Various Authors

AK Press is a worker-run anarchist collective that publishes and distributes radical books as well as visual and audio media. The collective was established in 1990 and is now run by seven people in five cities and two countries. They currently publish around twenty books each year.

Four collective members, who have been involved from 12 to 28 years, posed questions to themselves about anarchist publishing to take a look at their project.

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I was glad to see your discussion of my pamphlet, Misinformation and Manipulation: An Anarchist Critique of the Politics of AIDS, in your Spring 1992 issue (see “AIDS: Sex in the Safe: Repression & Treatment,” FE #339, Spring, 1992). However, I would like to comment on a few of the points raised in the article.

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by Ken Wachsberger

Preceding the Fifth Estate by two weeks, the Berkeley Barb celebrated its fiftieth anniversary with exhibits, films, poetry, and panel discussions on August 9, 2015.

The two papers were among the first five members of the Underground Press Syndicate. The Barb was known for its radical news coverage, outrageous visuals, support for liberation movements, and its explicit sex ads.

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“Without Borders,” this year’s Anarchist Conference and Festival was held in San Francisco from July 20^th to 25^th. Taking place at the Horace Mann Middle School in the city’s Mission District, the gathering drew somewhere between 1,000 and 3,000 people from North America and around the world. The exact number will never be known since only the lower number “officially” registered as participants, but thousands more took part in the six-day conference and other events which provided opportunities for learning and discussion, direct action, performance, play and celebration.

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Rebellion is its own justification, completely independent of the chance it has to modify the state of affairs that gives rise to it. It’s a spark in the wind, but a spark in search of a powder keg.

—André Breton

If only one thing has brought me joy in the last few weeks, it began when the matriarchs at Unist’ot’en burned the Canadian flag and declared reconciliation is dead. Like wildfire, it swept through the hearts of youth across the territories. Reconciliation was a distraction, a way for them to dangle a carrot in front of us and trick us into behaving. Do we not have a right to the land stolen from our ancestors? It’s time to shut everything the fuck down!

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Over the weekend of Sept. 30-Oct. 2, activists from around the country descended on the town of Monroe, Michigan to protest the restart of Detroit Edison’s crippled nuclear reactor, Fermi II.

Built at the site where its predecessor, Fermi I, suffered a partial core-melt accident in 1966, Fermi II was completed 20 years behind schedule and more than 2000% over budget.

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I thought that the article on Bhopal in your Winter 1985 issue [FE #319, Winter, 1985] was quite good and, since nothing on the event appeared in Strike!, I’m glad that you too are “filling some gaps quite nicely.” The only problems I have with the article come in the final section where you tack on your standard anti-technology pro-primitive spiel. In doing so you delineate a problematic that goes straight to the heart of your politics.

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Bicentennial

A Living History

Two hundred years ago today nothing happened. Literally nothing happened. Philadelphia was sweltering: the garbage men were threatening to strike, and had already enforced a slowdown. They knew that a goodly amount of refuse and filth was going to collect in the city for the July 4^th Continental Congress. Flies swarmed over the heaps of trash bags lying in the streets next to the piles of bodies of plague victims.

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The Black Economic Development Council has moved against the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan demanding that it give $200,000 for use in the black community. This is part of BEDC program that white churches pay reparations to the black community for the damage done to it over the last 350 years.

The National Episcopal Diocese has already agreed to give a large sum to the Council and the local group was demanding a similar show of Christian faith on the part of Bishop Richard Emrich and his church.

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When we put out the calls for this issue, we sought lists and commentaries on books that changed people’s lives. Apparently, many were too busy with summer reading to respond. Others may be too busy with life to read--or to write about what they might be reading if they’re reading. For me, I’ve decided to name writers more than books, and the shortlist is rather long, heavily populated by poets. Allen Ginsberg’s influence on me might always overshadow other writers, and to learn more about that, please see my article on him in a few pages. My world view has been so widely shaped by all of these visionaries that I would feel remiss not giving them their due in this issue.

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Honoring the Haymarket Martyrs

The U.S. National Park Service has declared Chicago’s Haymarket Martyrs’ monument a National Historic Landmark and the Illinois Labor History Society (ILHS) is sponsoring a celebration, Sunday afternoon, May 3. The ceremony will take place at the former Waldheim cemetery, now called Forest Home, at 863 Desplaines Ave. in Forest Park, Ill., outside of Chicago.

