Most Recent Additions

a review of

Snow Day by Willow Page Delp. The Amazine, 2023 theamazine.com

You stare at oblivion or maybe just at your social life—a sky darkening from blue to black, a group of college students fighting over foraged meals, a building decaying—and wonder what to believe. This is a snow day, but something more, too, a bonding experience that can only shatter and release you. When you belong somewhere, or maybe more often when you don’t, “things [have] to erupt.”

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When we talk about settler colonialism, we’re not just recounting the past, we’re describing a system that is alive and expanding today. It’s important to break down the terms: colonialism today often means invading a place to extract resources—a mine, a plantation, an oil field—before retreating. Canadian companies, for instance, loot minerals from Latin America and Africa, but when the mine runs dry, no “New Canada” pops up in Ghana or Guatemala. The colonizers take and leave.

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This wild account of a plan to decapitate the Chicago ruling class in 1916 first appeared on the website of the Hoosier State Chronicles: Indiana’s Digital Newspaper Program.

https://web.archive.org/web/20250401081025/https://blog.newspapers.library.in.gov/the-anarchist-soup-plot/

The Fifth Estate rarely publishes reprints, particularly if they have first appeared online. However, this story of extreme class warfare seems unknown to most of those interested in the history of the anarchist movement, so an exception is being made.

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The inhuman conditions of the assembly line claimed two more victims at Chrysler’s Jefferson Assembly Plant in Detroit on December 7. On that day a worker, bitter over his recent lay-off, shot and killed a general foreman in the plant’s paint shop.

The worker, 33-year-old Tilden Engle, had been laid off from his production job at Jefferson on December 4. Tilden had been in ill health, and had been certified by the plant medical staff as capable of performing “light work” only.

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< Supplement to Issue 173

In the past few weeks huge sections of the organized left in this country have been thrown into a state of chaos by a confrontation that initially erupted between the National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC) and the Communist Party (CP). Physical clashes have ensued; debates have raged; editorials have been written. There has been much posturing and affectations of indignation.

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Tens of thousands of miners across the country are voting this month, under the scrutiny of Federal government officials, to elect a new president in the scandal-ridden United Mine Workers union.

Miners will choose between incumbent president Tony Boyle, and reform candidate Arnold Miller, the leader of the Miners for Democracy group.

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(Underground Press Syndicate) Phone phreaking is a rapidly-growing sport among the radical left, and even among a few with more conservative viewpoints. There are few rules to the me, and your opponent can be either the phone company and what it represents, or just the computers. The chance of arrest provides the kick.

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Contemporary society has been engulfed and determined by the immateriality of cyberspace. A new remote-control e-reality lived online. It was preceded by another kind of immateriality, that of the move to the Age of Plastics.

Plastic is that rare substance that is not found in nature. In 1957, post-structuralist Roland Barthes called it “the stuff of alchemy” embodying “the very idea of its infinite transformation.”

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< Supplement main page

In recent weeks, Detroit has seen the disruption of several union meetings and of demonstrations by a group called the National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC). The NCLC began as a faction of SDS and surfaced nationally around the time of the SDS 1969 Convention.

For the last two years NCLC has participated in strike support coalitions around the country. Some local union members remember them for their tendency to subject unionists to long, theoretical speeches in return for NCLC strike support.

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Fifth Estate Extra

This is a supplement to THE FIFTH ESTATE, an independent socialist newspaper of Detroit now in its eighth year of publication. It deals with the current uproar in Detroit’s Left caused by a violent conflict between the Communist Party and the National Caucus of Labor Committees. The conflict has spread to include virtually every Left group, several welfare rights organizations and some unions. A few lessons can be learned from it. One article presents the criticism and analysis of The Fifth Estate production staff. A second article presents the criticism and analysis of The Fifth Estate distribution staff, Big Rapids Distribution Company.

