Most Recent Additions

“One and a half, two and a half, three and a half, four. You can’t control our bodies anymore!”

“Free our bodies—Free ourselves!” “Hey, Male Chauvinists, you better start shakin’. Today’s Pig is tomorrow’s Bacon!” “Sisterhood is powerful! Sisters Unite!”

Over 2,000 people, mostly women, marched and chanted from Durant Park to the state capitol in Lansing on Saturday, March 13, to demand a change in the state’s abortion laws. Spirits were high and it was clear that for most women there the march was as much a demonstration for women’s liberation as it was for a specific change in the law.

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Monday, March 8 was International Women’s Day. Women around the city organized and participated in activities to celebrate that event.

On the previous Saturday women from Youth Against War and Fascism had a literature table at the Lincoln Park Sears industries...

Available from Wayne State Women’s Liberation: the first issue of their magazine Moving Out. Also, a chapbook—a collection of stories, poems, graphics called Free Women: call 577–3409 for info....

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The Detroit Board of Education recently found itself in the midst of one of its perennial battles for money and power. At stake this time around are the board’s power and the people’s education. The students and their parents are being used as pawns in a game with the state.

Troubles began when the board suddenly discovered that it was broke and had to make some budget cuts. It first planned to lay off 258 non-contract teachers but finally laid off only 192. The cutbacks infuriated students, parents and teachers. The Detroit Board of Education found itself in the middle of a school crisis larger than a mere budget deficit.

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STAFF COLLECTIVE: Millard Berry, Barbara Carson, Cindy Felong, Bob Hippler, David Riddle, Bill Rowe, Len Schafer, Marilyn Werbe, Peter Werbe, Cathy West,

FRIENDS & COMRADES: Keep On Truckin’ Co-op (KOTC), Resa Jannett, Julie Medvecky, Nick Medvecky, Sanjuro Streetfighter, Tramp, Bruce Montrose, Frank Joyce

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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), prompted by a 58-year-old commissioner who is a former FBI agent, issued a policy statement on March 6 warning radio stations against broadcasting song lyrics “tending to promote or glorify the use of illegal drugs.”

The dictum—based on an unspecified number of complaints the FCC said it has received about several songs—has angered and bewildered Detroit area FM and AM rock stations.

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Aaron Mitchell was an American black man who killed a cop. In retribution the state of California asphyxiated Mitchell with cyanide poison gas fumes in San Quentin prison on April 12.

California’s first execution in four years took just 30 seconds after Mitchell’s limp body was dragged by guards into the green death chamber and strapped to the same chair in which Caryl Chessman died seven years before. The execution was witnessed by 58 persons, while over 350 members of Californians Against State Execution picketed outside.

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EDITORS: Harvey Ovshinsky, Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT: Cathy West

NEWS EDITOR: Frank Joyce

ART: Gary Grimshaw

MUSIC & LITERARY EDITOR: John Sinclair

CALENDAR: Rhona Whipple

FILM EDITORS: Joe Fineman, Shirley Hamburg

ADVERTISING: Leon Brenner

CIRCULATION: Wilson Lindsey

TRAVEL EDITOR: Sheil Salasnek

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a review of

Johnny Got His Gun: A novel by Dalton Trumbo. York: Bantam Books, Inc., 150 pp.

Let’s make America nauseous!!!

In 1939 Dalton Trumbo published a novel calculated at times to send the reader scurrying to the commode to brace his arms against the bowl and retch.

The book is Johnny Got His Gun. It was released in paperback last month by Bantam Books.

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Web Archive note: John Wilcock’s usual column heading is “Other Scenes”.

Every time somebody steals a masterpiece from a museum or fakes a Renoir or mutilates a Rubens the cause of art is served. Because we are reminded that art, like us, is mortal.

But the screams that arise from the culture vultures remind us of something else, too; that art today has less of an aesthetic value than an economic one.

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Nancy Sinatra is Wall Street’s answer to the hippie. She’s a facially beautiful broad that plays the almost fetish sex role to shake up her record sales and overall public appeal; and yet she never seems to really overdo it.

