Most Recent Additions

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.

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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.

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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

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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,

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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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Wow! I thought, look at all that color! Can it really be the Earth First! Journal? They pulled out all the stops creating this collage of Earth First! art, poetry, history and personal reminiscences of radical eco-warriors over the past 40 years!

It’s been a long while since there’s been an issue of the Journal chronicling the actions and campaigns of what the powers-that-be love to label eco-terrorism, but so many others see simply as a fight to save life on Earth!

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Bread and Puppet Theater’s Elka Schumann died this past August, at the age of 85. She and her partner, Peter Schumann, co-founded the Bread and Puppet Theater, the innovative and radical theater group, in New York City in 1963.

The Bread and Puppet Theater’s use of giant puppets with social justice themes has inspired similar use around the world

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a review of

The Operating System: An Anarchist Theory of the Modern State by Eric Laursen, Foreword by Maia Ramath. AK Press 2021

Politics in the U.S. are so skewed to the right that tepid reformers such as Congressional Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC) and Senator Bernie Sanders are characterized as the radical left for advocating universal health care and free college tuition.

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a review of

The Brickeaters by The Residents. Feral House 2018

In The Brickeaters, the recent novel by surrealist art and music collective The Residents, a freelance reporter—named Frank Blodgett leaves Los Angeles for Clinton, Missouri to investigate the mysterious death of an elderly man, Wilmer Graves, found on the side of a road with an oxygen tank. Compelled by the potential story, Frank tries to obtain information at the local police department and meets the secretary, Patty.

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a review of

Mutual Aid: An Illuminated Factor of Evolution by Peter Kropotkin, Illustrated by N.O. Bonzo, Introduction by David Graeber & Andrej Grubacic, Foreword by Ruth Kinna, Preface by GATS, Afterword by Allan Antliff. PM Press/Kairos 2021

This new edition of anthropological essays by Russian naturalist and anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin’s 1902 Mutual Aid provides us with key insights necessary to prevent our headlong plunge into planetary suicide.

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a review of

In The Time Of Job When Mischa Was a Zippie by Michele Dawn Saint Thomas (check facebook.com/msaintthomas for ordering info)

I didn’t know the Yippies were still around. As it turns out, they are still alive and well in 2021.

For those unfamiliar with the Yippies (formally the Youth International Party), they are a radical group that emerged during the 1960s that was notorious for its wild street theater, revolutionary anti-authoritarian politics, and humorous stunts like running a pig named Pigasus for president in 1968. The Zippie of the title were a Yippie faction.

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a review of

When We Are Human by John Zerzan. Feral House 2021

John Zerzan is a longtime advocate of anarcho-primitivism, the form of anarchism that draws inspiration from hunter-gatherer band society and expands the anarchist evaluation to a more total critique of civilization. Many of his original essays laying out this perspective first appeared in these pages in the 1970s.

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a review of

Fighting for A Hand to Hold: Confronting Medical Colonialism against Indigenous Children in Canada by Samir Shaheen-Hussain, Foreword by Cindy Blackstock, Afterword by Katsi’tsakwas Ellen Gabriel. Mcgill-Queen’s University Press 2020

On May 30, 2021, the land surrounding a former residential school in Canada was found to contain the unidentified remains of over 200 children. Since then, nearly a thousand other children’s graves have been uncovered. A horrified hush fell over those of us willing to accept this reality. Then rage.

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a review of

Red Nation Rising: From Bordertown Violence to Native Liberation by Nick Estes, Melanie K. Yazzie, Jennifer Nez Denetdale, and David Correia. PM Press 2021

“I can’t fucking breathe,” Zachary Bearheels (Rosebud Sioux) said before he died in Omaha, Nebraska, in 2017, where cops tased, then mounted him on the pavement, and punched his head 13 times. Murdered. In a bordertown.

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a review of

The Haymarket Affair, Chicago, 1886: The “Great Anarchist” Riot and Trial by Corrine J. Naden. Moffa Press 1968

On a rainy Tuesday night in May of 1886, a rally in Chicago’s Haymarket Square calling for an eight-hour workday turned suddenly violent when someone threw a bomb into the crowd of 200 policemen sent to break things up. The blast and ensuing gunfire resulted in the deaths of seven police officers and four civilians. News of the incident, known as the Haymarket Bombing, sent shockwaves around the world.

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a review of

Workers’ Inquiry and Global Class Struggle: Strategies, Tactics, Objectives, Robert Ovetz, Editor. Pluto Press 2020

“There’s not a Hand in this town, Sir, man, woman, or child, but has one ultimate object in life. That object is, to be fed on turtle soup and venison with a gold spoon. Now, they’re not a-going—none of ‘em—ever to be fed on turtle soup and venison with a gold spoon.”

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a review of

Ben Fletcher: The Life and Times of a Black Wobbly by Peter Cole. PM Press, 2021

One of the hardest tasks for an historian of the working class is telling the story of the organizer whose greatest talent is organizing their fellow workers while remaining anonymous. If not for historian Peter Cole’s book, Ben Fletcher: The Life and Times of a Black Wobbly, Fletcher might still be unknown to us today.

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a review of

Codename Arthur: The true story of the anti-fascist spy who identified the London nailbomber by Nick Lowles. Partisan Books 2021

Codename Arthur is both a tribute to “Arthur,” an anti-fascist spy who spent a staggering 10 years undercover in the nascent far-right British National Party (BNP) during the 1990s and 2000s, facing the constant threat of exposure.

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a review of

Champavert: Immoral Tales by Petrus Borel, trans. Brian Stableford. Borga Press, 2013 WildsidePess.com

The long-forgotten radical novel, Champavert, is the only full-length book available in English by Petrus Borel. The anti-authoritarian poet was known in 19^th century French underground circles as “The Lycanthrope” (Wolfman), and was central to the creation of the cultural avant-garde as both an idea and a functioning community in that era.

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a review of

Catastrophic Thinking: Extinction and the Value of Diversity from Darwin to the Anthropocene by David Sepkoski. University of Chicago Press 2020

Catastrophic Thinking is not an optimistic book. However, it is relentlessly realistic.

Sepkoski is a professor at the University of Illinois specializing in transnational history of biological, environmental, and information sciences in cultural context.

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a review of

The Bittersweet Science; Racism, Racketeering, and the Political Economy of Boxing by Gerald Horne. International Publishers 2021

Watching two men beat the crap out of each other either in the ring or in the alley has always seemed a little boring. However, not so for followers of the brutal sport, particularly in an era gone by when fans knew the names of every champion and challenger in the different divisions down to welterweights

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a review of

No More Mushrooms: Thoughts About Life Without Government by Kirkpatrick Sale. Autonomedia 2021

Kirkpatrick Sale has been an activist, author, and promoter of decentralism and bioregionalism for more than 50 years. No More Mushrooms stitches together material from two of his best-known books, Human Scale (1980) and Human Scale Revisited (2017), to give a quick summary of his thinking about government and the potential for creating new societies based on community, interdependence, and mutual obligation.

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a review of

Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder. Norton, 2017

Nomadland—Film 2021; Director: Chloe Zhao

In case you weren’t paying attention, the Academy Awards for best picture, best director, and best actress this year all went to Nomadland, a drama centered around Fern (Frances McDormand), a woman near retirement age, after losing her husband and her home, starts living in a van.

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