Most Recent Additions

It’s good to be back with you again. The Festival Sunday was one of the most beautiful things I have ever experienced, and I think a lot of the people there had the same experience as myself. There were SO many people there, all day long, And everyone was really grooving. Joseph Jarman started the Festival off just after one o’clock with a spoken introduction and music trumpeter Peter Bishop (also of Chicago) and bassist Doug Riggs. The readings began with Dave Sinclair, J.D. Whitney, and Mike Litle, all of whom opened the people up for the biggest human sound ever to come out of Detroit—the Lyman Woodard Ensemble of the day, a totally integrated musical blast made up of Lymie at the organ, Jim Semark, piano and trombone; Ron English (Lansing), guitar; Doug Riggs and John Dana, basses; Byron Lyles (Lansing), drums; Charles Moore, cornet; Pete Bishop (Chicago), trumpet; Joseph Jarman (Chicago), alto saxophone and clarinet; David Squires, tenor saxophone; Jerry Younkins, tambourine; Bud Spangler (Lansing), tambourine; and, after the music started getting GOOD to me, I had to run home and get my own alto saxophone so I could get in there too.

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Demonstrations, peaceful and anarchic, planned and spontaneous, continue to reflect the mood of the times locally and across the nation. In this area, peace marchers paid their respects to the Dow Chemical Corporation’s NAPALM facility in Midland; anti-war and pro-war voices were raised at Campus Martius; and bricks were thrown at the TMU’s in the ghetto.

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“To meet, to talk, and to sing with people on a human basis, this is the unique offering at Mariposa,” Mike Seeger mused while listening at the open-air concert Saturday night amongst a crowd of some 6,000 young people. “You can say something about the physical setting; it had good balance, good musical balance, but the main thing is the spirit—which is hard to generate at a large festival.”

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On August 7 and 8 about 100 persons from cities in Michigan and Ohio gathered at Midland, Michigan, national headquarters of Dow Chemical Corp., to protest Dow’s participation in the manufacture of napalm.

On Sunday, groups of protesters distributed leaflets to churchgoers, calling on the people of Midland to be aware of their involvement in the deaths of people in Vietnam. In the early afternoon a rally was held in Central Park. This soon became an open forum as people from Midland came forward to voice their opposition to the making of napalm or to voice their support of its manufacture. Lane Vanderslice and Peter Steinberger of Ann Arbor Students for a Democratic Society fielded questions from the audience. One resident of Midland challenged the assertion that Dow is profiting from napalm and suggested that it may be losing money instead, to which Barbara Burris, of Detroit SDS, replied that Chemical and Engineering News of March 14, 1966, reported that Dow raised the price of its polystyrene shortly after they began using it in their new napalm.

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This Interview Is something of a rarity in that it is one of the very few—if any—in which Dylan volunteered to talk to and with his interviewer in a manner honest and meaningful. However, I do not claim to have caught Dylan in it—I have only caught a segment of his shadow on that day...

Robbins: I don’t know whether to do a serious interview or carryon in that Absurdist way we talked last night.

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Turn on! Consciousness is energy received and decoded by structure. Waves and particles.

There are as many levels of consciousness as there are levels of energy and structures for decoding.

There are as many levels of consciousness available to the human being as there are anatomical structures for decoding energy.

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The American Civil Liberties Union last week urged the U.S. Post Office Department to reverse its decision to issue a 1966 Christmas stamp representing a religious scene, calling such governmental support of religion a violation of the First Amendment’s guarantee of separation of church and state.

In a letter to Postmaster General Lawrence O’Brien, ACLU executive director John de J. Pemberton Jr. sharply criticized the Post Office’s plan to reproduce Hans Memling’s “Madonna and Child with Angels” on a Christmas stamp. The ACLU spokesman declared that the government “has no mandate or authority to indoctrinate minorities in the religion of the majority, or to lend its instrumentalities and vast prestige to the celebration of the religious holidays of the majority.”

