Harvey Ovshinsky
Editorial

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There are four estates, the fourth of which is journalism. We are the fifth because we are something different than Detroit’s other newspapers. We hope to fill a void in that fourth estate a void created by party-controlled newspapers and the cutting of those articles which might express the more liberal viewpoint. That’s what we really are--the voice (I hate that word) of the liberal element of Detroit. This does not mean that everything in the paper will be slanted or written with the so-called “far left” creeping through every space. We want to be a truly free press. If it’s good, if it has a name, and if it’s sincere, it will be in the Fifth Estate. If not, you can probably find it in the News.

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Anne Draper
Eyewitness report on Delano strike

Delano is a five hour drive from Berkeley, but the farm workers who live and work in the grapes are five light-years away from the Great Society.

You drive down Highway 99 through the great San Joaquin Valley, where much of California’s agricultural abundance is raised. This is the heartland of the state’s agribusiness complex.

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anon.
Joe Hill: A Tribute

Labor History Archives of Wayne State University is commemorating the 50th anniversary of the execution of Joe Hill, America’s most famous Wobbly and the “Man Who Never Died.” The program will be held at 8 p.m. Friday, November 19, in the WSU McGregor Memorial Conference Center, Second at Ferry, and will highlight Hill’s life in “living newspaper style.” Further details about the event can be obtained by calling the University Archives office at TE 3–1400.

Various Authors
Letters

NOTE: The following Letter to the Editor of the Detroit News was written by Alvin Harrison, NSM [Northern Student Movement] field secretary in Detroit, in response to a number of letters published regarding his participation in a Teach-in on Viet Nam at Wayne University. Mr. Harrison was quoted as saying “That’s your flag, baby, not mine.”

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anon.
New Left

A group has formed calling itself the Detroit Circle. Its purpose is to fill the void that exists among those who consider themselves part of the independent left. One of its spokesmen said this about the organization:

“There is a need for new ideas, re-evaluating the old ones, and fresh discussion among us who reject totalitarianism in any form. There is a need for the youth and the adults of this city not only to discuss in depth new concepts, but to re-evaluate old ones. There is a need to have a forum for the community as a whole so that others who are contributing to creative thinking can be heard--people like Hal Draper, Erich Fromm, etc. We ought to set up a dialogue with the Detroit liberal and radical community with the purpose of helping, and even, when necessary, initiating actions concerning the burning issues of peace and civil rights.”

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anon.
Northern Student Movement

In announcing the creation of an organization called the “Friends of N.S.M.,” a group of Detroit area citizens have recently stated: “We propose to form a nucleus of a movement of whites and Negroes which is in communication with the ghetto based black freedom movement, can support and interpret its efforts and take initiative action in our own communities in confronting others on the issues of racism.”

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anon.
Prison Notes

NATCHEZ, MISS.--Within the last month, more than 500 people have been arrested in the city of Natchez, Mississippi. Although news of the arrests received wide circulation, the brutality and the indignities which the prisoners were forced to endure during their stay in Parchman State Penitentiary has until now been kept secret. However, with the release of some of the arrested, the story is finally getting out. What follows is the report by two of those recently released:

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Tad Zatlyn
The 400 Blows Film Review

In THE 400 BLOWS, recent feature at the Varsity Theater, Francois Truffaut telescopes in on one small but very human subject, picking up the story almost at the height of its conflict, rather than methodically building up to it, which might very well have been the “soundest” way to attack the story. Free of the conventional straight jacket of getting in the proper exposition at the proper time, and also acting this exposition out, he is able to give us a greater human close-up. It is as if he were applying a zoom lens to the entire script. And at the final scene, which is the height of the close up, he frames on the face of the boy. Nothing is really resolved--as in life things seldom are.

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anon.
VOICE Seeks New Programs The Michigan Daily

ANN ARBOR — The Voice Political Party is shifting emphasis from demonstrations and sit-ins to an in creased educational effort on the question of U.S. policy in Viet Nam. In a meeting last week, it was decided to attempt to bring the Viet Nam issue to both the student body at U of M and the community at large on a more personal basis.

