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[Web Archive note: The title and text of the print original of this article used the transliteration ‘Cakra.’ It has been changed to ‘Chakra’ here to conform with more familiar usage.]

Rainbow

Can you float through the universe of

your body and not lose your way?

Can you lie quietly

engulfed

in the slippery union

...

High Schools build strong Axle Plant workers twelve ways. Count ‘em:

• High Schools have separate parking lots for teachers and students. Axle Plant management parks just outside the factory gate; the employees park far down the street.

• Many high schools have uniformed guards in the halls. Plant Protection men constantly patrol the aisles of an Axle Plant.

• In High Schools students eat cheap institutional food, 12 to a table, in chrome, stainless steel and plastic cafeterias. They usually have 20 minutes to eat lunch. Axle Plant workers eat cheap institutional food, 14 to a table, in chrome, stainless steel and plastic cafeterias. They have 15–30 minutes to eat depending on their shift.

• A teacher almost always assigns a seat to you, and expects you to be in it; you are questioned and sometimes punished if you leave your seat. In an Axle Plant the foreman assigns you a job and expects you to be on it and working-when the whistle blows. If you leave your work area the foreman comes looking for you.

• If you leave your classroom you have to have a hall pass. If an Axle Plant worker is sick or injured on the job, he has to get a medical pass from the foreman.

• A student returning from an absence must have a letter from his parents explaining and excusing his truancy. An Axle Plant worker who’s been off sick must have a letter from his doctor confirming he was unable to work.

• High Schools emphasize productive effort and competition for grades. The teacher grades your performance, taking into account your attendance record, your attitude (“citizenship”) and your academic output. If he’s satisfied with your work, he passes you on to the next grade and you stay in school. Students with good grades and “high citizenship” get scholarships and good citizen awards from the American Legion, Chrysler Corporation and the DAR. Production output is the main criterion of worth in an Axle Plant. At the end of your 90 day probationary period, and when you quit (or are fired), your foreman grades your performance, taking into account your attendance record, your attitude and your skill in turning out gears and axles. If he likes your work, he recommends you be kept on the job; when you leave the Corporation, he recommends whether or not you should be rehired. Workers with good work records often get the easier jobs.

• College prep. students and athletes get most of whatever extra benefits a High School can offer. Skilled tradesmen in an Axle Plant do easier work and get paid more than ordinary production workers.

• Teachers do not like troublemakers. The best thing to do if you want to get along is keep your mouth shut, do the work the teacher wants you to do the way he wants it done, and pick up an easy passing grade. Foremen do not like troublemakers. You won’t have any trouble in an Axle Plant if you keep your mouth shut and do the work the way the foreman wants you to do it.

• If you’re a classroom troublemaker the teacher sends you to the office to talk to your counselor or the principal. If your Axle Plant work record is poor, the foreman takes you to the Production Office and the General Foreman decides what to do with you.

• Your High School will reprimand you, keep you after school, suspend you from class for a few days or longer, or expel you for breaking the rules. An Axle Plant foreman disciplines an employee by warning him verbally, writing him up, giving him days off, or by firing him.

• If you finish your classroom work early the teacher usually lets you do what you want as long as you stay quiet and don’t disturb the other students. When you make your production in an Axle Plant the foreman doesn’t care what you do until the end of the shift as long as you don’t disturb someone else from getting his production.

...

When students in Isla Vista, Cal. burned down a Bank of America branch in February, it became a symbol of the building revolutionary movement. But they didn’t stop there; a month later they torched the prefabricated unit that was to replace it.

Then, on June 4, word of 17 secret indictments of political activists was leaked (conspiracy, etc.). The city had planned to wait until students had split the town for the summer before handing them down.

...

“Shakin’ Street, it’s got that beat; Shakin’ Street, where all the kids meet; Shakin’ Street, it’s got that sound; Shakin’ Street, you gotta get down.”

—by MC 5

VAN NUYS, Cal.—A pack of chopped Hogs growls down the boulevard headed toward a bar for a couple of bottles of Coors beer.

Across the street, the girl in the raised, candy red Comet speed shifts away from the stoplight.

...

Pete Johnstone-Swartz was returning from the Cincinnati Pop Festival when he was attacked and shot three times by the Cinci Pigs at the bus depot. Pete was hospitalized in serious condition. He was charged with possession of dope, a hash pipe, resisting arrest, and assaulting a police officer. Pete is now held in the Cincinnati Workhouse jail with a $3,800 bond and no bread for legal help.