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Wooden Shoe, as a publicly facing anarchist infoshop, was established in 1976 and, using capitalist projections, shouldn’t exist. Amazingly, it still does. Many visitors share stories about their parents as youthful hippies or punks hanging out on South Street in Philadelphia and coming to the Shoe to learn about the system.

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a review of

Animal Resistance in the Global Capitalist Era by Sara Colling. Michigan State University Press, 2021

Animal Revolution by Ron Broglio. University of Minnesota Press, 2022

In the spring of 2020, a pod of orcas began ramming fishing boats in the Strait of Gibraltar, sinking three boats and damaging over 250. Marine biologists speculated that the whales were retaliating for a head injury inflicted by a vessel’s propeller on the pod’s matriarch, White Gladis. She was teaching her mates how to smash into boats and dismantle rudders in attacks lasting up to forty-five minutes. During a cockfight in the village of Lothunur, in the state of Telangana, India, a rooster killed its owner by jumping at him and slashing him with the three-inch blade tied to its leg. In July 2012, shortly after a rope-and-branch trap killed an infant mountain gorilla, two young ones worked together to find and destroy traps in their Rwandan Volcanoes National Park forest.

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a review of

Stop Thief! Anarchism and Philosophy by Catherine Malabou, trans. Carolyn Shread. Polity Press, 2023

Catherine Malabou’s challenging, provocatively titled book reminds us how philosophically radical anarchism is, beginning with Pierre Proudhon’s deceptively simple decision to call himself an anarchist in the 19^th century. It then investigates a curious fact about post-WWII European philosophy: that so many of its most celebrated figures were drawn to the idea of anarchy, yet dismissed anarchism as a political philosophy: a “thieving disavowal of anarchism,” as Malabou calls it.

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In an environment like prison, people are strictly regulated both physically and emotionally. We’re confined to our facility and told where and when we can move. Both bureaucratic and social rules also dictate that our range of emotional expressions be limited.

An outburst or meltdown can be misinterpreted as an attack, a risk of self-harm, an embarrassment other prisoners need to “correct,” or another infraction against the social structure of guards or inmates.

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a review of

Nadja by André Breton, translated from the French and with an introduction by Mark Polizzotti. New York Review Books, 2025

“I love the disappeared, the dying, the forgotten... I love those who vanish into dreams.”

—Renée Vivien

Mark Polizzotti’s 2025 translation of André Breton’s 1928 Nadja, the most iconic novel of the Surrealist canon, is a revelation.

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Last May 3^rd, workers went on strike at the San Antonio plant of Farah Pants to protest the company’s history of unfair labor practices, which included the firing of several workers who had engaged in legal union activities. Farah is a leading manufacturer of modish slacks for young people.

The strike quickly spread to the seven other plants owned by Farah, and today close to 3,000 of the 8,500 employees have joined the struggle.

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LOS ANGELES—The co-director of the Feminist Women’s Health Center was acquitted on December 5 of charges of “practicing medicine without a license.” The jury of four women and eight men deliberated nine hours before reaching their decision. The verdict was received joyously by Feminist supporters in the courtroom, as well as across the country.

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NORFOLK, Va.—(LNS)—When a $12 million fire rips through one of the U.S. Navy’s finest ships—in this case, the aircraft carrier Forrestal—they have to find a culprit. And when the fire takes place in the midst of widespread rebellion and crisis, they need one fast.

The Naval command structure has pinned the blame for both the fire and the rebellion on board the Forrestal on a 19-year-old seaman apprentice named Jeffrey Allison.

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PARIS—As the secret Vietnam peace negotiations between Henry Kissinger and North Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho remain deadlocked here after two weeks of talks, it is becoming clearer each day that the responsibility for the current impasse rests largely with the U.S. government.

Weeks ago, the North Vietnamese announced the existence of a nine-point plan to end the military conflict in Vietnam. The plan included an immediate cease-fire, complete withdrawal of all U.S. forces in return for release of all American prisoners of war, and eventually national elections, among other points.