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anon.
ACLU Blasts Draft as Punishment

The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan (ACLU) has condemned the announced intent of Colonel Arthur A. Holmes, state Selective Service Director, to use the Selective Service Act “as a device to punish dissent”.

Colonel Holmes was reported earlier as calling for “the immediate induction” of Vietnam war protesters who had violated Selective Service regulations or had caused any interruption of procedures.

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Steve Simons
Bob Dylan; In Memoriam

Detroit took its first glimpse at the “new” Bob Dylan in his concert at the Masonic Temple on Oct. 24. The first half of the spectacle was the traditional Dylan. Following the intermission, the audience was confronted by Dylan wielding an electric guitar, surrounded by his rock & roll combo.

His first song, “Tombstone Blues”, resulted in cries of “We want Dylan!”

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Jules Feiffer
Cartoon

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This cartoon strip consists of seven interchanges between two people.

Person 1: Tell me the reason for The Bay of Pigs.

Person 2: Kennedy believed that after an invasion there’d be a popular uprising.

Person 1: And who else believed that? Anybody you know?

Person 2: Nobody...

Person 1: Now tell me the reason for Santo Domingo.

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Associated Press
Discredit Who?

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 (AP) — Senator Stephen M. Young, Democrat from Ohio, said Thursday that he had learned that the Central Intelligence Agency hired persons to disguise as Vietcong and discredit Communists in Vietnam by committing atrocities.

The C.I.A. and Representative Cornelius E, Gallagher, Democrat of New Jersey, said it was not so.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Ammunition Books

Anarchism...stands for direct action, the open defiance of, and resistance to all laws and restrictions, economic, social, and moral. But defiance and resistance are illegal. Therein lies the salvation of man.

-- Emma Goldman, Anarchism, 1910

Ammunition Books, 4403 Second, Detroit, Michigan 48201 — Telephone: (313) 831–6800

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Bob Nirkind
Cuba: Dawning of American Imperialism The Spanish-American War

1976, being America’s 200th anniversary--with all the commercial pomp and whitewashed historical hoopla that’s riding along with it--would be the ideal year to miss entirely and go abroad.

Between television’s “‘Buy-Centennial’ Minutes” and the countless newspaper and magazine articles extolling our so-called grand and glorious history, it’s going to be kind of hard to keep our food down and our spirits up.

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anon.
Death of a Cow

SALINA, Kan.--UPI--A 1,400 pound cow rampaged for an hour through downtown business districts before being gunned down by an armed pig of the Salina Police Force.

Officer John Soukup said that he was forced to shoot the cow after it knocked him down twice and began ramming the rear door of a building where he had sought refuge. The cow, valued at $365, had escaped from a nearby livestock pen.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Free Readers’ Ads

THIS PAGE IS YOUR PAGE. All ads are FREE for the asking. We hope this page becomes a place where we can communicate and take care of our basic needs outside of the capitalist, consumption market. Send to THE FIFTH ESTATE, 4403 Second Detroit, MI. 48201. No ads accepted by phone.

WANTED--We are a young couple on General Assistance looking for a house or flat unfurnished with 2 bedrooms or more, east of Chalmers. We will pay $115 and all utilities or $125 with utilities included. Must move before March 1st. We have no children. Call anytime at: 822–1860.

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A. Shady Character
How to Cheat Ma Bell Telephone Credit Card Codes

As the profit-swollen Michigan Bell Telephone monopoly tries to gouge its captive customers more each year with unnecessary rate hikes, requests for charges for information services and 20-cent pay-phone calls, the Fifth Estate presents a small way to even the score: free long-distance calls.

The 1976 telephone credit card codes are presented here as both a public service, as we have done for the past several years, and as our way of saying “Fuck Michigan Bell” for its recent (and unsuccessful) attempt to prosecute this paper for printing telephone company information.

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Murray Bookchin
Notes on the Death of Franco (Part II)

In Part I of Notes on the Death of Franco, the historic rise of fascism under Franco was outlined. Part II analyzes modern Spain and the state of the revolutionary movement today.

