John Sinclair
The Coatpuller

The WSU Artists’ Society’s fall concert/reading series is now set and will continue with a concert by the Contemporary 4 at the Community Arts Auditorium Thursday, November 3, at 8:30 p.m. Charles Moore will introduce his new band, featuring Kirk Lightsey, piano, and Ron Johnson & John Dana, the regulars. Former pianist Stanley Cowell left Michigan for New York City in August and has been working with Marion Brown (including a recent recording session for Pixie) among others. The concert will be introduced by yours truly. There is no admission charge per se, but a donation of $1.00 will be appreciated.

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Franklin Bach
Bach on Rock

In the last issue of the FIFTH ESTATE John Sinclair put down “acid rock” in favor of new-thing jazz, implying that Coltrane is really where it’s at and that rock is nowhere. His opinion revolves around the term “psychedelic”. Sinclair feels that jazz is truly psychedelic while rock merely exploits the term. I asked Robin Tyner, lead singer of the MC-5, now appearing at the Grande Ballroom, what he considers to be the true psychedelic music.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Calendar

Saturday October 15

FILM. Famous Films of Famous Directors: Part. II. Akira Kurosawa’ s “Yojimbo”. Rackhman Aud. 80 Farnsworth, 8 p.m. Adm. 10/15

Sunday October 16

FILM, Famous Early Movie Series. Henry Ford Museum Theatre. 2 and 4 p.m. Adm. 10/16

PROGRAM. Student Sunday Program, movies and dancing. International Inst. 4–6 p.m. 10/16

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Ann Wehrer
Mime Troupe ‘Tells It How It Is’ In blackface

Unwind and uncomplicate. Let go, on Oct. 7 the Mime Troupe did. They touched on all the touchy issues. They gave us a quick look at ourselves, black and white.

The exaggerated makeup, the powder blue satin tails, the bentwood chairs were all an integral part of mime in the classic tradition, satirizing the minstrel show and putting us all down.

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Edward Rom
Pickets Greet What’s-His-Name at Cobo Hall Dinner

On Thursday, October 6, two people could have gone to Cobo Hall and for one hundred dollars had a dinner and heard Vice-president Humphrey give a speech. If the political viewpoint of the two people was slightly skewed to the right they could have gone down the hall to the “Romney-Griffin Bandwagon Ball” for only one hundred and twenty-five dollars. The difference in price was because the Romney people had to pay the band.

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Gary Grimshaw
Detroit Freaks Out With First Participatory Zoo Dance

The psychedelic dance concert, long an institution among San Francisco hippies, came to Detroit Friday and Saturday nights. Oct. 7th and 8th, at the Grande Ballroom, Grand River one block south of Joy Road. Judging from the enthusiasm of the crowd who made it, the venture was a success. It looks like this new form of entertainment is here to stay.

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Paul Lowinger, M.D.
LSD...A Capsule Report

A drug is known by the controversies that it raises as a person is known by the enemies he makes. The first argument around LSD was the kind of mental abnormality that it produced in research subjects. Some scientists contended the loss of contact with reality resembled schizophrenia while others said that it was comparable to a toxic mental condition such as may be seen with a high fever in a physical illness. The LSD psychosis was eventually conceded by most to be different from schizophrenia. It remains of scientific importance to study the changes associated with LSD but it cannot serve as a model for schizophrenia. It was hoped that drugs which cut short or prevented the LSD state of mental distress would be effective against schizophrenia. This was only partly true. Wishful thinking, attempts to find a short-cut to fame, poor observation and a lack of training in scientific method were responsible for the early conclusions that the LSD psychosis was like the schizophrenic illness and similar factors have led some workers to conclude that the medical use of LSD is a cure for illnesses ranging from neurosis to drug addiction.

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Fifth Estate Collective
On Getting The Fifth Estate

Due to the incompetence of the Post Office bureaucracy the subscribers did not receive their FIFTH ESTATES until a week after they were mailed. This is a double drag since our office staff really busted their asses trying to see that the mailing got to the subscribers before the papers hit the streets. Well, have faith, God and the old P.O. willing you should have this in your paid subscriber’s hands the day after we get it back from the printers.

