Most Recent Additions

Sanity tests have been ordered for Dave Valler who is facing trial on two counts of sales and possession of grass and for conspiring to dynamite several public facilities.

The police and prosecutor consider Valler to be the ringleader of the eight persons charged with the Detroit area bombings last year which hit police stations and cars, a draft board, the Ann Arbor CIA office and a research institute.

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a review of

Invisible Generation: Rants, Polemics, and Critical Theory Against the Planetary Work Machine by Jason Rodgers. Autonomedia, 2021

For many years, Jason Rodgers has been a motivating presence in a startlingly large number of anarchist zine projects and communities, including frequently in this magazine. Her work has been published in a great many collective contexts, but always singly and hard to find. In Invisible Generation, her diverse body of critical writing has finally been brought together.

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a review of

Space Forces: A Critical History of Life in Outer Space by Fred Scharmen. Verso, 2021

The late stand-up comedian, Bill Hicks, used to close his routines with an idea. Take all the money allocated to the U.S. military each year, he would say, and instead use it to feed and clothe and educate the poor of the world, not one person left behind, then take whatever’s left over “to explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.”

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The anti-war movement surged back onto the streets Easter weekend with major demonstrations taking place in six cities, and smaller actions in 44 others.

On April 5, 100,000 people rallied in New York City to hear speeches supporting the Black Panther party, the Presidio 27 and the Chicago “Conspiracy.” The demonstration was orderly throughout; the speeches marked a departure from the “broadbased, liberal-radical coalition” to reflect a growing class consciousness.

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The Detroit Repertory Theater’s current offering, Tango, is the most enjoyable play to appear in town since “MacBird.”

The director, Bruce Milian, like a good alchemist, has managed to transform broad farce, heavy social thought, and straight professional theatre into a first-rate production.

Tango is such a funny play that it is easy to overlook the fact that its humor is based on a very serious, and perhaps even a very frightening theme.

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SAN FRANCISCO—Four more GIs have been found guilty of mutiny and sentenced to prison terms. The March 27 verdict at Ft. Lewis, Wash., where the court-martials are being held to avoid large-scale protest demonstrations, came after nearly two weeks of testimony.

Convicted were Privates Edward Yost, William Hayes, Ricky Dodd and Harold Swanson. Yost was sentenced to nine months in prison; Hayes got two years, Dodd six years and Swanson three years. They also received dishonorable discharges. Appeals are pending.

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Cass students march to Wayne State University mall for student strike rally. Dave Watson is in the center. Photo by A. Gotkin.

On April 3, Detroit area high school students walked out of school in protest against the war in Vietnam, in commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and around issues of student rights, racism, and other issues pertaining to each school.

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Why I like Chinese food:

I guess I really became crazy about Chinese food when I was living in New York and working as a waitress. I always ate Chinese on my day off because I was tired of roast beef and other all-American delights.

Chinese food is different from anything else; it’s hard to make at home, and it is usually quite cheap and very filling. I have never known anyone to leave a Chinese restaurant hungry.

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Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: Where can I get myself CASTRATED? I’m tired of sex, I hate sex, I don’t want to be controlled by women any longer! I hate the two-facedness, double-think, hypocrisy. I can’t stand living in the Sexual Contradiction any longer: sex is condemned, sex is admired; sex is dirty, sex is fun; if I ask her or imply that I want sex, she hates me (“What? You think I’m a WHORE?”), but if I don’t ask her and in fact act like ‘I don’t want sex’ (and I have done this) she says, “What? I’m NOT GOOD ENOUGH for you?”

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Editors’ Note: The following is a public statement on the New Bethel incident released by George W. Crockett, Judge, Recorder’s Court, Detroit.

The distortions of fact and the confusion over this Court’s actions in the recent events at New Bethel Church compel me to make certain facts clear. I am personally deeply affronted by reports and stories which have clearly and deliberately twisted the truth and the law in this matter.

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“Along with the country as a whole, the press has too long basked in a white world, looking out of it, if at all, with white men’s eyes and a white perspective.”

—Kerner Report, p. 389

The headline of the Free Press editorial of April 1 reads, “Keep Isolated Incidents Within Narrow Limits.” This is a typical example of the racist distortion of reality practiced by Detroit’s major newspapers. There is nothing isolated about assaults on the black community by the white police. There is nothing isolated about attacks on Judge George Crockett for dispensing true justice to black people.

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a review of
Beyond Geography: The Western Spirit against the Wilderness by Frederick Turner. Viking, 1980

Beyond Geography first came to my attention in the early 1980s when Fredy Perlman began his arguments in Against His-story, Against Leviathan! with an appraisal of Turner’s book. Both of these texts attracted attention from the anarchist milieu around the Fifth Estate at the time, especially for those of us trying to build an historical picture of where human society went wrong.