...

Open City office manager, John Martin, will meet soon with Wayne State University officials in an attempt to re-schedule free concerts on the campus Mall.

Wayne State Public Safety Director, William McDaniels, cancelled the concerts because of alleged “sexual intercourse taking place throughout the Mall.”

...

“The nation’s young revolutionaries feel they are modern-day barbarians attacking the diseased Rome of the 1970s”

—Major General Glenn C. Ames (California National Guard Commander) addressing 1,500 pigs from across that state last month.

A couple of weeks ago, narc pigs seized 1,500 pounds of marijuana at a farm in Oakland County. Reports say that it was hauled from Mexico to the U.S. in a camper.

...

Lay, Elrod, lay;

Lay in your iron lung for awhile.

Play, Elrod, play;

Play with your toes for awhile.

—Weatherman song to the tune of Dylan’s “Lay, Lady, Lay”

Last October the SDS Weathermen went to Chicago to take on Mayor Daley’s oink city. Many felt the “Days of Rage” were successful despite the heavy toll in busts.

...

Joan Bird is a twenty-year-old New York City Black Panther. Before January of last year Joan’s life revolved around serving the people. At night she studied at Bronx Community College. “My ambition was to become a nurse,” says Joan. “I thought I could sincerely help my people.” By day she worked in the Black Panther programs—free breakfast for the children, free clothing for the people. “I was never tired because doing everything possible to help my people gave me the energy to go on.”

...

The people of East Detroit are undergoing a fast and, in many ways, painful awakening process that is cutting through all levels of the community.

On June 8 at a graduation party on Lincoln St., the police pushed 200 kids out onto the street and ordered them to leave the neighborhood. Arguments followed and, when the cops saw that the kids were not going to jump at their command, they called in reinforcements from the neighboring suburbs and Detroit.

...

One time Muhammad Ali and I sat sipping grapefruit juice at the snack bar of a hotel on Richmond, Virginia’s Second Street—the busy, shabby artery which before “integration” had been the Woodward Avenue of that city’s black bourgeoisie.

This was the street Muhammad Ali gravitated to. With its hangers out and hustlers and pimps and junkies and small business men and kids getting ready to drop out and pool halls and barber shops and soul food restaurants and illegal whiskey houses, and shoe shine parlors... this was the street where Muhammad Ali’s people were.

...

This newspaper has taken about enough bullshit from shopping centers and honk suburbs hassling our sales people. We are preparing a law suit that will give people the right to sell the Fifth Estate without pig interference. If at any time in the past you have been arrested, run off or threatened, please contact our office by mail at 1107 W. Warren or by phone at 831–6800 and tell us what happened...

...

Five black men face charges of having participated in what Detroit police have called a “plot to ambush officers at random” following a shooting incident in which three officers were wounded.

The department’s Special Investigation Bureau (SIB) has admitted they kept the five, and several other blacks, under intensive surveillance for some two weeks prior to the shootings.

...

Two hundred Chippewa warriors seized a lighthouse belonging to the U.S. government at Whitefish Bay in the Upper Peninsula on June 23. The takeover came after a Great Lakes Indians Youth Conference that was attended by 250 Ottawa, Potawatomi, Sioux and Chippewa Indians.

The lighthouse is situated on 62 acres of land that rightfully belongs to the Indians. It was ceded to the U.S. government in treaties of 1836 and 1862, but the pigs in Washington never paid the money.

...

The Fifth Estate is thinking about expanding operations, so we can get a better paper out to the people.

We particularly want it to be more of a Motor City paper, talking about where this city is coming from and where it is going.

We want the paper to make it a regular thing to cover more of what is happening in the parks, the schools, the factories and the communities. So if there is news happening that you know about, give us a ring and we can try and check it out and get it into the paper.

Jerry Brown, the anti-war GI who exposed the illegal physicals being given at Ft. Wayne, is back in Detroit. The question now is how long he’ll be around.

Spec. 4 Brown, who is a medical technician at the Detroit induction center, was interviewed by this newspaper in May regarding the improper procedures at the base and was transferred to Ft. Harrison in Indiana as a punitive measure. After a month’s stay at the base, the brass decided to ship Brown back to Ft. Wayne because of his continuing GI organizing efforts there.

