Most Recent Additions

The calendar will be a regular FIFTH ESTATE feature. We know that there is more happening in the Detroit and Ann Arbor areas than what we have listed, so we need your help. Send us information about what your group is doing or just anything you hear about. We think the items listed below disprove the contention that “nothing ever happens in Detroit.” The deadlines for the calendar are the 8^th and 23^rd of each month.

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First Letter: ‘In The House of the Hanged, One Does Not Speak of the Hemp.’

Today there’s a great deal of preaching to young people. One can hear the tongue clicking of sophisticated adults worrying about what is happening to the younger generation. There’s also the thoughtless embracing of the superficial fads of youth today by those adults who wish to appear to be “with it.” I don’t feel I’ve suffered from any generation gap, at least, this is how you have always treated me, so let’s get to the heart of some of the important things that bother all of us, Young and old, today. I have never worshipped at any shrine and I know that you, at least, will not mind the irreverence that I might express. After all, one of the things I want to warn you about is not to accept a man’s words except as you learn from them, but judge him by his deeds as you see him.

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“Where were the police and how could such a thing happen” were the questions asked by a stunned audience at the Art Institute on Friday, Oct. 21. They had come for an evening of beautiful music, superbly played by the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Rudolf Barshai.

Outside the hall were about 20 police vehicles to protect concert-goers from the Breakthrough picket line. Yet within the auditorium there was insufficient surveillance. Known members of Breakthrough were allowed in the lobby to create minor disturbances; others were seen to be seated in the hall. The concert proceeded. The first selection was played and as the ovation burst forth, four men sprang onto the stage, from the wings, with two huge insulting signs. Police arrived to quell the disturbance some minutes after some of the audience had taken their own action.

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A bizarre chiller which gives Rock Hudson a chance at drama, for a change, provides an evening of unusual entertainment in the John Frankenheimer film, “Seconds,” now appearing at the Studio New Center Theatre.

A fantastic organization, equally amazing in its efficiency and pose, offers Mr. Hudson a second chance at life. Excellent photography and a good performance by Rock brings you to a startling climax which is certainly not meant for weak hearts. Gagged and bound, Mr. Hudson has never looked nor sounded so convincing before.

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“Conscience is a costly thing, and I am paying dearly for the rights to my mind. Five years a cement wall and cold iron bars... is the price I am paying for real freedom. If it must be this way, I accept it gladly, knowing that the satisfaction, the pride and the honor I am feeling because of my actions will bring me through, whatever punishment my master’s hand down on me.”

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Reprinted from The Daily Collegian, Thursday, October 27, 1966, Vartan Knpelian, Editor-in-Chief. Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan

Against New Tabloid

It is always interesting to observe the machinations of the New Left. Therefore, it would seem to be even more interesting to observe their latest innovation designed to spread their particular form of radicalism.

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In contrast to the Dearborn decision on a Vietnam referendum, Highland Park’s City Council voted, 4 to 1, on Oct. 17, not to place the issue on the November ballot. The vote was surprising in a community which is more urban, more sophisticated than Dearborn, with a high percentage of Negroes, active in civic affairs.

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American heoroes, the Fort Hood Three: (l. to rt.) Mora, Samas, Johnson

Although I am being held in solitary confinement, the prisoners and guards find occasion to speak with me. I was ordered to remove the name tags from my uniforms and from above my cage door. I now exist as the man without a country or a name; this plus instructions for no one to speak with me entices the prisoners and guards to find out my story.

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The American Civil Liberties Union will challenge the court-martial conviction of an Army lieutenant for participating in a demonstration against US policy in Vietnam, arguing that the articles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice under which he was convicted violate freedom and are unconstitutionally vague.

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I remember that there was a time not too long ago when yours truly sat in one of Detroit’s few coffee houses wanting so badly to have a good time and hear some good music that I actually applauded the second-rate “musicians” folking off onstage. These performers were the product of a very small and very sick music scene in the city. There was very little of anything exciting attracting customers to hear live music. Consequently, there was very little money for the musicians playing in this city. There was, as a result, very little competition, creativity, or excitement going on in the coffee houses. A vicious circle.

