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Fifth Estate Collective
What’s On
Fifth Estate Calendar
SUNDAY
FILMS: The Bank, The Tramp, A Woman and Police, with Charlie Chaplin (1915). Henry Ford Museum Theater. 2 and 4 p.m Adm. chg. 3/20
MUSIC AND READING: The Detroit Contemporary 4 and reading by David Sinclair. Artists’ Workshop. 7 p.m. 3/20
THURSDAY
CONCERT: Det. Symphony Orchestra. Van Cliburn soloist, Ford Aud. 8 p.m. Adm, chg. 3/24, 26
Dec 26, 2022 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Calendar
November 1 to 15
Wed. Nov. 1
PLAY “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” WSU Hillberry Classic Theater, 2:30 p.m. Adm. 11/1.
LECTURE Sander Vanocur speaks, Mercy College, 12:30 p.m. 11/1.
CONFERENCE Communism in China: Democracy in India, Oakland U. Center, 10:00 a.m., 11/1.
FILM “Old and New” (1929), Sergei Eisen-stein, Architectural Aud., Ann Arbor. 7 p.m. and 9:05 p.m. Adm. 11/1.
Dec 25, 2022 Read the whole text...
Robert Knox
Life in the Margins
Man eating mermaids, demons, ghouls & thieves
a review of
We Won’t Be Here Tomorrow (and Other Stories) Margaret Killjoy. AK Press, 2022
We Won’t Be Here Tomorrow (and Other Stories) is a promising work by Margaret Killjoy, who has written novels in the steampunk and folk horror genres and whose stories have appeared regularly in science fiction and fantasy magazines. She is described on the book’s back cover as a transfeminine author with no fixed adult home.
Dec 25, 2022 Read the whole text...
Joe Fineman
Sounds
“Garden of Joy” The Jim Kweskin Jug Band (Reprise)—The flowers on the album cover have nothing to do with the inner product except that once again Kweskin has kept up with the times.
“Garden of Joy” is a conglomerate of raucous, jazzy and bluesy folk oriented material that steps on no one’s feet and needs nothing but itself to get you high. New to this album and the band itself are the talents of former country fiddler Richard Greene, turned jazz mechanic.
Dec 25, 2022 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Unclassifieds
UNCLASSIFIEDS cost 50 cents per line per issue. Figure four words per line. (A word is a word, including one and two letter words. A phone number is a word. Street numbers are words. Abbreviations should be sensible).
DISCOUNT RATES: Five runs cost 35 cents per line.
The FIFTH ESTATE can use the donation of two postage scales; a small ounce scale and one for packages over a pound. Also, does anyone have an old electric addressing machine and a small safe. If so, please contact the office. 831–6800
Dec 25, 2022 Read the whole text...
David Tighe
Remembering Peter Lamborn Wilson
Anarchist, author, Poet, scholar, & visual artist 1945- 2022
Peter Lamborn Wilson is best known for the book TAZ.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchism, Poetic Terrorism, and rightfully so. Written as Hakim Bey and first published by Autonomedia in 1991, many of the texts in TAZ had circulated for years in the ‘80s zine underground.
Drawing inspiration from the Situationists, classical anarchism, continental philosophy (Lyotard’s Driftwork, Deleuze & Guattari’s Nomadology), pirate utopias, the American communitarian tradition, and dropouts of every sort, Wilson did not invent the TAZ—he just gave it a name.
Dec 23, 2022 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
ACLU Defends Protest
NEW YORK—In a Supreme Court brief filed recently, the American Civil Liberties Union called for the protection of free expression on behalf of a World War II Bronze Star veteran who burned an American flag as a protest gesture.
Representing Sidney Street, a World War II medal winner, the ACLU and its New York affiliate, the New York Civil Liberties Union, challenges New York state’s law prohibiting desecration of the flag. (Similar statutes exist in all the states plus the District of Columbia).
Dec 20, 2022 Read the whole text...
R & R Crusader
Dig Music, Not Image!
The Crusader keeps wondering how long people are going to go on eating up images instead of music.