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a review of

Beyond the Final Whistle, Soccer for a Better World by Vasilis Kostakis. Pluto Press, 2025

On a hot night in Houston Texas, two teams played during a social and political moment that carried more meaning than just the end result of the match. The significance was shown by supporters’ shirts depicting half split Mexican and American flags worn by those in attendance.

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a review of

Ten Little Anarchists by Daniel de Roulet. Autonomedia, 2023

Daniel de Roulet’s novella, Ten Little Anarchists, is a masterful weave of fantasy and fact, history and histrionics, ideology and imagination.

It is a blend of feminist thought, pragmatic practice, and an open dialogue about strategy and priorities for the anarchist movement.

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We mourn the loss of David Chichkan, 39 years old, a renowned Ukrainian anarchist, artist and comrade who died on August 10 from wounds inflicted by fascist Russian forces the day before. He died defending the Zaporizhzhia front in southeast Ukraine on land which Nestor Makhno’s anarchist army once controlled from 1918 to 1921. Always on the side of justice, David fought for solidarity without borders, for a world with no masters, where everyone could live free.

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Editors’ note: The writer has worked as a full-time teacher in an inner-city elementary school in Detroit for the past three years.

For some years, the Detroit public school system has attempted to rationalize its failures to the community with the excuse of inadequate funding.

Today, with Detroit schools threatened by a complete shutdown due to financial shortages, this explanation is once again being offered by school officials to meet public protests over conditions in the city’s schools.

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In the latest development in Detroit’s cliffhanger school crisis, the Detroit Board of Education on December 5 reversed its decision of a month earlier to close the schools for eight weeks over Christmas.

On the basis of vague promises from the state legislature, the schools will now stay open until at least March 15 on a regular schedule. The Board hopes that by that time, the state will have come up with a way to finance the rest of the school year.

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They are fighting for the sovereignty of capital. Warlike adamance, pressurized plunder. Capitalism has always been war, but this sadism is evangelism in the name of their only belief. Fully activated and pushed to its furthest limits, this version ends in pure nihilism: everything is value, therefore, nothing has value. This time, we are inside the machine. The weapon is technological enclosure. Inside this nightless regime, language is code.

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A Circuit Court judge ruled against the request of the recently fired Sociology Dept. Chairman at the University of Detroit for a restraining order preventing the ouster this month.

But the judge indicated support for a motion which would permit an early trial on the main suit, which demands reinstatement of the fired teacher.

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Anti-Tyranny Dept.: A subcommittee of the Wayne University Student -Faculty Council is presently investigating the abuses of the school’s toy police force, the Public Safety Department. The University cops have left such a trail of harassment and illegal practices through both the campus and the surrounding community that several days of testimony is expected. If you have an experience to report, call the S-FC at 577–3416...

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American Civil Liberties Union 961–4662

Big Rapids Trucking Co. (Fifth Estate Distributors) 842–8888

Clergy for Problem Pregnancy 964–0838

Cobo Hall Concert Info 224–1000 —

Creem Magazine 624–6167

Fifth Estate Office 831–6800

FLF Food Co-op 547–0052

Free Legal Aid Clinic 832–2777

Gay Switchboard 875–0413

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Barbara Andrews

Mark Beltaire IV

Debbie Brentz

Nan Cain

Ken Fireman

Teresa Garland

Bob Hippler

Resa Jannett

Cathy Kauflin

Mike Neiswonger

Bob Nirkind

Karen Redmond

Bill Rowe

Len Schafer

Peter Werbe

Copyright 1973, The Fifth Estate

the Fifth Estate (a Michigan non-profit corporation) is published every other Saturday at 4403 Second, Detroit, Mich. 38201; phone: (313) 831–6800.

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In what seemed like “Shootout at the OK Corral,” an old Jimmy Cagney movie and “Superfly” wrapped into one, four white STRESS officers were shot and wounded in the early morning hours of Dec. 4 by three black gunmen.