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Frank H. Joyce
Campaign ’66

“The free election of masters eliminates neither the masters nor the slaves.”

—Herbert Marcuse

American politics, as has been noted here before, is the politics of non-alternatives and pseudo-choices. If we needed any evidence, the present election provides it. Search and fantasize as we might there simply are not any radical possibilities. Consider the following:

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Marlene Tyre
‘Inhuman Treament’ Charged by Families of Fort Hood Three

Last month the Fort Hood Three were convicted and sentenced to prison terms of three years for Mora; and five years for Samas and Johnson. The Fort Hood Three, to perhaps refresh a few memories, are Pvt. Dennis Mora, Pvt. David Samas and PFC James Johnson—the three U. S. soldiers who refused to serve in Viet4 nam believing that the war is “immoral, unjust and illegal.”

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Emil Bacilla
Film

Maybe film was only playing possum. It sure looked dead, though... Nothing was happening. The few people I had managed to find that were interested in film were leaving town. Most of the good theaters were closing. There was obviously no hope. Then I wrote a couple columns for The Fifth Estate and BHANG, the floodgates opened. Things started happening. So many things that I can’t really cover them in depth, because of a lack of space and information; I just haven’t had time to learn all that I want to learn about them. All I can do is mention them and promise to elaborate sometime in the future.

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Various Authors
Letters to the Editor

To the Editor:

Please send one year’s subscription of this thing you call “The Fifth Estate’ to me. It gets pretty cold out here in the wintertime and I gotta have something to burn in my fireplace. Ever tried to heat a 3 room house with a flaming draft card?

Oh, Yea! One other thing. Please try to keep your columnist out of jail (i.e. John Sinclair). Now that I got MONEY invested in your organization (and I use the term very loosely), I would like to see it go somewhere. And I don’t mean prison.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Masthead

The Fifth Estate

923 Plum Street

Detroit, Michigan 48201

962–9336

EDITOR AND PUBLISHER

Harvey Ovshinsky

NEWS EDITOR

Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASST.

Cathy West

ART EDITOR

Gary Grimshaw

PHOTOGRAPHY

Lena Sinclair

CARTOONIST

Rob Derminer

The Fifth Estate is a member of the Underground Press Syndicate (UPS).

Frank Kofsky
The Jazz Scene in America

The men who play the new styles in jazz frequently tell me that they don’t like to call their music that—they see nothing desirable in having their art identified with the gin mills, criminal activities, hustling, and ruthless entrepreneurship and exploitation that characterize the jazz scene today. (Or for that matter, yesterday. Haven’t black artists always been forced to create in these circumstances?)

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Fifth Estate Collective
The Fifth Estate Underground Bookstore

Underground newspapers, books & magazines & records & posters

buttons & bumperstickers

all kinds of things you need

ESP RECORDS!! The FUGS Broadside album — the FUGS second album — Timothy Leary Speaks on LSD Albert Ayler Spirits Rejoice! New York Ear & Eye Control

Patty Waters Sings!

Marion Brown Quartet!

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Fifth Estate Collective
Viet Committee Plans Nov. 5–8 Protests as Rocks Fly Smash! Crash! Tinkle!

[two_third padding=“0 20px 0 0”]Another window gone at the office of the Detroit Committee to End the War in Vietnam.

RING — RING!

“Hello--Detroit Committee to End the War in Vietnam.”

“You Commie son of a bitch! If you have any more marches, you’re all going to wind up dead!”

Click!

And so it goes at the local office of one of the groups trying to bring about an end to the war in Vietnam. Committee members say this type of harassment increases when the organization is particularly active. Since last week the Committee announced in the FIFTH ESTATE its plans to hold a four — day long series of protests against the war, they are now bracing themselves for the inevitable bricks and phone calls.

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Peter Werbe
Napalm Photos Spark Vietnam Dialogue

No matter what his choice of words, every newspaper editor is aware that he is bound to offend someone. The arrest and trial of Peter Zenger two hundred years ago and the bombing of the office of the WORKER in New York 4 weeks ago bear witness to this. The FIFTH ESTATE has not made everyone happy, nor would this be realistically possible. Some kind of people we displease send us threatening letters and make anonymous phone calls. Even our friends have had bitter words for us at times, as evidenced by our Letters to the Editor column, but this is to be expected and is a welcome indication that we are being read and thought about.