When a group comes to town all the hip people are here waiting to eat them up—which is as it should be—but even when the band isn’t making it musically or is just good, these people keep coming up and screaming about how out of sight they are or how the band is just blowing their minds.
Dec 20, 2022 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
“Harry the Rat” at Court
The Court Theatre will begin its third season with revivals of two successful productions—HARRY THE RAT WITH WOMEN and OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR.
“Harry the Rat with Women” is an adaptation of the Jules Feiffer novel of the same name. It is the biography of Harry, the beautiful and narcissistic youth who is corrupted and eventually de oyed by the society which forces him to accept love and involvement on its terms.
Dec 20, 2022 Read the whole text...
Eugene Schoenfeld M.D.
HipPocrates
QUESTION: A surgeon has recently informed me that he has been able to cure his sexual impotency through kite-flying. This idea came to him after reading a brief article by Sandor Ferenczi entitled THE KITE AS SYMBOL OF ERECTION (found in the SELECTED PAPERS of S. Ferenczi Vol. 2).
Dec 20, 2022 Read the whole text...
Various Authors
Letters
Please tell Mike Bloomfield (“Honkies Can’t Dig Soul Music,” FE #39, October 1–15, 1967) that he can take his idea about us Honkies (I’m from Grosse Pointe) and stick it up his ass.
Just because we buy the Doors doesn’t mean we’ve never heard Howlin’ Wolf. We can see this ugly world, too. The method is not the message.
Dec 20, 2022 Read the whole text...
George L. Juroy
Stephen M. Raphael
On the Street? Know Your Rights
Pay attention.
Read this article carefully and then commit it to memory. It will save your enormous trouble for the rest of your life. Your authors—two attorneys -are about to advise you on how to deal with THEM: the fuzz. Never again will you run the risk of a knee in your left ball, unless it is your own.
Dec 20, 2022 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Trans-love Move Slowed
The Trans-Love commune, as reported in the FIFTH ESTATE two issues back, is planning a move from their quarters on John Lodge and Warren to the corner of Forest and Second Avenues in the Warren-Forest. Originally scheduled for the first of October, the move will be held up until the middle of November due to machinations on the part of property owner Monte Korn, of Korn Realty.
Dec 20, 2022 Read the whole text...
Thomas Haroldson
“Ulysses” Heroic
film
Harry Levin, the literary critic, once said that the achievements of such writers as Joyce, Katherine Mansfield and Hemingway “can almost be computed in terms of specific gravity.”
In other words, density, rather than volume, is the main characteristic of their work. However, in James Joyce’s novel, “Ulysses,” one finds both density and volume, which make it one of the most formidable books ever written.
Dec 20, 2022 Read the whole text...
Frank H. Joyce
“Bonnie & Clyde” Defended
As a charter member of the “Bonnie and Clyde” cult, Thomas Haroldson’s hostile review of the movie in the last issue of the FIFTH ESTATE [“Bonnie & Clyde Shot Down,” FE #40, October 15–31, 1967] was slightly disconcerting. Enough so that I went to see the movie. For the third time.
My faith was restored. “Bonnie and Clyde” is one of a small number of great American movies. Haroldson’s review is wrong about nearly everything except the fact that some scenes would have been more effectively shot in black and white. Some wouldn’t.
Dec 18, 2022 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Groovies
FILM. “King of Hearts” at the Studio North. Student rates Mon. & Tues. ce
FILM “A Man For All Seasons” at the Studio New Center. Student rates Mon. & Tues. ce
CANTERBURY HOUSE. 330 Maynard, Ann Arbor. Skip James performs Nov. 4–6. Adm. ce
RAVEN GALLERY. 29101 Greenfield. The Gun Folk perform thru Nov. 5 Then Charley Latimer and Paul Bowles, Nov. 6–19, Adm. ce
Dec 18, 2022 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Masthead
THE FIFTH ESTATE
1107 W. Warren
Detroit 48201
EDITORS
Harvey Ovshinsky
Peter Werbe
NEWS EDITOR
Frank H. Joyce
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT
Cathy West
CIRCULATION MANAGER
Tommye Wiess
ACE REPORTER
John Sinclair
ART AND LAY-OUT
Gary Grimshaw
Carl Lundgren
FILM EDITOR
Joe Finemen
CALENDAR GIRLS
Dec 18, 2022 Read the whole text...
