Most Recent Additions
Fifth Estate Collective
Green Scare Prisoner remains in Worst Fed Prison
Campaigners in high gear to Move Marie Mason!
An international campaign demanding that imprisoned environmental activist, Marie Mason, be transferred from the repressive, high-security Carswell federal prison at Fort Worth, Texas, to a minimum security unit close to her family and friends, is in high gear.
Actions include a world-wide letter writing effort addressed to the U.S. federal Bureau of Prisons, legal action, and increased distribution of information about her case.
Dec 14, 2013 Read the whole text...
Leslie James Pickering
How one activist discovered his mail was being watched
Even in the modern surveillance state, the cops still use the old methods
Burning Books opened in Buffalo, New York on September 9, 2011, the 40th anniversary of the Attica Prison uprising. The store, located on the city’s west side is a family-run, friendly, neighborhood radical bookstore, owned by me, Theresa Baker-Pickering, and Nate Buckley. It has quickly become an activist hub for the local community.
Dec 14, 2013 Read the whole text...
Rachael Stoeve
“I Got Raped By That Pizza”
Language & the Trivialization of Gender-Based Violence
Throughout history, atrocities other than sexual assault have been described as rape. One example of this is the World War II Japanese massacre known as the Rape of Nanking. This serves the rhetorical purpose of bringing home the horrible nature of a crime, since rape itself is so horrifying.
Recently, however, there has been a trend towards trivializing it in common slang, assisted by its use as a descriptive for incidences completely unrelated to sexual assault. This obscures the meaning and nature of rape.
Dec 14, 2013 Read the whole text...
anon.
To Be Governed
Government Spying Didn’t Begin With the NSA
The old fashioned mail surveillance described on the opposite page is surprising since now most government snooping is done by modern technology. Apparently, however, the old-fashioned, J. Edgar Hoover-type is still around, although it too is being replaced by technology.
It’s recently been exposed that every piece of U.S. mail which goes through the postal system is scanned and its exterior digitally retained just like the NSA files.
Dec 14, 2013 Read the whole text...
Jason Rodgers
Against the Poverty of Language and Thought
16 Theses on the Cell Phone
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Cell phones are an overpowering, ever present factor in society. A factor which has multiplied at a staggering rate.
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They help to deal with the fear of the unknown. It is imagined that they provide for the protection of children, assuring that the child will never be stranded or outside of the watchful parental gaze. If a car breaks down, one no longer needs to risk getting a ride from a stranger--a risk which is primarily having to confront the overwhelming alienation of our community.
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The cell phone allows the user to avoid the risk of missing the updates they are constantly bombarded with. It is simpler and more convenient than having to risk making mundane choices yourself. The user is never difficult to contact about anything, no matter how banal.
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The cell phone fulfills the need to be hip and current. Those without mobile communications devices are constructed as being outdated, in the cultural lag, backwards. By owning a cell phone one can feel progressive and up to date.
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The underlying motivations for cell phone ownership are fear and convenience. Ultimately fear avoidance and convenience are the same thing- the avoidance of ambiguous situations.
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It is no extreme statement to say that capitalism creates false needs. Fifteen years ago cell phones were a rarity, certainly no necessity. How did we live before? They are now a need. We need it like a fix of cellular smack.
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The cell sell is the easiest imaginable; the consumer does it themselves. After the initial convincing, the consumer signs a contract, which they suffer monetary penalties for breaking. Once trapped, the job of persuasion is internalized by the consumer, so as to not face their contractual trap.
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It is now standard at many jobs, even low paying ones, to expect ownership of a mobile phone. Employers can constantly contact employees. Labor engulfs everyday life.
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Due to the addition of text messaging the cellular communication is trapped between orality and literacy. It has neither the improvisation and open ended nature of spoken language, nor the complexity and depth of written language.
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This contributes to a poverty of language. The exchange is constant, yet nearly meaningless. This poverty of language contributes to a poverty of thought.
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The 911 system, required by law to be included on all cell phones, allows the location of any cell phone to be triangulated, via GPS, within a few yards. The communication device becomes a tracking device. The cell is a cell.
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Paranoid? Maybe. After all, they can’t be tracking everybody all the time; there are just too many people. Precisely the point. The 911 system fulfills the concept of the Panopticon analyzed by Michel Foucault. We know they can’t be paying attention to everyone at every given moment. At the same time we know that they have the capability for surveillance on anyone at any given time.
