Most Recent Additions

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

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

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UNCLASSIFIEDS cost 50 cents per line per issue. Figure four words per line. (A word is a word including one and two letter words. A phone number is a word. Street numbers are words. Abbreviations should be sensible. DISCOUNT RATES: Five runs cost 35 cents per line.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Special to the Fifth Estate!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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a review of

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

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

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a review of

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Commissioner Spreen,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Special to the Fifth Estate

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

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

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

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

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a review of

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

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

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

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a review of

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

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

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

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a review of

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

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

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a review of

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

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

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

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

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

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

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a review of

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

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

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

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FT. JACKSON, S.C.—Four GIs are in the stockade as a result of an on-base meeting to discuss the war in Vietnam.

All are leaders of GIs United Against the War in Vietnam and are charged with “inciting to riot,” “disturbing the peace,” and “disrespect to an officer.”

The GI organization has been actively involved in opposing the war and demanding that GIs be allowed the same rights as civilians.

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Black high school students escalated their Spring Offensive March 26 in a city-wide demonstration at the School Center Building, headquarters of the Detroit Board of Education.

The demonstration was sponsored by the Black Student Voice, a black junior and senior high school newsletter dedicated to the complete liberation of black people.

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Fernando Gonzalez was 16 years old.

He won’t be getting any older.

As his name implies, Gonzalez was a Chicano youth from southwest Detroit. And in a wanton display of insane racism, four crazed pigs from the Fort-Green Station of the Detroit Police Department, savagely clubbed the man to death on a Detroit street.

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The revolutionary newspaper conference sponsored by this newspaper and several other publications will be held on only one day: Saturday, April 12. The planners felt that the necessary work could be accomplished in that period.

The conference will cover a complete range of subjects from how to put together any printed newspaper (from mimeo to offset) as well as political perspectives, organizing, financing, legal questions and anything else people want to know.

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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.

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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.

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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

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