John Sinclair
The Coat Puller
First, thanks to all of you who responded to our plea for help last issue—the Defense Fund is growing slowly, and hopefully, I’ll be able to turn it all over to our long — suffering attorneys when things get rough. Again, if everyone who reads this and is at all sympathetic to marijuana smokers who are presently heavily penalized by Michigan’s, cruel and unusual presently statutes, would sit down and send off a dollar or whatever you can spare to the John Sinclair Defense Fund, we could easily raise enough money to cover expenses in the trial.
Dec 18, 2022 Read the whole text...
Elliot Blinder
America Amuck, Wis. Style
MADISON, WIS. (LNS) Students and police fought with fists, rocks, sticks, and tear gas for two and a half hours Oct. 19 on the campus of the University of Wisconsin.
The rioting between some three to four thousand students and city police followed what began as a peaceful demonstration against the presence of the Dow Chemical Company on campus. (Dow Chemical is best known for its role in the production of napalm).
Dec 17, 2022 Read the whole text...
Underground Press Syndicate
Cops Stop Protest
OAKLAND, CALIF. (UPS) What began as an anti-draft teach in grew into issues of both anti-war and free speech and ended as 400 helmeted police, sheriff and California Highway Patrol officers using eye-stinging mace and swinging billy clubs broke up an anti draft demonstration along with some two dozen skulls in front of the Oakland Induction Center in the early dawn of Oct. 17. When the first of four groups of demonstrators arrived at the Oakland Induction Center early that Tuesday morning it was greeted by some 150 persons who had already gathered across the street.
Dec 17, 2022 Read the whole text...
Thomas Haroldson
Frinck
book review
a review of
Frinck: A Life in the Day of and Summer With Monika by Roger McGough (Ballantine Paperback, 60 cents)
This is one writer’s answer to how the modern novella should be written.
“I read the news today, oh boy,
“About a lucky man who made the grade, And though the news was rather sad, Well, I just had to laugh.”
Dec 17, 2022 Read the whole text...
Frank Kofsky
Janis Joplin
Next Pop Superstar
Mark me words, Janis Joplin is fated to be the next American pop superstar.
If, that is, Janis and her fellow members of Big Brother and the Holding Company decide that stardom is their goal. Right now, they are properly ambivalent about that trip, because they are mindful of the way in which pop fame and fortune can erode the soul. Fearful of losing their own, they teeter on the brink.
Dec 17, 2022 Read the whole text...
Henry Malone
Kill Grey
In Detroit, the skies are the color of lead most of the time, a sordid color that sweeps everything else along like a dynamo.
On these bleak days, all the houses are grey, the ground is grey, the buildings are grey, and for those who live in such a purgatory it is likely that the heart will also look very grey indeed. The physical environment, the very atmosphere, seems to invite leaden thoughts.
Dec 17, 2022 Read the whole text...
Carl Robb
My Secret Life
book review
a review of
My Secret Life by a Victorian Gentleman. New York: Grove Press, $1.75
My Secret Life ranks alongside other erotic novels such as The Story of O, Last Exit to Brooklyn, My Life and Loves, Candy, or Fanny Hill.
The first public edition lifted its head above the blanket of U.S. censorship in 1966 even though it was written about 1820 by an unknown author. The first edition contained 2,400 pages of large magazine page size which probably makes it the longest erotic autobiography ever written. This edition is abridged but unexpurgated and considering the size of the original edition, an unexpurgated edition is welcome. If a person wishes to include masochism in his erotic readings, he can attempt to read the entire edition.
Dec 17, 2022 Read the whole text...
Sol Plafkin
Off Center
Let’s have a few more words about Mel Ravitz (then, I hope to close this subject for a while).
Councilman Ravitz personifies, on a local level, the true “devil” to the Black community and to striving and alienated whites.
There is no question that Ravitz, a professor of sociology at Wayne State University, has made a substantial contribution to the community. In 1961, a lot of good people worked very hard to put him on the Common Council and his close election, with the simultaneous elevation of Jerry Cavanaugh to the Mayors’ chair, gave many hope for a “new day” in Detroit.