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This position causes the internalization of the control of surveillance. The oppressor is no longer a clear external force, it is now a formless totality which impersonally constrain us. This formlessness makes it difficult to remain autonomous against it; it can not be pinned down. Furthermore, the user knows that they consented.
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Cellular technology is transforming man into a cyborg. The technology grows more ever present. The user becomes more and more integrated into the totality. McLuhan argued that the integrated circuit and the television were extensions of the nervous system. He seems to have been premature. The cell phone is closer to the realization of this extension of the neurological system. Remember, McLuhan’s often forgotten companion point, every extension is also an amputation.
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The cell phone is becoming a permanent extension. It is responded to nearly automatically. This interaction forms a feedback system; a cybernetic system. What thoughts are ours, in this cybernetic system? This cybernetic transformation is particularly noticeable in the case of ear pieces and other hands free devices.
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The question this brings up is not one of right and wrong. It is a matter of admitting that these devices cause major shifts and determining if these shifts are what we actually want. It has been pointed out to me that the picture I present may even be too optimistic.
Dec 12, 2013 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Contents of print edition
#390, Fall, 2013, Vol. 48, No. 2
Cover photo: Pierre Garine: Bridge across the Yalu River to N. Korea
4 Mutual Aid in Times of Crisis scott crow
6 Mutual Aid in Action Dr. Zak Flash
8 16 Theses on the Cell Phone Jason Rodgers
9 “You are not welcome in New Zealand. Mr. Rovics.” David Rovics
10 Grand Jury Resister Margaret Killjoy
Dec 12, 2013 Read the whole text...
Various Authors
Letters to the Editor
Our readers respond
Send letters to fe — AT — fifthestate — DOT — org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220.
All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length.
What Size?
Not many mistakes in your Summer 2013 edition, but one I saw that referred to the 7-1/2” penis. It shrank significantly from the headline measurement of “Lessons from a 7-Foot Penis.”
Dec 12, 2013 Read the whole text...
Saint Just
Shutdown
Policing the Crisis in Pittsburgh and Boston
I have had the unfortunate privilege of experiencing two urban shutdowns in the U.S. In 2009, while living in a quickly gentrifying neighborhood adjacent to the University of Pittsburgh as a graduate student, I experienced a preemptive shutdown of a major city during the G-20 summit meeting of the finance ministers of the top world economies.
Nov 26, 2013 Read the whole text...
Dr. Zakk Flash
Solidarity Is Our Strength
Mutual Aid in Action in Oklahoma Tornado
The 2013 Moore tornado was an EF5 velocity storm that struck Moore, Oklahoma, and adjacent areas on the afternoon of May 20, 2013, with peak winds estimated at 210 miles per hour, killing 23 people and injuring 377 others.
At the beginning of June, when I arrived in Little Axe, Okla. to take a look at post-tornado recovery efforts, the countryside was still in crisis mode. Mountains of rubble and garbage filled gravel roads and red dirt paths leading to the remains of homes. Neighborhoods that had been full of working-class houses were uprooted and dirty, unsafe tent camps were all that remained.
Nov 26, 2013 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Answers and Annotations to Anarcho-Crossword
Voltairine: Voltairine de Cleyre (1866--1912); prolific anarchist-feminist writer and lecturer who advocated freethinking and “anarchism without adjectives.”
Nov 22, 2013 Read the whole text...
Various Authors
Letters
Our readers respond
I, too, have fears about the Americanization of Cuba and that it will end up “just like other Caribbean resorts” and that IMF-driven and other economic decisions will lead to the end of the many services provided to everyone and a change in the life and culture and well-being of its citizens. [See “Adios, Socialismo,” by Walker Lane, Summer FE 2010.]
Nov 22, 2013 Read the whole text...
anon.
Army Crumbling in Portugal
Crisis of authority for bourgeoisie
The rule of Capital continues to erode in Portugal as the increased activity of rank-and-file soldiers, workers and peasants comes into increasing conflict with the Sixth Provisional military government.
Perhaps the most dramatic example of the growing instability is the rebelliousness of the army troops and lower ranking officers. As has been well reported in the capitalist press, example after example of troops leading and taking part in mass demonstrations, giving arms to workers and “left” parties, and their refusal to obey government orders has precipitated the latest crisis for the moderate government of Premier Pinheiro Azevedo.
Nov 20, 2013 Read the whole text...
anon.