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The anti-napalm protest scheduled in Midland, Mich., national headquarters of Dow Chemical Corp., for Aug. 7 and 8 will include participants from all across Michigan and northern Ohio and parts of Canada. The region wide action has been called by VOICE, the University of Michigan chapter of Students for a Democratic Society. The demonstration planned in New York on Hiroshima Day, Aug. 6, by the 5^th Avenue Peace Parade Committee, will culminate in a rally in front of the Dow Chemical offices at Rockefeller Plaza. Dow is a major supplier of napalm to the government and has been responsible for developing napalm-B, a deadlier variety. (“Napalm has been used to bomb Vietnamese villages during the war. The jelly-like substance sticks to whatever it touches and burns with such heat that all oxygen in the immediate area is quickly exhausted” (N.Y. Times, May 29, 1966). Protests have been held at napalm plants in Torrance, California, and Redwood City, California. A nationwide boycott of Dow’s domestic products is also being organized. The new kind of napalm which Dow has developed contains 50% polystyrene, which Dow makes. CHEM. & ENG. NEWS recently reported that, “Predictions of future use of polystyrene in napalm-B now are running as high as 25 million pounds a month.” This is a 50% increase in the production of polystyrene, a fact which has led to the building of new plants. Dow has also raised the price of its product. So that it is no surprise when it is reported that sales and profits for Dow Chemical “were higher than in any quarter of any prior year. (Det. News, July 21, 1966).

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The most important cultural event in Detroit this Summer will be the Artists’ Workshop’s FESTIVAL OF PEOPLE, or “a summer ecstasy of the contemporary arts.” It will be held on Sunday, August 7, at the Detroit Artists’ Workshop, 4857 John Lodge (corner of Warren), starting at 1:00 p.m. and lasting as long as it has to. The purpose of the Festival is simply to celebrate PEOPLE—ourselves.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The Following is part one in a series of articles subtitled “a guide to bumming in the U.S.A.” The author is unknown, and we wouldn’t have found out about it if it weren’t for the keen eye of one of our readers in Berkeley, California.

“Nobody’s ever taught you how to live out on the streets and now you’re gonna have to get used to it.”

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First, I would like to thank the editors of The Fifth Estate for asking me to contribute. Folk music and the new music, called Folk-rock are my own areas of endeavor, and I hope I will be able to add something of value to these already diversified pages. In coming issues, I will try to pass along news of interest in these areas, including record reviews, articles on the artists appearing in Detroit, and news in general.

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The Detroit Friends of the Student Non-Veiolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) last week launched a local drive to help raise money to build shelters and to buy land in the deep South. The Poor Peoples Land Fund, headed by Ronald Bennett has already approached Detroit store-owners to ask for their support by serving as sponsors of the project.

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EDITOR & PUBLISHER: Harvey Ovshinsky

NEWS EDITOR: Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Kathy

STAFF: Annie Katzen, Lena Sinclair, Marilyn Werbe, Steve Simons, Deborah Osment

THE FIFTH ESTATE 937 PLUM ST, DETROIT, MICHIGAN

48201 962–9334

AD RATES: 50 cents per line. Call 962–9334 with your message or stop by 937 Plum St.

BUTTON COLLECTION for sale: 120 different political, sexual, dirty buttons (NO CAMPAIGN BUTTONS). Collected in years of arduous labor; hardship case, must accept best offer over $50. Call 833–0387.

A motor trip to South America in quest of Nature’s psychedelics is leaving December 1, 1966. If interested write Gene Davis, Box 192, Lombard, Ill. 60148

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The following are some random comments and recommendations on the upcoming August 2 primary election races.

It is entirely possible that Recorders Court is the worst criminal court in the United States. Its brand of “justice” has been discussed, exposed and documented in a number of reports, studies and editorials by the daily press.

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James Lafferty’s campaign for the Congress from the 17^th District on Detroit’s far West side took on a new dimension with the appearance in the district of a leaflet branding Lafferty a “traitor” and calling the FIFTH ESTATE an “anti-Christian, anti-American hate sheet.” Although the leaflet, entitled “HOW DARE JAMES LAFFERTY RUN FOR OFFICE IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD!” is signed by a group calling itself the 17^th Congressional District Citizens Associated for Support of Our Boys in Vietnam, with headquarters at 17538 Rutherford, Detroit, it appears as though this is a front for Detroit’s anti-Semitic hate group—Breakthrough. Particularly obvious is the re-use of “evidence” reprinted from past Breakthrough smear sheets and the liberal (excuse us) use of capital letters.