...

Staff

Fifth Estate #109, July 9–22, 1970, Vol. 5, No. 5, page 2

Debby Brentz

David Gaynes

Carol George

Mike John

Keep on Truckin’ Co-op

Resa Jannett

Jim Kennedy

Lee Ann Kennedy

David Levison

Julie Medvecky

Nick Medvecky

Harvey Ovshinsky

Dave Riddle

Bill Rowe

Len Schaefer

Chris Singer

...

Forty years after his untimely death in 1985, Fredy Perlman’s last work has been published, a second volume of his novel, The Strait, which he left in handwritten form.

In 1986, the anarchist activist/historian (and FE contributor) David Porter commented in the journal Kairos on Perlman’s contribution to anarchist ideas, identifying a central, unifying concern in the work as “the obstacles, inhibitions, and illusions that prevent genuine social liberation.” Although Fredy had begun with a critique of capital as the “overall framework for domination and self-repression in the modern era,” he continued, “Fredy’s special talent was to demonstrate the variety of its political forms,” a dialectic he described in his essays and books, in which “accumulation of unequal power leads to the privilege of a few and the degradation of the others.” Moreover, resisting tended to produce its own feedback “Every major step toward apparent liberation produces further domination...”

...

mayflies dead on the streets of Selma

mayflies dead on the Edmund Pettus

Bridge

David and I are there to remember

to pay our respects, to see

but everywhere we look

the streets and sidewalks are covered

with drifts of mayfly carcasses

heaps of translucent white wings

uncountable numbers of corpses

...

The Berkeley, Calif. Slingshot collective has published its 31^st annual Organizer, a radical day planner that comes in three formats. The press run has been increased to 24,000 copies and the all-volunteer staff expects it to run out as it did last year. The proceeds go to publish Slingshot newspaper, the following year’s Organizer, and grant generous mutual aid to anarchist projects around the world, including the Fifth Estate.

...

if it dies I will not shed a tear.

I don’t really know her or what she

wants from me,

the men who made her, or how I’m

supposed to live here-

sweltering in a chaos

that ain’t for my

sake.

Unwilling as I am to bear the responsibility

of accumulated force.

.

Collective destiny can only be spread

...

Does your book club or reading group need challenging titles?

Books with big ideas at 50% off when ordered in bulk.

Black and Red — Detroit has published books and pamphlets with an anti-authoritarian perspective since 1968. Through the Fifth Estate, they are offering discounts on their titles to reduce their stock and get books into the hands of readers.

...

Justice is vengeance in a world mad for blood.

Justice is debt when the slavers need their quota.

One-million innocents in one-million shackles:

one-million head of oxen

and the cops lick their lips like cannibals

when the masses scream ‘They deserve to suffer!’

.

Animal experiments extend to the wretches,

...

Free speech

Free speec

Free spee

Free spe

Free sp

Free s

Free

Fre

Fr

F

G. Kim Blank is a writer and professor in Victoria, British Columbia

It’s an hour before sunset and I am sitting between two spindly coffee trees with a larger tree stump in front for a blind to partially hide behind. The brim of my grass hat is pulled low to block a pin hole of sunlight that beams through the canopy of a tall mango tree. Leaves rustle in the breeze blowing up the hill from the ocean a thousand feet below.

...

a review of

“All Will Be Equalized”: Georgia’s Freedom Seekers of the Swamps, Backwoods, and Sea Islands 1526–1890 by Andrew Zonneveld. On Our Own Authority Publishing, 2024

Plans for a major celebration of the Columbian Quincentenary in 1992 led to an upswelling of radical resistance. Indigenous groups, Black radicals, the Chicano movement, anarchists and others fought hard to disrupt the glorification of the five-hundredth anniversary of genocide and settler colonialism.

...

Early in the first part of his recent book, The Message, Ta-Nehisi Coates, writing to his former students at Howard University, reflects on what made this particular cohort and their relationship with him special, honing in on Howard’s importance as a university “founded to combat the long shadow of slavery—a shadow that we understood had not yet retreated.”

...

Even before taking office, the incoming Trump Administration began discussing the possibility of American military intervention in Mexico to suppress that country’s drug cartels.

While shockingly brazen, it is not without precedent. The U.S. has a history of imperial intrusion in Mexico in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. There have also been instances where recent immigrants and U.S. citizens fought alongside Mexicans who opposed not only American intervention, but also sought to bring about a revolution.

