Most Recent Additions

a review of

Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950–1985 Edited by Andrew Nette and Ian McIntyre. PM Press, 2021

In the last several years, Science Fiction, or SF as it is known among fans of the literary genre, has been the subject of several excellent critiques.

In 2018, Alec Nevalla-Lee’s Astounding: John W Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction presented an in-depth analysis of the cultural impact of pulp magazines and the purveyors of the genre’s myth of “the competent man.”

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Fifth Estate

A Newspaper Of Detroit

FIFTH ESTATE #76, April 3–16, 1969, Vol. 3 No. 24

EDITORIAL GROUP

Alan Gotkin

Tommye Wiese

Peter Werbe

Cathy West

DISTRIBUTION

Bruce Montrose

MUSIC EDITOR

John Sinclair

PHOTO EDITOR

Mike Tyre

STAFF

Claudia Montrose

Franie Nelson

Marlene Tyre

Marilyn Werbe

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Hippy beggars are a colossal drag. They are all losers, parasites. Their begging is a way of saying that somebody else should take care of you and you don’t much care who it is.

Hippy beggars are worse than most because 1) they hit on their brothers too often; 2) most of them have parents who could and would pay their bills; and 3) lazy, whining kids are an aesthetic bring-down as well as a lousy advertisement for the whole community—any community.

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FLASH! Sincavitch has been convicted of being absent without leave and received a suspended sentence of six months confinement. He was ordered to report for active duty immediately, but Sincavitch has stated that he will refuse to do so.

Tom Sincavitch, who was arrested March 12 by some 40 FBI agents in his “sanctuary” of St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church, is confined in Fort Riley, Kansas.

...

This is the greatest honor of my life. It is with sincere humility that I accept this federal indictment. It is the fulfillment of childhood dreams, climaxing years of hard work and fun.

I wish to thank all those who made it possible: my mother, my father, brother, wife Nancy, Stew and Gumbo, Spartacus, Tom Paine, the Boston Tea Party, Ho, Che, Fidel, Huey, Eldridge, Lenny Bruce. Walter Cronkite, and last but not least—Richard J. Daley.

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CHICAGO—The repression that many have forecast may have come.

On September 9, 1968, Judge William J. Campbell charged a 23-man grand jury with the job of investigating the violence in the streets of Chicago that occurred during the week of the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

Last week the grand jury, in a remarkable political balancing act, returned indictments against 17 persons: eight Chicago police; eight persons allied with the movement; and, one member of the fourth estate, a suspended NBC News executive.

...

Editors’ Note: The following is a press release issued by Detroit Police Commissioner Johannes Spreen at 3:25 am on March 30 following the shoot-out between two police officers and 12 armed black men following a meeting of the New Republic of Africa. Events of the evening are still unclear as we go to press, but next issue we will feature in-depth coverage of the occurrence. All errors were in the original.

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Arthur P. Hughes is a short, timid appearing young man of 23. He wears thick glasses and a large turquoise ring.

On May 19, Mr. Hughes, a painter who resides in New York City, stood before hundreds of stockholders of the General Motors corporation assembled for their annual Freakout in Cobo Hall.

He announced that a few days before, upon learning of the nature and extent of GM’s investments in South Africa, he had divested himself of 955 shares of General Motors stock by turning it over to the African Aid and Legal Defense Fund. The stock was worth more than $80,000.

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Dear Marshall:

I have just read the article you wrote in the May 15^th issue of The Fifth Estate, pertaining to the Spike-Drivers. To say I am angry about what you have written would be a gross understatement.

The reason for my anger is that no one is more aware than me of the conflicting sides of this story from its very inception and what you have written is a very inaccurate, untrue and one sided version. How you could refer to me as a “headless manager” without ever having an interview with me from which you then could draw your own conclusion shows a lack of respect for your profession, which is to delve into all aspects of a situation, meet the various participants and then make a personal evaluation.

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The Midwest “Underground” Press Conference originally scheduled for Saturday, May 20, at WSU has been called off until further notice due to the machinations of Dean J. Don Marsh of Wayne State University, who refused the WSU Artists’ Society classroom space for the Conference.