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The Sunday night sessions at the Artists’ Workshop (4857 John Lodge) have been getting better both in audience attendance and in presentation. Last Sunday’s (July 17) featured poet Tom Mitchell and the music of the Workshop Music Ensemble, this time composed of Lyman Woodard on organ, Charles Moore on drums (!), Jim Semark on piano & trombone, and Doug Riggs on bass and piano. You should have heard the sounds this band produced! Sunday the 24^th of July will feature poet Mike Little and the Workshop Music Ensemble again. The Ensemble, in case you have been wondering about it, is the new houseband of the Workshop, and is composed of whoever happens to be playing that particular night. You can be sure the band will never sound the same twice. And if you don’t want to miss their most exciting session, you should be at the Workshop every Sunday night at 7:00 p.m. (Admission is free.) There will be a very important happening, a FESTIVAL OF PEOPLE, at the Workshop on August 5. (See details on that in the special article on the festival in this issue).

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The possible trial and execution of United States airmen as war criminals by the Hanoi government has been handled by the administration and by the press as a crucial turning point in the war in Vietnam. Partially to justify the bombings of Hanoi and Haiphong, partially to pave the way for bombings of the Red River dikes and, perhaps, China, and partially to silence the peace movement and other dissenters, the administration is conducting an incredibly effective propaganda campaign to project the impression that the trials represent a significant escalation of the war by Hanoi, justifying further escalation on the part of the U.S.

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VOICE, the University of Michigan Chapter of Students for a Democratic Society has called for regional action Aug. 8 at the Dow Chemical Corp. in Midland, Mich., protesting that company’s production of napalm for use on Vietnamese villages.

Members of the participating organizations will travel to Midland on August 7^th to attempt to mobilize community support against napalm production there much in the same way a group of citizens did in Redwood City, California. On Monday, August 8^th, there will be a mass demonstration at the Dow Chemical plant. Participants are expected from all across Michigan and Northern Ohio. The Detroit Committee to End the War in Vietnam voted July 13 to support the action and will coordinate travel arrangements and publicity for the Detroit area. The Committee may be contacted at its office at 1101 W. Warren.

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Detroit’s Greektown seen from Monroe and St. Antoine streets.

When I saw the olive oil had been diluted in what was once the most simpatico of Greektown restaurants, I heard the death rattle of Greektown. The first major casualty was the old Kozani Cafe (today’s Pink Panther) where there used to be wooden pegs for coats and old men would sit on an ouzo all night watching the young guys dance and fight. There were no belly dancers in those days, just good hill and country Greek music like you have a hard time finding even in Athens. One old “theo” played an instrument similar to Zorba’s except on Thursdays when he went with a young whore who worked the area regularly. That was during the days before urban renewal knocked out most of the houses where the pensioners lived and destroyed the interesting Greek-Negro community of the area. That was before the funeral home had to relocate. That was when the musicians could find work in their own city. That was when Big Mike ran the Laikon and the cops spent a frustrating afternoon tracking down a tip linking a Mr. Papagalous with a murder (Mr. Papagalous was a parrot). That was when the Greeks played most of the bar but in the backrooms and there was no junior executive trade jamming into the Lafayette Bar causing a nervous Sam to turn away tieless ethnic trade. The barber shop remains. The newspaper still publishes. Grocery stores carry on. A few tough coffeehouses of the old dozen. But the entrepreneurs are modernizing. The salads shrink, the price of feta cheese (imported from Italy these days) goes up. There are signs in the windows to guarantee in print that you are a friend as well as a customer. The city fathers have become aware of their tourist gem and the basest aspect of the Greek merchant personality has responded to civic duty. Coney island joints (symbol of bastardized Greek-American palate) have appeared. One thanks the Olympic gods for the Stemma Bakery which still produces the raw materials needed for homemade pastries. But nothing has been the same since Greekness was officially discovered during the time of Never on Sunday. I won’t bother to tell you that Pireaus whores aren’t really like that, nor Greek villagers like the animals you saw in Zorba. A certain stereotype of Greekness has been fashioned and now the community is coming to believe in it even as the stereotype is exploited. A few merchants grow wealthier but there is no place for the young guys to hang out at anymore. The old-timers are dying off at a rapid rate and many prefer to remain home rather than gather in the now barren kaffenions. The houses they might have moved into in other years are now parking lots and deserted fields. Part of the process is that of the inevitable and perhaps justified accommodation of a minority culture into the American malaise. Even under the best conditions, Greektown could not be the more Eastern than American quarter it was during the initial wave of immigration, yet the recent decay of Greektown is not a process of the melting pot but of the garbage pail. The physical attack has been thorough, destroying buildings on all sides of the one remaining Greek street, sparing the Greek church (at least temporarily) only because of vigorous protest. The spiritual decay is part of that general process by which Americans tend to become more and more the distorted image they think others have of them. Any of your hyphenated friends might reveal a parallel cultural experience, So let’s plant the goddam little flower boxes next to the parking meters. Let’s change our name from Leonides to Lincoln. Let’s have the city condemn the unprofitable old joints for health violations. Let’s fill the street with well-meaning enthusiasts for the Greek madness. America, you are a tough tough bitch and it will take a lot more than a smack in the mouth to set you right.