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Realizing that he who jumps into the middle of a fight gets shot at from both sides, I must say that both sides in the debate over “On Organization” are wrong: Ed Clark with his impersonal formal organization, and Camatte/Collu, and their defender Maple, with their unorganized formal persons. [See “On Organization: Two Reviews of The Camatte/Collu Pamphlet,” FE# 279, December, 1976.] Here are two positions badly in need of dialectic. (I’m more sympathetic to Clark, mostly because I worked with him for a number of years, but also because he’s less pretentious and dogmatic than Camatte/Collu.)

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Dear F.E.:

It would be very interesting to know more about the character of the N.Y. looting but it is not clear to me that we can tell anything from the figures which the Zerzans passed on to us from the San Francisco Chronicle in your August issue [see “New York, New York: The blackout of 1977” by John Zerzan, Paula Zerzan, Fifth Estate # 285, August, 1977].

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On April 27, eight of us from Detroit, including people from the Fifth Estate staff, traveled 200 miles north to Cadillac, Michigan to participate in the Earth First! initiated “Days of Outrage Against the U.S. Forest Service.” The Forest Service has been selling off large chunks of wilderness areas and national forests to rapacious logging concerns which have destroyed millions of acres of trees. The USFS has opened areas to logging by an extensive road building program which destroys habitat and wildlife and plans an additional 50,000 miles if they are not stopped. The EF! action brought out people in 40 locations around the country including ours at the headquarters of the Manistee/Huron National Forests. EF! has an important brochure detailing the danger posed by the Forest Service; contact Earth First!, P.O. Box 5871, Tucson AZ 85703. A dollar for postage would be appreciated.

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FE Note: This is a response to “More Minneapolis Anarchy,” the letters beginning on page 15 of this issue.

Well, even more Minneapolis Anarchy has come our way since our introduction and page layout was begun.

First, a letter from “Some Chicago Anarchists,” the conveners of the 1986 Haymarket Centennial, who question the necessity of multiple national meetings for the anarchist movement and in particular the January 16 planning meeting in Atlanta for the July Toronto Gathering. This is an abridged version of a much longer letter; the complete text is available from the above folks at: Box 163, 1340 W. Irving Pk. Rd., Chicago IL 60613.

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The following are excerpts from stories published in the Fifth Estate immediately following the July 1967 events.

Reading them a half century later, one is saddened and angered by the fact that the causes of the Rebellion—police brutality, racial discrimination, and wealth inequality—remain virulent and unresolved.

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The letters on this page are responses to John Zerzan’s “The Refusal of Technology” which appeared in the October 20, 1980 edition [#303] of the Fifth Estate; below are our comments on the question. In the article, Zerzan accuses those whose vision of revolution contains a dependence upon “‘advanced’ technology” as not significantly breaking with the world as it is. We have edited each of the contributions for purposes of space and we can only hope that we have left intact the authors’ intent.

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“Every time I think about us women, I think about the trees, the subversive trees laden in blood but not bleeding the rebellious trees encrusted but not cracking.”

—Jayne Cortez

“Unless rooted in poetry the experience of ‘outside’ from within—even the deepest ‘deep ecology’ barely scratches the surface.”

—Franklin Rosemont

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The following is excerpted from a longer critique of the Emma Goldman Papers Project and its director, Candace Falk. For a copy of the complete article, write: c/o the Last Blast, Box 410151, San Francisco, CA 94141. [Authorship in the print edition is attributed to “Marie Berneri & Francois Ravachol.”]

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Game (1) “Shelf Life”

How to Play: You take a series of books off your shelf in the order they sit there. Working through them in sequence, you open them at random, selecting the phrase or clause that strikes you, and create a text in this way. (It’s also possible to make a title in this way). As a variant, this can also be played with more than one player, by taking it in turns to add a sentence, phrase, clause or half-sentence.

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In the last issue of the Fifth Estate [#283, June 1977], a letter appeared signed by a Joe Doaks criticizing Black Rose Books of Montreal. Doaks charged that a recent BRB publication, Durruti: The People Armed, by Abel Paz and translated by Nancy MacDonald, omitted a key section without informing the reader, failed to give the book’s printing history (thus making it appear as though it were a BRB original), that it was overpriced, poorly produced (typesetting and proofreading) and that BRB had a history of appropriating titles from other publishers and putting BRB covers on them. Doaks further said that he and others planned to put out another edition at a third the BRB cost and ended by stating that “Durruti would have shot those (BRB) fuckers.”

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LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. (LNS)—Dr. Timothy Leary, his wife and teen-age son, John, have been arrested here for possession of marijuana.

