Most Recent Additions

a review of

A Desert Pilgrim’s Bestiary by Anthony Walent, author; Maurice Spira, Illustrator. Eberhardt Press, 2019

A Desert Pilgrim’s Bestiary is both archaic and modern. Anthony Walent has been employing this very tension in his zine, Communicating Vessels, for many years, that is assembled and designed using functioning, but antique typesetting equipment.

...

Happy hippies and costumed peace freaks assembled behind DeRoy Auditorium on Wayne University’s campus for the 2^nd Annual Halloween March the night of Oct. 31. Led by John Schwartz, alias Jacob Odaryan, the march was to bring an absurdist dance of death to the festive evening.

Seventy-five freaks danced around DeRoy and stopped for a WWJ-TV newsman. “Help the poor, stop the war” chanted the marchers. They then danced down Cass Ave. Their chanting visibly disturbed Wayne’s Public Safety fuzz and stopped traffic on both sides of Cass. Black children running alongside the marchers dropped firecrackers in the street and some joined the zany throng.

...

Tommye Wiess, Fifth Estate circulation manager, surveys damage left by right-wing vandals at the office of the Detroit Committee to end the War in Vietnam. The office has since been repaired and the anti-war group is continuing its activities. photo: Ollie Anderson

Detroit’s right wing launched a terrorist attack on the offices of the Detroit Committee to End the War in Vietnam early in the morning on October 29.

...

No, this is not an astronaut—just a well-prepared demonstrator on his way to a march. photo: Dave Lindquist

The anti-war movement has recently become actively involved in the type of resistance protests that has brought a violent reaction from the forces of law and order. One has only to witness the police terror perpetrated on demonstrators at Oakland, Washington, D.C., and Madison, Wis., to realize that those involved in demonstrations should take some precautions before venturing out’ in the streets for confrontations with the police.

...

In his early 19^th century book Jerusalem, English poet, painter, and printmaker William Blake writes: “I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s. I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.” Blake was an anti-authoritarian revolutionary. Although largely unrecognized during his lifetime, his liberatory influence has been felt in the spheres of politics, poetry, religion, economics, art, and sexuality.

...

The next project of Abigail Susik, author of Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work, investigates the radical connections between anarchism and surrealism through the little-known figure of Jonathan Leake and his work in the 1960s with the magazine, Resurgence.

It is devoted to the extremely rare surrealist, anarchist, IWW, and anti-racist underground zine which had twelve mimeographed issues printed in New York, Chicago, San Francisco; between 1964 and 1967. It contains reprints of all twelve issue covers, as well as page selections from each issue, including the recently discovered, formerly lost issue #4.

...

a review of

The Weight of The Stars: The Life of Anarchist Octavio Alberola. Written and illustrated by Agustin Comotto. Translated from Spanish by Paul Sharkey, AK Press 2022

“These notions of Marxism and anarchism have shown themselves not to be serviceable enough, as circumstances have changed and so they need re-elaborating, amplification, or amendment.”

...

Reprinted from Fifth Estate, #378, Summer 2008.

In fairy tales, humans can possess exterior souls, things magically containing or embodying individual life force—stone, egg, ring, bird or animal, c. If the thing is destroyed, the human dies. But while the thing persists, the human enjoys a kind of immortality or at least invulnerability. Money could be seen as such an exteriorized soul. Humans created it, in some sense, in order to hide their souls in things that could be locked away (in tower or cave) and hidden so their bodies would acquire magical invulnerability—wealth, health, the victoriousness of enjoyment, power over enemies—even over fate.

...

Rojava is still in my eyes. A fountain in the middle of desert. By desert, I mean authoritarian regimes, imperialist and colonialist forces, and Islamist warmongers. But it seems now that while at a societal level, Rojava is flourishing with ways to fight patriarchy, the environment is turning into an actual desert.

