The White Panthers arrested in New Jersey after the Woodstock Music Festival have all been released on bond and are back in Ann Arbor.

Although defense attorneys feel there are good chances of the charges being dismissed, the Panthers see this as an enlarging pattern of attempts by the authorities to eliminate their organization.

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In many respects the November 15^th March on Washington was a monumental success: the issue of the war in Vietnam was once again brought before the American people with the drama that only masses in the streets can achieve. Many new participants were drawn into the anti-war movement and demonstrators left the capital with a sense of accomplishment and commitment rather than the disillusionment of less meaningful days.

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Like so many other historical instances of state persecution, such as the Sacco and Vanzetti and the Rosenberg cases, the 1886 Haymarket Affair continues to haunt the present with its injustices. It is almost universally accepted in the Haymarket case that the five anarchists condemned to death by the state of Illinois were victims of an incredible miscarriage of justice, a view held even at that time.

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“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

This famous quote from Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities probably can be applied to any era, but which it is depends upon where you are situated at a given time.

Most of us, though, might find it difficult to locate the best at this moment as we face a pandemic, an increasing climate crisis, and a rising fascist movement among other contemporary disasters.

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Crowd at last year’s exhibit of Marie’s art at a Chicago gallery.

Supporters of imprisoned environmental activist Marie Mason, are fearful that the repressive conditions she currently experiences could worsen when a construction project inside of her unit in a Texas high security prison is completed.

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This year marks the 30^th anniversary of publication of the pamphlet Wildcat: Dodge Truck, June 1974, written and produced by several of the people who became the core of the Fifth Estate collective the next year when it was transformed into an overtly council communist, and then, anarchist publication. A short excerpt is reprinted below.

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The Detroit Committee to End the War in Vietnam (1101 West Warren) is not the most popular organization in town. It has had all but two of its nine windows stoned, shot through or broken into.

In early march, late in the evening, at least three bricks were tossed into the office via the glass windows.

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MADISON, Wisc. — (CPS/LNS) While many schools have been abandoning women’s curfew hours (most recently the University of Iowa), the state board of regents of the University of Wisconsin has voted to re-instate women’s hours for freshmen. The ruling takes effect in September, 1970. Hours for coeds were abolished in 1968.

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Most students will have left for Summer vacation when a special state Senate investigating committee begins its witch-hunt of campus radicals and their morals.

“It probably will be the end of July before we are able to conduct public hearings intelligently,” said Chairman Robert J. Huber, an apparition from the 1950s.

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“With Conviction: Art and Letters from Behind Prison Walls,” was displayed in January at Sacramento’s Exhibit S Gallery featuring prisoner art, letters, and zines. Chicago-based Anthony Rayson and Michael Ploski, amassed hundreds of pieces of original artwork rarely before exhibited beyond prison walls including four acrylics from Marie Mason seen above.

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As one might expect, paranoia runs high in Earth First! at this moment with much of their boisterous self-confidence muted by the realization of the extent of the government’s attempt to stop their efforts. This is exactly what the intent of the infiltration, arrests and subpoenas are: to rein in a movement that refuses to play by the rules established for “nice” environmental groups. In that regard, it should be seen as an attack on all environmental radicals and defended as such.

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This special section, announcing itself with the above headline, contains more of a critical and theoretical tension than may be immediately obvious at first reading. Imbedded in it is the difference between the clarion call proposed by Marxists to the international proletariat, “Workers of the World, Unite,” and another slogan, introduced in these pages some three decades ago—“Workers of the World, Relax!”

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Fifth Estate: Jackie, what were some of the main obstacles that confronted you while growing up’?

Jackie: Well, first of all as a child I really didn’t consider any profession that influences society as being for women. Every profession that influences rather than servicing people is male.

When I was very young, 8 or 9, I had a diary. I was very interested in art, particularly literature because that’s all I was exposed to, but I automatically assumed that it was impossible for me to be an artist. I could appreciate art, but that was it. I got into a very defensive idea about appreciating art because I didn’t think I could actually do it. At a very early age I had already got that idea fixed in my head. There are very few women artists for a young girl to identify with, and in my neighborhood and family, women were wives and mothers, certainly not artists.

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An interview with Lorraine, of the women’s band GOLDFLOWER, which has played for many enthusiastic women, including Erika Huggins and the other inmates at Niantic State Prison in Connecticut.

Lorraine grew up in a Long Island suburb. At 14, she was playing bluegrass guitar and hanging out with Washington Square folk musicians. At 16 she met a guy named Bobby and married him just before her 17^th birthday. They moved to the lower East side where their daughter Magdalena was born. Lorraine left, taking Maggie with her after about a year of marriage. She went through a lot of heavy stuff: unsatisfying relationships, trying to bring her daughter up herself, no money, a brush with hard drugs. A good psychiatrist really helped her a lot. After a while, she felt good enough to start playing guitar again. Singing and playing with Bev and Laura in Goldflower has given her confidence that she lacked even when she was already quite good. But she’s still learning and struggling, doesn’t think of herself as having “made it.” I thought some of the changes she’s gone through in the past couple of years would be meaningful to other women, whether you’re trying to be musicians, or just starting to find out what you’ve always wanted to be.