The long time and old time guru said that the arrests were part of a continuing campaign of police harassment.

Leary and his wife were released on $2,500 bail each. John was held “because of his condition.” Authorities refused to elaborate.

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from Detroit Free Press, April 5, 1966

Gentlemen:

Regarding the issue of negotiation vs. withdrawal, it would be most unfortunate to allow the question to take up the working time of the peace movement. We are not Johnson’s special advisors, and our precise policy statements need not be unified, or even entirely compatible. What would appear to count most is visibility and persistence. There are, however, many who disagree with that statement. Some contend that the more extreme positions are too easily accommodated by the administration. The key question then is the difference in the operating code of ethics between these factions. I suggest the following. Once a group decides and plans an activity, all those who can in good conscience assist with its execution should do so in accord with the ground rules set by the originally responsible group. I see no contradiction in restraining my sign to “urge negotiations” even if I were personally to favor immediate withdrawal...

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Dear Friends:

The murders of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in Chicago have awakened many Americans to the campaign being carried out against the Black Panther Party throughout the country. Since April 1968, 28 Panthers have died and countless others have been imprisoned. But the “search and destroy” operations against the Black Panther Party do not always take such dramatic forms.

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Send letters to fe — at — fifthestate — dot — org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220.

In order to engage in electoral politics by claiming it as harm reduction, you have to ignore the fact that each new law creates new criminals, and that the state has always sought to isolate and punish criminals. Aside from whatever fantasy of minimizing damage Kathy Ferguson proffers in her article, “Anarchism & the Vote,” in FE #413, Spring, 2023, that’s an objective harm to individuals and even entire classes of people.

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This letter is in reply to the article by Tom Haroldson entitled, “Vote No On Survival” which appeared in FE #99, February 19 — March 4.

Mr. Haroldson makes some very good points in regards to Nixon’s bullshit maneuvers regarding the ecology issue, and also by pointing out that the “...ecology movement is endorsed by the very people who make the movement necessary.”

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Dear F.E.,

Just got the new issue. It’s too good to be true! Two issues in a row with relevant, well-written, hip articles specifically for women [FE #105, May 14–27, 1970].

Women being equal with men in all things except glandular and physical makeup, such articles as the Women’s News Co-op’s are welcome [FE #105, May 14–27, 1970]. And the tone of these articles is so positive and pleasant-natured. They give the Fifth Estate a freshness it has been needing.

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I’d like to reply to SP Marc Nadeau whose trash was published in the Feb. 4, F.E. [Letters, FE #98, February 4–18, 1970]

Baby, I’m not under 25, and am old enough to be your mother. Guys like you make me want to vomit. You made a big issue out of an article on the Northland “happening”. I don’t condone what the “kids” have done, but they were exercising a constitutional right—free assembly.

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You will note with paradoxical titters that the “Silent Majority” of which Nixon speaks (that is, referring to “a nation of sheep”), is in fact a misnomer caused of social lingual conditioning. The silent majority in this country—I would like to believe—are those millions of young and old people both, who inside themselves, know the radical youth of today are right and correct.

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“Where grievances pile high and most of the elected spokesmen represent the establishment, violence may be the only effective response.”

—Justice William O. Douglas, U.S. Supreme Court

“Violence? We hate it. But is it violent to shoot a cop who breaks into your home bent on killing you? If so, the Panthers are violent.”

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Editors’ Note: Fifth Estate staffer Rick Londin is in Cuba with Venceremos Cane Cutting Brigade. The Brigade has been there since last November to assist the Cubans in harvesting 10 million tons of sugar cane as part of their program of attaining economic independence. The contingent Rick is with will be arriving back in the U.S. in early February and a second group will leave for Cuba at that time.

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I managed to get my hands on a copy of the Fifth Estate. Wow, what a paper. I passed it around my section and everyone thoroughly enjoyed it.

I’m a GI and I have been in Vietnam for six months. I despise the military and I believe the same as I did before I came here, that we don’t belong here.

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Send letters to fe@fifthestate.org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220.

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten.

Letters may be edited for length.

Your editorial on the Ukraine war in FE #411, Spring 2022 starts out promising, calling for the defeat of Putin by the Ukrainian resistance, and the overthrow of his dictatorship in Russia.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The following letter was sent to one of our subscribers who had sent Mich. Senator Philip Hart a copy of the speech given by Dr. Norman Pollack on U.S. participation in the war in Vietnam:

Dr. Pollack’s premise that “we are at war today because we cannot—or will not—solve the internal problems at home” is just all wrong. The first session of this congress enacted more social and economic legislation than any Congress since the early days of the New Deal, and the fear now is (not the pain, as Dr. Pollack seems to imply) that increasing costs in Vietnam will slow down full implementation of all these programs.