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John Sinclair
The Coatpuller

Detroit is full of openings! Last weekend: Uncle Russ’s Gran-de Ballroom broke into the open with the MC5 and the High Society’s light show, both of which were just as they have to be—TOO MUCH. (William Blake: “Enough! or Too Much.” Charles Olson: “We must have / what we want.”) We are getting it. The Gran-de will be the place again this weekend, and hopefully for a lot more weekends, with the pounding MC5 and the great new band from Lansing, the Woolies, who just recorded their first sides on the West Coast last month with one of the heaviest guitar players anywhere, Ron English, featured. The High Society will be there too.

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John Sinclair
Who’s Afraid of Black Power? Stokely in Detroit

1-o-fe-16-1-cover-203x300.jpg

The poster announced a mass rally at Rev. Cleage’s Central United Church of Christ, where the “friends of Snick” present STOKELY C. CARMICHAEL, Chairman, Student Nonviolent Co-ordinating Committee.

The spelling is different now though—“Snick” (picked up from TIME magazine’s bastardization & turned back on H. Luce) brings to the ear the sound of a knife clicking open, a guillotine swipe at a fat red neck & the head plopping softly into a basket full of identical heads, a nice fitting name indeed. In/deed.

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Fifth Estate Collective
A Batalha fundraiser

Three collectives belonging to the history of Portuguese anarchism, Zentro de Cultura Libertaria, BOESG (library) and A Batalha (newspaper), have purchased an Anarchist Center in the Lisbon region: a common space, open to old and new collectives, that will rid them of the pressure brought about by gentrification and real estate. The new Center will also host the archives and libraries of the three collectives. They are asking for contributions of solidarity.

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William Rudolph
Flies Swarming poetry

In this cafeteria flies swarm the recruiter’s cropped hair.

“One thing I hate—” he spits out—“flies!”

His dominant hand swipes the air. Pure reflex.

.

In this same room girls carry plastic babies, lifeless until

internal mechanisms inspire crying when

they haven’t been fed, haven’t slept, are jarred in some way.

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SF
Isabelle Walks With Angels

a review of

Isabelle Walks With Angels: A Montreal Urban legend by Norman Nawrocki, Illustrated by Ivan R. Les Pages Noires, 2023

Norman Nawrocki’s novella is a beautifully illustrated story, allegory, or fable about a woman who had a home, but lost it. All her adult life there have been abusive men: lovers, landlords bosses, restaurant clients. She loses what little she has and is now living on the street, defending herself from predators the best she can. All the avenues have been closed, there’s only one left...jumping into the freezing waters of the Saint-Laurence Seaway from a high bridge.

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Various Authors
Letters

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

DON’T VOTE

In order to engage in electoral politics by claiming it as harm reduction, you have to ignore the fact that each new law creates new criminals, and that the state has always sought to isolate and punish criminals. Aside from whatever fantasy of minimizing damage Kathy Ferguson proffers in her article, “Anarchism & the Vote,” in FE #413, Spring, 2023, that’s an objective harm to individuals and even entire classes of people.

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Meghan Krausch
Why Identity Politics Has Proven So Useful to Elites & What to do about it

a review of

Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else) by Olúfemi Táíwò. Haymarket Books, 2022

Although most readers may not think of ourselves as elites, one of the great gifts of the Black feminists who developed the concept of identity politics was to demonstrate how status and power are relative, and move simultaneously in different directions across multiple aspects of a person’s identity.

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Eric Laursen
Encapsulating Anarchism A practical guide to answering, “What is anarchism?”

a review of

Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction by Alex Prichard. Oxford University Press, 2023

Anarchists have been devising short guides for the anarcho-curious practically since anarchism existed as a coherent ideological thread. They date back at least to Kropotkin’s contribution to the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1911) and including Alexander Berkman’s ABC of Communist Anarchism (1929), Colin Ward’s Anarchy in Action (1973), and Cindy Milstein’s Anarchism and its Aspirations (2010).

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David Annarelli
Sean Swain says, “Abolish Ohio” Anarchist Political Prisoner

a review of

Ohio by Sean Swain. Ardent Books

Ohio is the story of Sean Swain, a man wrongfully convicted and turned into an anarchist political prisoner in the state that bears the title of the book’s name.

