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July 1989 marks the bicentennial of the French Revolution. Self-organized Parisians liberated the hated Bastille prison on July 14, 1789; it was their first major victory. Unlike the American revolution which was mounted by racist land speculators and greedy commercial entrepreneurs, the French revolution resulted from a vast groundswell of people determined to rid themselves of their oppressors. In the French countryside as well as in cities, determined individuals lashed out against the clergy, aristocrats, and tax collectors. Peasants seized land from absentee nobility; throughout the country, property of the Catholic Church and the aristocracy was confiscated, desecrated, destroyed.

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George Armstrong Custer, whose “last stand” has been depicted by more than 200 artists since it occurred during the summer of 1876, has been made into a prime symbol of this country’s “winning of the West” from American Indians.

Glamorized in scores of books, and depicted as a gallant cavalier by Errol Flynn in films such as They Died With Their Boots On, Custer might even be seen as the centerpiece of a whole genre of American imperial mythology.

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FE Introduction

During the massive European anti-nuke demonstrations of the ‘70s, at squatter defenses and other actions across the Continent, shadowy groups of angry militants, often dressed in black, masked and armed with slingshots and stones became a common sight.

They were labeled “autonomes” and exhibited a discontent with tired leftist “protest” movements as well as a marked readiness to confront the police with violence in an attempt to go beyond the limits of bourgeois civility. They spoke of a desire not only to be autonomous of the dictates of capitalist society, but of all previous political movements including those in the anarchist tradition.

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Final planning is in high gear for the 1989 Anarchist Conference/Festival to be held in San Francisco on July 20–25. Its theme and name are “Without Borders.” Over 3,000 anti-authoritarians and anarchists from around the world are expected to attend, which would exceed the total participants for the last three previous gatherings in Toronto, Minneapolis and Chicago.

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The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in 1848, asserts that “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,” that social transformations grow out of the contradiction between productive forces and the relations of production when the latter become too constricting for the development of the former. In every epoch a revolutionary class incarnates these productive forces. [For Marxists, the classic historic example of a class struggle which is followed by a radical social transformation is the transition from feudalism to capitalism. In this example the bourgeoisie incarnated the new productive forces: the feudal relations of production (the way society was organized), were too inflexible to accommodate the increasing commodity production.

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On March 21, four people, including one from the Bad Attitude collective, demonstrated at the Federal Bldg. in downtown Detroit for the right to be anti-patriotic. In so doing, they burned a small american flag much to the outrage of passersby and security guards. The date of the protest coincided with a U.S. Supreme Court hearing of a criminal conviction of a demonstrator who also burned a flag as a political statement at the 1984 Dallas Republican Convention. Flags have also been in the news recently involving an exhibition in Chicago in which an art student placed a flag in front of his work so people would be forced to walk on it Veterans and other patriots demonstrated at the art school, and the U.S. Senate passed a law 97–0 making walking on a flag a federal crime.

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Amazing! This issue follows the last faster than any one since we became a quarterly ten years ago. In good part it is motivated by the quickening pace of political events throughout the world and the sense that revolution is once again afoot in the land (even in the United States and even in Detroit!).

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In North Orissa, on the coast of India’s Bay of Bengal, a three-year conflict between the Central Government and local farmers and fisherfolk continues, virtually ignored by the international media.

In the village areas of Baliapal and Bhograi—a region known as the granary of Orissa because of its great fertility and high-yielding cash crops—approximately 100,000 people face eviction from their homes and lands. The cause of their imminent displacement is the government’s National Testing Range, a military base costing an estimated $840 million (U.S.), designed to test and launch satellites, rockets and missiles.

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Fifth Estate

FIFTH ESTATE #332, Summer 1989, Vol. 24 Number 2 page 2

The Fifth Estate newspaper (ISSN No. 0015–0800) is published quarterly at 4632 Second Ave., Detroit MI 48201 USA.

Phone (313) 831–6800.

Subscriptions: $5.00 per year; $7.00 per year foreign including Canada.

Second Class postage paid at Detroit, Michigan.

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Throughout the Pentagon’s preparations for nuclear war, it has waged genocide on the Earth and native people. As of 1987, the U.S. and Great Britain had exploded 670 nuclear bombs on Newe Segobia, the Western Shoshone Nation. All the nuclear “tests” in the world are conducted on the territory of native peoples. The Nevada Test Site (NTS) was created in 1951 by an executive order of President Truman, violating Shoshone land rights and the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley.