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On September 16 charges of Inciting to Riot against Moses Wedlow and James Roberts were dismissed in Recorder’s Court by visiting Judge John Seiler. The charges grew out of the August 9–12 “Policeman’s Field Days” on Kercheval on Detroit’s East Side. Three additional charges of rioting, conspiracy to disturb the peace and possession of a bomb against the two men had previously been dropped for lack of evidence.

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Floyd McKissick, National Director of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), will be speaking in Detroit on Monday, November 7. The Detroit Committee to End the War in Vietnam and the Wayne Committee to End the War in Vietnam have announced that McKissick will be one of the main speakers at a teach-in which is scheduled for that day on the Wayne State University campus.

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Carl Campbell is 23 years old and a veteran of the Vietnam war, where he served in the United States Marine Corps. He is presently a student at Wayne State University. His interview with the Fifth Estate follows below.

FE: Carl, why did you join the Marines?

Carl Campbell: I was 19 years of age, a high school graduate, I didn’t have enough money to go to college, I felt somewhat patriotic and soldiering is the logical action of anyone who is patriotic. I had also decided if you were going to be a soldier, you might as well be a good one. At that time I had no doubt that the Marines were good soldiers.

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Well you see it was something like this. Larry Weiner (formerly mentioned in this column), Detroit film-maker, has finally gotten everything together for his long planned sequence for his long in the making film. The sequence involves some junior executive types walking through the Fisher Building, through the tunnel, in and out of the General Motors Building, dressed in turtle shells.

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(Reprin

ted from the Toronto Star) The Cartoon panels show a middle aged chubby woman gesturing with her hands and body as she speaks, clasping hands, putting them in front of her, away from her body, close to her body. She says:

1. “His father talked to him. He said ‘Let the GOVERNMENT worry about RESPONSIBILITY! All YOU have to do is drop the bombs!’ But it was no use. He’d just start yelling about WARSAW.

2. “I talked to him. I said ‘Let the GOVERNMENT worry about MORALITY! All YOU have to do is burn the villages!’ But he wouldn’t listen. He’d just start yelling about HITLER.

3. “His teacher talked to him. He said ‘Let the GOVERNMENT worry about NATIONAL GUILT! All YOU have to do is gun down the silly peasants!’ But he paid no attention. He’d just start yelling about BELSEN.

4. “Our minister talked to him. He said ‘Let the GOVERNMENT worry about HUMAN DIGNITY! All YOU have to do is NAPALM the women and children!’ But it had no effect. He’d just start yelling about NUREMBERG.

5. “So the day his draft card arrived he left for CANADA! He’s living there now in some place called YORTVILLE or something! I didn’t raise my boy to be a Canadian!”

Maybe you dug the San Francisco Mime Troupe doing their blackface minstrel show jamming black-white reality back in your face, but the Denver cops certainly didn’t. Charges of indecent acts and indecent language were filed against three members of the Troupe when they played Denver’s Phipps Auditorium last week.

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from The Rag (UPS) — One of the brighter aspects of the sexual revolution is that it offers this generation whole new levels of personal manipulation. Instead of the older concept of “nice girls” being virgins upon marriage, the liberated standards offer people the chance to express their deepest feelings to one another in a natural way. Marriage counselors often say that successful marriages are built upon compatible interests, liking one another, and a satisfactory sex life.

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The WSU Artists’ Society’s fall concert/reading series is now set and will continue with a concert by the Contemporary 4 at the Community Arts Auditorium Thursday, November 3, at 8:30 p.m. Charles Moore will introduce his new band, featuring Kirk Lightsey, piano, and Ron Johnson & John Dana, the regulars. Former pianist Stanley Cowell left Michigan for New York City in August and has been working with Marion Brown (including a recent recording session for Pixie) among others. The concert will be introduced by yours truly. There is no admission charge per se, but a donation of $1.00 will be appreciated.