He has been in prison in Ohio since 1991 on a murder charge, the self-defense killing of an abusive ex- of his then-girlfriend who had broken into his house and threatened his life.

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A.W. Tymowski
The Fifth Estate Essays of Peter Werbe A perhaps not so tasty solution to the world’s problems

a review of

Eat the Rich & Other Interesting Ideas: Selected Essays by Peter Werbe. Black & Red-Detroit, 2023

“To live outside the law, you must be honest.” B. Dylan, “Absolutely Sweet Marie”

Eat the Rich, a compilation of Peter Werbe’s journalism from the Fifth Estate, demonstrates in formidable detail how he has been getting our attention for the last five decades.

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Abigail Susik
Black Mask & Up Against the Wall, MF! Are 1960s radical groups now just artifacts for study?

a review of

Up Against the Real: Black Mask from Art to Action by Nadja Millner-Larsen. The University of Chicago Press, 2023

When I met Ben Morea some years ago, I assumed that our correspondence would further my historical research on the interrelation between experimental and ultra-leftist radicalism in the United States in the 1960s and ‘70s.

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Josefine Parker
Create Community Be present

a review of

On Community: Field Notes #8 by Casey Plett. Biblioasis, 2023

Casey Plett’s new book, On Community, weaves a nexus of themes and concepts, including compassion, needs, the pleasure of sharing coffee, the mutual support queers and transsexuals provide, the power of the group, and an ongoing space of encounter.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Dispatches from behind bars Political prisoners speak out

A new book of oral histories edited by political prisoner Eric King and abolitionist Josh Davidson is now available for preorder through AK Press and Burning Books. Rattling the Cages: Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners with a foreword by Angela Davis and an introduction by Sara Falconer is a fundraiser for, and a way to raise awareness of those imprisoned for politically motivated actions.

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Resa Jannett
Events Calendar

in Cooperation with Detroit Adventure

THURS MARCH 19

POWER TO THE PEOPLE and other assorted revolutionary politics will be discussed by the citizens of the Woodstock Nation sponsored by the Free University and conducted by the White Panther Party. All persons, hippies, yippies, Commies and other facsimilies thereof are welcome. 8 p.m., 4867 John C. Lodge at Warren.

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Fifth Estate Collective
FBI Hunts Pun

“The beauty parlor’s filled with sailors, the circus is in town.”

—Dylan

Bill Rowe, alias Desolation Rowe, radical accountant and financial wizard for the Fifth Estate, Argus, numerous rock groups and conspiracies far too numerous to mention here, was raided in his plush Northwest Detroit apartment, March 6th.

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Eugene Schoenfeld M.D.
HipPocrates

1-m-fe-81-6-eugene-schoenfeld-1969-243x300.jpg
Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

Antoinette Dishman was a 17 year old Barnard College freshman who died January 31st of a heroin overdose. She had sniffed heroin at a party and was found dead the next morning. Hers wasn’t an exceptional case. Heroin overdoses killed more than 200 teenagers in New York City alone last year. The drug is made even more dangerous when used in combination with alcohol or barbiturates.

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Various Authors
Letters

To The Editors:

This letter is in reply to the article by Tom Haroldson entitled, “Vote No On Survival” which appeared in FE #99, February 19 — March 4.

Mr. Haroldson makes some very good points in regards to Nixon’s bullshit maneuvers regarding the ecology issue, and also by pointing out that the “...ecology movement is endorsed by the very people who make the movement necessary.”

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Liberation News Service
Students Trash SUNY

BUFFALO, New York (LNS) Students at the State University of New York at Buffalo pulled off a series; of actions for nearly a week in support of black athletes’ demands and to get police off campus in late February. They fought with police, attacked ‘political targets on campus and finally shut the place down on March 2.

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Larry Kaplan
Thee Column

A high school diploma. Whether it’s meaningful or not is your own trip, but I think you’ll have to agree that it’s often an essential ingredient in getting a job or going to college in this bizarre country we inhabit.

If you’re a dropout and have been putting aside the idea of going back because of the hassles involved then read on brothers and sisters, it’s a whole lot easier than you’d think.