She borders on the absurd in her prolific poses, yet she doesn’t really try as hard as she could to ‘sell’ herself. You know, that Mansfield coax that is so exaggerated it’s comical. But that’s because Papa’s got coin. It’s because of this that she can skyrocket to the top of almost any music survey any time she’s in a mood to bellow out.

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When “The Best of Second City” comes to Detroit, May 8, feature sketches will include those originally written and performed by Second City alumni: Alan Arkin, Barbara Harris, and Joel Grey.

The troupe, which specialized in satirical and topical humor, is being brought to Detroit by the Grosse Pointe Unitarian Church. The performance will be held at the Detroit Institute of Arts Auditorium, 5200 Woodward on May 8, and will begin at 8:30 p.m.

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During the last few months an increasing number of FIFTH ESTATE subscribers have complained to us that they receive their mailed issues either very late or not at all. Others complain that they receive their copy in a mutilated condition.

This is particularly disturbing since our office staff makes every effort to get the paper out to subscribers as soon as we get it back from our printer. We publish a paper for people to read not to lay in a back room of the post office.

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A possible pleasant alternative to the traditional “tweedle-dum—tweedle-dee” characters bound to run from the two major political parties in 1968 is a combo of Rev. Martin Luther King for President and Dr. Benjamin Spock for Veep on a 3^rd party “peace” ticket.

It would be interesting to know how some of our “radical” Young Democrats would react to this slate.

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Doc Greene is confused. So are 170 million other white Americans, including Hubert Humphrey and Roy Wilkins.

It all started when they were born white in a society which told them all their lives that they were better because they were whiter. And which then organized itself to make it come true.

In a column he writes regularly for a newspaper which calls itself The Detroit News, Doc Greene spoke for most Americans when he condemned Dr. Martin Luther King for finally coming out against the war in Vietnam.

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Thronging pulsing Central Park thousands strong—some in trees viewing the love-in—march. Begin in Sheep Meadow near the vendor of fat crunchy pretzels. Twenty cents and that’s a pretzel. It fills you up after 3 salami sandwiches, an orange and lots of turnpike coffee.

Not a baby crying here. Babies and kids love marches and turn on to parades. They help the love thing along. The daffodils helped and so too, the painted faces. A huge yellow submarine in paper mache. A suit, a tie and flowers in the hair. An army jacket, a robe and flower-wreathed halo. Flower power, flower power, Psychedelic bells and Viet Cong flags ring and wave. Sing and beat. Drum beating militants and prayerful Quakers are one. A baby on his mother’s back; a child hiding under a skirt and only the sneakers and dungarees to show on the warm ground.

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Joseph Strick’s film adaptation of Ulysses is rather like a high-minded comic-strip version of Stephen Hero or Dubliners.

On the few occasions when a bit of genuine Joycean complexity is allowed to survive in the midst of all that jolly, naturalistic Irishry, it strikes one as self-conscious and out of place. To make the film less expensive to produce, it has been updated, so that all the Celtic Twilight and Irish revolutionism had to be dropped, and much that is left (like the references to England being taken over by a Jew) is out of keeping.

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A benefit for the Be-In was one of the most beautiful events I’ve ever participated in in my life. The Grande was just full of loving people all dancing together in circles, under the strobe, individually, or in all kinds of freaky numbers, showing that in the end when someone asked how many people came it was obvious that everyone was one. The Family Medicine Chest, Billy C and the Sunshine and the Back and Back Boo Funny Music Band supplied sounds that I couldn’t believe. Energy just pulsating all over, people hanging on to each other, falling together, laughing, screaming, what can I say. It was just beautiful.

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A national meeting of anti-war student groups will take place May 13–14 in Chicago to evaluate the results of the Spring Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam that brought 500,000 demonstrators to New York and San Francisco.

The meeting was called by the Student Mobilization Committee, which is a broad coalition of student groups that participated in the April 15 action. Interested students or organizations can get further information on the conference by writing the Committee at 1101 W. Warren, Chicago 60612. Housing for the conference will be provided.