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DETROIT: Six weeks ago the News Editor of the FIFTH ESTATE sent an inquiry to the Defense Department regarding the validity of an article in the VIETNAM COURIER, a paper published in Hanoi, reflecting the political positions of that country. The article in question appears in May 12, 1966 edition and claims that a battalion of the First Infantry Division mutinied and refused to fight on April 24, 1966 at Lai Khe. It further claims that several soldiers were shot by their own officers in an attempt to force them into battle. Also, several suicides by men of the First Battalion were reported. As of July 13 no answer has been received from the Defense Department. In a further attempt to ascertain the truth of the situation copies of all correspondence have been sent to Cong. Charles C. Diggs (D-13^th district) asking him to investigate the matter. Nothing has been heard from him to date.

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reprinted from the L.A. Free Press

“Given a city government that is unconcerned about the problems of the people of South Central Los Angeles, a Mayor who considers these citizens to be hoodlums and a Chief of Police who considers them to be monkeys, the only alternative to violence on both sides is for a separation from that city government and the institution of another one with powers assigned by the people it serves.”

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“any image around which any people concentrate & omit themselves is a usable one just because it is theirs.”

—Charles Olson, Apollonius of Tyrana

I am talking to you people who read this paper. Are you there? What then do you want? You have it in your power now to create a vital living situation here in Detroit and make it in your own image—-if you have the will & commitment to such a situation. If you don’t care if Detroit ever gets to be such a place, it won’t. It will stay just as it is now—a burgeoning police state, with isolated groups of people fighting each other and ignoring each other but never working together to make a decent place of this place. And this newspaper, which could be so great and such an important community newspaper, will continue to flounder because its editor gets so little help, and there is so little response to calls for help, aid, participation, etc., that are issued in it. I am thinking particularly of the Artists’ Workshop Society, which is part of my own life, and which is about to die out because my wife and her few helpers have received so little support from you while I’ve been gone these last four and a half months—just when they’ve needed help most. If you want to have Detroit as a real, alive, worthwhile place to live and work in, you’ll have to make it that way yourselves, since the city rulers aren’t going to help, they’ve proved that, and the commercial interests never want to make a place for something new and vital but will capitalize on it when it appears and grows. You dig? What I mean is that we are all going to have to start working with each other on all fronts, help each other out, and take advantage of what are our local possibilities—like this newspaper, like the Artists’ Workshop and the West Central Organization, the Concept East Theatre, the Detroit Committee to End the War in Vietnam, the SDS Free University, Kenneth V. Cockrel for state representative, etc., etc. —all of these are manifestations of the same essential concerns, that Detroit be a vital human place for all of us.