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Fifth Estate

A Newspaper of Detroit

EDITORIAL GROUP

Alan Gotkin

Peter Werbe

Cathy West

Tommye Wiese

DISTRIBUTION

Bruce Montrose

MUSIC EDITOR

John Sinclair

PHOTO EDITOR

Mike Tyre

STAFF

Claudia Montrose

Franie Nelson

Marlene Tyre

Marilyn Werbe

The FIFTH ESTATE is published every other Thursday of each month by the Fifth Estate Newspaper, Inc., 1107 W. Warren, Detroit, Michigan 48201.

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NEW YORK—The tremendous pace at which the so-called sexual revolution is moving leaves us all a little dizzy. It’s only a matter of weeks since Jim Buckley and Al Goldstein broke away from the New York Free Press to found a new unabashedly sexual tabloid called Screw. Now Screw, after seven issues is selling 50,000 copies (at 35 cents each) and is about to go weekly.

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As part of a series of ten poetry readings across the country, there will be a poetry reading at St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church on April 29^th at 8 p.m.

The series is being coordinated by RESIST, a national organization of adults who support draft resistance and other anti-war activities. It is being sponsored locally by Detroit Resistance. The poets reading in Detroit will be Robert Bly, Donald Hall, Clayton Eshlemon, Ted Berrigan, David Henderson, and Ed Sanders of the Fugs.

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a review of
Hermetica by Alan Lea. Detritus Books 2021

The journey of a generation ship is a classic of the science fiction genre. One that tells the story of what happens when a bunch of humans decide to leave Earth in a sub-lightspeed rocket that will take generations to reach its destination.

The lack of unlimited resources and tight living conditions enables an author to experiment with alternative organizations of society, what critic Brian Attebery refers to as a science fiction parabola. The parabola is intriguing because it is boundless despite having an origin point, as J.D. Bernal’s long essay, The World, the Flesh, and the Devil, published in 1929, is the progenitor of the generation ship as a concept. In contrast, Alan Lea’s novella Hermetica is the latest data point along the parabola’s edge.

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The bulldozers are coming again to the Warren Forest area.

To complete Wayne University’s plans to obliterate the hip and poor community surrounding the school the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has approved almost $8,000,000 to wreck the area bounded by Warren, Trumbull, Forest and the John Lodge Freeway.

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The Revolutionary Newspaper Conference held at Wayne State’s Lower DeRoy on April 12 was fairly successful. Over 70 persons registered and over 125 were in attendance throughout the day.

The morning session consisted of a panel on the function of the media in a revolutionary movement. On the panel were Nick Medvecky and James Tripp of the South End, Peter Werbe from this paper, Marty Glaberman from Speak Out, and Mike Honey from the Oakland Observer.

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Members of the Black United Front mass on the steps of the Old County Building on April 3 in one of the many demonstrations of support for Judge George W. Crockett. During the day over 3,000 persons took part in pro-Crockett picket lines at Recorder’s Court, Police Headquarters, and the City-County Building. White organizations such as the Ad Hoc Group and People Against Racism gave inter-racial support to the embattled judge. Photo by Gerald Simmons.

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a review of

The Blast by Joseph Matthews. PM Press, 2022

The Blast, a new novel by Joseph Matthews, takes place in San Francisco in 1916, just as the United States edges its way into the general European slaughter known as World War I.

We learn that three years before the current moment, labor radicals and anarchists of various denominations agitated mightily for workers’ rights and union recognition in that thriving waterfront shipping town, but failed to make lasting progress.

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a review of

The Racial Contract by Charles W. Mills. Cornell University Press 1993

No, we don’t. We live under a racial contract. Calling it something else, such as a social contract is part of the racial contract’s system of concealing itself.

The late Charles Mills clarified this matter quite definitively in The Racial Contract, a 133-page book published in 1993.

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Compiled by Barbara Wellner and Ivana Gottfried.

Those events marked with an asterisk (*) need Fifth Estate salesmen. If you want to earn some extra money, come down to our office and pick up some papers.

FRI. APRIL 4

* RED ROACH COFFEE HOUSE with short films light show, dancing and poetry readings. 9 p.m. to 4 a.m.

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Plymouth, Michigan, is a small town. To say that it is conservative would be an understatement.

It is run by a small group of politicians and pigs, among them Carl “Pig” Berry, the chief narc; Chief of Pigs “Daley” Straley; Harold Gunther, the ex-mayor, who is running for the post of city commissioner; and a few others.

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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.

White Broadminded male desires replies from other males for possible meeting. Send photo, phone, interests, etc. to Main Post Office Box 613, Flint, MI 48501. Let’s get together pronto!

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April 3^rd began a new evening of theatre from black experience entitled “Soul of Darkness.”

Evenings of two one-act plays by Detroit playwright Laurence Blaine will be held at the Detroit Repertory Theatre.