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In the last issue of the FIFTH ESTATE John Sinclair put down “acid rock” in favor of new-thing jazz, implying that Coltrane is really where it’s at and that rock is nowhere. His opinion revolves around the term “psychedelic”. Sinclair feels that jazz is truly psychedelic while rock merely exploits the term. I asked Robin Tyner, lead singer of the MC-5, now appearing at the Grande Ballroom, what he considers to be the true psychedelic music.

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Saturday October 15

FILM. Famous Films of Famous Directors: Part. II. Akira Kurosawa’ s “Yojimbo”. Rackhman Aud. 80 Farnsworth, 8 p.m. Adm. 10/15

Sunday October 16

FILM, Famous Early Movie Series. Henry Ford Museum Theatre. 2 and 4 p.m. Adm. 10/16

PROGRAM. Student Sunday Program, movies and dancing. International Inst. 4–6 p.m. 10/16

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Unwind and uncomplicate. Let go, on Oct. 7 the Mime Troupe did. They touched on all the touchy issues. They gave us a quick look at ourselves, black and white.

The exaggerated makeup, the powder blue satin tails, the bentwood chairs were all an integral part of mime in the classic tradition, satirizing the minstrel show and putting us all down.

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On Thursday, October 6, two people could have gone to Cobo Hall and for one hundred dollars had a dinner and heard Vice-president Humphrey give a speech. If the political viewpoint of the two people was slightly skewed to the right they could have gone down the hall to the “Romney-Griffin Bandwagon Ball” for only one hundred and twenty-five dollars. The difference in price was because the Romney people had to pay the band.

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The psychedelic dance concert, long an institution among San Francisco hippies, came to Detroit Friday and Saturday nights. Oct. 7^th and 8^th, at the Grande Ballroom, Grand River one block south of Joy Road. Judging from the enthusiasm of the crowd who made it, the venture was a success. It looks like this new form of entertainment is here to stay.

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A drug is known by the controversies that it raises as a person is known by the enemies he makes. The first argument around LSD was the kind of mental abnormality that it produced in research subjects. Some scientists contended the loss of contact with reality resembled schizophrenia while others said that it was comparable to a toxic mental condition such as may be seen with a high fever in a physical illness. The LSD psychosis was eventually conceded by most to be different from schizophrenia. It remains of scientific importance to study the changes associated with LSD but it cannot serve as a model for schizophrenia. It was hoped that drugs which cut short or prevented the LSD state of mental distress would be effective against schizophrenia. This was only partly true. Wishful thinking, attempts to find a short-cut to fame, poor observation and a lack of training in scientific method were responsible for the early conclusions that the LSD psychosis was like the schizophrenic illness and similar factors have led some workers to conclude that the medical use of LSD is a cure for illnesses ranging from neurosis to drug addiction.

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Due to the incompetence of the Post Office bureaucracy the subscribers did not receive their FIFTH ESTATES until a week after they were mailed. This is a double drag since our office staff really busted their asses trying to see that the mailing got to the subscribers before the papers hit the streets. Well, have faith, God and the old P.O. willing you should have this in your paid subscriber’s hands the day after we get it back from the printers.

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“The free election of masters eliminates neither the masters nor the slaves.”

—Herbert Marcuse

American politics, as has been noted here before, is the politics of non-alternatives and pseudo-choices. If we needed any evidence, the present election provides it. Search and fantasize as we might there simply are not any radical possibilities. Consider the following:

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Last month the Fort Hood Three were convicted and sentenced to prison terms of three years for Mora; and five years for Samas and Johnson. The Fort Hood Three, to perhaps refresh a few memories, are Pvt. Dennis Mora, Pvt. David Samas and PFC James Johnson—the three U. S. soldiers who refused to serve in Viet4 nam believing that the war is “immoral, unjust and illegal.”

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Maybe film was only playing possum. It sure looked dead, though... Nothing was happening. The few people I had managed to find that were interested in film were leaving town. Most of the good theaters were closing. There was obviously no hope. Then I wrote a couple columns for The Fifth Estate and BHANG, the floodgates opened. Things started happening. So many things that I can’t really cover them in depth, because of a lack of space and information; I just haven’t had time to learn all that I want to learn about them. All I can do is mention them and promise to elaborate sometime in the future.