Lording in the Corridor
Save Your Rent
Corridor Lording
Ten years ago, the number of residents in the Cass Corridor, bounded by Adams, Cass, Penn Central RR, and the John Lodge X-Way, numbered well over two hundred thousand. Today that number has dwindled to under ninety thousand. Most of the people have relocated in other parts of Detroit, buying up property abandoned by the flight of middle and low income whites to the suburbs. This relocation, usually accounted for along the lines of racial prejudice, stems as much from the nature of real estate values as simple racial realignment.
Nov 20, 2013 Read the whole text...
Dennis Witkowski
The Torch Drive
Say No to United Fraud
The Fifth Estate has published information exposing the Torch Drive hustle for the past several years. In keeping with this tradition, the following article presents an up-to-date account of what the Torch Drive is really about; how they initially get their money, who they eventually give it to and why.
Nov 20, 2013 Read the whole text...
Dennis Witkowski
Vandals Hit Sexist Ads
Mohawk and the other booze peddlers hit by anti-sexist vandals moved quickly to restore their insults to women. Further action against them has been promised.
Billboards are so plentiful in and around Detroit that they could almost be taken for granted as part of the natural environment. Indeed, in a society where profit outweighs everything else, billboards fit-in quite naturally. They are the “Au-natural” voice of capital, and their mimicry of the population’s repressed desires flaunts the consumer only with the ideal of escape via sex, liquor and flights far away.
Nov 20, 2013 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Classifieds
(Page 3 of The South End insert)
Classified deadline is noon of the day before publication. Rates are $2 a day (non-student) and $1 a day (students with ID), for the first 15 words or less. Classified ads must be pre-paid by check, money Order, or receipt from the WSU Cashier Office. No cash accepted at the South End Office.
Nov 19, 2013 Read the whole text...
anon.
Strike & Sabotage at Wash. Post
If the publishing of a sympathetic account of a union struggle seems inconsistent with our perspective, which views unions as auxiliary organs of Capital, let us clarify the matter. As people who have spent our adult lives as wage workers and members of several different trade unions, we have always supported the struggles of our fellow workers to improve their lot within Capital. What we are adamant about is that union struggles have absolutely nothing to do with the revolutionary struggle for a communist society.
Nov 19, 2013 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Detroit Seen
What with all the straight media from TV-2 to the Ann Arbor Sun declaring us dead, we thought it was about time to bring out some proof to the contrary. On the other hand, maybe we shouldn’t be so cocky about it since this is only our third paper in four months, pretty well giving the lie to our proposed monthly schedule. But a fatal combination of laziness and a desire not to be bound by externally imposed deadlines has probably allowed us to become self-indulgent (like this column). Also, this is an explanation, not a promise for more frequent issue.
Nov 18, 2013 Read the whole text...
Jan Harald
Exposé: Press Biggies Rake Media
Hearst, Knight Shock Hundreds Here
(Page 2 of The South End insert)
Two of the nation’s biggest media barons shocked hundreds of student and professional journalists yesterday when they delivered a searing attack on the American news industry and exposed themselves as “mass manipulators.”
John S. Knight, Editorial Chairman of Knight-Ridder newspapers, and William Randolph Hearst Jr., Chairman of the Hearst Corporation, told a Journalism Day crowd in WSU’s Alumni Lounge that long-held assumptions about newspapers being “objective” and “independent” were nothing but illusions and myths.
Nov 18, 2013 Read the whole text...
Tom Panzenhagen
Gullen Quits
Cushman New WSU President
(Page 1 of The South End insert)
President George Gullen took a late-night meeting of the WSU Board of Governors by surprise Tuesday with the announcement of his resignation from the University’s highest post effective immediately.
Citing what he called the “massive dehumanization” which distinguishes “this and every other university,” the 57-year-old administrator said he could no longer justify “a single day more” at the helm of the State’s third largest university.
Nov 18, 2013 Read the whole text...
Various Authors
Letters
Letters to Fifth Estate
Greetings:
You are to be commended for surviving despite the premature reports of your publication’s demise coupled with the other difficulties the Fifth Estate has faced recently.
I was greatly pleased to find your September issue on the newsstands. What a great issue. Your politics are a breath of fresh, fresh air--especially when compared to the drivel in The Sun and the so-called Michigan Free Press.
Nov 18, 2013 Read the whole text...
anon.
Spain: The continuing revolution
For the first time since I got here, people are openly and seriously comparing this to the pre-Civil War situation in 1936.