Since neither the FIFTH ESTATE or the SUN has adequate facilities for holding such a Conference, it will have to wait until facilities can be arranged. In the meanwhile, people who wish to publish “underground” or independent newspapers, tabloid or mimeograph format, can consult with the staffs of Detroit’s two community newspapers—the FIFTH ESTATE, 923 Plum Street (3^rd floor) and THE SUN, 4863 John Lodge (at Warren).

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THE FIFTH ESTATE 923 PLUM STREET, DETROIT, MICH. 48201. 962–9336

UNCLASSIFIED costs 50 cents per line per week. Figure 5 words per line. (A word is a word, including 1 and 2 letter words. A phone number is a word. Street numbers are words.

Abbreviations should be sensible.) (no limit on number of lines)

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Welcome to another issue of the Fifth Estate Anarchist Review of Books. We haven’t changed our title permanently; just letting readers know what to expect inside this edition. We also haven’t changed our belief that it is direct action in the streets and in the woods, and creating communities of resistance and rebellion that are needed so critically as conditions worsen on almost every level. We read and learn to increase our commitment in our struggles.

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As we write at the end of March, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is at full fury with deaths and destruction increasing daily. By the time you read this, the conflict will hopefully have ended. If not, any number of terrible scenarios may have taken place or are still continuing.

The best outcome will be the thwarting of Vladimir Putin’s plans by Ukrainian resistance, but also by the overthrow of the Russian president by popular forces within Russia. The consequences of a victory for the invaders would be a disaster and only come at a horrendous price.

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Can the Army brass deny a GI his constitutional rights to hold and express ideas differing from those held by the administration in Washington—including ideas in direct opposition to the Vietnam war?

These are the key issues of civil liberties in the now celebrated case of Howard Petrick, the twenty one year old Fort Hood based Pfc., recently threatened with court martial solely for expressing his anti-war and socialist — oriented beliefs to his fellow soldiers.

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Ann Arbor—A nonprofit exhibition and sale for the benefit of EAT (Experiments in Art and Technology, Inc.) will take place at the studio of artist Robert Rauschenberg from June 5 to 7.

The exhibition is called GIANT MODEL AIRPLANES and consists of precisely scaled and detailed enlargements of stick-and-tissue-type models of vintage aircraft.

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Thursday June 1

JUSTICE! Judge Gillis’ Courtroom 1326 St. Antoine. Trial Preliminaries concerning the “great reefer raid” of January 24^th. John Sinclair and others will be up before the bench. Friends and sympathisers are urged to attend. 6/1

FILM: “Ipcress File,” 7:30, WSU Community Arts. Free. 6/1.

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Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare.

This 16 word Hindu chant was first heard in Detroit when poet Allen Ginsberg led the hippie community in a Lovefare last February. Jerry Younkins and Anarchy next brought the Hare Krishna to the Grande Ballroom for a SUN benefit and the recent Love-In at Belle Isle witnessed hundreds of young people chanting Hare Rama for hours.

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FIFTH ESTATE #31, June 1–15, 1967, Vol. 2 No. 5, page 6

EDITORS

Harvey Ovshinsky

Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Cathy West

NEWS EDITOR

Frank Joyce

ART

Gary Grimshaw

MUSIC & LITERARY EDITOR

John Sinclair

CALENDAR GIRLS

Karen Kovach

Naiomi Epel

ADVERTISING

Leon Brenner

Joe Drozdowski

...

Now you can hear what guitar playing sounded like when Eddie Lang was big back in the Twenties. If you play another cut you can hear what Pete Johnson and Joe Turner sounded like back in the Thirties. You can hear a little Blind Boy Fuller, Pink Anderson, Teddy Bunn, Mance Lipscomb, and John Hurt too. But most of all you can hear what Mitch Greenhill sounds like TODAY, if you get his album SHEPHERD OF THE HIGHWAYS on Prestige/Folklore.

...