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Please send one year’s subscription of this thing you call “The Fifth Estate’ to me. It gets pretty cold out here in the wintertime and I gotta have something to burn in my fireplace. Ever tried to heat a 3 room house with a flaming draft card?

Oh, Yea! One other thing. Please try to keep your columnist out of jail (i.e. John Sinclair). Now that I got MONEY invested in your organization (and I use the term very loosely), I would like to see it go somewhere. And I don’t mean prison.

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The Fifth Estate

923 Plum Street

Detroit, Michigan 48201

962–9336

EDITOR AND PUBLISHER

Harvey Ovshinsky

NEWS EDITOR

Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASST.

Cathy West

ART EDITOR

Gary Grimshaw

PHOTOGRAPHY

Lena Sinclair

CARTOONIST

Rob Derminer

The Fifth Estate is a member of the Underground Press Syndicate (UPS).

The men who play the new styles in jazz frequently tell me that they don’t like to call their music that—they see nothing desirable in having their art identified with the gin mills, criminal activities, hustling, and ruthless entrepreneurship and exploitation that characterize the jazz scene today. (Or for that matter, yesterday. Haven’t black artists always been forced to create in these circumstances?)

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Underground newspapers, books & magazines & records & posters

buttons & bumperstickers

all kinds of things you need

ESP RECORDS!! The FUGS Broadside album — the FUGS second album — Timothy Leary Speaks on LSD Albert Ayler Spirits Rejoice! New York Ear & Eye Control

Patty Waters Sings!

Marion Brown Quartet!

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

RING — RING!

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

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

Click!

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

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No matter what his choice of words, every newspaper editor is aware that he is bound to offend someone. The arrest and trial of Peter Zenger two hundred years ago and the bombing of the office of the WORKER in New York 4 weeks ago bear witness to this. The FIFTH ESTATE has not made everyone happy, nor would this be realistically possible. Some kind of people we displease send us threatening letters and make anonymous phone calls. Even our friends have had bitter words for us at times, as evidenced by our Letters to the Editor column, but this is to be expected and is a welcome indication that we are being read and thought about.

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Detroit is full of openings! Last weekend: Uncle Russ’s Gran-de Ballroom broke into the open with the MC5 and the High Society’s light show, both of which were just as they have to be—TOO MUCH. (William Blake: “Enough! or Too Much.” Charles Olson: “We must have / what we want.”) We are getting it. The Gran-de will be the place again this weekend, and hopefully for a lot more weekends, with the pounding MC5 and the great new band from Lansing, the Woolies, who just recorded their first sides on the West Coast last month with one of the heaviest guitar players anywhere, Ron English, featured. The High Society will be there too.

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The poster announced a mass rally at Rev. Cleage’s Central United Church of Christ, where the “friends of Snick” present STOKELY C. CARMICHAEL, Chairman, Student Nonviolent Co-ordinating Committee.

The spelling is different now though—“Snick” (picked up from TIME magazine’s bastardization & turned back on H. Luce) brings to the ear the sound of a knife clicking open, a guillotine swipe at a fat red neck & the head plopping softly into a basket full of identical heads, a nice fitting name indeed. In/deed.

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Three collectives belonging to the history of Portuguese anarchism, Zentro de Cultura Libertaria, BOESG (library) and A Batalha (newspaper), have purchased an Anarchist Center in the Lisbon region: a common space, open to old and new collectives, that will rid them of the pressure brought about by gentrification and real estate. The new Center will also host the archives and libraries of the three collectives. They are asking for contributions of solidarity.

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In this cafeteria flies swarm the recruiter’s cropped hair.

“One thing I hate—” he spits out—“flies!”

His dominant hand swipes the air. Pure reflex.

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In this same room girls carry plastic babies, lifeless until

internal mechanisms inspire crying when

they haven’t been fed, haven’t slept, are jarred in some way.