Spain alone carried the classical tradition well into our own century. Here, every classical working class Movement, indeed, almost every revolutionary sect, played out its programmatic role with guns in hand. Each exhibited its possibilities and limitations within the traditional framework that had been created by the 1840s. With the collapse of the Spanish revolution a full history of proletarian socialism--whether syndicalist or Marxist, libertarian or authoritarian--came to an end.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Prisoners

Prisoners wanting to read anarchist literature: Black Market will send you a general packet of anarchist literature. If you have requests for specific literature, we will try to get it for you (and probably succeed). All free. To all persons who can help, Black Market has been sending anarchist literature free to prisoners for over 6 months. The costs are getting too much for us alone. We need help in the form of used books & pamphlets & leaflets having to do with anarchism (-ists), or a little cash to buy literature specifically requested. Write or send help to: Black Market, box 306, Cambridge, Mass 02139.

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Pat Halley
Protect our Insane Heritage Review: “Cuckoo’s Nest”

“Madness cometh sometime of the passions of the soul.”

-- Bartholomew of England

“Zounds! Bethumped by words!”

-- Richard II

The critics are raving about it. Sold out shows and long lines testify to a growing public obsession with it; indeed, everything having to do with the film version of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” is having mind-boggling repercussions.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Staff & Contributors

FIFTH ESTATE #269, February, 1976, Vol. 11, No. 5, page 5

Millard Berry

Murray Bookchin

Red Evans

Alan Franklin

Ralph Franklin

Pat Halley

Colleen Jensen

E.B. Maple

J.J. Markin

Nick Medvecky

Monrós

Bob Nirkind

Pat O’Bryan

Algirdas Ratnikas

Mr. Venom

Marilyn Werbe

Peter Werbe

Dennis Rosenblum

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A. R.
The Family Institutions of Repression, Part 1

She meant well, most all do. And she did a fine job, under the circumstances. And that’s exactly what it was, a job, like any other. Underpaid, understaffed, boring. She put off all compensation for her later years. “A child saved is a child earned.” Like insurance, but with no guaranteed premium. And she wonders now, that most of her children have departed, what she has to show for it all.

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Liberation News Service
Zionism Past & Present Anti-Zionism Confused with Anti-Semitism

This short account by Liberation News Service of Zionism’s sordid history as a white settler, colonialist movement barely scratches the surface in terms of the magnitude of the injustices committed in the name of the Jewish people, but should not in any way imply support for any of the Palestinian Nationalist groups who claim to speak for the refugees.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Ann Landers

Dear Ann Landers:

Please tell me how certain people can appear to be perfectly OK when they are clearly insane?

Our sweet, innocent daughter was married last week to a Mortician 12 years her senior. He courted her for more than a year. One of the things that Impressed her so favorably was this man’s restraint and good manners. He never embraced her intimately nor did be try to talk her into sex, even after they were engaged.

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anon.
Death of a Salesman Good Riddance To Bad Rubbish

Time Magazine wrote in its eulogy of Chou En-lai that he never forgave John Foster Dulles for refusing to shake hands with him at the 1954 Geneva Conference. That was where he engineered the famous “compromise” in which he convinced the Vietnamese Stalinists to accept a divided Vietnam and thus paved the way for the genocidal U.S. intervention to come.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Detroit Seen

Bad news for the Ann Arbor Sun. “Detroit’s Hottest Paper” (as they call it) was hit in January with a coordinated wave of vandalism which left 40 of their newspaper coinboxes disabled after a liquid solder was poured in the coinslots. Since the gang from Ann Arbor has offered a $100 reward to bring in the culprits to justice, we thought we could narrow down the list of suspects for them. (1) Any of the 650,000 members of Detroit’s black community who have been insulted by the blatantly racist attempt of a group of white college-town liberals to publish a paper for blacks without the slightest understanding of the dynamics of the situation; (2) Any of the 250,000 members of the UAW who have seen chief union bureaucrat Leonard Woodcock portrayed on the Sun pages as a friend of labor, rather than as the stooge of the auto companies which he is; and (3) Any of the thousands of radicals in Detroit who have seen the Sun try to divert criticism of the political system by uncritically praising every elected hack in the state. Hope that helps you out, fellas...