--Basque Diplomat, October 1975
For 36 years now, Generalisimo Francisco Franco has been ruling Spain through iron-fisted repression and the executions of thousands of Spanish workers and peasants. But last month the senile dictator may have signed his regime’s death warrant with the executions of five revolutionaries.
Nov 18, 2013 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Staff & Contributors
Staff and contributors for this issue
Millard Berry
Porter Canfield
A. Shady Character
Dan Dickerhoff
B. Durrutti
Alan Franklin
Ralph Franklin
Dan Gordon
Kathy Horak
Algirdas Ratnikas
Marilyn Werbe
Peter Werbe
Dennis Witkowski
Cover photo: Millard Berry
The Fifth Estate Newspaper, a non-profit Michigan corporation is published monthly at 4403 Second Avenue, Detroit MI; phone: (313) 831–6800. Office hours are 1:00–5:00pm Tuesdays through Fridays and 1:00–4:00pm on Saturdays. Subscriptions are $3.00 (12 issues). Second Class postage paid at Detroit, Michigan. Call 842–8888 for retail sales outlets. No copyright. No commercial advertising accepted.
Nov 18, 2013 Read the whole text...
anon.
Today 10/30/75
(page 1 of The South End insert)
The South End Political Affairs advisor has thrown his hat into the ring. No, he’s not running, but has gone out on a limb to predict the 1976 Republican candidate for president. Nelson Rockefeller is his name, ruling class, go-getting is his game. SEPA’s theory is that Rocky just ain’t acting like a submissive VP for nothing and that just as Ford arranged to pardon Nixon in advance, he also only planned to be Pres for the duration of Nixon’s term. Betty’s health, among other things, will give Jerry an out. What will Jerry do after his time is up? Return to Michigan and act as official target for the Michigan Police Pistol Team, a source has told the South End.
Nov 18, 2013 Read the whole text...
B. Durrutti
Unions & the Nature of Work
New James Boggs pamphlet misses the point about work and workers today
a review of
“But What About the Workers?,” a pamphlet by James Boggs and James Hocker, available from the Advocators, Box 07249, Gratiot Sta., Detroit MI 48207; $0.75, 43 pp.
James Boggs and James Hocker, like so many other revolutionaries, desire a unified working class capable of a socialist revolution and set out in their pamphlet to examine the state of unions today and why so many workers employ “individualistic” solutions to their problems.
Nov 18, 2013 Read the whole text...
David Rovics
“You are not welcome in New Zealand, Mr. Rovics.”
Or, the 207th reason why to hate all nation states
It was mid-August, and after singing at various events, mainly ones commemorating the bombing of Hiroshima, I was supposed to be switching planes, en route from Fukuoka to Christchurch, New Zealand, via Tokyo and Auckland. When I got paged over the intercom to the All Nippon Airways desk I was nervous, but figured it was something about a seat assignment on the flight from Narita to Auckland that I was about to board. When the woman from ANA handed me a cell phone and said that someone from New Zealand Immigration in Auckland wanted to talk to me, I was suddenly feeling fatalistic.
Nov 18, 2013 Read the whole text...
Margaret Killjoy
We Will Not Be Broken
Jerry Koch, Grand Jury Resister
We packed the courtroom to overflowing, some of our number forced to wait nervously in the hall outside. Jerry Koch, a New York City anarchist and legal activist, stood calmly and silently as his lawyer went through the motions of arguing against his incarceration and the judge yelled at her.
Nov 13, 2013 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
This is not the Fifth Estate...
...that is the new movie drama about Wikileaks and Julian Assange.
Nov 9, 2013 Read the whole text...
scott crow
Mutual Aid in Times of Crisis: Ecological, Economic, and Political
On the ground, doing what is needed
The mutual-aid tendency in man has so remote an origin, and is so deeply interwoven with all the past evolution of the human race, that it has been maintained by mankind up to the present time, notwithstanding all vicissitudes of history.
-- Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid
Nov 8, 2013 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Call for Submissions
For FE #386, Theme: “Revolution”
The Fifth Estate has always proudly displayed the FBI’s description of this publication as “supporting revolution everywhere,” but the world has greatly changed since the U.S. secret police prowled around our offices and kept tabs on staff members in the 1960s.
