Most Recent Additions
Fifth Estate Collective
Marie Mason Update
Denied a vegan diet; Appeals Continue

As BP continues to devastate the Gulf of Mexico for generations to come, militant eco-radicals like Marie Mason, who have dedicated their lives to halting exactly this kind of environmental destruction, helplessly watch from inside the dungeons of the State.
Mason is serving almost 22 years for two acts of environmentally-motivated property destruction, the longest sentence of any Green Scare prisoner. The Green Scare is the name given to the recent slate of prosecutions of radical environmental and animal liberation activists. Her sentence is under appeal.
Feb 10, 2014 Read the whole text...
Christine Monhollen
Mick Vranich, 1946–2010
Our friend and comrade, Mick Vranich, died March 29 following a terrible construction accident in February. If you ever met Mick, you wouldn’t forget him. You may have seen him perform his poetry, punctuating lines with a stoic stare or watched him play guitar, amazed at his ability to perfect each note, each chord in sync with poetic ease. Perhaps you attended one of his benefits calling for freedom for Leonard Peltier. Maybe you just stopped by his Solstice campfire in the middle of Detroit and were offered a cup of coffee and some real, true talk, or poems like the ones of his on this page.
Feb 10, 2014 Read the whole text...
Dahr Jamail
Seth Kershner
Resistance to Iraq inside the military
Q&A with Dahr Jamail
The U.S. defeat in the Vietnam war can be attributed to many things including the American military’s inability to vanquish the National Liberation Front and the North Vietnamese Army on the battlefield despite killing three million Indochinese and destroying the country’s infrastructure, and the enormous and unprecedented domestic opposition to the war.
Feb 10, 2014 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
RNC Update
Judge rules trumped up charges from 2008 Republican convention can proceed
The RNC 8 are preparing for trial following hearings to dismiss felony charges against them stemming from planned demonstrations at the 2008 Republican National Convention (RNC). The eight activists were preemptively arrested before the convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, some in raids by heavily armed SWAT teams. While the State dismissed terrorism counts last year, the defendants still face charges of conspiracy to riot with a dangerous weapon and conspiracy to commit criminal damage to property.
Feb 10, 2014 Read the whole text...
Marie Mason
The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle
A review of
The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle, David Solnit and Rebecca Solnit, AK Press, 2009, $12, www.akpress.org
Having been in Seattle for the “insurrection” against the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1999, I looked forward to reading David Solnit’s account of the days leading up to November 26 and his interpretation of the aftermath of those events. I took part enthusiastically in many of the demonstrations and blockades of which he writes, and ran in the Black Bloc.
Feb 10, 2014 Read the whole text...
Walker Lane (Peter Werbe)
State Violence & Cuba’s Ladies in White