At last we have a presidential candidate, a man who will aid in uniting the hippie tribes into a solid unit with one goal in mind. That man is Louis Abolafia, a New York artist and jazz trumpeter.

Mr. Abolafia is running on an Independent, Art, Love Beauty platform and in the recent New York state gubernatorial election he polled 2,500 write-in votes. One of the planks in Mr. Abolafia’s platform is the lowering of the voting age. He also intends to attack Governor Romney in his own back yard. Some of Louis’s backers include Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary and Paul Krassner.

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Let me predict this: Jerry Cavanagh is definitely on the way out! It may not come as a result of the current recall movement, but it will happen soon.

I don’t think that there’s a single reader of the FIFTH ESTATE who gives a damn about the Mayor’s sex life, but there are a hell of a lot of people in town who do care about his political, ethical, intellectual, and possible, financial corruption.

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Years ago the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was just about the only medium via which lazy, white liberals could salve their consciences when they happened to think about those poor, underprivileged Negroes down south. But the NAACP not only didn’t advance the colored people very far but actively began to resist change when other more militant (such as SNCC & CORE) organizations came along. Maybe that’s why it continued to get so many white “liberal” contributions.

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Every Mother’s Day Paul Krassner, editor of the REALIST comes to Detroit and educates us on what’s REALLY happening in the underground.

For instance, if you ever see Tim Leary walking around crouched like a rabbi, it’s because he has a rip in his pants and he doesn’t wear underwear. Krassner also suggested that’s where Leary keeps his stash.

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“We’ll save it in the editing.”

Though true of James Cruze, Griffith, Stroheim, this maxim was hardly any longer true of Murnau, Chaplin, and becomes irretrievable untrue with sound film. Why? Because in a film such as Eisenstein’s “October” (and still more so with “Que Viva Mexico”) editing is above all the supreme touch of direction. Elena, just as Mr. Arkadin, is a model of editing because each in its class is a model of directing.

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On April 30, the professional headbusters of the Detroit Police Department turned a love-in into a violent hate-in.

On Sunday, May 22, at a Toledo, Ohio mock war show, several hippies and new leftists tried a reverse procedure. They tried to stage a love-in at the cite where the Toledo Chamber of Commerce and the local military had built a Vietcong village which they planned to destroy as an exercise for Armed Forces Day.

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A call for ending parking fees at Wayne State University was made last week by the Wayne Provos. The group, fashioned after the Amsterdam Provos in Holland, plans to protest by putting epoxy glue in parking meters and the coin slots in the automatic parking lots.

A Provo leader told the FIFTH ESTATE that parking fees and parking meters served as taxes on Wayne students. Something should be done now. These parking facilities should be free to all students.

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After three weeks of exposes, rallies, demonstrations and meetings the Wayne Student Movement last week (May 17–18) elected three candidates to the Wayne Student-Faculty Council. Three additional candidates were elected on modified student power platforms.

The WSM has also been gaining support from the student boards of the various colleges at Wayne. The Liberal Arts Board, the Monteith Council and the School of Social Work Student Organization have endorsed the WSM six demands with qualifications.

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The FIFTH ESTATE is growing like wild marijuana.

Our current press run is 8,000 newspapers and our newsstands have been empty a week because we didn’t have the papers to fill them. If this keeps up, our circulation before the summer will be 10,000 paid. Figuring at least three readers per copy that makes thirty thousand readers every issue.

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A conference for high school underground publications has been set up. All high school students working on publications or interested in starting underground papers are invited.

The purpose of the meeting is to discuss all aspects of establishing a paper, and compare experiences for the benefit of other papers. It would be beneficial if those people who are already printing a paper would bring copies with them.

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The new album by COUNTRY JOE and the FISH on Vanguard is the greatest piece of music that was ever vaguely labeled under the title of rock ‘n roll.

They do every kind of musical change in the album better than I’ve ever heard it before. They do heavy blues things, soft regular singing, guitar and organ solos that just fly, the free sounds of tinking wind chimes and hands rubbing a balloon.