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A. F.
Education Institutions of Repression, Part 2

Today’s Lesson

Schools are the training ground which provides compliant, disciplined, work-orientated, patriotic model citizens who are necessary to staff the compulsive relationships of everyday life. Just as the Catholic Church sanctified the social relationships and obligations of feudalism during the Middle Ages and made them appear “objective,” so now does “modern” education do the same for capitalism.

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Various Authors
Letters

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Dreary Marx

Dear FE:

Our high at your printing of our article on the decomposition of capitalist society waned appreciably when we noted that about 30% of the original had been deleted. We had, of course, performed our own editing job before submitting, on the wealth of available data.

Neither were we heartened to see so much space devoted to A.R.‘s dreary Marxist determinism entitled “The Big Picture.” “Never before in the history of human society,” we are informed, “has the whole social order been confronted with the possibility and necessity for consciously evolving into a whole new social form...”

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anon.
Nationalist Gangs Battle for Angola Peasants, Workers Lose

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Nearing the end of an almost year long civil war, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) appears to be on the verge of a military victory over its rivals in the West African former Portuguese colony.

The National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) have suffered substantial battlefield losses in recent weeks to the MPLA forces led by 10,000 Cuban troops and most Western military analysts predict a quick MPLA victory now that South Africa has withdrawn its 1,200 troops from the conflict.

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Earth First!
From Saguaros to Sawgrass: Thirty Years of Ecological Resistance Announcement from the Earth First! Journal Collective

The Earth First! Journal is celebrating its 30th anniversary of independent media with a 120+ page edition featuring contributions from a slew of radical environmentalists, surrealists, voices from indigenous resistance movements, the Greek insurrection, as well as artists and writers from CrimethInc., the IWW, the Beehive Collective, the Just Seeds cooperative and more. Included are articles on mountaintop removal in Appalachia, resistance to Shell in Nigeria, BP in the Gulf and free-states in Cascadia.

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anon.
Outlaw Midwifery SQUAT: An Anarchist Birth Journal put out its first issue this past June...

And two months later, its first annual birth conference, “SQUAT Camp,” which took place in Washington state from August 10-13th. Usually, midwifery/birthwork conferences are outrageously inaccessible, from their location (high-end hotels) to the cost (upwards of $100 per day). SQUAT organized a conference in the woods, camping style, for $30 for the four-day event (plus meals included). Workshops were a little different than what you’d usually find at a mainstream birth conference, too: “Prison as a Form of Violence Against Women,” “She’s, He’s, and They’s Giving Birth,” “Abortion Doulas and the History of Abortion in Midwifery,” and “Racism and Classism in the Midwifery Movement” were just a few of the fifteen different workshops organized.

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anon.
12th Annual Montreal Anarchist Bookfair May 21 and 22, 2011

The 12th annual Montreal Anarchist Bookfair, which takes place during Montreal’s month long Festival of Anarchy, will be held on May 21 and 22, 10am-5pm at the CEDA, 2515 rue Delisle, (a short walk from Lionel-Groulx metro).

The bookfair is one of North America’s largest, and features publishers, distributors, and book sellers from across the continent and Europe. There is a zine room, films, art exhibits, and introductory as well as in-depth workshops, some in French and others in English. The Fifth Estate will be present with its latest edition.

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Ron Sakolsky
How Art and Music Can Change the World

a review of

How Art and Music Can Change the World: Mecca Normal

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Mecca Normal is Jean Smith and David Lester--making music and art together since 1984.

Over the last 25 years, Mecca Normal has consistently turned up the heat on the theoretical relationship between music and social change by furiously stirring them together in the fiery cauldron of artistic practice. In the process, they have boldly created a unique body of work that has challenged the downpressing gravity of the authoritarian life with a yeasty combination of outrage and subversive laughter. In essence, they have defied gravity, and, in doing so, have urged us all to refuse to be held down when we could be soaring to the outer reaches of possibility, or, better yet, demanding the impossible. Their music is not designed to present us with a dry polemic on the “one-best-way” to be politically active or offer a pat answer on how to live our lives according to anybody’s party line. Instead, it is a direct call to see through the bullshit and make our own choices.