...

a review of

Shadows in the Struggle for Equality: The History of the Anarchist Red Cross by Boris Yelensky, Edited with a new Foreword and Introduction by Matthew Hart. Illustrated by N.O. Bonzo. PM Press, 2025

From Cop City to the Dakota pipelines and Jane’s Revenge to numerous struggles worldwide, anarchist organizers are relentlessly targeted by the state today as they have been for over a century.

...

“June 11 was a hot day,” a 17-year-old girl from Birmingham said. “Everyone was hot.”

A girl with long blonde hair in a white bathing suit walked up to one of the TMU riot cops who was clearing the beach at Cass Lake. She petted his German Shepherd. The dog whimpered and wagged his tail. “Goddamit get out of here,” the cop said. And he kicked the dog.

...

A lot of people who went to the Cincinnati Rock Festival on Saturday, June 13^th, got a lot more than they thought they would for their $6.50.

At least four people got broken arms, three got broken legs; at least ten got head or body wounds requiring stitches. One girl was in the hospital with a brain concussion; another guy has a broken back. All at the hands of the Queen City police.

...

In cooperation with Detroit Adventure

Thurs. June 25

KINETIC ART FILM PROGRAM. Prize winning flics shown at 7:30 & 9:30 p.m. Detroit Institute of Arts.

OPEN CITY FREE MEDICAL CLINIC. Sign up at 5:30 p.m. Clinic hours are from 6:30–8:30 p.m. 4225 Second at Canfield.

MUSIC UNDER THE STARS with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra at Meadow Brook. Solo pianist is Gary Graffman. 8:30 p.m. It’s at Oakland University (take I-75 to Oakland U. Drive).

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: Can any harm come from making love in the bathtub? Hopefully not. Cleanie.

ANSWER: My research team plunged into action, after reflecting on the habits of whales and dolphins. Brace yourself for the answer: contusions and abrasions if the tub is empty, seasickness, drowning, or scalding if it’s not and your inhibitions go down the drain.

...

Dear Fifth Estate:

We’ve stumbled upon your paper at the right time. Our heads have been infiltrated with “lifer” propaganda. We’re becoming radical and have developed a leftist attitude. It’s hard to accomplish in the Army but we continue to get our point across.

We’re more open minded in discussing the conflicts in our society today. We’re gaining power in our unit, we’re gaining freedom.

...

Specially designed “Kill Cong” badges were awarded by a U.S. Army battalion to soldiers who could prove they killed a soldier of the National Liberation Front (NLF) last year, according to statements by returned servicemen.

“One way to prove your claim to a badge was to bring back an enemy ear,” former Sgt. Frank Shepard, 23, of Plymouth told the Detroit Free Press. “They kept a string of ears at headquarters, which I saw. The ears were rotting and they smelled pretty bad. It turned my stomach. It was like we were on a hunting trip or something.

...

From the Ann Arbor Argus:

“Rock promoter Russ Gibb made one of his rare public appearances two weeks ago when he stopped at South U for a while to pass out circulars advertising his and Mike Quatro’s pop festival in Cincinnati. The circulars were full of bullshit hypes like: “14 BIG ACTS IN 12 HOURS” and claimed that the Cincinnati Pop would be “as groovy as Woodstock but without the hassles.”

...

Following the lead of the literary success of Jerry’s and Abbie’s books, Random House will bring out a collection of writings by imprisoned John Sinclair this fall. Tentative title: Street Writings; Prison Writings. Also, Marquette Prison officials are trying to cut down on John’s incoming mail because they say it has “strained” the Mail office there. They have completely cut off his right to receive records....

...

As prematurely, but accurately reported in our last issue the Michigan House approved a bill June 19 lessening the penalties for possession of two ounces or less of marijuana. There were only three dissenting votes on the bill that would make possession a misdemeanor rather than a felony.

Possession of over two ounces or sales would continue to be a felony crime, but with lessened penalties. The maximum penalty under the new law would be ten years rather than the current 20 year minimum for sales. Legislators expect an increase in sales conviction as a result.

...

a review of

Finally Got The News, A Film by Stuart Bird, Peter Gessner, Rene Lichtman and John Lewis, Jr. Produced by Black Star Productions

“Finally Got The News” is a one-hour film about the activities of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and its politics. It is an important film for all people concerned with changing the Detroit area to see and think about. In addition it is a film that raises the art of political propaganda to a new and significant level.