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John Thackary
Carmen Retold

a review of

“Carmen” (2022) Dir: Benjamin Millepied

Benjamin Millepied’s retelling of the classic opera “Carmen” feels like the kind of movie that you need some time to process...and then some more after that...and then even more later on. It’s hard for someone to make up their mind about a film and safely tuck it away, never to be examined again, when the density of the film in question insists on coming back to haunt the viewer.

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Andrew/Sunfrog (Andy “Sunfrog” Smith)
When Students Took On the Government

A review of

SDS: Students For A Democratic Society: 50th Anniversary Edition by Kirkpatrick Sale. Autonomedia, 2023

The 50th anniversary edition of Kirkpatrick Sale’s history of SDS, the 1960s radical student organization, is more than a time-capsule. It is a breathing, encyclopedic compendium of hope and outrage, a chronicle of chaos and courage. The book connects contemporary readers with a radical lineage filled with inspiring stories of the contagious movement among rebellious youth during that tumultuous decade.

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Eldridge Cleaver
Cleaver On Seale

The following appeared in the March 15 issue of the Black Panther, official organ of the Black Panther Party.

CONCERNING: The pre-planned political murder of Bobby Seale, Chairman of the Black Panther Party, in the electric chair in the state of Connecticut.

The Primary Task of the American Revolution, at this point in our history, is to defeat the Number One maneuver of the fascist power structure, which is to make an example of Bobby Seale by putting him to death in the Electric Chair in the state of Connecticut.

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Burning River Oracle
Earth People’s Park Yankee Go Home