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David Widgington
Islands of Resistance

a review of

Islands of Resistance: Pirate Radio in Canada by Andrea Langlois, Ron Sakolsky and Marian van der Zon. New Star Books, 2010

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After reading Islands of Resistance: Pirate Radio in Canada, all I wanted to do was become a pirate. Not the kind that steals in a capitalist bent to become rich at the expense of others. I want to appropriate what is already mine: the public airways and broadcast what corporate media despise most--defiant free-form radio that encourages audio creativity and promotes social justice.

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Ron Sakolsky
Music review: d’bi young

a review of

d’bi young. Wombanifesto.

www.dbiyoung.net

Invoking Elegua to open the musical floodgates, d’bi young wastes no time in unleashing bold soul sonic vibrations that ripple through the body and mind, swiftly but surely navigating the resulting rapids to carry us along on the raging (as in outrageous and outraged) river of her creativity.

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Sarah Coffey
New World From Below Anarchists & Antiauthoritarians at the USSF

Detroit--Some see a battered, blighted city here. Others see fertile ground for alternatives to capitalism and state structures by building our/their own infrastructures and networks as natural responses to a broken system.

Against this backdrop came the 2010 U.S. Social Forum (USSF), a self-described “movement building process,” that brought 15,000 non-party leftists and people from community projects to Detroit between June 22 through 26. But, among the throng that held a huge march on Woodward Ave., the city’s main street, attended workshops in the downtown convention center, and presented numerous cultural events, the North American anarchist movement also had a strong presence.

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Patrick Dunn
Return to Self-Reliance

In “Self-Reliance” Emerson tells us that our alienation consists of living in a world that does not manifest our genius. We trust only in society and do not trust in fate. Society is built on a secondary selfhood that has its limits in the order of calculation. Its founding principles are conformity and consistency. Its relations are governed by envy, property, and debt. In society we are “ashamed before the blade of grass and the blowing rose.” We practice a false morality, as if in apology for our existence. Our original powers are sacrificed at the altar of a ghostly civilization.

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David Tighe
Revolution and Other Writings

a review of

Revolution and Other Writings: A Political Reader by Gustav Landauer, edited and translated by Gabriel Kuhn, PM Press, 2010.

Gustav Landauer is perhaps the most important German speaking anarchist of the late 19th and early 20th century, but he is not well known in the English speaking world. Despite four book length studies of Landauer and a few translations, there has never been a major collection of his work in English. Gabriel Kuhn and PM Press have changed that.

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Nicholas Jon Crane
Supporting the Scene in Association with Others: Do-It-Yourselfers and Difference Does DIY stand inside or outside capital’s economy?

I attended a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) event three years ago that was promoted as a “zine release show.” Ostensibly devoted to the distribution of recently published zines, the event provided zine writers with an audience of people with shared dispositions, but this essay considers a less obvious way it drew people together across difference and precipitated a politics.

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Walker Lane (Peter Werbe)
The Vegetarian Myth

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a review of

The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice and Sustainability by Lierre Keith, 320 pp, PM Press, 2009, $20

Vegan Freak: Being Vegan in a Non-Vegan World. Revised edition, expanded & updated by Bob Torres and Jenna Torres, 222 pp, PM Press, 2010, $14.95

Once, at a Tai Chi workshop I attended, an elderly Chinese master of the discipline suddenly stopped in the middle of the demonstration and asked, completely out of the blue, “Why do so many of you not eat meat?”

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Jhon Clark
Trumbullplex DIY anarchist living in the heart of Detroit

In a not-so-typical area of Detroit, close to Wayne State University, slowly redefined and made more attractive for investment and middle-class living, the Trumbullplex and some of its immediate neighbors stand out. Trumbull (for short) is a 17 year-old shabby DIY anarchist living arrangement more concerned with how to be supportive of one another and less how it’s seen by the broader community.