...

a review of

“The Northman”

Dir: Robert Eggers, 2022

There was an unavoidable discomfort in my bones upon deciding to view “The Northman.” It felt difficult to ignore how, from advertisements, the film’s early Norse historical setting seemed like unfortunate—if unintentional—catnip for fascists with a tendency for perverting Paganism to justify ideologies of volkisch nationalism. And yet, I was happily surprised.

...

a review of
The New Science of the Enchanted Universe: An Anthropology of Most of Humanity by Marshall Sahlins. Princeton University Press, 2022

The late anthropologist Marshall Sahlins (1930–2021) is best known for his claim, first published in 1968, that people living in traditional economies based on hunting and gathering enjoyed lives of relative security, abundance, and leisure.

...

Reprinted from Liberation Magazine.

Secretary of State Dean Rusk doesn’t seem to appreciate the monumental irony of his own position. On the one hand he insists fervidly on the right of small nations like South Vietnam to independence”: on the other he damns the means by which such independence is usually achieved, namely “wars of national liberation.”

...

Energies of the West Central Organization, since its formal emergence on the Detroit scene in June,1965, have exploded the myth of “apathy” inherent in the behavior of “poor folks.” Human beings—Negro, white, Mexican, Maltes, and Puerto Rican—who have never fully recognized and used their latent power are doing so now. “poor folk’s” organizations which thrive in one area of Detroit’s poor folk ghetto are merging into a poor folk liberation front popularly known as WCO. Presently, WCO is confronting the common enemy—those persons who by design or inability operate the existing educational, welfare, housing, law enforcement, and urban renewal machines, etc., in a way which conspires against poor people.

...

Mrs. Draper, active trade unionist and secretary of California Citizens for Farm Labor, spent several days on the Delano-Sacramento pilgrimage march of the grape strikers.

A giant march and rally of some 10,000 farm workers and supporters on Easter Sunday in Sacramento, California demonstrated the enormous support which the seven-month strike of the Delano grape strikers has aroused. On Easter morning the original 67 pilgrims who had left Delano 25 days earlier were joined by thousands coming from all parts of the state and nation for the last five miles from West Sacramento to the gold-domed State Capitol.

...

Color image of album cover for Phil Ochs’ 1966 LP “I ain’t Marchin’ Any More.”

It has been a good season recently at Ed Pearl’s Ash Grove: last week it was Doc Watson and now it is Phil Ochs, songwriter, poet, revolutionary, and all-around good egg. Phil Ochs, who has been held over this weekend to co-star with Guy Carawan, writes his own songs, thinks up his own comedy lines on the spot, and plays his old-style Gibson Jumbo guitar in a most entertaining fashion. I talked with Phil Ochs between sets and he told me:

...

a review of

El Socialism Salvaje: Autoorganizacion y democracia directa desde 1789 hasta nuestros dias (Wild Socialism: Self-organization and direct democracy from 1789 to the Present) Charles Reeve. Virus Editorial, 2020

What Paris-based author Charles Reeve calls socialismo salvaje, “wild socialism,” is the demand for direct democracy and popular control of social institutions by workers, peasants, and citizens in periods of social and political upheaval appearing throughout modern history.

...

Vietnam Newsletter

Detroit Committee to End the War in Vietnam

Vol. 1, No. 2

1101 W. Warren, 832–5700, May, 1966

The major activity of the DCEWV since the March 25–27 International Days of Protest was a demonstration at a fundraising function of the 17^th District Democrats. About 35 demonstrators carrying signs reading: STOP THE BOMBINGS; BRING THE TROOPS HOME; I WAS A LIBERAL UNTIL I DISCOVERED THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY SELLOUT: and MARTHA (Griffiths) MUST GO, formed an orderly picket line from 8 to 10 p.m. in front of the Latin Quarter where the affair was held. Three of the demonstrators, who managed to obtain tickets legitimately, participated in the cocktail party, despite police efforts to keep them out of the building. One of them, Dena Clamage, executive director of the Detroit Committee, engaged Rep. Martha Griffiths of the 17^th District in a discussion about the Vietnam war, which ended when Rep. Griffiths accused Miss Clamage of baiting her and suggested that if Miss Clamage were opposed to her (Griffiths’) Vietnam policies, she should support some other candidate running on a peace platform. Smiling, Miss Clamage assured Rep. Griffiths that she would.