“Little Old Ladies” will be performed by Jessie Newton, Irene McGlone, Frenchy Hodges, and Harrison Avery.

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The New Physician, a national medical journal with a monthly circulation of over 60,000 physicians and medical students, has become the first major national medical journal to speak out in favor of the legalization of marijuana.

An editorial in the March 1969 issue entitled: “Pot: Hobby not Habit,” it was suggested that unless new medical evidence is unearthed to prove any ill effects from marijuana, then “marijuana should enjoy the same status as alcohol.”

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Special to the Fifth Estate!

SAN FRANCISCO—The MC5 have blasted their way out of the grease pits of FoMoCo city, resolved their feud with the Motherfuckers of New York’s lower east side, and wound up in the San Francisco jailhouse after a near street fight with a squad of TACs.

In the early hours of March 18 the Five were rolling along San Francisco’s Bayshore Freeway in a borrowed station wagon with eleven other friends of the Berkeley White Panthers, doin’ their usual thing, when the forces of Legitimate Violence tried to run them off the skyway.

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D.A. Pennebaker’s endlessly fascinating film, “Monterey Pop,” gives us Gracie Slick & The Jefferson Airplane, The Who, Simon & Garfunkle, Janis Joplin, Hugh Masekela, Eric Burdon & The Animals, Otis Redding, The Mamas & the Papas, Canned Heat, Country Joe & the Fish, and many, many others all on one sensational single-bill; something that Uncle Russ would never do without charging around $50 a head.

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MIAMI (LNS)—Jim Morrison, erotic magician and lead singer for the Doors, is in big trouble in Florida.

On March 2, as John Burks of Rolling Stone puts it, Morrison “finally let it all hang out” during a rock concert before 10,000 people here. And now, local authorities want to zip him up in the pen.

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A few weeks ago the Flying Burrito Brothers brought their electrified, rockified country style music to the Grande Ballroom and the good folks responded with a silent Bronx cheer.

They wanted something familiar to vibrate their nervous systems, but the Burritos responded with soft, but apparently unsoothing country rock.

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a review of

Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work by Abigail Susik. Manchester University Press, 2021

Surrealism emerged from the brutality of the trenches of the first world war that devastated Europe as an attempt to come to terms with the ruins and a rapidly changing world of new technologies and systems.

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a review of

There Plant Eyes: A Personal and Cultural History of Blindness by M. Leona Godin. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 2021

More Than Meets the Eye: What Blindness Brings to Art by Georgina Kleege. Oxford University Press 2018

“I want freedom, the right to self expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things.”

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INFORMED SOURCES, a novel by Willard Bain: Doubleday, 1969, 144 pp., $2.95.

“Power is the ability to define phenomena and make them act in a desired manner.”

—Huey P. Newton, Minister of Defense, Black Panther Party

Willard Bain’s book was originally printed by the Communications Company in San Francisco the summer of 1967 and given away free in the streets. Informed Sources is the first post-Burroughsian novel I’d say, post-McLuhan also, and in its intentions and design strictly contemporary. Bain (who has the same initials as Burroughs—WSB—strangely enough) has gotten down to the simple major questions of control and power and what language has to do with it.

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(above) A Greek Independence Day celebration at the Masonic Temple March 22 was the signal for the Michigan Freedom for Greece Committee to hold a protest demonstration. “How can they hold an ‘independence’ day celebration when Greece is in chains ruled by a fascist dictatorship?” asked Nikos Boyias, chairman of the group. About 35 persons participated in the picketing.

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Having been publicly admonished by the editors for a lack of responsibility, I dutifully return to these pages, hanging my head and offering bagels, begging forgiveness (up the wall, Peter!).

Finals time usually finds me typing papers with little interest in cooking or column writing which is my excuse for a lack of responsibility.

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I read your paper today for the first time and I dig it to the max.

I’ve been around army posts for 6-1/2 years and just recently my eyes were opened to what the vast “green machine” is really like.

I don’t believe we had any business getting involved in Vietnam.

We went in as advisers! Like always. We wound up fighting their war.

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Open City’s first financial setback occurred April 1^st when the Studio 1 benefit was canceled at the last minute. Bob Scott was supposed to receive enough backing to open his Optek Pharmacy at the old Studio location, but things back-rued and our April Fools benefit hit the dust.

Uncle Russ has come through for an Open City “Rites of Spring” benefit that will be held at the Grande on April 23. The celebration will begin at 7 p.m. and last only until 11 p.m.

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Commissioner Spreen,

In regards to your public clearing of your fellow police officers for their actions at the Wallace rally at Cobo Hall, I would like to say a few words as a victim of police brutality that you say didn’t take place.

First of all, having suffered a broken leg and a sprained arm at the hands of your “law enforcement officers” and now of hearing your words of praise for the “fine work” of your police I can now have a better understanding of the reasons for the ghetto uprisings of two summers ago. When the work of your sadistic men in blue goes unchecked and even praised how do you think people should react? How would you react, Mr. Spreen?