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Common Council, City of Detroit, 2 Woodward Avenue, Detroit 26, Michigan

Dear Sirs,

A meeting was held Wednesday, March 9 at Burton School promoted through the combined efforts of Cass Community Council, Cass Community Church, Burton School Mother and Dad’s Club, WCO affiliated groups (St.. Patrick’s Parrish and Central Methodist Church, Southern Baptist Convention, Priscilla Hall, St. John’s Episcopal Young Adult Fellowship and Cass Park Baptist Church).

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That g.d., m.f., c.s., s.o.b., J.L. Hudson is running for mayor.

F. Janorin

Detroit

Love and flowers from a sleeping city.

I subscribed to your Oracle in August and took some issues with me to school in September. I have changed a lot of attitudes with the FIFTH ESTATE’s help.

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The Underground Press has opened the eyes of many Americans to much of life that they otherwise would not know of. But many of the more intelligent readers still do not understand homosexuality, especially some hippies who, due to their long hair, etc., have been falsely accused of being gay.

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Please tell Mike Bloomfield (“Honkies Can’t Dig Soul Music,” FE #39, October 1–15, 1967) that he can take his idea about us Honkies (I’m from Grosse Pointe) and stick it up his ass.

Just because we buy the Doors doesn’t mean we’ve never heard Howlin’ Wolf. We can see this ugly world, too. The method is not the message.

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We just finished reading your paper “the 5^th Estate” dated April 3–16, which couldn’t be classified as good trash. After wasting 4 books of matches we finally got your paper burning so we could heat our C-rations.

You probably are wondering why we are writing this letter to you. Well, we read some articles concerning Vietnam and some of the letters from men in Vietnam which we will call clerks, because we know they haven’t seen any combat by the letters they have written. The rest of the articles were written by the girlish boys back in the world.

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I have read your newspaper many times and for the most part, found it very enlightening. You have helped answer many of my questions, and set me on the right foot on some important issues. Now, I’m asking another favor. Your acceptance and backing of minority groups is what has prompted me to write to you.

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Thanks for reprinting my Other Scenes article on nudity in and out of the theater (They Can’t Get Any Nuder. FE #75, March 20-April 2, 1969). I’ve just seen it and you did an esthetically nice job. But a line was dropped from one of the final paragraphs.

My point (the important part) was that “the real qualitative difference in the experience of public nudity lies in its goals. If one’s goal is to convince a skeptical public that nudity need not lead to sensuality, then one’s participants dare not touch. But if one’s goal is personal self-fulfillment—and nudity is just a means to that end—one will want to touch. And to be touched.

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I’ve been watching all the shit going down around Detroit and our revolution either means we’re fighting for communism or black supremacy. I am not prejudiced, but want equality for all; not white or black supremacy.

And I’ll be damned if I’m in this revolution if it’s for communism. I wanna change the government, but not have the government change me.

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I read your paper today for the first time and I dig it to the max.

I’ve been around army posts for 6-1/2 years and just recently my eyes were opened to what the vast “green machine” is really like.

I don’t believe we had any business getting involved in Vietnam.

We went in as advisers! Like always. We wound up fighting their war.

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Myself and another head, were very mellow on the bunker line, when we happened to glance at your paper “The Fifth Estate.”

Since then it hasn’t left our hands. Our souls and hearts would be yours if we could get more of this paper, just to keep our minds straight.” We would appreciate your free subscription as soon as possible.

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Just wanted to let you know how much I, and many of my friends who read the paper, dig the poems you’ve been printing lately, especially Diane DiPrima’s.

I always say that a good anarchistic poem is worth a thousand MC-5 jams since very few of the 5’s songs have any revolutionary message to them while the poems have a lot. I can now see William Leach’s point that music isn’t revolution.

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I was dismayed, but not overly surprised, upon reading William Spencer Leach’s article [“The White Left—Serious or Not?” FE #70, January 9–22, 1969]. Brother Bill has made several good points and suggestions.

He is right in the need for “white revolutionaries” to work in factories (and in fields, I might add). He’s also correct in his call for going into churches with the Word; some of the most important work can be done by going into “straight” gatherings.

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Just a short note of congratulations on your editors’ notes column in the last (Jan. 23) issue of the Fifth Estate.