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An incident involving a Wayne State student and the University’s Security Police touched off a controversy when the student, MacArthur Binion, described his treatment as “outrageous.”

On April 6 Binion was approached, in the Wayne library, by a uniformed Security officer who demanded identification from him. Binion said he refused to do so since the officer gave no reason for his request. The officer attempted to forcibly remove Binion from the building, but the student pulled away and went to a reading area and began studying.

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Ed. Note: Wilbert McClendon is one of the most talented and important “grassroots” leaders in Detroit’s Negro community. He is a past Chairman of the Adult Community Movement for Equality (ACME).

We print, with pleasure, his comments on the student peace movement and invite readers to comment.

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Up to one hundred young people from South Oakland County have spent three nights of the week of April 17 at the Elias Brothers’ drive-in, at Woodward and Normandy in Royal Oak, informing their elders that they are tired of being pushed around.

The drive-in has recently blockaded their parking lot to make it impossible for cars to cruise through, and soon plans to add a fifty cent cover or minimum charge. As one picket put it, “They have forgotten that we are the attraction here, not the lousy food or the lousy service or their SS guards. If the kids aren’t here, they have nothing to sell.”

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Paul Krassner, editor of the Realist and Society Editor of Ramparts magazine, will speak on Friday, May 12 at Wayne State University.

Krassner describes himself as the “court jester of the new left.” His talks usually range from soft core humor to hard core reality. His latest Realist features excerpts from the Manchester book on Kennedy, relating how, during the flight from Dallas, Johnson humped the wound in Kennedy’s neck.

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THE FIFTH ESTATE and Translove Energies will sponsor a day-long Mid-West Underground Press Conference in Detroit on Saturday, May 20.

The purpose of the conference is to bring together the already established underground papers and discuss each paper’s techniques and experiences. Hopefully the conference will be the impetus for underground papers to begin in other cities, primarily Cleveland, Windsor, Ann Arbor, and Toledo.

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April 28 marked the opening of a new theatre in Detroit. The Tropic Theatre in the Wolverine Hotel began its first season with Harold Pinter’s “The Lover,” directed by John Kinney, and on the same bill, “The Man Upstairs” directed by Edith Carrol Canter.

The new theatre, located at 55 East Elizabeth was organized by three Detroit theatre veterans, John Kinney, Robert Heiple and Robert Jones. Kinney and Heiple have performed at the Un-Stabled and other Detroit theatres. Both are in the art supply business in Royal Oak and Jones is an assistant professor of Philosophy at Wayne State and has appeared with the Irish Hills Playhouse and Greenfield Village players.

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On Saturday, April 15 between 400,000 and 500,000 people marched in New York City and in a single voice demanded the end to mass murder in Vietnam.

The Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam described the demonstration as “the largest of any kind ever held in the history of the U.S. for any reason.” In San Francisco another 40,000 marched the same day.

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Detroit High School students are being sought for a special summer seminar on Racism in America being sponsored by People Against Racism (PAR).

Dubbed “Freedom Schools in White America,” the seminars will attempt to supplement and in some cases counteract the effect of regular school teaching about Negro and white history.

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Green peppers, bananas, peanuts and now STP.

This latest addition to the armamentarium of the underground messiah has become a legend almost before it was made available. Reputed to have been named STP by the Grateful Dead “because it lasts so long” this new drug is capturing the imagination of hippies everywhere.

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People seem not to believe me when I say the Artists’ Workshop needs money to operate, or Trans-Love needs money, or the Sun needs money—but it’s true. I know it shouldn’t be that way, people, but this is America and you don’t even get a place to stay without paying some property-owner for it. Month after month we scuffle and hassle to get enough money to pay the rent ($200), the gas and electric (although not the gas any more, since it’s been shut off), the telephone bill ($75 or so), and hundreds of little bills which mount up every time we move to expand the operation in another direction.