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Rioting by 250 Black youths, says a UPI dispatch dated March 23, 1969, brought 200 police from 10 communities to the 20,000-student campus at Northern Illinois University at DeKalb.

Windows were smashed in the campus police station, library, university center, and a women’s dormitory. Two trucks and two cars were vandalized. Damage was estimated at several thousand dollars. There were no arrests.

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Karen Malloy is out of jail and home in Columbus, Ohio.

Enough fuss was raised by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to force the Beast to “release” her on $5000 cash bond.

You see, Miss Malloy is one of the “key prosecution witnesses” in the bogus trial of suspended Detroit Pig Ronald August. This racist pig is due to stand trial in May for the vicious torture-slaying of Auburey Pollard, a 17-year old black who was among three blacks brutally murdered by the mad-dog agents of the Beast in the former Algiers Motel on Wednesday, July 26, 1967, during the height of the Rebellion.

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Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: I am a serviceman in Vietnam and my wife thinks I am having sexual relations here. Not so. But after arriving I noticed some pimple-like protrusions in my pubic area. I went to my sick bay where the corpsmen laughed them off as venereal warts.

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Special to the Fifth Estate

GREAT FALLS, Montana—A local boy has made good out in the wooly West.

Mickey Gordon, formerly of Detroit, was charged in Montana Federal District Court with threatening the life of President Nixon. Gordon is a student at Rocky Mountain College in that state.

The complaint is based on information furnished by Roger Lee Clement, a fellow student who claims Gordon said, “If I had a gun, I’d shoot the President.”

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Editors’ Note: Bill Hutton’s tribute to the Eisenhower Years first appeared in this paper in the Jan. 15, 1968 issue and is reprinted now on the occasion of the General’s passing. This piece is part of a newly released book by Bill Hutton entitled “A History of America.” It is published by The Coach House Press in Toronto.

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a review of

3 online plays by Norman Nawrocki, 2020–2022: “EVICTION? Dog’s Blood!!;” “Ukrainians, Pelicans & the Secret of Patterson Lake,” and “Run Nawrocki Run! Escape from Banff Prison”

Norman Nawrocki in “Run Nawrocki Run! Escape from Banff Prison”

Norman Nawrocki is a veteran artiste and activist in the Montreal anarchist and radical communities. He has produced more than 20 theater plays, 14 books, and over 30 music albums as a solo artist or with many bands and collectives since the 1980s such as Rhythm Activism, Bakunin’s Bum, Anarchist Writers Bloc, and DaZoque.

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a review of

Peter & Emma’s Bookcafe (operetta) by Lenny Kwok, 2021

During the worldwide youth revolt in 1968, Lenny Kwok was a 13-year old Hong Kong high school student handing out radical pamphlets with his friends. He got busted, but it didn’t stop him from continuing to agitate for anarchism.

Flash forward 53 years, and Lenny is still at it. He has spent a life-time as a Hong Kong anarchist/artist/musician/singer/author, but now lives in Taiwan following repression from the Chinese government.

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a review of

The Nation on No Map: Black Anarchism and Abolition by William C. Anderson, Saidiya Hartman (Foreword), Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin (Afterword). AK Press 2021

As a Black diasporic female academic and activist, it isn’t so easy to encounter the intersectionality of the struggles I encounter reflected in many academic or anarchist discussions.

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a review of

All of Me: Stories of Love, Anger, and the Female Body Ed. Dani Burlison. PM Press, 2019

In this collection, women’s bodies are discussed as sites of healing, burnout, grief, joy, transformation, and growth. The essays, interviews, and other writing vary immensely in tone and style, and there is a sense that this is a place where women’s anger is being expressed freely, however the contributors choose to do so.

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FT. JACKSON, S.C.—Pvt. Henry Mills has refused orders to Vietnam.

According to the American Serviceman’s Union, Mills came to New York to consult with them and then turned himself in at Ft. Dix, the nearest base.

Mills, who is black, has stated that he will not participate in a war that is immoral and racist.

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TACOMA, Wash. (LNS)—Good news in the Presidio “Mutiny” case: Linden Blake, the third of the 27 stockade prisoners to escape while awaiting trial, has arrived safely in Canada. And the Department of the Army, feeling the unaccustomed weight of public pressure, has cut Nesrey Sood’s sentence down to two years.

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a review of

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2021

“In one sense,” David Graeber and David Wengrow write, “this book is simply trying to lay down foundations for a new world history” Simply?

As the title indicates, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity is an extremely ambitious, 692-page book. It’s also a bit of an anomaly in contemporary anarchist writing, which tends to shy away from Big History, with its overtones of imperial sweep and Smart White Guys explaining to everyone else How It Went Down.

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