Dec 17, 2022 Read the whole text...
Allen Fisk
Students Battle War Profiteers
Fourteen people were arrested and a number of assault charges are pending after two days of protest by Wayne University students, Oct. 24 and 25, at the site of a Defense and Government Procurement Conference set up to bring more defense business into Michigan.
Dec 17, 2022 Read the whole text...
Frank H. Joyce
The “Bad” Americans
Editorial
The events of the week of anti-war resistance which began October 16, and which have continued to this writing—including the assault on the war profiteers at the Rackham Building on Wayne State’s campus on October 24 and 25—are of profound significance for the nation and the Movement.
Thousands of whites have in fact moved from protest and dissent to resistance. As many black people were forced to do some years ago, increasing numbers of whites have been forced to conclude that the government is illegitimate. The “legal” structures for change which are presumed to exist in this country are in fact meaningless. White people, in short, do not have any power either—or at least they do not have the power to change anything, only the power to acquiesce. Congress has been petitioned. The Executive has been implored. And still babies die. “Napalm is Johnson’s Baby Powder,” said one sign.
Dec 17, 2022 Read the whole text...
Rui Preti
The Return of the irrepressible
Anarchist inspired resistance in Ukraine Then and Now
“The question is always how to move from a social insurgency to an anarchistic society?”
—Voline, The Unknown Revolution
In early October, as the Russian military assault on Ukraine enters its eighth month, radical publications have been reporting on anarchists participating in the popular struggle against the invasion. Surprisingly, several mainstream journalists have also published articles presenting anarchists in a positive light.
Dec 16, 2022 Read the whole text...
Jack Bratich
Fascism is not an Information problem
Gender and Microfascism
When U.S. President Joe Biden called MAGA Republicans “like semi-fascism” in late August, then gave a speech in Philadelphia a few days later on a set decked out in martial aesthetics (including actual Marines), he embodied a contemporary troubling paradox.
We are in a curious historical moment in which it is easy to name the enemy as fascist, even while enacting fascist tendencies. Associating Trump with fascism has been in play for years before Biden’s half-hearted accusation. Meanwhile, QAnon Christian white supremacists call Biden a Nazi. And all of them are troubled by antifa. Anarchist antifascists find ourselves caught in the cross-hairs of these other so-called antifascists.
Dec 15, 2022 Read the whole text...
Dave Bailey
Hell No to the Draft
October 16 was the first day of massive draft resistance in Detroit and throughout the United States. From coast to coast thousands of Americans demonstrated against the Vietnam war and against draft slavery.
In total, over 2,000 young men returned their draft cards to the Federal Government. In San Francisco over 200 cards were returned; in New York over 300; in Chicago, 250. Similar actions were held in Denver, Kansas City, St. Louis, Des Moines, and Philadelphia. In Washington D.C. prior to the giant Mobilization almost 1,000 young men said no to the draft by depositing their cards at the office of the Attorney General.
Dec 11, 2022 Read the whole text...
Thorne Dreyer
Antiwar Battle at the Pentagon
WASHINGTON, D.C. Liberation News Service—On October 21, 1967, the white left got its shit together.
The gala Pentagon confrontation, long billed as a move from “protest to resistance,” was a dramatic and intense political event. Many had been dubious; few can now deny that a new stage is upon us.
Battle of the Pentagon, October 21, 1967. Photos: Bob Evans, Frank H. Joyce, Liberation News Service (originally filled the back page of Issue 41, November 1–15, 1967.
Dec 10, 2022 Read the whole text...
Bill Brown
On the Poverty of Student Life
The Little Pamphlet that Started a Revolution
a review of
On the Poverty of Student Life, Considered in its Economic, Political, Psychological, Sexual, and Particularly Intellectual Aspects, And a Modest Proposal for its Remedy: Members of the Situationist International and Students from Strasbourg. Edited by Mehdi El Hajoui and Anna O’Meara. Common Notions, 2022
Dec 10, 2022 Read the whole text...