This was a dramatic turnabout from the toll of 15 lives STRESS has taken in the black community during 18 months of its existence. Opinion in the streets and auto plants ranged from undisguised glee to a feeling that the STRESS squad had “just messed with the wrong people.”

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The election of Justin Ravitz to a seat on Recorder’s Court came as no surprise to most Detroiters who had watched the campaign, and had seen Ravitz’s clear-cut lead in the spring primary.

Ravitz, 32, came into the election campaign with a long list of credentials as a proponent of radical change:

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a review of

Anarchy in the Big Easy: A History of Revolt, Rebellion, & Resurgence by Max Cafard. Illustrated by Vulpes. PM Press 2025

The Big Easy is the Isle of Orleans, an archipelago of a long and narrow, always unsure island in a surregional stream. The Isle is a meandering Möbius half-twist in a topologically peculiar place connecting the inside and outside. If you start on one side and move along the strip, you will eventually reach the other side, which is supposed to be land but may not be, without crossing an edge. It goes by “Big Easy.”

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Fifth Estate

Radical Publishing since 1965

Vol. 60, No. 2, #417 Winter 2025

The Fifth Estate is an anti-profit, anarchist project published by a volunteer collective of friends and comrades.

www.FifthEstate.org

No ads. No copyright. Kopimi — reprint freely

Prisoners, please note: You are an important part of our subscribers, but our small staff usually cannot answer personal letters asking for resources, legal advice, addresses, or pen pals, and cannot accept emails. We are pleased to be able to provide free subscriptions to the incarcerated through our Prisoner Fund, but this is all we can manage.

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The Fifth Estate is in its 60^th year of continuous publication and for the last 40, our front-page usually bears artist Stephen Goodfellow’s graphic assault on power accompanied by the Latin phrase, Non Serviam. Its translation is “I will not serve.” This statement of rebellion is taken from John Milton’s 1667 poem, Paradise Lost. It is the ultimate statement of the refusal to serve authority as it is Lucifer’s rejection of obedience to the Christian god for which he is expelled from Heaven.

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a review of

Hurt, Baby, Hurt by William Walter Scott III. University of Michigan Press, 2025

First self-published in 1970, Hurt, Baby, Hurt is a fast-paced and brief yet intimate look into the life of William Walter Scott III, the man credited with inciting the so-called Detroit riots of July 1967. Known to city residents as The Rebellion, the five days of fires and police and National Guard repression resulted in 43 deaths, 1,200 injuries, over 7,000 arrests, and hundreds of buildings and homes destroyed.

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a review of

The Popular Wobbly: Selected Writings of T-Bone Slim, T-Bone Slim, Edited by Owen Clayton and Iain McIntyre, Foreword by David R. Roediger. University of Minnesota Press, 2025

There’s a new book out which should be of interest to all fans of poignant and witty anecdotes, whether or not they’re interested in history or in union organizing, and whether or not they’ve ever experienced police brutality, prison, or poverty. But for those who appreciate the written word, who have an interest in history or in union organizing, and especially for those among us who have ever gone to bed hungry and broke, this book will provide you with sustenance of all kinds.

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a review of

Jobs, Jive, & Joy: An Argument for the Utopian Spirit by Bernard Marszalek (Ztangi Press and Charles H. Kerr, 2024)

“Certainly, contending with climate catastrophe and civilization collapse requires a cultural revolution to match the devastation before us.” —Bernard Marszalek

The environmental, health, social, economic and political stresses of the last few decades have spurred the formation of increasing numbers of mutual aid groups for sharing resources and solidarity. Especially since the emergence of the Covid pandemic, people are reflecting on how to move their lives beyond working in the current world’s humiliating, boring, and unhealthy jobs.

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Marius Mason, an anarchist, environmental/animal rights activist, vegan, and trans advocate was denied his scheduled Gender Affirming Surgery by the Trump administration and transferred to a women’s prison. The Republican candidate’s campaign spent $27 million on ads condemning gender surgery for prisoners and the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) quickly remanded those detained back to prisons corresponding to their birth gender.