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In Dylan’s sixth album he sings a major poem called “Desolation Road.” One stanza has to do with Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot sitting in the captain’s tower arguing for power while calypso dancers leap on the deck and fishermen hold flowers. The image is relevant to any interview with Dylan, for it illustrates his basic attitude towards showplace words. It has to do with experiencing life, partaking of its unending facets and hangups and wonders instead of dryly discussing it. A typical Dylan interview is more an Absurdist Happening than a fact-finding dialog. He presents himself in shatterproof totality—usually a somewhat bugged and bored mode of it—and lets components fall out as the interview pokes at it. He’s not taciturn, he’s simply aware of his absurd situation and the desperate clamor of folks who want to know how many times he rubs his eyes upon awakening and why.

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Face the Nation

Thru Hickman’s rolling earth hills

icy winter

gray sky bare trees lining the road

South to Wichita

you’re in the Pepsi Generation Signum enroute

Aiken Republican on the radio 60,000

Northvietnamese troops now infiltrated but over 250,000

South Vietnamese armed men

our Enemy—

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The Committee for Independent Political Action (CIPA) on the West Side of New York City was formed at the end of the summer of 1965, on the basis of a draft statement prepared by two editors of Studies on the Left, Jim Weinstein and Stanley Aronowitz. The initial CIPA nucleus consisted of about twenty people, all conscious “radicals” from a diversity of activist backgrounds—single issue and housing groups, reform democratic clubs, “old left”, SDS and others. They all came to CIPA with some sense that the actions they had been engaged in were inadequate: those of us from the anti-war movement felt that a certain saturation point was being reached with demonstrations: that they were no longer bringing in or educating significant numbers of new people, and that the old people were beginning to feel frustrated and discouraged.

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According to Time Magazine, prostitution has always been part of the American soldier’s life. It is a continuation of a grand tradition going back to the Crusades and extending through the vivandieres of World War I to the B-Girls called tea girls in Saigon today. After dysentery and other intestinal diseases had multiplied fourfold in four months and venereal disease had afflicted one-third of the 21,000 troopers of the U.S. first cavalry (Airmobile) in the small town of An Khe in the central highlands, the local commander acted. He made the town off limits. Prices, which the soldiers had forced up, and disease rates soon fell but, as Time puts it, “In March the first cases of ‘battle fatigue’ showed up.”

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Thirty-five people from the DCEWV picketed at the Detroit Stock Exchange, Thursday, May 19, protesting the fact that the war in Vietnam, although in the interest of certain American corporations making skyrocket profits from war production, benefits neither the Vietnamese people nor the GIs who are sent to Vietnam to kill and be killed.

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On Tuesday, May 3, 1966. Thomas L. Baker, a 16 year old black youth was shot and wounded while entering the office of the Afro-American Youth Movement (A.A.Y.M.), formerly known as the Adult Community Movement for Equality, at 9211 Kercheval on Detroit’s East Side.

This incident is only one of a long series of violent acts directed at the A.A.Y.M., as well as A.C.M.E. The A.A.Y.M. has been in existence for approximately three months. In that time, burning rags have been thrown through the rear office window, a bomb has been tossed through the front window, and a shotgun blast at the office in the middle of the night.

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TIME MAGAZINE is in many ways the most honest representation of the American conscience today. Reaching more than 3,000,000 families it presents official thinking and popularizes the attitudes of the “tastemakers.” The May 6^th issue is an historic document. In three stories it summarizes and epitomizes the most important problem the peace movement faces—the brutalization of the American conscience.

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Reprinted from The Free Student

FS: What is your reaction to the New York Times quote that “SNCC officials insist that they would prefer segregationist officials because their presence would keep Negroes aroused and militant?”

Courtland Cox: I think the facade—that if you vote for Wilson Baker as opposed to Jim Clark you have improved something—is really something people have to look at as not being true. I would feel much better if Negroes would stop thinking in terms of which is the lesser of two evils and start thinking of how I can get somebody that benefits me. The Democratic Party in the South is still racist

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On May 15, at the Wayne Campus, the Detroit Committee to End the War in Vietnam and the Students for a Democratic Society marched to demand that Wayne State University stop their cooperation with the draft system. A brief sit-in of 60 students followed.

WASHINGTON, May 6. The defense Department yesterday boosted the draft back up to 26,000 men for July compared to 15,000 in June.