In March, Cuban police broke up a protest by the Ladies in White, women with family members sentenced to prison for opposing the government. The images of the women being dragged to a bus, their white clothes smeared with mud, were broadcast world-wide as proof of the repressive nature of the Castro government.
Feb 8, 2014 Read the whole text...
Walker Lane (Peter Werbe)
Cuba: From State to Private Capitalism
Adios Socialismo
HAVANA — We entered the elevator on the ground floor of Havana’s renowned FOCSA building in the city’s Vedado district and were quickly whisked, non-stop, to the 33rd floor. When the doors opened, tuxedoed waiters welcomed us to La Torre, an elegant, candle-lit restaurant with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the city and harbor twinkling in the night below us.
Feb 5, 2014 Read the whole text...
anon.
The Politics of Carnival
Festivals Medieval & Modern that Slip Out of Control
FE Note: In the random manner carnivals can get out of hand, so, too, does this article appear in our pages. A staff member sent it to us months ago, and we found it tucked away in our on-line files. It seemed like a good fit for our theme and we liked the subject matter, but upon reading it, realized that it had been printed elsewhere, particularly since it makes reference to an accompanying CD which obviously isn’t here.
Feb 5, 2014 Read the whole text...
Ian L.
A Reader’s Belief
“Free oneself from an irrational belief in our need for authority.”
In my personal experience, the simultaneous transition from Christianity to atheism, and from conservative statism to anti-authoritarianism, had ontological shifts to non-belief as their catalyst.
I have come to see belief in any political ideology as having essentially the same religious quality as belief in any religious system. Both, it seems to me, inhibit learning and the progression of becoming which prevent individuals and societies from growing beyond the confines of ideology and dogma.
Jan 30, 2014 Read the whole text...
Frank Joseph Smecker
Commodifying experience
The School of Tyrannical Indoctrination
In the mid- to late 19th Century, the rapidly expanding Industrial Age provided the impetus behind the expansion of the public school system. Reading, writing and arithmetic were pressed into service in order to form a needed literate labor force.
At the same time, it was important to assure that this newly educated proletariat remained obedient and submissive to authority. Subject matter such as history was taught from the perspective of great men and the victors of wars. Mathematics inculcated the presumption that the world is comprised of generalized numbers to be counted, manipulated and exploited. Reading and writing silenced languages older than words themselves.
Jan 30, 2014 Read the whole text...
Le Garcon Dupont
Cul de Sac
Are we in a hopeless dead-end?
FE Note: Usually, Fifth Estate essays are filled with the vision that alternatives exist to our current predicament. This article explores the possibility that humanity has already been extinguished and that there may be no hope of fashioning a different world. If that’s the case, do we just cease our resistance? Comments welcome.
Jan 30, 2014 Read the whole text...
Michael Gurnow
“The Folly of Beginning a Work Before We Count the Cost”
Anarcho-Primitivism in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe
“You don’t own property; property owns you.”
--B. Traven (Treasure of Sierra Madre)
Anarcho-primitivism states that humanity’s problems began once we abandoned our hunter-gatherer lifestyle in favor of an agrarian one. By contrast, our new sedentary way of life leads to social stratification and overpopulation due to a division of labor and food commodities being produced to the point of surplus.
Jan 30, 2014 Read the whole text...
Peter Lamborn Wilson
“Anarchist religion?”
It’s often said that we anarchists “believe humans are basically good” (as did the Chinese sage Mencius). Some of us, however, doubt the notion of inherent goodness and reject the power of other people over us precisely because we don’t trust the bastards. It seems unwise to generalize about anarchist “beliefs” since some of us are atheists or agnostics, while others might even be Catholics. Of course, a few anarchists love to indulge in the spurious disagreeable and pointless exercise of ex-communicating the differently-faithed amongst their comrades.
Jan 25, 2014 Read the whole text...
Andrew Dobbs
Conspiracy or Anarchy
If you think space aliens killed JFK and brought down the twin towers, and no one realizes it because of government chemtrails, you may think this article is part of the conspiracy.
Like God before her, Reason is dying. Her fast life has taken its toll: God took a millennium or two to live out His days, Reason has had a mere three centuries of gallivanting to the moon and back.
People now find her insufficient to explain their experience of nature just as they once found God unnecessary.
Jan 25, 2014 Read the whole text...
Dan LaPonsie
God: Unplugged
“No, I think He looks better on the right,” Bejewel said.
Lisp slid god back over to a right-of-center place on the mantel. The electric god was plugged into a wall outlet, casting a shimmering white light on either the right or left of Lisp’s face--depending on where Lisp’s older sisters directed.
Jan 25, 2014 Read the whole text...
J. M. White
O (poem)
“A way that is laid out, is not the way.”
--Tao Te Ching
O
life is a journey
fraught with peril
the way is never clear
naive faith
and sarcastic doubt
circle aimlessly
resolving nothing
pay attention
your time is short
the way long
there are people watching television
while the house is on fire
Jan 25, 2014 Read the whole text...
David Solnit
Tenth Anniversary of Bolivia’s Water War
Report from the World People’s Conference on Climate Change in Bolivia

--photo Mona Caron
In spring 2000, the people of Cochabamba, Bolivia rose up against the privatization of their water, forcing out the US based corporation, Bechtel, and Bolivia’s neo-liberal government to back down. The rebellion opened up new political space in Bolivia, catalyzing the most powerful, radical, visionary mass movements and mobilizations on the planet. My friend and collaborator, Mona Caron, a public muralist from San Francisco, and I spent six weeks in Cochabamba, a city in central Bolivia, during March and April co-creating art and visuals with local communities and organizations. We came at the invitation of the organizing committee for the International Feria del Agua (Water Fair) commemorating the ten year anniversary of what has come to be known as the Water War. We also participated with 30,000 others in the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, organized by the Bolivian government of President Evo Morales.
Jan 25, 2014 Read the whole text...
Octavio Alberola
Venezuelan anarchists see Noam Chomsky as Chavez’s Clown
FE Note: The comrades of Venezuela’s El Libertario magazine are unrelenting in their criticism of what they call the myth of Hugo Chavez’s “Eco-socialism of the XXI Century.”
They often write about the general unwillingness to see the authoritarian side of Chavez as an echo of how almost the entire Left, including many anarchists, refused to criticize the Cuban revolution.
Jan 25, 2014 Read the whole text...
Patrick Dunn
A Radicalization of Reich
Sexual Repression & The Roots of Authoritarianism

