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ANN ARBOR, Jan. 26—Euripides was so pissed after the Ann Arbor pigs busted the Performance Group’s performance of “Dionysus in ’69”—an updated and realistic version of his “Bacchae”—that the city was covered with a slick icy glaze for three days afterwards.

It all started when word leaked out that a nude performance was going to take place on the chaste floor of the Michigan Union Ballroom, as a part of the University of Michigan’s annual Creative Arts Festival.

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Open City has started to happen and I’m excited about it and glad to be involved in it. I’m working on the job co-op, hoping to influence the business world to hire freaks who really want to work but are more left of center in their commitments.

Why do we all have to lie so much when we apply for a job? Why do we have to promise to never miss a day and stay with the job forever when both sides know it’s so much bullshit? Part of the job of our committee is to try to get work that is meaningful, a job at which we can be ourselves: long hair, freaky clothes and whatever else we are. We hope to eventually extend beyond the menial, baby-sitting, window washing job set up that other freak communities have established.

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Reprinted with permission of the Guardian, independent radical weekly, NYC

One of the most difficult responsibilities of the revolutionary is to be self-critical. To be self-critical means being able to ask yourself if you are wrong, and if so, to admit the fact and correct it. Revolutionary self-criticism also involves the necessity to see the mistakes before they actually happen, and thus avoid them. However, to engage in self-criticism affords no guarantee that errors will be avoided or corrected. Self-criticism can lead to its own mistakes. The only thing the revolutionary knows for sure is that poverty, exploitation in all of its infinite varieties and racism must be destroyed. It is the question of “how” which involves the revolutionary and the concomitant responsibility to be self-critical.

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GRINNELL, Iowa (LNS) Brice Draper is a PR man for Playboy Magazine. He travels around to college campuses, selling the Playboy line and “promoting products for our advertisers.”

When Hefner’s boy Draper came to Grinnell, the local folk engaged him in naked confrontation. Ten students, six of them girls, took off their clothes to protest Playboy’s exploitation of the female body.

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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: Is there such a thing as sexual allergy? I have been dating a recently divorced woman, but we have had intercourse only once. Here’s why: Shortly after we shared one of the most explosive, mutually exciting and uninhibited amorous encounters a man and woman could experience she developed an irritating vaginal infection.

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Just a short note of congratulations on your editors’ notes column in the last (Jan. 23) issue of the Fifth Estate.

It is not often that a good cultural newspaper is willing to admit that the working class contains more than a bunch of fat contented racists. While I am one of those lucky individuals who can be both worker and hippy, I am the first to realize that this is impossible for most of the population.

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SAN FRANCISCO (LNS)—Pvt. Louis Osczepinski, one of 27 soldiers being tried for mutiny at the Presidio Army Base in San Francisco, attempted to commit suicide on Feb. 14. He slashed his arms four times.

Osczepinski, along with Pvt. Lawrence Reidel, was scheduled to hear the verdict in his case some time during the week of Feb. 17 through 24. On Feb. 13, Pvt. Henry Sood, the first of the Presidio 27 to be tried, was convicted and sentenced to 15 years hard labor.

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There is a lot happening in pop music and it is ridiculous to predict trends. One noticeable occurrence is the breaking up of groups and the need for individual artists to “go it alone.”

The group movement started in England and came over with the Beatles.

On both sides of the Atlantic all musicians seemed to be in groups. Possibly forsaking their own musical desires, what seemed important to the rock artist was the group “sound.”

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Performer James Brown is one Negro who’s certainly managed to come to terms on his own with Black Power. First he gave a cozy, bear-hugging endorsement of Hubert Humphrey (himself just back from hugging Lester Maddox) and then, when HHH’s balloon deflated, the nimble Brown was right in there socking it to them on behalf of President Tricky Dicky. Uncle Tom Brown may be full of soul but he’s also full of shit.

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A review of

Jerry Rubin’s “Letter to the Movement,” New York Review of Books, Feb. 13, 1969, 40 cents.

The Young American Poets, edited by Paul Carroll, Follet Publishing Co., 1968, $3.95,

Evergreen Review Reader, edited by Barney Rosset, Grove Press, 1969, $20.00

“From the Bay Area to New York we are suffering the greatest depression in our history...it’s a common problem, not an individual one, and people don’t talk to one another too much anymore. America proved deaf, and our dreams proved innocent. Scores of our brothers have become inactive and cynical,” Jerry Rubin has spoken.

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NEW YORK (LNS)—New York cops are guilty of a regular pattern of arbitrary arrest, physical abuse and courtroom perjury, according to a two-year study recently completed under the auspices of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

The study was conducted by lawyer Paul Chevigny and its findings are published in a new book, Police Power.

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“Read All About It!” for this issue consists of those papers put out by and for GIs.