It is not often that a good cultural newspaper is willing to admit that the working class contains more than a bunch of fat contented racists. While I am one of those lucky individuals who can be both worker and hippy, I am the first to realize that this is impossible for most of the population.

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William Leach from the Black Panther Party is absolutely correct (“The White Left—Serious or Not?” FE #70, January 9–22, 1969) when he points out that white so-called revolutionaries have not organized anyone in the white community—we must ask ourselves why?

Is it because we are afraid to challenge the handful of Wallacites in Hazel Park, or Wyandotte who are attempting to give leadership to the thousands of young white workers who live there.

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John Watson and the Fifth Estate are revolutionaries and that’s why they support the Teamster workers. [See “The News Gets Ready,” FE #68, December 12–25, 1968.]

Revolutionaries remember 1937 when industrial workers in Flint fought the National Guard, just as students at San Francisco State College are fighting the Tactical Police.

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Send letters to fe — AT — fifthestate — DOT — org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220.

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten.

Letters may be edited for length.

My partner brought home a copy of The Anarchist Review of Books and I wanted so much to love it.

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On the afternoon of November I, there was a demonstration in front of the 13^th precinct police station on Woodward. The purpose of the demonstration was to protest the brutal treatment which the police inflicted upon a group of anti-Wallace demonstrators at a rally earlier in the week.

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Due to a surprising thing to come, I wish to cancel my subscription.

I’m on a heavy cruiser off the DMZ (Vietnam) coast. On 18 Jan. 1969 the ship returns to the United States and I am to be released from active duty.

Upon my return home to Detroit I will again be in the groove. This will enable me to buy the Fifth Estate at my local hangouts. Thus, I won’t need your subscription at my current address.

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Since their seems to be some controversy about calling police “Pigs,” I would like to say that when you call any group any one name, that you are generalizing.

Whether you call a policeman a pig, a long haired freak a hippy, or a black man a nigger it’s all the same.

Believe it or not police are people and by classing them together as one name, you are guilty of exactly what their doing. Not to say that the majority of police aren’t sadists, I’m sure they are, but you have to realize that police work naturally caters to sadists.

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Send letters to fe AT fifthestate DOT org or Fifth Estate, P.O. Box 201016, Ferndale, MI 48220.

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten.

Letters may be edited for length.

Rob Blurton’s article, “Anarchy in the Midwest,” [FE #406, Spring 2020] uses the term Native American to describe the people living in the lands invaded by Europeans.

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Send letters to fe@fifthestate.org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten.

Letters may be edited for length.

Your Winter 2019 issue [FE #405] is full of fine writing and provocative thinking, particularly so in the review of Godless: 150 Years of Disbelief by Peter Werbe. The final section, beginning with “Let’s devise a spiritual belief system...” is a beautiful manifesto worth sharing. I wish I’d written it!

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Send letters to fe AT fifthestate DOT org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten. Letters may be edited for length.

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Shit, man! I despise philosophical cretins like letter writer A.M. Holton [Letters, FE #64, October 17–30, 1968]. His archaic mind nurtures an imagination that’s 2,000 years behind the times. No wonder he got all shook up after reading Ayn Rand’s bullshit concerning the “mindless masses.” His idiotic outcry against us, reflects his despair at the thought of being a mediocrity. He says he’ll destroy us! There is no need to destroy him, cause he’s a self-destructive motherfucker.

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This letter was sent to the Editor of the Detroit Free Press.

About the arrogant note on page 7-C of the Free Press of Nov. 8 that “writer Richie Yorke of Toronto has supplied the Detroit Free Press with the first newspaper review in the United States of the Beatles’ new album, ‘The Beatles.’”

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The following writer is one of the Vancouver Five. See our coverage of the start of their trials elsewhere in this issue.

Dear Fifth Estate:

I’ve just finished reading the Summer 1983 issue of the paper which you sent me. As usual, I found lots to think about in it, and it is a joy to read many ideas that I am more than less in agreement with. Zerzan was thought provoking, but I especially liked the article on economic recovery, and the replies to the letter by Ron Haley.

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Send letters to fe [@] fifthestate [dot] org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten.

Letters may be edited for length.

Fifth Estate note: We usually don’t print letters of this length, but thought this encapsulated the sexual immiseration suffered by many. We don’t offer advice in this matter, but invite others to suggest how best to navigate sex and partnering.