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My brother Greg the prosecuting attorney advises me to chill

He says the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice

I ask did it bend toward justice for the guy who said that

but he hasn’t a clue who I mean

my clue he harvested those words from a bumper sticker

his rosy perspective hogtied into irrelevance by cobwebs

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Where’s my issue?

We’ve heard that question a considerable number of times recently from subscribers, bookstores, and distributors.

No, you haven’t missed an issue. The last one we published was our Summer 2024 edition. The one you are holding is Spring 2025.

This issue marks the beginning of our 60^th year of continuous publication. We used to joke that the Fifth Estate was once a weekly in the early 1970s, but now our goal is a yearly. We met that criterion for 2024. If you are a subscriber, how often can you expect an issue? Subscriptions, which provide the basic finances for continuing publication, are for four issues regardless of when or how often we appear.

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is the might of restraint closing in on me simply

a problem of synaesthesia? of this Autistic mind making life

hellish for its inhabitant—or is this unshakable weight

about statism? apparently the control industry &

gatekeepers well versed in verbal bandages

in therapy speak, conditioning into agony

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a review of

Portraits of Struggle: Photos from 1972–2023 by Orin Langelle. Global Justice Ecology Project 2024

The old newspaper adage that “a picture is worth a thousand words” has mostly been vitiated by Photoshop and AI. Photos have joined words in the realm of suspicion as now any image can be manipulated or even fabricated out of thin air with a few keystrokes.

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a review of

King Mob: The Negation and Transcendence of Art by David and Stuart Wise. Wise Books, 2024

New York City, 1967. Roaming the streets in debate on the merits of the then-peak vogue art movement, Abstract Expressionism, are Ben Morea, part of a local affinity group, Up Against the Wall Motherfucker, and David Wise and Anne Ryder of the English group of cultural subversives known as King Mob.

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FAMOUS FILMS OF FAMOUS DIRECTORS SERIES. VIRIDIANA (1961) (Luis Bunuel) April 15 in Community Arts Aud., WSU at 8:15 Adm. AMORE IN CITTA (Love in the City—1953) (Michelangelo Antonioni) April 22 in Community Arts Aud., WSU at 8:15 Adm. ORDET (The Word-1954) (Carl-Theodor Dreyer) April 29 in Rackham Aud. WSU at 8:15 Adm.

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a review of

Hakim Bey: Real and Unreal by Th. Metzger. Motgus-sanlux, 2023

Hakim Bey: Real and Unreal is the newest entry in a growing genre of literature, books about having met anarchist author and poet Peter Lamborn Wilson/Hakim Bey (1945–2022) and how it changed the author’s life.

There was Michael Muhammad Knight and Jacob Rabinowitz before him. This is halfway to the reading list for a college course on the subject.

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The International Times (IT) will be temporarily out of commission as a result of a monster bust on March 9, during which both IT headquarters and the Indica Bookstore were severely disordered.

The Fifth Estate’s sister underground paper in England had confiscated 10,000 copies of IT and the entire correspondence files.

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The Fugs at Wayne, April 6, were super everything. Jumping, humping, singing, dancing, running, making love on stage in front of, and for everyone at the same time. They led the audience in a chorus of RIVER OF SHIT, sang old hits like SUPER GIRL, and blew my mind with their togetherness and lack of up-tightness.

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a review of

Hell, No, We Didn’t Go! by Eli Greenbaum. University Press of Kansas, 2024

The U.S. invasion of Indochina not only unleashed horrific death and

destruction resulting in the murder of millions of Vietnamese, but also engendered massive domestic opposition. One of the significant flash points was the military draft.

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a review of

Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt by Orisanmi Burton. University of California Press, 2023

When Heather Ann Thompson’s account of the 1971 Attica prison uprising, Blood in the Water, was published in 2016, I was one of the readers who was overjoyed to see that historical turning point brought back to life after decades when it seemed to be slipping from popular consciousness.

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The American Civil Liberties Union has hailed the recent action of a Federal District Court Judge in Denver temporarily barring the U.S. Air Force from ordering into combat service a Captain who objects to serving in the Viet Nam War.