Note: The Hog Farm is an apolitical commune which has set up shop in New Mexico. A few innovators who had been involved in People’s Park and Woodstock got together with the Hog Farm and kindred spirits and have recently come up with a groovy idea—why not stake out an “Earth People’s Park” in some vast wilderness territory, move in about 20,000 of the beautiful people, and live together in love and harmony, taking good care of each other and the natural environment. The Earth People’s Park developers are trying to collect $1 million to buy about 100,000 acres in New Mexico on which to settle their 20,000 people. Twenty thousand who are not Mexican, not Spanish-speaking, not Indian. Ecology-minded people really dig the idea. Those who can’t stand the rat-race of city life, those who feel they’ve struggled long enough and want to drop out, those who feel they could somehow build a better life away from the repression of the cities, groove on the idea. The Governor of New Mexico, reassured that the Earth People plan to “obey all the laws of the state,” grooves on the idea. The Chicano and Latino and Indian people of New Mexico don’t groove on the idea at all. The following article is from El Grito del Norte, the Chicano paper that comes out of Espanola, N.M. It explains the position of the people who already live on the land that the Earth People want to buy. Earth People’s Park has a mailing address at 1230 Grant Ave., Box 313, San Francisco, Calif 94113, where they expect to receive donations. People might want to write to them to tell them what they think of the idea of setting up their “liberated zone” in an area already brutally “liberated” from its original inhabitants. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ The basic message is: PLEASE DON’T COME! At least not now. Stop and think about a few things that you may not have heard about or thought about. Think about the fact that, much as you reject your middle class Anglo society and its values, you are still seen here as gringos. Anglos. Think about the 120-year old struggle by Chicanos and the even older struggle by Indians to get back millions of acres of land stolen from them by Anglo ranchers with their Anglo lawyer buddies. Think about what it means for a new influx of Anglos—no matter how different their purpose from those others—to come in and buy up land that the local people feel to be theirs and cannot afford to buy themselves. Think about the fact that a real estate agent in Taos reports having sold almost $500,000 worth of land to longhairs. Think, on the other hand, about how people have sometimes reacted to hippies who get welfare payments and food stamps. Even though this takes nothing away from poor Raza people, they have felt resentment. It seems like a false identification, when the hippies involved can get money from home or a decent job if necessary. Think about the water problem. Longhairs usually come from the big city, not knowing that water is precious and often hard to get. They see a stream and wash their feet or dishes in it. Hey! That’s our drinking water. We are used to being abused, ignored, scorned—but that’s too much. Think about not only the land and water, but also the culture. Longhairs come, often deliberately unwashed and ungroomed in their rebellion against a sterile, hypocritical middle-class society. They don’t see that, for the Spanish-speaking people, cleanliness is a weapon of cultural self-defense against the oppressor. It is not a symbol of hypocrisy but part of the little pride and self-respect left to them, preciously guarded. So is conventional morality: the tight-knit family is everywhere a source of strength and unity against a hostile environment. Longhair values might sometimes be better—but they cannot be imposed. Especially when you are not joining the struggle of the people against the oppression which is the source of many Raza values. Think about the educational advantages that you often have—whether you wanted to have them or not. You can come here and start a little business, and you will often succeed where Raza people fail (or would not even try). “Son muy vivo.” Raza people say—the hippies are very bright. It is often true, it is not your “fault,” but it is important to remember how many millions of times the Anglo’s education and technology helped to make him a successful oppressor. If you say, “I’ve come to learn from the people,” excuse us if we sometimes remember: that’s what the Anglos said when they came to Sierra Nevada, learned from us how to mine—and then drove us out, even murdered us. Think about yourself, and just how clear you are about rejecting your own society’s values. Recent events here have shown that, when things get heavy, the longhairs sometimes act very much like the society they have fled. When a hippie woman in Taos was raped by a Chicano youth (because the Chicanos don’t understand free women and because they have been taught not to see hippies as human beings) the longhaired men called the cops—THE COPS! In another case, the longhair went out and shot the Chicano dead for supposedly raping “his” woman. And he got off, with a hung jury. Think about this: the longhair has opted out. Most of the Chicanos and Indians have no option—except revolution. People here cannot flee to islands of peace in their nation of horrors, this is their nation. It cannot be said too often that there is a long, hard political and economic struggle in these beautiful mountains, a struggle for land and justice. That struggle calls for fighters and supporters, not refugees with their own set of problems. You may see the scenery as relief from an oppressive America. We see a battleground against oppression. You (rightly) condemn your own society, your own culture strongly, but why not go where it is, and change it? And if your answer to that is “I can’t” or “I won’t” then think about what this answer implies—and whether you are then a person needed by people here, who can be useful here. Now, finally, please think about this: if you must come, wait a while. Wait until things cool off for longhairs, wait until the speed freaks have hopefully left, wait until the longhairs who are already here can develop a better climate—if they can. While you wait, READ and LEARN about this part of the country. Read what has been done to the people here by the white man; find out why they see Kit Carson and those other frontier types as murderers—not heroes; find out what the U.S. Forest Service and Smokey the Bear represent here. Don’t just put on long skirts and beads, and think you understand “the Indians;” too many rich tourist ladies do that too: Learn Spanish, learn about the every day culture, hang around some poor Spanish-speaking families. Learn about the tradition of courtesy, and why you must not presume on it. Learn some humility; look in yourself for unconscious arrogance and selfishness. Ask yourself, what do I know? Do you know how many Mexican-Americans there are in this country? Do you know that, in terms of education and jobs, they are worse off even than the blacks? Can you imagine what it is to speak one language as a child and then suddenly be dumped into a classroom where another is enforced on you—and fall behind in class, then be told you are stupid? Can you see the difference between being poor and being without money? Can you go to a demonstration by poor people and let them run it their way, and not impose your style as did some longhairs in Santa Fe recently? Can you show respect for another people’s culture and not be disrespectful simply because that’s the way you feel toward your own culture. Can you in other words, do some hard thinking? If you think, you won’t come. Not now. And when you come, come as a revolutionary.

Robin Morgan
Goodbye to All That “...wild hair flying, wild eyes staring, wild voices...”

from The Rat/UPS — Let’s run it on down. White males are most responsible for the destruction of human life and environment on the planet today. Yet who is controlling the supposed revolution to change all that? White males (yes, yes, even with their pasty fingers back in black and brown pies again). It just could make one a bit uneasy. It seems obvious that a legitimate revolution must be led by, MADE by those who have been most oppressed: black, brown, and white WOMEN with men relating to that the best they can. A genuine Left doesn’t consider anyone’s suffering irrelevant or titillating; nor does it function as a microcosm of capitalist economy, with men competing for power and status at the top, and women doing all the work at the bottom (and functioning as objectified prizes or “coin” as well). Goodbye to all that.