Those evil gumshoes knew little about what constitutes an authentic overthrow of the current misery and the restructuring of its causes along revolutionary principles. But, perhaps the armored toadies of the state intuited something important: that society perpetuates itself through people’s habit of submission to authority, and that even the smallest act of rebellion contains the seeds of total revolt.
Nov 7, 2013 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Philip Levine
An anarchist is America’s Poet Laureate
Detroit-born and raised, and self-described anarchist, Philip Levine was named the U.S. Poet Laureate by the Library of Congress in August. The post, whose task entails raising “the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry,” may take on a different than usual dimension during Levine’s tenure given his politics.
Nov 7, 2013 Read the whole text...
Max Cafard
“The Politics of the Imagination”
(excerpt)
[The] utopia of domination is utopia as escapism. This danger is especially real for those utopians who have been frustrated in their efforts to realize their dreams, or who do not even reach the level of praxis. Utopia as escapism remains in the vacuous realm of what Hegel called the Beautiful Soul, of those Dreamers of Moral Perfection who are unable to cope with the ugliness and ambiguity of the world, and therefore cling to a bloodless ideal.
Nov 7, 2013 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Activists Get $50,000 for FBI & Police Raid Prior to 2008 Republican Convention
Preemptive, politically motivated raids are the police tactics used to suppress dissent
St. Paul, Minn. — Three activists and their attorneys won a $50,000 settlement May 23 in a lawsuit that challenged an August 30, 2008 police raid on a St. Paul home before that year’s Republican National Convention (RNC).
The plaintiffs in the case, Sarah Coffey (who wrote the FE’s Detroit anarchist convergence article in the Spring 2011 edition), Erin Stalnaker and Kris Hermes, are giving most of the award to the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, the Institute for Anarchist Studies, and the formation of a national legal defense fund for political activists.
Nov 6, 2013 Read the whole text...
Alex Hooks
A Morning at the Library
For the past five years I have been a reference librarian at a small public library in Florida. Today I pulled into the parking lot at my usual time of eight-thirty. The Library did not open until ten, but people often lined up early at the front doors. The library was the most impressive building in town. It was big, modern and well lit. It really stood out among the small rental houses and grungy bars that make up the rest of the area. The only person waiting when I arrived was Marco. Marco sat at his usual morning post on the green bench next to the main glass doors of the library. He got there every morning hours before the library opened. Marco was in his fifties. He described himself as a special forces killing machine created by the United States government. He did not look like much of a killing machine. He was an overweight guy with a dazed facial expression. His dazed expression may have been caused by the prescription medications he got from the veteran’s administration or perhaps that was just his natural state. I did not know. He always wore black and had a collection of crosses hanging around his neck. These were the kinds of crosses they sell at the flea market for bikers and metal heads. Because of these decorations Marco was known to the young teens who hang out at the library as Ozzy. My car was the only car in the parking lot except for a big black Escalade. I knew it was not Marco’s. Marco rode the bus.
Nov 6, 2013 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Anarchist Publications
The Raging Pelican, A Journal of Gulf Coast Resistance; The Anvil Review; Psychic Swamp #1
Three new ones: The Raging Pelican; The Anvil Review; Psychic Swamp #1
The Raging Pelican, A Journal of Gulf Coast Resistance, published by a group of “blue collar New Orleans residents,” who are understandably pissed about what’s been done to their piece of planet. Their first issue came out in the weeks following the BP oil spill and they’ve broadened their focus to include a whole range of the worst abuses of cops, bureaucrats, politicians, and principals. Reach them at ragingpelican.com and on Facebook.
Nov 6, 2013 Read the whole text...
Gaza Youth Breaks Out
Gazan Youth’s Manifesto for Change
Fuck Hamas. Fuck Israel. Fuck Fatah. Fuck UN. Fuck UNWRA. Fuck USA! We, the youth in Gaza, are so fed up with Israel, Hamas, the occupation, the violations of human rights and the indifference of the international community! We want to scream and break this wall of silence, injustice and indifference like the Israeli F16’s breaking the wall of sound; scream with all the power in our souls in order to release this immense frustration that consumes us because of this fucking situation we live in; we are like lice between two nails living a nightmare inside a nightmare, no room for hope, no space for freedom. We are sick of being caught in this political struggle; sick of coal dark nights with airplanes circling above our homes; sick of innocent farmers getting shot in the buffer zone because they are taking care of their lands; sick of bearded guys walking around with their guns abusing their power, beating up or incarcerating young people demonstrating for what they believe in; sick of the wall of shame that separates us from the rest of our country and keeps us imprisoned in a stamp-sized piece of land; sick of being portrayed as terrorists, homemade fanatics with explosives in our pockets and evil in our eyes; sick of the indifference we meet from the international community, the so-called experts in expressing concerns and drafting resolutions but cowards in enforcing anything they agree on; we are sick and tired of living a shitty life, being kept in jail by Israel, beaten up by Hamas and completely ignored by the rest of the world.