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Members of the Women’s Liberation Coalition of Michigan staged a protest march in downtown Detroit March 7 to “dramatize the atrocious deaths of our sisters who, in their desperation, have had butcher abortions.”

About fifty women dressed in black with their faces shrouded to symbolize their mourning marched silently through the streets carrying coat hangers, safety pins and other devices often used in illegal abortions. They proceeded to the City Morgue on Brush and Lafayette “where thousands of our murdered sisters have been taken, victims of those who oppose a woman’s right to control her own body and bear the children she wants.”

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Many women are going to take part in the anti-war activity being planned for the Spring. A group known as the Mayday Coalition is planning a march to the Chrysler Tank Plant in Warren on April 30. Several groups of women are planning to form a contingent named after Angela Davis to be part of the march.

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The Women’s Liberation Coalition of Michigan has opened a state office in the Ad Hoc building on Woodward, headquarters for several other movement organizations.

The Coalition’s goal is the abolition of male chauvinism—the domination, exploitation, and oppression of women by men.

The office will serve as a center for information exchange between the affiliated women’s groups and the general public. It will also be a coordinating center for the activities of the Coalition.

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A good cigarette is like a woman—the best ones are thin and rich.

If there ever was a time to be a woman, Woman it’s now!

You’ve come a long way Baby—now you’ve even got your own cigarette!

The capitalist media has copped all the rhetoric and jumped on the Women’s Liberation bandwagon. Woman’s newfound freedom has opened up a vast new market of products and ad campaigns-everything from vaginal deodorant sprays to her very own cigarette.

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In a concerted effort to reform the outdated Michigan abortion laws, Michigan Women for Medical Control of Abortion has launched an all-out action program. The program has been set up to involve as many people as possible in working for the medical control of abortion in Michigan.

“Until there is a concerted effort on the part of hundreds of Michigan women, the legislators will not make changes in our abortion laws,” said Mrs. John H. Tanton of Petosky, President of the state organization. Mrs. Tanton pointed out that in a recent test of the old California abortion law, which was similar to Michigan’s, the Supreme Court of that State recently reversed the abortion conviction of a California physician, ruling that the law was invalid “because it infringed on a woman’s right to privacy without legislative reason.”

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In this column we’d like to share with you some of the work and ideas of women in Detroit. There are many more things to be done, like starting your own rap group, theater group, women’s newspaper, child care center, male baby-sitting service, a women’s union, women’s history classes, auto mechanics and carpentry classes, and women’s legal aid services. How about a women’s center so we can meet each other and coordinate our activities? We need to pool our energies to get some new things started in Detroit. Let us know what you are doing. Maybe we can work together.

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Four Michigan women have filed a suit in U.S. District Court charging that the Automatic Retailers of America, Great Lakes Steel Division, discriminate against women by stabilizing them into job categories; in other words, freezing them into dead-end jobs. They also charge that ARA requires women to undergo burdensome training requirements not required for men and deny women equal opportunity to work overtime.

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Woodstock Music & Art Fair presents</strong>

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One morning last week I was approached at the plant gate after my shift-by a student passing out your handouts. I spoke to him briefly, and noting the peace symbol painted on my lunchbox, he asked me to pass out your sheets in the plant on my lunch break. How can you expect workers to relate to your programs when your people are so uninformed about conditions in the plants they don’t even know a worker can be automatically fired for “distribution of unauthorized literature?”

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This was the centerfold of the May 1–7, 1975 (we were a weekly then!) Fifth Estate, as part of a special Mayday supplement. The drawing is by Gilbert Shelton, of “Fabulous, Furry, Freak Brothers” fame.

Capitalist work is a slavemaster and a thief; it steals from us our time, our creativity, our health, our humanness. It forces us to work where we don’t want, when we don’t want, to create things we don’t want for people we don’t want. Wage labor is the root of the system that robs us all of our human potential and at the same time it cannot exist without our willful cooperation in it each day we work.

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This issue’s sports roundup shows radical changes in fortune for many players.

Finishing last was Ali Bhutto, former prime minister of the “Islamic Republic” of Pakistan. Despite the pleas of other government leaders around the world, Ali just didn’t make the finals. Calling for leniency in his behalf were such ideological opponents as Leonid Brezhnev and Jimmy Carter, which proves once more that birds of a feather flock together. No matter what their line, politicians in general are not enthusiastic about such precedents being set. To All we can only say, you plays the game—you takes your chances.

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You’ve heard it from the pundits, the malcontents, the radicals, even the competition.

Now we’d like to set the record straight.

We’ve made our share of mistakes. We’ve squandered more than our share of corporate dollars that go down the tubes each year. We’ve produced shabby products and covered up information about their poor quality that would hurt us in the market. We’ve overworked our employees in outmoded plants on dangerous, obsolete machinery and broken their walkout strikes when they got fed up with their conditions. And we’re willing to accept responsibility.

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Wayne State University is a working class college in a working class town. It is located in Detroit, a city which has long since taken the United Auto Workers bureaucracy into its ruling class and blunted union militancy by cooptation.

Many of the students of WSU work in Detroit’s factories and belong to unions. Almost all have come into contact with union experience through their parents.

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