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The most important event of the last few weeks was a concert by the Joseph Jarman quartet from Chicago. This was Joseph’s second concert in Detroit. The first one, on March 18 in the Lower DeRoy Auditorium at WSU, was such a success (not financially, certainly, but meaning that the music was so beautiful that the people who came to hear it wanted to hear more of it) that the WSU Artist’s Society decided to sponsor these Chicago musicians again. With Joseph Jarman, who plays alto saxophone, bells, whistles, & other musical instruments, will be Christopher Gaddy on piano; Charles Clark, bass; & Thurman Barker, drums. A ‘delegation” from the Artists’ Workshop fortunate enough to be in Chicago on May 13 to hear Joseph Jarman’s concert entitled “TRIBUTE to the HARD CORE” at the University of Chicago & will not soon forget that historic performance.

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Paul Krassner, editor of a magazine of free thought, criticism, and satire, called The Realist, was in Detroit last month. In his “Evening with A Self-Styled Phony,” Krassner turned people on to what turns him on. The Realist, for example:

“I wake up every morning and I giggle: I’m the editor of The Realist ha-ha-ha. It really is strange because I’ve been doing it for eight years now and I really haven’t accepted that fact. If I walk past a store and it says ‘boy wanted,’ I stop—I say ‘maybe I can still get the job.’ I really don’t relate to this—you know what it’s like; working, you know, not going to a job, it’s like playing hooky all day long. I mean you can go to an afternoon movie and you don’t get in trouble. I have a secretary to take the calls while I’m gone. It’s very strange, you know, just putting out a magazine and not getting paid for it.”

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First installment of a regular column syndicated by EVO [East Village Other] for L.A. Free Press, Berkeley Barb, Fifth Estate, & The Paper

This is the first of a series of columns by Timothy Leary, Ph.D. spelling out a theory and method of becoming a conscious person. The blueprint for a new religion. The working plan for a new species. The subsequent columns will present detailed, practical, day-by-day, step-by-step instructions, for rearranging your life, for establishing a harmony with your nervous system, your cells, your molecules and the multiple energy networks around you.

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This past week the D.C.E.W.V. conducted a survey in the segment of the 17^th district in which we intend to concentrate our efforts on the Lafferty campaign this summer.

In order to plan specific strategy we thought that it would be important to know something about the people who lived there. We felt that with a survey we would have more of a concrete estimation of prevailing sentiment than one painfully derived from an endless committee discussion.

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For as long as the “New Left” has been in existence, “New Leftniks” have talked about the need for serious thought and analysis within the various “movements” which have arisen: analysis of American society, its history, its power structure, its operating mechanisms; analysis of other countries, especially those of the under-developed (overexploited) Third World; analysis of the problems which this country is or very soon will be confronting, i.e., automation, foreign policy, poverty, etc.; and analysis of where we as a movement, should be concentrating our attention and organizing energies. Unfortunately, very few New Leftniks have actually undertaken this type of work.

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Send letters to fe@fifthestate.org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220.

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten.

Letters may be edited for length.

Your editorial on the Ukraine war in FE #411, Spring 2022 starts out promising, calling for the defeat of Putin by the Ukrainian resistance, and the overthrow of his dictatorship in Russia.

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My childhood prepared me for prison

I knew that in every day

There was a possibility

That I might be ashamed,

Denied something I

Needed,

Would be contained and prevented

From escaping

And yes, there would be pain,

There might be violence

Marius Mason paints and writes while serving 22 years in prison. supportmariusmason.org

When the wind blows against us, there are two distinct choices: either push back and push on against it with ever more resolve, or surrender to the direction in which it’s going.

Undoubtedly, if you are reading this publication, like us, you have decided that resistance must continue regardless of the forces we face. It’s easy to take for granted democratic rights supposedly guaranteed to us, but at critical junctures in U.S. history, those evaporated leaving critics of government at great risk.