Nov 6, 2013 Read the whole text...
Dan Georgakas
Hell No, We Won’t Pay
Uprisings in Greece
The international press is constantly writing about the economic crisis in Greece. Economic pundits speculate less about whether or not Greece will default but in what manner and when. Absent from these considerations is the massive popular revolt in Greece against the Draconian measures already in place. Totally absent from mainstream commentary is the effect on European stability the mass resistance developing in Greece might have if replicated in other EU nations. The massive marches in Greece have gotten considerable coverage, but far more significant are the unreported successes of the I Won’t Pay movement and the communal revolt in Keratea, a small seaside town 25 miles southeast of Athens.
Nov 6, 2013 Read the whole text...
Phillip Norbury
It Will be Like This
My father had strong ideas about heaven. He would share them with his congregation like sweets for good behaviour. ‘There will be no gravity,’ he would say with irresistible certainty. ‘And no sun or moon. God’s love is all the light we need.’
At home on grim, rainy Saturdays he would stand looking out of the window for long durations while I lounged around reading comics. ‘We won’t have to endure this for much longer,’ he would say, looking up to the continents of clouds overhead. His eyes would close and a serene smile form in his mouth; and I, just a boy, would look up in wonder knowing that in those moments he was not thinking of this life, of me, but of paradise.
Nov 6, 2013 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Larry Portis
In Memorium
Larry:Portis grew up in a working-class family in Seattle, Washington and Billings, Montana. His father was a sheet metal worker and city fireman. His mother was an occasional secretary. At the age of 18 he married and quickly had two children. In 1968 he graduated from Montana State University Billings where he was active in university and local politics, wrote (1965 through 1968) weekly articles on politics for the university- newspaper (The Retort) and created an underground newspaper (The Free Student Press) in addition to working for a living. Before leaving the area he participated in organizing the municipal water workers in Billings.
Nov 6, 2013 Read the whole text...
Penelope Rosemont
Subversions
a review of Subversions: Anarchist Short Stories Ed. Anarchist Writers Bloc, Les Pages Noires 2011, Montreal 115 pages, Softcover, $14.95 U.S.
This collection is the first ever in English or French of new anarchist fiction. These sixteen stories, offer something for everyone: If you like action, there is plenty of action, as well as surprise endings and thought provoking parables. This is a great idea for a collection of stories and it is wonderful that it exists as an accomplished fact. Pulled together with lots of hard work and inspiration--expressing self-organization, self actualization and cooperation at its best--the publication of this book is a do-it-yourself revolutionary action that means to make a difference in this world.
Nov 6, 2013 Read the whole text...
J.E. Hamilton
“We are sleeping, let’s wake up”
The uprising of the Indignadxs in Spain
On the left: a white-haired shoemaker in checkered shirt and brown khakis, casting uneasy glances at the circle of people surrounding him. A smirk settles on his lips as he prepares a witty rejoinder; perhaps he’s amused by the tourists, too.
To the right: a tan young man with a single dreadlocked braid hanging from the back of his scalp, tattered pajama pants, dirty fingernails. His hands move in front of him as though describing a box, and the words come slowly, ineloquently. His eyes evince a friendly conviction.
Nov 6, 2013 Read the whole text...
Margaret Killjoy
A Brief History of Anarchist Fiction
People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all
-- Oscar Wilde
I used to see my interests in anarchism and fiction as wholly separate things, because I didn’t know there was any overlap. None of my activist friends were writing stories--at least that they told me about--and I hadn’t yet realized how rich the history of anarchist fiction is. But there are anarchists, philosophical and active alike, in mainstream fiction--it’s just that their politics are rarely shown to the world. There are writers among the activists, but their writing is rarely distributed. And there is a remarkable, broad history of multilingual anarchist culture from around the world, although most of it is hidden by obscurity or time.
Oct 31, 2013 Read the whole text...