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How to love Poppa while he’s beating you on the hind end will be the theme of the Conference of Concerned Democrats all day Saturday, June 10 at the MacGregor Memorial Conference Center on the WSU campus.

A bunch of pretty decent-type Demos are going to get together and discuss the Democratic Party and its current stance on Vietnam, Civil Rights, etc. One of the main speakers will be happy warrior Zolton Ferency, Democratic State Chairman.

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From Michigan Daily—An estimated 600 students from 100 high schools and colleges across the nation overwhelmingly approved a resolution here Sunday calling for a nationwide Vietnam referendum on campuses next fall.

The students took part in a two-day Student Mobilization Committee meeting at the University of Chicago last weekend.

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HOUSTON, Texas—The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has requested the U.S. Attorney General to launch a “vigorous investigation” of Houston police who “engaged in a vengeful and destructive rampage” against students and property at Texas Southern University during a five-hour riot on May 17.

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The second Detroit Triple Fan Fair of fantasy literature, films, and comic art convenes the weekend of June 17 and 18 at the Park Shelton Hotel, Woodward at East Kirby.

The convention attracts not only Camp followers, but of Fandom, i.e. dedicated enthusiasts of the imaginative popular arts.

Fandom itself is comprised of individuals and loosely — knit tribal groups who collect, preserve, and discuss the artifacts, artists, and history of each genre. Fans also keep abreast of the current scene critically and, creatively, and engage in two major activities to promote the Cause: the production and consumption of an underground torrent of Fanzines, and Conventions.

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The local gestapo ended their celebration of National Police Week Sunday, May 21, by staging a tiny raid on the offices of the FIFTH ESTATE’S brother newspaper, THE SUN, at 4863 John Lodge, and took SUN editor Gary Grimshaw into temporary custody for “exhibiting an obscene drawing.” Grimshaw is also Art Editor of the FIFTH ESTATE.

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The Unified Megalopolitan Piece Pow Wow, a choreographed multi-media presentation will debut Thursday, June 8, at 8:00 p.m. in the WSU Community Arts Auditorium, Cass at Putnam.

The magic circus will feature performances by folksingers Phil Marcus Esser, Jan and Lorraine, and Tony Wright; bands including the MC-5, The Passing Clouds, and the Spike-Drivers; lights by The Magic Veil; poetry by John Sinclair and an astrological reading by Billy Reid. Unexpected sympathetic apparitions are also anticipated.

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The Rev. Charles Williams is a conservative, Negro, Republican Baptist.

Robert Tindal is the executive director of the tradition-bound Civil Rights Organization to The Establishment—the NAACP. The Rev. Albert Cleage is a militant black power advocate and chairman of the Inner-City Organizing Committee.

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Lots of good music coming up for the summer, June 8^th, the new Spike Drivers will present a huge three-ring circus type show at Community Arts Auditorium, WSU, featuring the MC-5, the Passing Clouds, the Magic Veil Light Company, classical guitar, poetry by this correspondent, a karate exhibition, psychedelic ping-pong by Billy Reid, mantra chanting with musical accompaniment, and a story line by Larry Cruse and Sid Brown to tie it all together. Tickets at $1.50. Sponsored by Trans-Love and the WSU Artists’ Society.

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a review of

Lives of the Saints by Alan Franklin. Black and Red, Detroit, 2022

Alan Franklin dropped his book, Lives of the Saints, into a world where the final years of the last century seem like a distant dream. Where our then dramatically dire descriptions of accumulated misery were actually more understated prophecies than the mere screeching wheels of an overblown cerebral car-crash on the freeway of our shared consciousness. That is to say, Chicken Little was right, and so were the angry writers at publications like Fifth Estate. As bad as we told you it was then, it is worse now

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Annares Infoshop

422 NW 13^th Ave #147

Portland OR 97209

Blackbird Bookstore/Infoshop

1431 Park Avenue

Chico CA 95928

blackbirdchico.com

Bluestockings

172 Allen Street

New York NY 10002

bluestockings.com

Bound Together Bookstore

1369 Haight St.

San Francisco CA 94117

boundtogetherbookssf.github.io

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We welcome submissions of art and photography. Send high resolution images to fe@fifthestate.org. The Fifth Estate is an all-volunteer project. Images that appear in our pages are separate statements on subjects addressed in articles.