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Worried about the drug problem? How about the chemical problem? Do you know how many you had for lunch?

Considering the amount of preservatives added to keep foods on the shelf longer (calcium silicate, propyl gallate, propylenglycol), the amount of fillers (like water and cereals) used to pad the contents and boost profits, and the process themselves, food becomes a very important problem. In a profit-oriented society the quality of food and its usefulness to the body become secondary to its salability.

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Is there a blood test which can conclusively determine paternity? If not, is there another test or are there other tests being developed to determine exactly who the father is?

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

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Subject: “Abortion Must Be...... “ [FE #126, March 4–17, 1971]: Working women often fear that demanding free abortions means we want more money out of their paychecks.” Just who are you if you are not a part of the masses of working women?

You have revealed in this statement a very interesting and damning consciousness of division between yourselves and those of us who must work for our paychecks.

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Compiled by Resa Jannett in cooperation with Detroit Adventure

Wed. March 17

GRANDE BALLROOM, Fifth Estate Benefit to help support the Youth New Coalition, 7 til 11 pm. Adm. $2.50. Lots of music and even films, light show too. Y’all come!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BARBARA!

Thurs. March 18

VAL GRAY WARD, a nationally acclaimed dramatist will appear with her Kuumba workshop in a program of dance, music and poetry. Union Ballroom, Ann Arbor, 8 pm. $2 adm.

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Within the broad spectrum of real and non-real cultural/political revolution, many diverse and contradictory tendencies exist side-by-side. The sensitive “spiritual” types deplore the nihilism and violence of the revolutionaries with righteous indignation. The wilted flower children pack their bags and split to the country where ““the vibes are mellow.”

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On a recent Monday evening, a Detroit Police Department patrol wagon, license number X25061, blocked the alley next to the Forest-Third Market, better known as Sharkey’s, for well over an hour.

At five minutes past nine, two uniformed sergeants hurriedly made their way from the market to the illegally parked wagon. They backed onto Third and drove off, followed by a curious member of the community.

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At 4:00 am Sunday morning, February 21, Michael Fylstra of the Detroit Gay Liberation Front was busted for “accosting and soliciting” at the corner of Woodward and the Fisher Freeway. The cops mixed up the situation, however, because it was they who had accosted Michael.

“I was taking a walk late at night,” relates Michael, “when a car pulled up, and a passenger called me over. I went to the car and we started to rap.

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Remember Bob Denver? He played on TV for years as Dobie Gillis’ best friend Maynard G. Krebs. Maynard always wore a sweatshirt, had a goatee and sideburns, and freaked out whenever anyone mentioned work. Well, on February 8, Bob Denver was busted by cops in a little California town for possession of grass. Bob told the police he was on his way to Oregon.

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Directed by: David Maysles, Albert Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin. Starring: The Rolling Stones, Hells Angels and a cast of thousands.

“Ooo, the storm is threatening my very life today... But it’s all right, man, in fact, it’s a gas. It’s all right, I’m...an under-assistant, West Coast Promo Man...”

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MADISON, Wisc.—A Federal Grand Jury here has indicted three army enlisted men on charges that they dynamited installations at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin last July 26^th, the anniversary of Fidel Castro’s attack on the Moncada Barracks.

All three GIs are members of the American Servicemen’s Union.

Damage to the camp’s central telephone exchange, a Western Electric transformer and the base’s waterworks was estimated at $100,000 by United States Attorney John Olsen. Destruction at the two old WWII buildings housing the telephone exchange was almost total, putting the phone service out of operation for almost a month.

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The demonstration in Kalamazoo that resulted in a police riot on Feb. 17 has given rise to a full-scale witch hunt in the city. The local citizens grand jury has turned in indictments against members of the United Front, a local community organization, which is a coalition of black, brown and student groups.

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