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Don LaCoss
A Q&A about DIY with Kathleen Hanna

Kathleen Hanna is a musician, zine writer, and feminist activist who was at the heart of the riot grrrl movement of the 1990s. This conversation between Ms. Hanna and Don LaCoss unfolded over a couple weeks in June 2010.

Fifth Estate: Is it an exaggeration to say that DIY culture helped to launch and sustain the riot grrrl movement?

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Ryan Alexander Neily
Making Anarchist Multimedia

Film can be a powerful social and political tool. As anarchists, socialists, DIYs, and every other type of fellow traveler, we need to make videos to motivate and inform us. What does an anarchist world look like? What does an anarchist do in a political suspense movie? I challenge storytellers to make movies that answer these questions. What do we want to have them say? Do we have any idea what we want to have happen as a result of people watching our videos?

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Betty Dodson
Masturbation as DIY Sex A Tribute to Onan

Why does the acceptance of masturbation seem to threaten the very foundation of our social structure? Could it be that independent orgasms might lead to independent thoughts? An effective way to keep a population docile and easy to manipulate is by prohibiting childhood masturbation, insisting on the procreative model of sex, upholding marriage and monogamy, withholding sex information, making birth control difficult, trying to end abortion, criminalizing prostitution, condemning homosexuality, censoring sexual entertainment and denying the existence of sexual diversity. That makes everyone a sexual sinner.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Next issue: Fifth Estate #385 Summer 2011 Theme: fiction issue--Visions of Anarchy

In a 1905 letter from prison, Alexander Berkman wrote: “None of us are ready for anarchy, though many are for anarchism.” In this letter, Berkman defined anarchism as a philosophy, and anarchy as a social state, the end goal of anarchism.

The next issue of Fifth Estate will explore visions of anarchism and anarchy through fiction. From fictional struggles of anarchists in the past and present to stories of an anarchist future, we will explore the many facets of anarchism as a philosophy, anarchy as a social state, and anything and everything else in between. We will be open to any style of fiction that carries this theme. Be creative. Tell us a good story, but don’t just entertain, inspire us! Challenge us to see anarchism from a new perspective, or in a different light.

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anon.
Remaining RNC 8 Defendants Accept Misdemeanor Plea Agreement Community service sentence but no jail time

ST. PAUL, MN--The case against eight Twin Cities anarchists known as the RNC 8 came to a conclusion October 19, when the remaining four defendants pled guilty to misdemeanors resolving their legal and political battle stemming from arrests at the 2008 Republican National Convention.

Last September, county prosecutors dropped all charges against RNC 8 defendants Monica Bicking, Eryn Trimmer, and Luce Guillen-Givins. In June, RNC 8 defendant Erik Oseland entered a guilty plea to one count of conspiracy to commit criminal damage, a gross misdemeanor

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Timothy Messer-Kruse
The Haymarket Martyrs Guilty...So What?

In Chicago’s Haymarket Square on the night of May 4, 1886, a dynamite bomb was thrown at a squadron of police during a rally of striking workers. The bomb blast and ensuing gunfire resulted in the deaths of police officers and workers. Eight anarchists were tried for murder and found guilty although the prosecution conceded none of the defendants had thrown the bomb. Four of the men were executed.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Don LaCoss

This issue is dated Spring 2011 and follows our Summer 2010 number. It was intended for publication on November 1, but the tragic death of our friend and comrade, Don LaCoss, who was editing the issue, is the reason for our interruption in publishing.