Jim Feast
Watching the Clock
Waiting to get back to living
a review of
The Lady Anarchist Café: Poems and Stories by Lorraine Schein. Autonomedia, 2022
Lorraine Schein, a friend of long-standing, has just published her latest book, The Lady Anarchist Café: Poems and Stories.
This writer has toiled for years within stultifying bureaucratic confines of the workaday world while maintaining sharp anarchist perspectives in her creative endeavors.
Dec 10, 2022 Read the whole text...
Arthur Parumba
Richard Brautigan’s 3 & 1 & 3-in-1 Books
O.K. now, I got to tell you about what I am writing about. It is 3 books and another one, and I guess, another one. They are called Trout Fishing in America, The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster, In Watermelon Sugar and all three of them together (they cost about 2 dollars each in paperback or you can buy (ed. note: steal) all three of them together in hardcover for about 8 dollars. All from Delacorte Press, I guess, and The Confederate General from Big Sur (a buck ninety five from Grove Press) and they were all written by Richard Brautigan who is a crazy man.
Dec 9, 2022 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Anti-War Presidential Candidate In City
Socialist Workers party presidential nominee Fred Halstead was in Detroit Friday, October 6 to kick off his campaign at a rally sponsored by the S.W.P. campaign committee.
Halstead spoke about the positions of the Republican and Democratic presidential aspirants on the Vietnam war before an audience mostly made up of young people. Picking up on Governor Romney’s statement that LBJ had “brainwashed” him on Vietnam, Halstead pointed out that even the “dove” candidates and mass media evidenced brainwashing in the unconscious racism of assuming that somehow the U.S. had a mission in Vietnam.
Dec 1, 2022 Read the whole text...
R & R Crusader
City Rock Scene Grows
Through the efforts of many the Detroit music scene is growing in fantastic leaps and bounds. Not only are the local bands getting it extremely together—the MC-5, the Rationals, Scot Richard Case, Billy C. and the Sunshine, the Up, and a lot of others—but the promoters and proprietors are doing their thing too and bringing music into town that hasn’t been happening here before.
Dec 1, 2022 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
CNVA to Merge
The Committee for Nonviolent Action has issued an urgent request for additional financial backing. CNVA and the War Resisters League are mutually considering a merger and the CNVA Executive Committee has already authorized the partnership. The major obstacle, however, seems to be the current CNVA deficit of about $7500 which must be greatly reduced before the merger can be completed. UPS member, WIN magazine, currently behind in its printing bills, will be unable to publish an October issue unless new and immediate financial help becomes available. CNVA staff members have not received salaries for the last several weeks.
Dec 1, 2022 Read the whole text...
Various Authors
Letters
The Underground Press has opened the eyes of many Americans to much of life that they otherwise would not know of. But many of the more intelligent readers still do not understand homosexuality, especially some hippies who, due to their long hair, etc., have been falsely accused of being gay.
Dec 1, 2022 Read the whole text...
Sol Plafkin
Off Center
Probably one of the dirtiest jobs in the world is being a police commissioner in a large American city.
Even the most enlightened and liberal person in the world would have a bad time presiding as a civilian director over what is essentially a military operation designed to physically, socially, and psychologically suppress urban Blacks and poor whites.
Dec 1, 2022 Read the whole text...
Marieke Bivar
Resistance is an Intimate Art
Stories from the Middle of a Sexual Revolution
a review of
Sexual Revolution: Modern Fascism and the Feminist Fightback Laurie Penny. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022
“This [book] is an exercise in pointing out the obvious. There is a slow-moving sea change happening in gendered power relations. It’s been building for decades now. And it has to do with economics; it has to do with imbalances and rebalances in structural violence and how power is organized and operates. And the reaction to that sexual revolution explains a great deal of modern politics.”
Dec 1, 2022 Read the whole text...
Marlene Tyre
Review Denied for Fort Hood Three
The Fort Hood Three Defense Committee announced September 30 that the U.S. Court of Military Appeals turned down the request for a review of convictions of the Fort Hood Three.
PFC James Johnson, Private Dennis Mora and Private David Samas, the three who refused orders to ship to Vietnam, were court-martialed in September, 1966. All are now in the Federal Military Prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, serving three years at hard labor.