It should be obvious from the number of papers existing, especially the ones from army bases, that the opposition within the armed services to the war and to the military has become increasingly visible in the last six months or so.

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The Legal Self Defense (LSD) benefit February 4^th was the greatest success in my memory: over 1200 people attended and offered their bread for support, and the LSD Fund netted over $2200.00 for the community.

A Board of Directors for LSD was set up to handle the disbursement of the money when people need it, and a bank account was opened in the name of Legal Self Defense. The Board comprises Brother Jack Forest, Detroit Captain White Panthers; Brother John Watson, editor of the South End newspaper; Brother Pun Plamondon, editor of the Sun (Ann Arbor) and Minister of Defense, White Panthers National Office; Brother Alan Gotkin, of the Fifth Estate Editorial Group and Minister of Propaganda, Detroit White Panthers; and Revs. James Markunas and Robert Morrison from St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church.

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RICHMOND, Calif. (LNS)—Workers and students here fought together Feb. 3 to repel scab attempts to break picket lines during a strike against Standard Oil Refinery.

Some 500 students and 800 workers slashed scab car tires and shattered windows with clubs. Strike breakers on foot were pushed back and beaten when they attempted to cross picket lines. When the company goons arrived to photograph the pickets, they were jumped and their cameras were demolished.

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WINDSOR, Ont.—For the first time in its history, the University of Windsor has felt the effects of increasing student demands for a voice in those decisions which affect their lives.

On Feb. 11, 55 students took over the Theology and Classics departments in the South Wing of the Administration Building.

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Reprinted from the Guardian.

San Francisco—A major breakthrough in the San Francisco State College strike was achieved Feb. 7 when representatives of striking workers at the Standard Oil refinery in Richmond, across the Bay, joined with striking SF State students and teachers to call for the formation of a mutual-aid agreement in the best traditions of labor solidarity.

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Recorder’s Court Judge Thomas Poindexter has bound over for trial seven of the nine persons accused of conspiring to bomb police stations, draft boards, and the Ann Arbor CIA office last Fall.

Poindexter has apparently already decided that the accused are guilty even before the trial begins.

“A conspiracy is like a circle,” he said on Feb. 7 after an 11 day preliminary examination. “After I make that comparison the defendant David Valler is the center of the circle.”

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February 21^st marked the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Black America’s hero, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (known to many as Malcolm X).

Born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska on May 19, 1925, Malcolm quickly learned the bitter taste of white racism. His mother was born as the result of her mother’s rape by a white planter (thus giving Malcolm his light complexion and red hair).

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John Watson, the Editor-in-Chief of Wayne State’s revolutionary student newspaper, the South End, has been charged with assault and battery on a TV newsman.

Watson, pleading innocent, was arraigned Feb. 14 in Judge Robert Colombo’s court. A jury trial was set for March 6^th. Ken Cockrel is his attorney.

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TOPEKA (LNS)—Pvt. Donald Till wasn’t happy when the MP’s busted him for being AWOL.

When they decided to fly him to Fort Riley, Kansas for a court-martial, Till hatched a plan. Feigning fear of flying, he conned a parachute out of his captors, and then questioned them at length about its use.

Mid-flight, the industrious soldier leapt 3,000 feet to his freedom. Unfortunately he was captured a short time later.

FIFTH ESTATE #73, February 20-March 5, 1969, Vol. 3 No. 21, page 2

Fifth Estate

A Newspaper of Detroit

EDITORIAL GROUP

Alan Gotkin

Harvey Ovshinsky

Tommye Wiese

Peter Werbe

Cathy West

PHOTO EDITOR

Mike Tyre

DISTRIBUTION

Bruce Montrose

MUSIC EDITOR

John Sinclair

STAFF

Claudia Efimchik

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On Monday evening, February 20^th, Alvin’s Delicatessen hosted the second “official” meeting of the OPEN CITY project.

After smoldering in the cauldrons of the finest minds in Detroit’s underground, OPEN CITY is being realized at a killer pace.

The primary objective of this meeting was to create committees around which people can be organized. This was accomplished in such an organized and (lo and behold) enjoyable manner as to make one wonder whether organizational meetings are worthy of the profound aversion which most people have for them.

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FRI. FEB. 7

A TASTE OF HONEY presented by the Film Arts International in the Library Lecture Hall, Marygrove College. 7:30 p.m. Adm. 50 cents.

GRANDE BALLROOM. This weekend the Savoy Brown Blues Band and Mother Earth will be performing. You must be 17 and adm. is $3.75.

UNDERGROUND FLICS at the Detroit Repertory Theatre. The films for this week include “Brats” with Laurel & Hardy, “Square Inch Field,” “Stretching Out,” and “Autumn Spectrum.” 13103 Woodrow Wilson, shows at 11 p.m. and 1 a.m.