P. 5 Paul Signac, “Portrait of M. Felix Feneon” 1890.

Feneon was a French art critic and anarchist who coined the term Neo-Impressionism. Signac also was an anarchist.

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Fifth Estate

Radical Publishing since 1965

Vol. 56, No. 3, #410, Fall 2021

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

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

This famous quote from Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities probably can be applied to any era, but which it is depends upon where you are situated at a given time.

Most of us, though, might find it difficult to locate the best at this moment as we face a pandemic, an increasing climate crisis, and a rising fascist movement among other contemporary disasters.

...

not since I was seventeen

have I been in a similar state of lockdown

.

back then it was

beaming home with the early light

with complete disregard for any promises

of minding a curfew or sobriety

jeep a degenerate comet

reeking of beer and weed

and I an alien approaching a staircase

where I cross paths with my captors

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Don’t stop me. I’m dreaming.

We’ve been through centuries of injustice.

Centuries of loneliness.

Not now—don’t stop me.

Now here forever and everywhere.

I’m dreaming of freedom.

Gorgeous unique anyone,

let’s restore harmony to the universe.

Let’s play. Knowledge is joy.

It’s not mandatory schoolwork—

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Is your nature revolting? You certainly look the type. Yes? Then you will be interested in a very special inscription found scrawled on the wall of a public toilette by some good fairy to offer us salvation in transformation: “you must get smaller.” No simple task you might say. Maybe Alice left us a crumb, you might quip. Or perhaps we can reverse time, you add incredulously. No, my cynical friend, there is another way. And I found it on a sunny Sunday walk in the park. It is simple. Just walk out on the path with a stone in one hand and a leaf in the other and think of a vine sprouting through asphalt. When that pale green light inside your aorta expands around you and the or olfactories are filled with the scent of rich earth, you are ready, and your feet will guide you to the deeply trodden path of the deer. Crouch low to pass under boughs and thick bramble till you can feel your hooves firmly beneath you. Sniff out the rabbit trails among the moss and dry leaves, straining to follow them until you can hear clearly with your long, soft ears. Search out the long line of ants and walk with them until you can taste with your antennae down in the detritus. Crawl down into the earth, ever smaller and deeper. Until you are so small you can fit inside the smallest unit of life. And there, of course, you will find and become that which...well, I can’t tell you what. Perhaps you’ll know soon enough. In any case, I must be going. I have some graffiti to write.

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To break off from the homeworld,

Separate and start anew,

Takes courage nigh unknowable.

Make a new language, speak it;

Choose a harsher planet, keep it;

Dispossess yourself of things

And your only home alike;

Leave the old lush rainforests

For frigid deserts, dry, starving,

Where through hardship you are free.

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it’s also the worst

when used in circumstances calling for a closeup

or in circumstances that call for detachment

it is only a gift when it employs the appropriate distance

that minimizes pain

between the observer and the observed

.

we have a school for teaching appropriate distance

it’s called a slum a favella

...

Women,

step up to your place

as bounty hunters,

claim your $10,000 reward.

Grab your knitting needles,

pinking shears and nail files.

Maim, castrate or, if need be, kill,

at your discretion, each man

who approaches you in a

manner indicating he intends to engage

any of your body parts.

Remember,

...

a review of

33 Revolutions by Canek Sánchez Guevara, Translated by Howard Curtis. Europa Editions 2015

Les Héritiers du Che (The Heirs Of Che) by Canek Sánchez Guevara and Jorge Masetti. Presses de la Cite 2007

“The persecution of homosexuals, hippies, free thinkers, syndicalists, poets (dissidents of a sort) certainly seems in excess of what was being combated. The criminalization of being different has nothing to do with freedom. Neither does the concentration of power in the hands of a few form part of anarchist ideas, and even less so the perpetual surveillance of individuals or the prohibition of any associations that may be formed on the margins of the State.”

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