Judge William E. Doyle, on March 29, ordered a temporary restraining order which would temporarily prohibit the Air Force from assigning Capt. Dale Noyd to any combat, combat training or combat support activities until at least April 19. Judge Doyle set that date for a hearing on the preliminary injunction sought by Capt. Noyd.

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Belle Isle at springtime is a world in itself.

Go with some friends and rent tandum bikes (make sure you wear something you don’t mind getting wet), and head down Central towards the Scott Memorial Fountain. The main fountain is a gigantic monstrosity with beautiful turtle statues; further down is a step fountain that’s fun to climb on. All that water ends up in the lagoon that makes a pretty nice foot bath if you can get into it without a guard seeing you.

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Federico Garcia Lorca’s folk tragedy, “Blood Wedding,” opened on Friday, April 14, and will continue for seven performances at Wayne State University’s Bonstelle Theatre.

“Blood Wedding” is a poetic play in the tradition of peasant rituals. On her wedding day, a bride runs off with a man from an enemy clan. The bridegroom hunts them and both men are killed. The bride and the bridegroom’s mother are left face-to-face in a mystery of passion and death.

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Cleveland poet D.A. Levy is in jail. He was arrested March 27 for publishing obscene literature and contributing to the delinquency of minors, which means he was reading poetry to kids under 18. Bail has been set at $1,000. Levy can’t raise it. “Poets in Cleveland make 89 cents a day,” he says, “on good days.”

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Detroit LEMAR will organize and sponsor a May Day Smoke-In to take place in Grand Circus Park on May 1 at 12 noon.

The Smoke-In will be held to demonstrate the strength of those who would have the archaic Michigan and Federal marijuana laws changed and have marijuana made legal for all. Free banana joints and other legal herbs will be passed out, along with pro-marijuana literature explaining the LEMAR position to passers-by.

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After reading an article in the FIFTH ESTATE entitled “Detroit’s Shameless Old Lady, the Eastern Market” [FE #27, April 1–15, 1967], I was a bit pissed off at all the lies.

I was very interested in the ‘old Lady’. last summer, so interested that I worked alongside these ‘black gypsies’ for 2-1/2 months. After reading this article, I feel that these people were terribly underrated.

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From LA Free Press (UPS)

Get 15 pounds of bananas and scrape off the insides of the peels. This will take one person one hour to finish.

Put peeling in pots, add water and boil for two to three hours—until you get a solid paste.

Spread on cookie sheets and dry in oven for about fifteen minutes. Final product is a fine black powder.

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(Washington Independent) On August 5, 1966, Austin Burton was arrested in New York City, where he lives, for “mailing obscene matter in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1463 (1964).”

Bail was set at a modest $200,000. (Contrast this with the $10,000 bond set on Clay Shaw accused by New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison of taking part in a conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy.)

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In about one month Expo 67 will open in Canada on Montreal’s Ile Sainte-Helene. It will last until October 27, with April 28^th as the opening day. One expects 35 million visitors during this half year of “Happenings” on a grand scale. The Montreal Gazette writes that Expo 67’s network of canals will be filled with water from the River St. Lawrence, which will be tinted blue.

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A Man For All Seasons may not be a play for all seasons, but it certainly is a godsend in this particularly impoverished one. A good deal has been written elsewhere about this commendable but somewhat less than considerable play.

In adapting his work for the screen, Robert Bolt once again both idealized and oversimplified Thomas More, who was, at times, both more religiously fanatical and broadly facetious than Bolt’s protagonist. By giving us such a flawless man, Bolt gives us a flawed play and film. From the film, moreover, some of the play’s strongest and wittiest lines have been excised.

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The title of this article suggests an attitude, which has characterized a generation of adolescents, recently departed. It is, as far as I can tell, a lost attitude, upended and overwhelmed in the maelstrom of homogenized eyes and freak-outs.

Considered as a species, I have to refer to them as The Science Hipsters, young people, like myself, who grew up surrounded by the romantic aura of modern science.

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