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REVOLUTION

REVOLUTION

ELDRIDGE

CLEAVER

Get your shit together be

ready

Tell your friends be

the first on

your block

My God Man be

serious

What would Che say

?

Kill a pig a day fuck in the streets wear

berets

Quote Mao

If you like this poem

it isnt for you

friend

five sticks/electric cap

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William Leach from the Black Panther Party is absolutely correct (“The White Left—Serious or Not?” FE #70, January 9–22, 1969) when he points out that white so-called revolutionaries have not organized anyone in the white community—we must ask ourselves why?

Is it because we are afraid to challenge the handful of Wallacites in Hazel Park, or Wyandotte who are attempting to give leadership to the thousands of young white workers who live there.

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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.

Wanted: Articles, photos, etc. on the MC5. Mag. 53270 Aulgur Dr., Rochester, MI 48063.

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Global books, a long-time Detroit Marxist bookstore, has moved its headquarters to 4415 Second at Canfield.

The bookstore, which has been in operation since 1958, carries radical literature, both current and classic, periodicals from Socialist countries and books on black liberation, labor and economics.

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a review of

the Rolling Stones, “The Beggars’ Banquet” (London)

the Beatles, “The Beatles” (Apple)

The Beatles and Rolling Stones albums have been out for a couple of months now and we have a clearer perspective on what these, the super-est of the groups are up to.

When the Beatles’ album first appeared my immediate reaction was that it would be pretentious for anyone to attempt to “review” it. The Beatles had released a new album, of course it was great, and what else could us “lowly types” say about it.

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Diane di Prima has died. Now we have no choice but to introduce her to each other, since she is no longer here to introduce herself.

Diane Di Prima, 1960s

On paper, you could say, “she was a poet, she was a feminist, beatnik, anarchist, Buddhist.” You could list her famous friends and lovers. Promote her books, her poems, her art. But she was so many things.

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Reprinted with permission of The Guardian, independent radical weekly, NYC

The revolutionary process takes many decades to fulfill itself. The generation which finally assumes power gives the appearance of having started a revolution in a short period of time. That is not so. The generation which wins power is only completing work begun decades before.

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Two cases of “getting away with murder” of blacks by whites are currently occupying the attention of Detroiters.

First is the Algiers Motel murders where Detroit police officers are charged with executing three black youths during the Detroit Rebellion in July of 1967.

The Algiers murder trial, as newsmen term it, was shipped up to Mason, Michigan away from Detroit because the Detroit Police Officers’ Association attorney, Norman Lippitt, claimed he couldn’t get a fair trial for his clients in Detroit, Mason has one Negro living in it and is the town where Malcolm X grew up.

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PONDICHERRY, India—The heart and soul of Pondicherry is the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, focal point for pilgrims not only from India but from all parts of the world. It is an unusual ashram in the sense that its buildings are spread all over the town and some of its businesses provide employment and services for other residents of Pondicherry.

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Through the uproar of the sustained near-uprisings of Covid summer 2020 against police violence and systemic racism, one could sometimes hear more radical voices. The assertion from them that everybody behind bars should be recognized as a political prisoner is no longer completely beyond consideration. If so, then it’s worth looking at how radical prisoners have conceptualized their experiences within the state’s institutionalization of punishment.

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A woman wrote in recently and asked for the addresses of several radical and underground papers. This made us realize that our paper may be the only one of its kind that is known to many of our readers.

Since Liberation News Service just mailed us a complete list of all such papers known to them to be currently operating, we thought we could pass some of the information about them along to you.

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I remember two and three years ago and longer writing columns for the Fifth Estate and trying to hip people to a new music and never getting anywhere—people just didn’t seem to be ready for the high-energy jams for one reason or another. Maybe they weren’t eating enough acid like people do now. But I feel very strongly right now that people are ready for a lot more high-energy music than they’re getting from the pop stars, and the music is certainly out there waiting for them—waiting for you right now.

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a review of

Daughters of Albion, Fontana (SRF-67586)

In these troubled days of “super” musicians, I find myself turning more and more to the finer facets of newly released albums.

Whereas previously I could really get into many lengthy virtuoso instrumental solos, I now discover that second-best Claptons are myriad and that no one plays Clapton as well as he, so why bother?

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“Work, now? Never, never. I’m on strike.”

—Rimbaud

This year marks the 150^th anniversary of the Paris Commune, an experiment in self-governance that is still inspiring today. It was born in response to the suffering caused by the Franco-Prussian War and the betrayals of the French central government.

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Was it really only ten years ago that Main Resnais shocked the world by graphically demonstrating that lovers do not always wear pajamas to bed?