Wilhelm Reich’s The Mass Psychology of Fascism (MPF) was written in 1933, at the peak of Hitler’s rise to power. The book is, most immediately, an attempt to explain the victory of the Nazis, at a time when economic hardship in Germany should have provoked a turn to the Left.
More fundamentally, as Reich writes in MPF, it is an effort to diagnose the fascist phenomenon, not as a trend of national politics, but, as “the basic emotional attitude of man in authoritarian society, with its machine civilization and its mechanistic-mystical view of life.”
Jan 24, 2014 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Contents, intro to print edition
Welcome to our Summer edition with its theme of Belief/Disbelief/Unbelief.
Our essays don’t so much investigate beliefs themselves as much as belief systems, our cognitive constructions which determine our perception of reality. Beliefs can either chain us to repressive ideas or free us with visions that go beyond dominant paradigms. The entire modern era has been one of contestation as to which belief systems will rule in societies--ones that link us to submission and acquiescence to hierarchal authority, or those which rebel against them and eliminate the categories of rulers and ruled. Comments are welcome on the essays which follow.
Jan 24, 2014 Read the whole text...
T.P.T.G. (The Children of The Gallery)
In Critical and Suffocating Times
The anti-austerity popular explosions in Greece may contain the future of struggles against capital.

As a publication appearing only three times a year, it’s difficult to report on the outrages of capital and the empire in a timely fashion. Usually, we cover only issues not available elsewhere. However, the Greek events of this Spring seem worthy of reporting and analysis as Capital’s crisis becomes generalized and rulers’ call for austerity enforced on workers becomes more shrill.
Jan 24, 2014 Read the whole text...
Various Authors
Letters
Our readers respond
Send letters to fe — AT — fifthestate — DOT — org or Fifth Estate, POB 204016, Ferndale MI 48220.
All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length.
Greetings Comrades,
I just want to say thanks for keeping FE going. Yes indeed, the longest running radical mag in the US. I just ordered another year’s subscription.
Jan 24, 2014 Read the whole text...
anon.
Who Is Wilhelm Reich?

Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) was an Austrian-born physician, psychoanalyst, and revolutionary. He worked with Sigmund Freud in the 1920s before breaking with him. His sex-political activities in Germany led to his denunciation by the Communist Party in the early 1930s and expulsion from the International Psychoanalytic Association at the insistence of his former mentor.
Jan 24, 2014 Read the whole text...
Walker Lane (Peter Werbe)
Wilhelm Reich
The Emotional Plague & the Authoritarian Family