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Detroit White Panther Party
The History of President Pig

Remember what happened when you came home from the Chicago Democratic Convention in 1968? Things started blowing up around here—things like police stations, draft-boards and recruiting stations—even the war-crimes building at U-M and the Ann Arbor CIA office.

A dude named David Valler was coming on the set in a big way around that time. Called himself “President Dave” and meant it. He was so far out on his ego trip he was appointing his future “cabinet” from off the street. One street brother was tapped for “Postmaster-General” because he delivered mail.

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Dave Riddle
Down in the Mines Film review

Eldridge Cleaver has a rap about how immigration screwed up the unity of the American working class. How the English immigrants came and kicked the Indians off the land and then had to import black people to do the work, so that the Indians and blacks were always at the bottom of the heap. And then how later the Germans, French, Polish, Italians and Irish made the scene, each group starting at the bottom of the white job market and clawing its way up, only when the next immigrant group arrived and was forced into the shittiest jobs.

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Fifth Estate Collective
First Amendment Rights!

Over the past year, 58 GI antiwar newspapers published by and for GIs have sprung up on bases around the country and overseas—substantially augmenting the quality of news and analysis for GIs who previously had access only to such military publications as Stars and Stripes—the official mouthpiece of the brass and lifers.

...

Fifth Estate Collective
GI Caucus

A caucus of anti-war GIs meeting at the Feb. 15 Student Mobilization Committee conference in Cleveland decided to call for a national anti-war GI meeting. GIs at the conference represented bases from Alaska to Texas, and from Ft. Dix, N.J. to Ft. Lewis, Wash.

Some of the thinking behind the call for the GI conference was indicated by Tim Karney of Ft. Bliss GIs for Peace:

...

Fifth Estate Collective
Just Motor City News

VOTE DRUM

The League of Revolutionary Black Workers has been participating in elections of UAW locals and found itself confronted with vote fraud when it was clear the union bureaucrats could win in no other way.

At the Chrysler Eldon Avenue gear and axel plant four white company hacks won a recent election although the plant employees are 85% black, as is the local president, who won last year with League support. League leaders attribute the loss to the fact that the ballot box was locked in a police station overnight for “safekeeping” while waiting to be counted the next morning. The group plans to contest the election.

...

David Gaynes
Letter to the 13th Precinct Everywhere

At first he just wanted us to pull our car over to the curb.

Deciding to milk the scene for all it was worth, he changed his mind—“Just get out of the car right here—hands up! Put your mother-fuckin’ hands on the roof and don’t MOVE!!”

His partner jumped out of the wagon and walked down the road a few feet to talk to one of the undercover state troopers that had been harassing the entire neighborhood for a month and who had undoubtedly set us up for the bust that morning.

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Fifth Estate Collective
News Shorts

FUZZY PIG

BOSTON—Fuzzy the pig is going to be alright. Fuzzy is, fittingly, the mascot of the National Patrolman’s Association, and underwent a weekend operation for an intestinal disorder at the Angell Memorial Animal Hospital last week.

Richard MacEachner, president of the association, said the patrolmen picked a pig for a mascot because, “We believe pigs are beautiful. We’d rather associate with Fuzzy than some of the degenerates who run around referring to policemen as pigs.”

...

Joshua Newton
Poem by Joshua Newton

Yesterday we were in your station.

it was not what we had in mind,

that morning—to be pulled over at gunpoint

& shoved upagainstthecar / motherfucker.

surrounded

by five or six cars

with pigs jumping

out of each pigcar

like clowns at the circus do &

their cars too were gaudy with

ads from their sponsors

...

Fifth Estate Collective
Set Our Brother Free Now

FT. LEWIS, Wash., Feb. 28 — 300 people rallied to the defense of Pvt. Bruce McLean, an American Servicemen’s Union (ASU) member who was shanghaied to Vietnam Feb. 19. The rally was held at American Park, just off Ft. Lewis.

Speakers at the rally were Denny Leonard and Stan Hoffman both members of the Ft. Lewis local of the ASU. They called for the military to immediately return Pvt. McLean from Vietnam, where he was taken illegally. The rally was organized by Seattle Liberation Front and ASU Shelter-Half.

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