My, how far we’ve come since “Hiroshima Mon Amour.” Bared breasts, bellies and buttocks no longer hold the shock value they had back in 1959. And with the upcoming release of Vilgot Sjoman’s “I Am Curious: Yellow,” we will have witnessed every possible “normal” human sexual activity on the screen, and then some.

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Voodoo is a colloquial corruption of Vodo, the name of an African godhead, the Holy Serpent.

The practice of Voodoo has been, until recent years, the most consistently revolutionary and anti-establishment force among poor blacks in the United States. For this reason, Voodoos have always been, and-still are, secretive, especially where white people are concerned. Yet, as “the Power” of Voodoo is slowly assimilated into many secular forms, including some of the recent black nationalist movements, candid information becomes more and more generally available, and it is finally clear how profoundly important Voodoo has been in so many quarters of American life.

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SAN FRANCISCO (LNS)—The strike at San Francisco State has dragged on for two long months, with virtually every aspect of confrontation sooner or later included. [See “Strike at S.F. State,” FE #71, January 23-February 5, 1969.]

Mass arrest, the one previously missing ingredient, was finally added on Thursday, Jan. 23, when over 400 people were busted while trying to hold an “illegal” on-campus rally.

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A new and exciting group of directors has appeared in the Italian cinema over the past four or five years. Its two most promising members are Marco Bellocchio and Bernardo Bertolucci.

So far Bellocchio seems to be the most outstanding, and with only two feature films to his credit he is already one of the more important talents in the young European cinema.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. (LNS)—A river of young Americans flowed up into downtown Washington from 14^th St. and Pennsylvania Avenue, away from the Death Parade marking Richard Nixon’s Inauguration January 20.

We were taking the streets for an affirmative celebration of our own. And when the cops came to break it up, the new fighting movement used fists, rocks and sticks to repel the attackers.

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A big thanks to the Tennessee Ghost writer for socking it to you last issue.

And thank you to everyone concerned about my hand. It wasn’t a bad burn and I was fine the next day.

Sundays at Alvin’s continue to be a lot of fun for me and hopefully for everyone who comes there. My soc. class with Dr. Stein has taken to meeting informally at Alvin’s on Sundays as a few Monteith classes have done. It’s a fine place to study later in the afternoon (our hours are 11 to 5).

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The following letter was received from Shreveport, Louisiana:

QUESTION: How can a male determine whether or not he is circumcised? I am not sure about myself.

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

ANSWER: Buy the John Lennon-Yoko Ono album. Neither John nor Yoko is circumcised.

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It looks like the uptight Michigan Senate is going to do a witch-hunt thing.

As we reported in our last issue certain honkie State Senators want to investigate the activities of Students for a Democratic Society on the state campuses, and to find out why “students write dirty words in campus newspapers, take off their clothes in class and commit other acts that vex their elders.”

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Special to the Fifth Estate

ANN ARBOR—A National Guard garage and a business administration building in Kalamazoo, and the state capitol in Lansing were the targets of the latest bombings in Michigan.

The Kalamazoo bombings occurred within 20 minutes of each other in the early morning hours, but police say they have established no connection between them. A gallon jug of gasoline with a wick did $12,000 worth of damage to the National Guard building, destroying a jeep and damaging another, and causing extensive smoke damage.

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The transformation of life in its entirety begins when men dare to rule their own lives.

—A narchos

The Detroit revolutionary community needs its own turf.

There are tens of thousands of people in this area who read the Fifth Estate, take part in anti-war demonstrations, go to the Grande, listen to WABX, smoke dope, won’t listen to their parents, to the police, to college administrators or to their bosses.

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Fifth Estate

A Newspaper of Detroit

EDITORIAL GROUP

Alan Gotkin

Harvey Ovshinsky

Tommye Wiese

Peter Werbe

Cathy West

PHOTO EDITOR

Mike Tyre

DISTRIBUTION

Bruce Montrose

MUSIC EDITOR

John Sinclair

STAFF

Claudia Efimchik

Ann Mikolowski

Marilyn Werbe

Marlene Tyre

The FIFTH ESTATE is published every other Thursday of each month by the Fifth Estate Newspaper, Inc., 1107 W. Warren, Detroit, Michigan 48201.

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FRI. JAN. 24

“PARIS ON THE BARRICADES,” film of May-June events in France, will be shown at Debs Hall, 3737 Woodward at 8 p.m.

INTERNATIONAL FOLK DANCING every Friday night at the International Institute. 111 E. Kirby, 8 p.m.

KENNETH JEWEL CHORALE saluting Karl Haas. WSU Comm. Arts Aud. Cass at Kirby 8:30 p.m.

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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.

Cinderella Wanted. Gentle sincere executive who needs grooming and contacts to realize her potential and who would like gifts of clothing or cash from an intimate friend. G. Arthurs, Box 301, Leamington, Ontario.

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