...

ATLANTA, Ga. (LNS)—Anti-war GIs from around the country got together here over Memorial Day weekend to discuss ways of increasing nationwide cooperation in their struggle against the military machine.

Out of the conference came the GI Alliance, a national clearinghouse which is being set up in Washington, D.C., to provide GI organizations with support services—information, financial and legal assistance, material for political education—and to help coordinate activities and communications among various GI groups.

...

Summer is coming on strong in Detroit. We’ve had good weather, lots of free concerts, and young people hanging out together all over the Motor City. But already it’s become real obvious that the mood is tense. Things are not completely together and there are a lot of contradictions.

Too many of our brothers and sisters are being busted on bullshit charges and, in general, the harassment seems to have greatly increased.

...

Look closely at the faces of the men on this page. Some of them look like average citizens; some have the look of black revolutionaries. They are all cops. These police officers work out of the First Precinct Larceny Squad and generally patrol the downtown department stores looking for shoplifters and pickpockets. That, however, is not the main problem.

...

Draft boards are bracing themselves for a deluge of requests for conscientious objector to war status as a result of a recent Supreme Court decision which said you don’t have to be religious to qualify.

Col. Arthur Holmes, Michigan selective service director, said 632 men are presently awaiting processing on conscientious objector claims. He admitted they represent only part “of the large number who get turned down” under procedures the court questioned.

...

A couple of weeks ago, sixty-three graduating seniors at Oak Park High School responded to Representative William S. Broomfield’s plea to “love their country and respect their flag” by holding a burn-in under the flag pole outside their school.

Copies of the “American Creed” and color pictures of himself, both of which are sent to all graduating seniors of Oak Park High by Republican Broomfield at the taxpayer’s expense, were set to flame by the students.

...

Out of control riot pigs attacked a crowd of East Detroit youths who were attending a graduation party in early June. Neighboring residents characterized the police action as “unprovoked and unwarranted brutality.”

Many of the residents of East Detroit’s Lincoln Street, where the incident occurred, say they intend to file complaints with their City Council about the repressive anti-youth conduct of the pigs.

...

The Phantom of comic strip fame is more symbolic of America than Uncle Sam. In fact, the Purple Pig, as he’s known in some circles, should be depicted on the Great Seal of the United States. No one has served the honko cause better.

As a youth, he gave up the comforts of the Skull Cave in order to be educated in an American university. He was, of course, brilliant in every subject, but athletics were his forte. It didn’t take long for word to spread. People came from all over to watch the super jock work out.

...

(Women’s News Co-op) Ladies—are you ready for the Midi? The designers say women are bored and need a change to a more feminine look. The fashion world has announced that this Fall women will be wearing their skirts at mid-calf length, ready or not.

The exploitive and repressive world of women’s fashions has long been with us—or more correctly, against us. While women have little control over the clothing industry, economics and politics exert major pressure in the fashion world. The exploitive economics of capitalism, based on the continuing need for rising profits, seeks constantly to create a demand for new products.

...

NEW YORK (LNS)—An explosive device estimated by police to have the force of 10 to 15 sticks of TNT went off in a men’s toilet on the second floor of the New York City Police Headquarters at 6:57 p.m. June 10.

The explosion tore a hole in the wall between the men’s room and an adjacent office belonging to high-ranking police officials. Seven persons were injured, none of them seriously.

...

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (The Daily World and LNS)—After the California Appellate Court had overturned the decision in the Huey Newton case, clearing the way for a new trial or freedom for the Black Panther Party Minister of Defense, all the press were clamoring for interviews.

Under this pressure, the authorities at California Men’s Colony—East temporarily let down the wall they had built to isolate Huey and his ideas from the public, and a stream of reporters filed through the bright, sunny visitor’s lounge on June 4.

...

Fifth Estate #108, June 25-July 8, 1970, Vol. 5, No. 4, page 2

The Fifth Estate

Debby Brentz

David Gaynes

Carol George

Mike John

Keep on Truckin’ Co-op

Resa Jannett

Jim Kennedy

Lee Ann Kennedy

David Levison

Julie Medvecky

Nick Medvecky

Harvey Ovshinsky

Dave Riddle

Bill Rowe

Len Schafer

...