...

The game is definitely played in someone else’s ballpark! The rules are really quite simple: attend an endless stream of meetings attended only by other candidates; seek publicity, but avoid notoriety; have a platform, but don’t say anything really controversial (substitute “honest”?) belong to as many organizations as possible, but list only the respectable ones on your literature; make the proper deals and alignments with a variety of political hacks; etc., etc.

...

“The bombing won’t stop us. We’re still going full speed ahead with our plans.”

Jack Weinberg, a member of the Vietnam Day Committee, said this quietly only hours after he and 10 other VDC members had narrowly escaped death in a midnight bomb blast that ripped through the VDC headquarters on Fulton Street here [in Berkeley, Calif., not indicated in print original] April 9. Four VDC members were treated for minor injuries at the University Hospital, and released.

...

Washington, March 29, (UPI)—The Defense Department called today for the drafting of 34,600 men in May. It had asked for 21,700 for April.

The Army still needs 90,000 more men to complete its buildup for the Vietnam war.

The new draft call dimmed hopes previously expressed that the induction of college students might be avoided. Selective Service officials believe that induction of college students would be unnecessary if the draft could be kept below 30,000 a month.

...

There seem to have been a lot of very hip things going on in Detroit lately, though from my (disad-)vantage point I can only read about them or hear of them on the radio. I heard very beautiful things about the Archie Shepp et al. concert last month—anyone who missed the happenings in Ann Arbor should be locked up here in my place. Archie brought trombonist Roswell Rudd, the strongest man on his instrument today, from New York City; bassist Charlie ** Haden, now living in San Francisco after getting straight at Synanon; and drummer Beaver Harris, of NYC, with him for the big Ann Arbor affair, and all reports indicate that they all got into some very moving music. After the concert proper a mammoth session took place under Ron Brooks’ auspices—participating were some of the strongest voices in the country—Rudd & Harris of NY; Haden of SF; altoist Joseph Jarmon, tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson, trumpeter Bill Brimfield, bassist Charles Clark, and drummer Steve McCall, all of Chicago (they had played, under Jarmon’s name, for the WSU Artists’ Society the night before); and cornetist Charles Moore and drummer Danny Spencer of Detroit. These men worked in a lot of combinations, including 2 bass-2 drums teams (Moore’s setting), and enough music was made (as I hear it) to fill the whole midwest.

...

The condition of education in America is not an education towards realizing the possibilities of one’s own life, but is in fact an arm of the larger system of the nation with the duty to turn out people who will maintain whatever that system is or has become.

The education is generally aimed toward preserving, and eradicating what is considered worthless (or, it might better be said, what is considered dangerous—considered so by this segment that determines, in that what is kept out of reach is generally this history and traditions of such minorities as Negroes, any respect for the quality of language they’ve developed-the very things that would render them a sense of their own worth; that is, roots of their own strength).

...

(reprinted from the LA Free Press)

Somewhere in Los Angeles this week, a small group of men and women are preparing the tenth in a series of weekly radio programs of news and critical commentary on America’s foreign policy which they tape and send to Hanoi for broadcast to American troops.

Since it is very possible that the activities of Radio Stateside, as the group calls itself, are illegal (they are urging American soldiers to oppose America’s role in Vietnam), everything is done in clandestine fashion.

...

Schedule

Friday, March 25: At 6:30 P.M. the Wayne State University

Young Democrats are sponsoring a forum on the war in Vietnam in the community Arts Auditorium, Cass and Kirby.

Saturday, March 26: At 4:00 P.M. a mass march will start down Woodward from Central -Methodist Church at Adams and Woodward. We will march to Campus Martius carrying signs, banners, and giant grotesque puppets to the beat of death drums.