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I used to like ‘em too, just like everyone else, caught-up in that follow-the-other-people, emotional group-cohesion thing. But then I began to think! The Stooges are one example of a group that takes us (the audience) for fools and chumps.

Iggy goes thru all this sexual stuff and then he poses and finally JUMPS out into the audience on someone! He did this at Olympia, Halloween, and almost started a fight with the guy he jumped on! He cursed at the boy and called him names saying “Hit me, I dare ya” and stuff like that.

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The Students for a Democratic Society, the Radical Education Project (REP) and other radical groups in Detroit, were set up for harassment in the Detroit Free Press article of October 30, 1969 which printed one of our names and several addresses. The article implied that we were responsible for the unrest in local high schools this fall.

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Arthur Parumba’s review of Richard Brautigan’s three books [FE #94, December 11–24, 1969] was the best thing to appear in the Fifth Estate in ages. His Shell Station sounds like the greatest spot this side of Alice’s Restaurant. By the way, is “Parumba” for real?

Thomas Haroldson

Editors’ Note: Sure he’s real. The Parumba Bros. Shell Station is right on the corner of Prentis and Woodward. Drop in and see them.

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Ever since I’ve been reading Hank Malone’s articles, I acquired the irresistible urge to blast his ideas out of our midst into oblivion, where they belong. Malone’s reflections on art are a classical example of revolutionary cretinism.

Malone’s views have been attacked (rather irrationally) by another reader before me, and his response is curiously analogous to vice-president Agnew’s: “I’m not for censorship” said Agnew, after subtly advocating censorship in a previous speech.

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I just finished reading your latest “words of wisdom.” Isn’t it about time you knocked it off? Words are works, I agree, but more appropriate adjectives may be found in any pocket dictionary.

You must be aware of the fact that “straight” people find your choice of words more than a little distasteful. If you’re trying to “turn on” the squares, come on slow, in a way acceptable to all.

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Hey John, I’ve been digging your doings way back since 1965. I have always respected and, I might add, shared, your point of view on this whole pig establishment.

I’ve been keeping in touch with the scene even though I’ve been in Vietnam more than a year, via the Fifth Estate and news-clippings and papers sent by friends back in Detroit.

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On August 2, Denny Dunn and Carlson Tuttle were arrested in an anti-Humphrey demonstration at Cobo Hall. Later in the evening a bail fund was collected in hopes that we could get enough money to get our brothers out of jail. We collected $206.00. As it turned out the bail was set at $1,000:00 each, so we had to pay a bondsman the $200.00.

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I’m still alive and well in the U.S. Navy. Much has happened since the MP hassled with Ray Greer last Jan. 4^th at Metro airport. If you’ll remember I was on a TV news spot last Feb. 27^th when I left for Norfolk. Va.

Haven’t been home since Feb. 27^th when I left for Norfolk, Va. to join the U.S.S. Yorktown CVS-10, a “Hunter-Killer Force” anti-submarine carrier.

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I’ve really been digging the stuff that’s been going down in your (no THE it’s for everyone) paper, and I’d just like to mention a few radical things around.

First, I’m surprised that, except for once on ABX, no one in the left media has mentioned the only radical program on nationwide TV at the present. This being “The Prisoner” on CBS/Thurs., 8 pm.

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Enjoyed our paper over here in Nam. They really get worn from use. I’ll be back home to Detroit in 3 weeks so you should stop sending it. I will subscribe when I’m back.

Read with great interest the John Sinclair story. He spoke at our high school a few years ago, and the instructor that brought him down was dismissed.

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The letter in your August 7 issue [FE #85, August 7–20, 1969] from the corpsman in Da Nang harbor has prompted me to relate a similar experience to you.

I was a corpsman at the hospital at Fort Ord, Cal., for almost two years, where I was appalled by the condition and treatment of over 1000 patients who were packed into a hospital staffed for 250 beds. Most of these patients were Vietnam returnees, and seeing them (and in fact the whole experience) turned me on to the resistance and the revolution.

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Send letters to fe — AT — fifthestate — DOT — org or

Fifth Estate,

POB 201016,

Ferndale MI 48220

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten.

Letters may be edited for length.

As always, thank you for everything your team does. I’ve been working my way through the Winter 2019 issue of Fifth Estate after my shifts at Starbucks, and it really grounds me and makes me feel sane after working for capitalist madness.

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I am a dumb old GI and I hate this MF Army. I want to subscribe to your underground paper. It’s not a very pleasant thing being here where I really don’t want to be.