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Fifth Estate

Radical Publishing since 1965

Vol. 57, No. 2, #412 Fall 2022

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

www.FifthEstate.org

No ads. No copyright. Kopimi — reprint freely

David Susskind’s office decided to investigate “Bohemia” in a one- or two-hour “Open End” television show. Called Israel Young’s Folklore Center for information. Poets Allan Katzman, an EVO editor and Tuli Kupferberg of The Fugs were standing by. Next scene, Susskind’s plushy office in Newsweek building on Mad Ave: Jean Kennedy, nice but playing dumb, interviews Tuli, Ed Sanders, drummer Ken Weaver, guitarist Pete Kearney. Attempts to orient herself: does Ed admire LBJ? (sneers) Bob Dylan? Mailer? the Village Voice? Do many villagers “use drugs?” Sanders remarks: “You know we might blow Susskind right off the air; not because of our foul-mouthedness or anything but because of our philosophical position.” Well asks Kennedy with a brave smile, what are some of your philosophical positions? Oh, says Ed deadpan, Legalize Marijuana, Cunnilingus Now, etc. etc....

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It always has to be something new//new stuff gets old begins to swallow//old stuff is not

good//a new thing//routine//order//success//yes//that will keep the head above water//at least

until it gets old and begins to sag//to pull down//to swallow//equilibrium is an

idea//fleeting//taken when it comes//enjoyed//but then a new thing is needed

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“Tell me you support the government’s policy if you like, but don’t try to tell me you didn’t know what was going on.”

—Tom Paxton

The first issue of the Fifth Estate [FE #1, November 19-December 2, 1965] featured a review of DANTON’S DEATH, a powerful drama about the French Revolution. During that performance, our reviewer noted that in many of the programs, several pages were omitted. He later realized that these pages consisted of notes written by the director Herbert Blau. Titled “THE TERROR IS DEAD! LONG LIVE THE TERROR!”, Blau’s insert compared Mao Tse-Tung with Lyndon Baines Johnson in that both are equal distributors of terror.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an edited transcription of a press conference held in the Greenville office of the Delta Ministry Tuesday evening, February 1, 1966. The participants include three spokesmen of the over 70 poor Negroes who occupied the barracks of the Greenville Air Force Base. They were Mr. Isaac Foster of Tribbett, a leader of last spring’s strike of plantation workers; Mrs. Unita Blackwell of Mayersville, a member of the Freedom Democratic Party executive committee; Mrs. Ida Mae Lawrence of Rosedale, chairman of the Mississippi Freedom Labor Union local; and Rev. Arthur Thomas of Greenville, director of the National Council of Churches.

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Until recently, Critical Race Theory (CRT) was unknown to most people other than law professors and their students. Now, thanks to right wing hysteria deliberately inflamed by Republican politicians, their malignant enablers, and their MAGA stooges, we all know the term even if we don’t quite know what it means.

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a review of

Ukraine & the Empire of Capital: From Marketisation to Armed Conflict by Yuliya Yurchenko. Pluto Press, 2018

This book was written four years before Russia massively invaded Ukraine, but is in some ways even more relevant now.

Yurchenko is a democratic socialist, yet takes a more rigorous neither/nor position regarding Russia and the West than some figures associated with the Western anarchist left, such as Noam Chomsky.

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a review of

Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology by David Graeber. Prickly Paradigm Press, 2004

This early short book by the late David Graeber provides us with several edifying topics. Its 105 pages contain a concise summary of anarchist principles, an overview of anarchist ideas that have already shown up in conventional anthropology, a critique of both academic leftism and academia itself, and the idea that anarchist imagination and activism can benefit from anthropological work.

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a review of

How to Read Marx’s Capital: Commentary and Explanations on the Beginning Chapters by Michael Heinrich. Translated by Alexander Locasio. Monthly Review Press 2022

My interest in reading this tome is so minuscule that I haven’t even opened it. The title is off-putting enough.

The question never asked is why would anyone want to read the arcana of the inner workings of Capital’s political economy? And, perhaps, who would want to?

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Copyright 1966 by the Los Angeles Free Press. Reprinted with permission.

“All a man wants is a home like a castle, all a man wants is peace at his door, all a man wants is a tree by his window...”

(A poem fragment tape-recorded by Ginsberg on the Los Angeles freeways)

Last Friday I had a three hour conversation at the Free Press office with Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky, who are presently touring the country writing poetry, giving readings and meeting people.

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