Zeraph Dylan Moore
Coiled Rope Haikus
inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin’s “Newton’s Sleep”
I.
flat gray surfaces
curved metal architecture a cold sphere in space
the earth died screaming
epidemics, plagues
starvation, dead ground
above, we orbit
clean children, good water
Caucasian intellectuals
the holograms of
vermont skies or florida
glades o’er white steeples
til one day the burned
Oct 31, 2013 Read the whole text...
Alan Franklin
Excerpts from Lives of the Saints
DIALOGUE I
And what happens when you don’t take
the medication?
I’m a danger to myself and others.
Is that your opinion, or someone else’s?
I think we’re in agreement on this one.
What happened before you had the
medication?
I would eviscerate things with my teeth.
What kinds of things?
Moles. Voles. Shrews.
Oct 31, 2013 Read the whole text...
Ron Sakolsky
Sean Woods
Hoppin’ Aboard the Underground Railroad
Fiction
The first night after leaving their hide-out in the Vancouver Island woods, Jerry and Max climbed the drawbridge off the last ferry of the day onto what they hoped would be the safety of Inner Island and headed down the beach to avoid meeting anyone.
Inner Island bobbed comfortably in the calm waters between the mountainous spine of Vancouver Island and the mainland Coast. After the indigenous Pentlatch had been decimated by lethal doses of smallpox and colonialism, it had- been settled for the past half century by an assortment of old-time pioneer families, hippie dropouts, draft dodgers, and a scattering of retired criminals.
Oct 31, 2013 Read the whole text...
Brien O’shea
The Nacirema
A voice says, “Step Forward,” and we do.
We stand one heel touching the other. We are haggard. We have slept coiled next to and on top of one another for weeks, maybe months, it’s impossible to know.
“Remove your clothing.“The voice says.
We do. Our bones jut, poke, and hang from our skins. We are not fed. The woman in front of me, my forward toe touching her back heel, is my wife. We are twenty-eight and will remain twenty-eight for eternity. At this point, I can’t care. I haven’t seen my wife naked in so long I don’t recognize her anymore. There are others behind me, five total.
Oct 31, 2013 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
June 11 International Day of Solidarity with Eric McDavid & Marie Mason
World-wide events organized to show solidarity with Marie Mason and Eric McDavid, the two longest sentenced environmental prisoners, were an overwhelming success.
Events took place in at least 30 cities across the world including two in New York City, ones in Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, and San Francisco, but also in places such as Fresno, Calif, Worcester, Mass., Salt Lake City, and Asheville, NC. Internationally, people responded in Toronto, Guelph, Ontario, Montreal, Melbourne, Barcelona, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv.
Oct 28, 2013 Read the whole text...
Ron Sakolsky
Thin Ice, Deep Water
The Vancouver Hockey Riots
The surging waters of the collective unconscious that were unleashed in the Vancouver “Hockey” Riot of June 2011 made it abundantly clear just how fragile the artificial ice age of industrial civilization can be when it comes in contact with the searing heat of the moment.
Faced with the nagging miserabilism of daily life, the emotional dam of mutual acquiescence finally burst its walls and a tidal wave of repressed desire obliterated the illusion of social peace.
Oct 28, 2013 Read the whole text...
Jim Feast
Vietnam: Where the Political is Still Personal
a review of
In the Crossfire: Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary, by Ngo Van; Eds. Ken Knabb and Helene Fleury; Trans. Helene Fleury, Hillary Horrocks, Ken Knabb, and Naomi Sager; AK Press; 2010; $19.95
There is a sub-genre of science fiction called alternative history, which consists of works such as Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, in which Germany wins World War II, and Hitler becomes the ruler of the U.S. Works of this type offer a counterfactual version of past events, allowing readers to think along different lines about how the world has developed.
Oct 28, 2013 Read the whole text...
Walker Lane (Peter Werbe)
Copyright or Wrong?
Should anarchists, who oppose private property and the state, want copyright protection for their work? What if they get it whether they want it or not?
Most everyone knows that the small encircled, lower case letter “c” indicates that a piece of work is copyrighted, and that it designates legal protection of creative work and intellectual property. Perhaps the key word for this discussion is the last one in the sentence--property.
How copyrights are applied and the protection they provide for work that is intended as property within the commercial marketplace, on the face of it, wouldn’t seem to need much elaboration. However, its definitions and applications are quite complex, but fortunately aren’t what will be under discussion here. This article will center on how anti-statists can or should relate to state protection.
Oct 24, 2013 Read the whole text...