The only thing that I want is to be back home (Detroit) and to be with my girl. I don’t want the war in Vietnam, or the Army or all of this unnecessary harassment. I’m not really proud of being in the Army although my parents seem to think so.

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To the Editor:

Your paper has done so much for our heads simply because it is so meaningful.

We would like to add just one thing for your other readers: “Respect the Revolution and you shall inherit the earth.”

The Iron Butterfly Conspiracy

Danang

I was in your town the past week and got caught up in the action there. I’m from Pittsburgh where there is absolutely nothing happening. And I mean nothing!

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Listen and dig the “fair” deal the troops get in good old Vietnam by the military-pig-racist-establishment.

Currently I am being framed on a phony marijuana bust. I have an eyewitness to testify in my favor but it will be the word of two enlisted men against the word of two 1^st Lts. who can do no wrong as far as the military is concerned.

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I have dug the newspaper for almost 8 months and I’m really for the People having the power, because the Establishment has fucked this country completely up. I feel that your paper really gets down to the natural nitty thang in every printed page!

I especially dug your hip reply to the brainwashed men of the 3^rd Plt., B Co., 1/6 Inf., 5^th Div.

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

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The strike of the Third World peoples and white supporters at San Francisco State College was a part of expanding the movement in this country toward liberation. It was a strike, an action with a direction toward a revolutionary level because it was based upon principles drawn from the foundation of oppressed Third World people’s needs.

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Send letters to fe AT fifthestate DOT org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220.

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten. Letters may be edited for length.

Enjoyed your review of John Zerzan’s A People’s History of Civilization, “The Way of the Passenger Pigeon,” by Peter Werbe in FE #401, Summer 2018. In your reviewer’s analogy of civilization being a train heading towards a bridge that is out without the realization of those supping in the dining car, if I enjoy that last supper as it crosses that trestle, is that decadence?

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In the July 18 edition of the Detroit American, Anthony J. Wierzbicki, the paper’s president and publisher, wrote an editorial in response to the barrage of criticism directed at the paper’s use of uncomplimentary terminology when referring to law-breakers, precisely black law-breakers.

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Thank you for finally calling out your fellow privileged white lefties for their, “I choose not to vote,” bullshit. (See “In Defense of Tactical Voting,” by Bill Weinberg, FE #400, Spring 2018.)

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In regard to the events of Chicago during the convention week, I would like to submit the following information:

On August 26, 10:30pm, a friend and I went to Lincoln Park. At this time a large group of people, mostly young, was gathered in the park listening to different speakers, chanting and sitting near fires talking. Soon some of the people began “antagonizing” the present police with name calling.

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Dear Sirs,

I have been a subscriber to your paper for a long time and hope to be a subscriber for a long time to come, but that’s not why I wrote.

I wish to congratulate you on your last issue (vol. 3, no. 7), it was great!

I also wish to criticize you on your letting John Sinclair ruin your fine newspaper by printing all of his bullshit on the MC5.

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As I was sitting in Grant Park in Chicago August 28 what to my tear-gassed eyes should appear but a beautiful young girl with a free copy of the Fifth Estate.

She handed me a copy with a smile on her face so I immediately began to read every page, through the tears in my eyes. It was beautiful to say the least.

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Editor’s Note: The following letter was written by an American serviceman in Vietnam. It was sent to one of our readers, who in turn forwarded it to us with permission to print it in our letters column. The writer’s name has been omitted for his own protection.

Dear Bob,

This is a place of horror, and I am frankly unequipped for it. I can perform my duty; cleaning the jungle mud from gaping wounds, folding a man’s near-severed lower leg up against the intact part and binding them together, or swathing a head in bandages to keep the brain from falling out, as much as any other purpose. I can carry a shapeless bundle from a helicopter and assist in opening it to find inside little more than a jumble of severed limbs, intestines, and chunks of charred muscle. I can even fish a blood-soaked envelope from the bundle and fill out a tag for the body from its address, noticing that the same name, plus, “mrs.” is repeated in the return address.

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The Fifth Estate has always looked beautiful to me, from the very beginning, typos and all. But even more so lately. It’s always saying something provocative visually, too. There is such a wonderful vitality about it. And obviously the only way to keep it alive and assure longevity is to print the Fifth Estate “at home”—with a printer who is sent to school by the Fifth Estate and Inner City Voice jointly.

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The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee has asked support for a nationwide trading stamps drive through which it hopes to equip its Atlanta, Ga., garage. SNCC has recently been able to obtain, through redeeming such stamps, three mini-buses as well as several battery chargers, and tire-changing, wheel-balancing and other equipment which enables it to keep its cars operational.