Death’s scythe slices always cruelly, often unexpectedly, sweeping away those we cherish and need without regard for those left in grief. So it was with Don LaCoss, who succumbed on January 31 to complications from a respiratory illness he had been fighting for months.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Green Scares and Marie Mason Despite supporters world wide--Mason loses appeal

Marie Mason, who is serving the longest prison term of any Green Scare prisoner, lost her appeal as the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati on December 16 upheld her almost 22-year sentence for two acts of eco-sabotage. Following oral arguments in front of the court in October, Mason’s attorney, Anastatse Markou, said he was encouraged by the questions the judges asked about the harshness of the sentence which is the basis of the appeal, but it came to naught. As usual, American justice, not impartially blindfolded to her supplicants, but with one eye open, winked obscenely at the power she serves so dutifully. Green Scare is the name given to recent prosecutions of radical environmental and animal liberation activists who are labeled terrorists by the government and given exceptionally long sentences. No one has been killed or injured as a result of their actions. Mason accepted a plea agreement that called for a sentence of 15–20 years, although the judge tacked on even more time to the maximum agreed upon with the prosecution. It’s not clear whether any further avenues within the legal system are worth pursuing. An appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, given its right-wing composition, and the cost involved, makes it probably prohibitive. In early July, Mason was remanded to solitary confinement for a month before being transferred to a facility in Fort Worth, Texas. She was told by prison officials at Federal Correction Institution (FCI) Waseca (Minnesota) that her confinement and transfer, during which she was not allowed to retain many of her personal belongings including books and photos, was “administrative” and not punitive. Mason had been a model prisoner and was teaching guitar to other prisoners. She was known for her peacekeeping efforts inside the prison. Mason’s plea agreement included the crime of arson at the Michigan State University Biotechnology Support Project in East Lansing, Michigan, a genetically modified organism (GMO) research site. In 1999, she and her husband at the time, Frank Ambrose, set fire to research records at the lab causing considerable damage to the building. Ambrose became a snitch for the federal government almost ten years later, taping incriminating conversations with Mason, and later with dozens of other activists around the country at the behest of the FBI. Ambrose is serving a nine-year term in spite of all his work as a government informant. He was sentenced by US District Judge Paul Maloney who also presided in Mason’s case. Ambrose and Mason had been divorced prior to their arrests. There were initial fears that Mason had been transferred to a newly established Communications Management Unit (CMU) at the Federal Medical Center (FMC) Carswell in Fort Worth. In CMUs, prisoners are subjected to a heavily repressive regimen that allows only severely reduced contact with friends and family. Lawyers with the New York City-based Center for Constitutional Rights say the feds have consistently denied that Carswell is a CMU. However, the wing Mason is in is clearly a special control unit, and has restrictive conditions. Carswell’s web site states that it “provides specialized medical and mental health services to female offenders,” but the facility is notorious for its bad services for ill or disturbed prisoners and has been the subject of past law suits. Although Mason says she preferred the prison in Minnesota with its larger population, she is reconstructing her life at Carswell and reports that she has improved access to fresh foods to accommodate her vegan diet. Mason receives support from environmentalists and animal rights activists world-wide, many who do not approve of her tactics, but are appalled at her harsh sentence. She says she wants to assure them that, contrary to rumors, she steadfastly maintains her vegan diet even though so doing was beginning to erode her health given the lack of proper food at the Minnesota facility. Supporters help provide Mason with money for food of her choice from the prison commissary, stamps, clothing, supplies, phone calls and internet communication. Mason’s son and daughter receive stipends from the Rosenberg Fund for Children that makes grants to the offspring of persecuted activists. The fund is administered in part by Robert Meerpol, one of the two children of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who were executed as atomic spies in 1953 following a frame-up trial. In other developments, Mason urgently asks that her supporters not send money directly to her commissary account, since when it reaches a certain level the government confiscates the overage to pay toward her $4 million restitution she has been ordered to repay. All donations should be sent to her mother, Karin Mason, at PO Box 352, Stanwood MI 49346. Money sent to her is put into Mason’s commissary account as needed. Please circulate this information. Benefits continue to support Mason including recent ones in Cincinnati, and another in October in Detroit’s Trumbullplex featuring singer/songwriter David Rovics which raised over $700. Mason welcomes mail, but please contact her before sending her anything other than a letter to insure she can receive a particular item. Her address is: Marie Mason #04672–061 FMC Carswell P.O. Box 27137 Fort Worth, TX 76127

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