...

Common Council, City of Detroit, 2 Woodward Avenue, Detroit 26, Michigan

Dear Sirs,

A meeting was held Wednesday, March 9 at Burton School promoted through the combined efforts of Cass Community Council, Cass Community Church, Burton School Mother and Dad’s Club, WCO affiliated groups (St.. Patrick’s Parrish and Central Methodist Church, Southern Baptist Convention, Priscilla Hall, St. John’s Episcopal Young Adult Fellowship and Cass Park Baptist Church).

...

The Fifth Estate 1107 W. Warren Detroit Michigan 48201

831–2525

EDITOR AND PUBLISHER

Harvey Ovshinsky

EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS:

Steven Simons

Nancy Mitchnick

Karen Mitchnick

Marilyn Mitchnick

Deborah Osmet

Janet Klotman

Robin Dibner

Steven Dibner

The National Student Association’s Poor People’s Corporation Personnel Program is recruiting sales representatives to work in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, and managerial aides to work In cooperatives in Mississippi. Sales representatives will be Working in programs designed to increase the sales of the Poor People’s Corporation by establishing marketing agreements with retail stores and student stores on college ‘campuses, and by working to establish P.P.C. stores. They will be working on a commission basis, with a guaranteed income of $45/week, and an allowance for certain operating expenses.

...

Liberal Detroiters were recently mildly surprised and, perhaps, even a little bit shocked, by a recent picket line thrown by the West Central Organization (WCO) before a union hall where a victory” fund-raising dinner was being held for recently re-elected Councilman Mel Ravitz.

One prominent local progressive, George Crockett, Jr. refused to cross the line, even though he was a close personal friend of Ravitz.

...

Skeptics about Happenings—the kind of person who says, “I’ve seen one and I don’t like them”—should visit Al Hansen’s loft at 119 Avenue D. It is like finding yourself In the attic of a childhood you only heard about but never knew. “I had always enjoyed the fact that people visiting me couldn’t tell in many cases whether a thing was a work of art or a useful household object,” writes Hansen in his book, “A Primer of Happenings & Time/Space Art” (Something Else Press, $4.50). “Friends who knew very well what art is and isn’t would even make jokes such as, ‘May I sit in this chair, or Is it by George Brecht?’ or ‘Can I put my cigarette out in this, or is it part of an assemblage?’”

...

I would like at this time to point out what I believe to be the central considerations involved in my position that the United States is totally unjustified in pursuing its current policy in Vietnam.

To begin with, the resumption of bombings of North Vietnam can lead only to escalation and intensification of the already dangerous war in Vietnam. Three presidents have warned us of the dangers of an all-out war on mainland Southeast Asia; and yet, this is exactly the situation which the United States is now confronting.

...

Their Statement:

On Friday, March 4, 1966, Attorney General Nicholas D. Katzenbach presented the subversive Activities Control board with a petition asking them to list the W.E.B. Du Bois Clubs of America as a “Communist front group” as provided under the McCarran Act.” This act would require the Du Bois Clubs to register as a “Communist Front Group.” For every day that we fail to register, we are subject to a $10,000 fine and five years in jail. We will not register.

...

James Peake, director of Du Bois Clubs (DBC) national publications, who lives in San Francisco, stated on March 11 that he knew of 2000 new memberships since the terrorist attacks. Of these, 700 are in the San Francisco Bay area. There is no way of estimating at this time how many more new members there are across the nation of which the national office had not then been notified. Except that a substantial number of people in other groups on the left have, like Staughton Lynd, joined as a protest against the recent attacks, it is not known just what these memberships signify. Only one thing can be said With certainty: this reaction is not what Attorney General Katzenbach wanted.

...

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

...

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.

...

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.

...

“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.

...

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

...

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.

...

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).

...

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.

...

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.

...

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

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).

...

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.

...

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.

...

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.

...

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.

...

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.

...

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

...

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

...

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.

...