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I am more than happy to state my opinion of the Army and the war in Viet Nam. I’ve been in the service nearly a year now and I have had several unpleasant experiences with the foolish and incompetent leaders of this organization.

I have been very fortunate and I have not had to kill to save my life, but many of my friends here have not been so fortunate. Three weeks ago we had 10 men killed and approximately 40 others who were wounded in an ambush just North of this city.

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Is it wrong to hope? Is it wrong to have a dream and to keep searching for the realization of that dream? I’ve been told that anything worth obtaining is invariably very difficult to obtain. To some people this means working overtime to get the resources for a long awaited vacation; to others it is the sacrifice of social position in return for personal integrity; and to still others (and these are few, unfortunately) it is the complete denial of oneself in order that someone else’s dreams be fulfilled. Of course, there are very few of us who are willing to go beyond the first mentioned sacrifice.

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Send letters to fe — AT — fifthestate — DOT — org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220. All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length.

Taking part in protests is an act of defiance which may result in violent retaliation. “In Defense of Self Defense” by Paul Walker in the Fall 2017 Fifth Estate (#399) made this clear.

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Send letters to fe@fifthestate.org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length.

I appreciate Chellis Glendinning’s criticisms of modern, Western civilization, including modern agriculture, which has been highly detrimental to ecological and social balance in the world. (See “Linear Perspective, Fences & Nature’s Glory,” FE #396, Summer 2016.)

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Send letters to fe--at--fifthestate--dot--org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220. All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length.

Enclosed is $30. Please send us a bundle of the Summer 2015 Vietnam issue. Thank you for putting out this paper! Printed propaganda is where it’s at!

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We welcome your opinions.

Please send us your comments and ideas about what we have published by letter (typed or handwritten), email, or social media.

Address information is at our website: www.fifthestate.org

Florida Kollective

I’m writing on behalf of our small and growing kollective in northeast Florida.

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The Fifth Estate welcomes letters at PO Box 201016, Ferndale MI 48220, or fe-AT-fifthestate-DOT-org

I am no fan of the United States Government, nor of any of its agencies, including the FCC. As far as I can tell, we have government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich, and only a revolution in the human psyche will change that. Nevertheless, I found much to disagree with in Ron Sakolsky’s article “No More Safety Valves” (#372, Spring, 2006).

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I read with some surprise EB Maple’s letter (see FE 370, Fall 2005) regarding an article I wrote which was published in the Winter 2005 issue of the Fifth Estate.

Maple writes: “The standard issue primitivism of the article’s message appeals to me in many ways...” Thanks, a rather condescending way to agree with some aspects of my vision, but an acknowledgment nevertheless.

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The following is in response to an item which appeared in the Fall 1983 Fifth Estate which listed the Columbia (Mo.) Anarchist League as one of the sponsors of a Yippie! coordinated demonstration to be held at the 1984 Republican convention.

Fifth Estate:

For the record, the Columbia Anarchist League has nothing to do with “Freeze Reagan/Bush.” I told the NYC Yippies that we did not want to endorse it because it was a move in a reformist direction away from the nobody for president idea. However, I told him it would be okay with us if they put the Columbia Nobody for President Committee as an endorsee (since we could make our point this way).

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Send letters to fe@fifthestate.org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220. All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length.

Thank you to the comrades of the Fifth Estate for publishing John Clark’s review and remembering my father so fondly. (See Winter 2017 FE, “Sam Dolgoff: A life at the center of American anarchism for seventy years.”)

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Send letters to fe — at — fifthestate — dot — org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220. All formats accepted, including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length.

I am really glad the FE has published and continues to publish articles that cover the experiences of people in various parts of the world that haven’t conformed neatly to the dominant narratives on the left or the right, or the cheerleaders of any government. As anarchists, these are the stories we need to know about, and often the people are the ones we want to be in solidarity with, when we know they are there!

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Send letters via email to fe<AT>fifthestate<DOT>org or Fifth Estate, P.O. Box 201016, Ferndale MI 48220. All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten. Letters may be edited for length.

I had just thought about Pat Halley yesterday. (See “FE Staffer Puts a Pie in God’s Face,” FE Spring 2015)

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Send letters to fe — at — fifthestate — dot — org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220 All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length

Want to write a letter about our Anti-Marx section?

We assume our essays critical of Marxism will generate a large number of responses. Limit letters to 400 words. If you want to suggest an essay in reply, please contact us.

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