INTRODUCTION (2010)
In 1976, much of what had constituted the New Left of the previous years was in a state of terminal collapse.
As an example, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the quintessential white radical youth organization, whose numbers at its height were in the hundreds of thousands, was reduced to several dozen activists in the Weather Underground.
Jan 24, 2014 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Birmingham-Bloomfield Area
The first public meeting of The Birmingham-Bloomfield Committee on Open Occupancy was held at the Birmingham Unitarian Church on Sunday, November 14. An unexpectedly large turnout of 250 people responded to the speakers’ demands for an end to the organized exclusion of Negroes by the realtors in the area.
Jan 18, 2014 Read the whole text...
Stan Ovshinsky
Danton’s Death
Theater
We attended the preview of DANTON’S DEATH, the first play by the Repertory Theatre of the Lincoln Center in their new, attractive Vivian Beaumont Theatre.
The directors, Herbert Blau and Jules Irving, were previously co-producers of the San Francisco Actors’ Workshop where they had earned acclaim for the imaginative and excellence of their productions.
Jan 18, 2014 Read the whole text...
anon.
F.B.I...
from The Michigan Daily
Officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Michigan State Police are investigating the Committee to Aid the Vietnamese, a group of about 25 University of Michigan students who are raising money to aid Vietnamese civilians living in Viet Cong-controlled areas.
Stanely Nadel, ’66, chairman of the committee, said his group is sympathetic to the aims of the Viet Cong but that the purpose of the money the group is raising is to help supply medical aid for civilians wounded in Viet Nam fighting.
Jan 18, 2014 Read the whole text...
anon.
March on Washington Committee
March on Washington Committee, 23 East Adams, Detroit 48226
The March on Washington will take place by bus, planes, car pools, and possibly railroad. It is imperative that we know as soon as possible if you are coming and which means of transport you Would prefer.
The trip by railroad (if there are enough interested people) will be organized as a traveling workshop. On the way to Washington we will have workshops and discussions on Vietnam and other foreign policy issues. We will have written materials and discussion leaders.
Jan 18, 2014 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
What’s On
FRIDAY
LECTURE: An Evening With Clifford West. Bloomfield Art Association. 6 p.m. Admission charge. 11/19
“A SECOND NIGHT WITH THE WOBBLIES, with Ellen Stekert, folk singer. Sponsored by WSU Labor History Archives at WSU McGregor Mem. Conf. Center. 7:30 p.m. 11/19
COURT THEATER: “archy and mehitabel”--modern musical classic from an original story by Don Marquis; “Children on their Birthdays by Truman Capote, and a cutting from “Death of Bessie Smith” by Edward Albee. Detroit Institute of Arts, Kresge Court,8:30 p.m. Admission charge. 11/19
Jan 18, 2014 Read the whole text...
anon.
Albany Freedom Singers
“The songs they sing come from their own experiences. They are not entertainers but are leaders who want everyone in the audience to join in singing songs that serve to inspire us to go on further to hold on ‘til we’re all free...”
The description above belongs to the Albany Freedom Singers who will be coming to Detroit on Sunday, November 21, 1965 at 7:00 pm at the Mayflower Baptist Church, 5858 Fourth at Holden. The program, called Gospel Sing For Freedom will also feature the New Cosmopolitan Baptist Church Choir, the East Side Community Choir, and the Mayflower Baptist Church Choir.
Jan 14, 2014 Read the whole text...
Steve Cherkoss
A soldier in Vietnam
Interview
Bruce Whitten, age 26, held the rank of Staff Sergeant in the Air Force until he received a general discharge on May 23, 1965. Whitten was assigned to the first Air Commando group spending two years in Vietnam. Whitten gave the interview despite his awareness that he might be endangering his future. He felt however, that the experiences which he had during his two years in Viet Nam were of unquestionable importance to the American people--especially to men of draft age.
Jan 14, 2014 Read the whole text...
anon.
DCEWV Convention
Advertisement
Today the Vietnamese people are fighting for the right to choose their own society. Their demands are human; food, a decent place to live and work, political and private self determination, and a life of dignity and self respect. They are engaged in a struggle for human rights, a struggle which affects us all. Their demands reach into Chicago, Mississippi, Selma, Detroit, Los Angeles, South Africa, the Congo. America is waging an actual military war which prevents them from achieving these aims.
Jan 14, 2014 Read the whole text...
Harvey Ovshinsky
Editorial

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.
Jan 14, 2014 Read the whole text...
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.
Jan 14, 2014 Read the whole text...
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.
Jan 14, 2014 Read the whole text...
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.”
Jan 14, 2014 Read the whole text...
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.”
Jan 14, 2014 Read the whole text...
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.”
Jan 14, 2014 Read the whole text...
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:
Jan 14, 2014 Read the whole text...
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.
Jan 14, 2014 Read the whole text...
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.
Jan 14, 2014 Read the whole text...
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.
Jan 13, 2014 Read the whole text...
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!”
Jan 13, 2014 Read the whole text...
Jules Feiffer
Cartoon

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.
Jan 13, 2014 Read the whole text...
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.
Jan 13, 2014 Read the whole text...
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
Jan 2, 2014 Read the whole text...
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.
Jan 2, 2014 Read the whole text...
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.
Jan 2, 2014 Read the whole text...
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.
Jan 2, 2014 Read the whole text...
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.
Jan 2, 2014 Read the whole text...