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a review of

Isabelle Walks With Angels: A Montreal Urban legend by Norman Nawrocki, Illustrated by Ivan R. Les Pages Noires, 2023

Norman Nawrocki’s novella is a beautifully illustrated story, allegory, or fable about a woman who had a home, but lost it. All her adult life there have been abusive men: lovers, landlords bosses, restaurant clients. She loses what little she has and is now living on the street, defending herself from predators the best she can. All the avenues have been closed, there’s only one left...jumping into the freezing waters of the Saint-Laurence Seaway from a high bridge.

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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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a review of

Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else) by Olúfemi Táíwò. Haymarket Books, 2022

Although most readers may not think of ourselves as elites, one of the great gifts of the Black feminists who developed the concept of identity politics was to demonstrate how status and power are relative, and move simultaneously in different directions across multiple aspects of a person’s identity.

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a review of

Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction by Alex Prichard. Oxford University Press, 2023

Anarchists have been devising short guides for the anarcho-curious practically since anarchism existed as a coherent ideological thread. They date back at least to Kropotkin’s contribution to the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1911) and including Alexander Berkman’s ABC of Communist Anarchism (1929), Colin Ward’s Anarchy in Action (1973), and Cindy Milstein’s Anarchism and its Aspirations (2010).

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a review of

Ohio by Sean Swain. Ardent Books

Ohio is the story of Sean Swain, a man wrongfully convicted and turned into an anarchist political prisoner in the state that bears the title of the book’s name.

He has been in prison in Ohio since 1991 on a murder charge, the self-defense killing of an abusive ex- of his then-girlfriend who had broken into his house and threatened his life.

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a review of

Eat the Rich & Other Interesting Ideas: Selected Essays by Peter Werbe. Black & Red-Detroit, 2023

“To live outside the law, you must be honest.” B. Dylan, “Absolutely Sweet Marie”

Eat the Rich, a compilation of Peter Werbe’s journalism from the Fifth Estate, demonstrates in formidable detail how he has been getting our attention for the last five decades.

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a review of

Up Against the Real: Black Mask from Art to Action by Nadja Millner-Larsen. The University of Chicago Press, 2023

When I met Ben Morea some years ago, I assumed that our correspondence would further my historical research on the interrelation between experimental and ultra-leftist radicalism in the United States in the 1960s and ‘70s.

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a review of

On Community: Field Notes #8 by Casey Plett. Biblioasis, 2023

Casey Plett’s new book, On Community, weaves a nexus of themes and concepts, including compassion, needs, the pleasure of sharing coffee, the mutual support queers and transsexuals provide, the power of the group, and an ongoing space of encounter.

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A new book of oral histories edited by political prisoner Eric King and abolitionist Josh Davidson is now available for preorder through AK Press and Burning Books. Rattling the Cages: Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners with a foreword by Angela Davis and an introduction by Sara Falconer is a fundraiser for, and a way to raise awareness of those imprisoned for politically motivated actions.

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in Cooperation with Detroit Adventure

THURS MARCH 19

POWER TO THE PEOPLE and other assorted revolutionary politics will be discussed by the citizens of the Woodstock Nation sponsored by the Free University and conducted by the White Panther Party. All persons, hippies, yippies, Commies and other facsimilies thereof are welcome. 8 p.m., 4867 John C. Lodge at Warren.

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“The beauty parlor’s filled with sailors, the circus is in town.”

—Dylan

Bill Rowe, alias Desolation Rowe, radical accountant and financial wizard for the Fifth Estate, Argus, numerous rock groups and conspiracies far too numerous to mention here, was raided in his plush Northwest Detroit apartment, March 6^th.

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

Antoinette Dishman was a 17 year old Barnard College freshman who died January 31^st of a heroin overdose. She had sniffed heroin at a party and was found dead the next morning. Hers wasn’t an exceptional case. Heroin overdoses killed more than 200 teenagers in New York City alone last year. The drug is made even more dangerous when used in combination with alcohol or barbiturates.

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