Dec 1, 2022 Read the whole text...
Paul Buhle
The Rojava Revolution is a Women’s Story
a review of
Their Blood Got Mixed: Revolutionary Rojava and the War on ISIS by Janet Biehl, PM Press, 2021
This is a remarkable graphic novel that could be described as part of an emerging genre of comics journalism. Joe Sacco famously showed the way with his on-the-scene descriptions of conflict in the Balkans and the West Bank, graphic novels that reached all the way across the world in many languages.
Dec 1, 2022 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Unclassifieds
Unclassifieds cost 50 cents per line per issue. Figure four words per line. (A word is a word including one and two letter words. A phone number is a word. Street numbers are words. Abbreviations should be sensible).
DISCOUNT RATES: Five runs cost 35 cents per line.
All unclassifieds must be paid in advance by mail. Or personal delivery
Dec 1, 2022 Read the whole text...
Karen Kovac
Naiomi Epil
‘Zappening (Events Calendar)
The calendar is prepared by Fifth Estate calendar girls Karen Kovac and Naiomi Epil with cooperation from Detroit Adventure. Copy deadline is the 6th and 22nd of each month and should be sent to the Fifth Estate, Calendar 1107 W. Warren, Detroit, Michigan 48201.
SUN OCT 15
DANCE/CONCERT. The Cream plus the Rationals, the Apostles, the Thyme in a no — age — limit show at the Grande Ballroom, Grand River at Beverly from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Adm. 10/15.
Dec 1, 2022 Read the whole text...
Jeffrey Shero
All The Way With FTA
Special to the Fifth Estate
Ed. Note: Jeffrey Shero is a former national vice-president of Students for a Democratic Society. He recently returned from an extended journey to the Soviet Union, Eastern and Western Europe.
They used to whisper, “Pssst, soldier! Dirty pictures?”
But times have changed. Just as likely now that long-haired kid hanging around the European train station or soldier’s bar is offering abettor deal—Freedom. “Hey, man, FTA, (Fuck the Army), take one of these.” That’s the new hustle.
Nov 30, 2022 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Birth of a Nation
A national movement has been developing in Detroit with accelerated momentum since the summer rebellion, according to an analysis by Grace and James Boggs in the October 7 issue of the independent radical newsweekly NATIONAL GUARDIAN printed in New York City.
The movement, according to the authors, “is conscious of itself as being in the process of creating from all elements of the black community a self-governing nation which will control and determine its own destiny.”
Nov 30, 2022 Read the whole text...
Thomas Haroldson
Bonnie & Clyde Shot Down
It is usually unwise and often physically dangerous to laugh at another man’s religion. When a person believes fervently in something, no matter how absurd the object of his faith appears, there is no safe way to tell him that he is wrong.
Therefore, when one attacks the movie “Bonnie and Clyde,” there is no way to avoid infuriating the worshipping instant cult that the movie has produced.
Nov 30, 2022 Read the whole text...
Frank H. Joyce
Expose ’67
The Fifth Estate has obtained a copy of a letter, one paragraph of which states: “As far as I am concerned, the local police in every community must be prepared to draw fast and not let the bleeding hearts again accuse them of being brutal. In my opinion, the future must be planned by real, practical and statesmanlike people.”
Nov 30, 2022 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Hell No, They Won’t Go
On October 16, young men in Detroit and in cities across the United States will have turned in their draft cards to federal officials.
In Detroit, at least 20 men are expected to take part in the actual resistance at Cadillac Tower in Downtown Detroit, site of the Selective Service System while a support demonstration will take place outside beginning at 3:00 p.m.
Nov 30, 2022 Read the whole text...
Eugene Schoenfeld M.D.
HipPocrates
QUESTION: Is it possible to get high on morning glory seeds? If so, is it dangerous?
ANSWER: Morning glory seeds contain ololiuqui which is basically lysergic acid monethlamide. Ingesting the seeds gives an LSD-like experience but there is also almost invariably a prolonged period of severe nausea and vomiting. A real bummer.
Nov 30, 2022 Read the whole text...