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Left: Women of WEAVE block incinerator gate after slipping behind the police line. photo/Jake Right: Shouting “Shut it down!,” Right: crowd overwhelms surprised cops at the gate. photo/Buster Brown

The continuing movement to stop Detroit’s killer incinerator reached a high point on June 3^rd when over 500 people turned out to protest the existence of the $438-million polluter.

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Between May 19 and 21, a regional anarchist gathering sponsored by the Outaouais Anarchist Circle was held in Ottawa (the capital of Canada, located on the border between the provinces of Ontario and Quebec). The gathering was attended by about 150 people from Ontario, Quebec and Vermont, and followed by a now familiar format of workshops, musical events demos and communal meals. A generally upbeat mood was clouded by a number of sexist incidents. Although some of these incidents seemed to be caused by men who were not directly connected with the gathering, women were angry about the lack of response from anarchist men who were present (for example, a man had interrupted a women-only meeting and later made so much noise with a drum that they had to leave the house). Discussion of these incidents dominated a brief evaluation period before the demo, and it was made clear that some women were strongly considering not coming to future gatherings.

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Those events marked with an asterisk (*) need Fifth Estate salesmen. If you want to earn some extra money, come down to our office and pick up some papers.

Web posting note: None of the events are marked with an asterisk in the print original.

FRI. MARCH 21

JOHN WATSON speaking on the South End newspaper and its defense. Militant Forum, Debs Hall, 3737 Woodward. 8 p.m. Adm.

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Detroit area high school students will protest the war in Vietnam and commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King in a student strike on April 3^rd.

April 4^th marks one year since the assassination of Dr. King, who was an outspoken opponent of the war in Vietnam and an active participant in the antiwar movement.

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Myself and another head, were very mellow on the bunker line, when we happened to glance at your paper “The Fifth Estate.”

Since then it hasn’t left our hands. Our souls and hearts would be yours if we could get more of this paper, just to keep our minds straight.” We would appreciate your free subscription as soon as possible.

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Open City, Detroit’s service organization to the free community, has begun operation. So far most activity has centered around people calling in problems to the switchboard.

Although many of the calls regard minor services like telling callers who is at the Grande or where they can read material on LSD, many calls have been of a more serious nature.

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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.

ALL UNCLASSIFIEDS MUST BE PAID FOR IN ADVANCE

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SAN FRANCISCO (LNS)—The U.S. Army has decided that the easiest way to win a court martial conviction is to off the defense lawyer.

Terrence “Kayo” Hallinan, defense attorney for 16 of the 27 men charged with mutiny at the San Francisco Presidio last Oct. 14, has been a headache to the Army for more than a year now.

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April 5^th Action Committee

Nine thousand GIs have died since the Paris peace talks began. Last week casualties reached a new high with over 450 deaths in just seven days.

North Vietnam is no longer being bombed but more bombs than ever before are being dropped on the South. President Nixon dismisses the idea of a cease fire as “meaningless.”

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The work that’s being done by the new Italian cinema continues to amaze me, and the latest entry proves no exception.

“Grazie, Zia” (Thank you, Aunt) was written and directed by Salvatore Samperi at the preposterous age of twenty-four. Yet it is a film of uncommon depth and shapeliness, so clearly the work of a mature, sophisticated artist.

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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: An old lover of mine was fond of a certain trick taught to her by an old lover of hers—which involved the placement of an ice cube in her vagina and then copulation.

Certainly an exciting experience, but I have two questions: 1) Could this harm her? 2) Could this be used as an effective means of contraception as well as groovy orgasms?

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In an issue of Esquire magazine of a year or so ago, a brace of famous writers suggested that the ‘60s have been too long with us, and that we hereby declare them at an end and devote the next few years to resting up.

In the course of that event, an occasional look at “Joanna” and “The Chelsea Girls” will tell us much of what we were.

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Fr. James Markunas of St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church has been convicted of illegally marching last April during the so-called “emergency” following Martin Luther King’s assassination. (See Fifth Estate, April 16–30, 1968.)

Markunas was arrested April 7, 1968 with 107 others while attempting to march to the Royal Oak City Hall in memory of Dr. King. A ban had been put on all gatherings of over three people by then Gov. Romney.

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a review of

The Me Nobody Knows: Children’s Voices from the Ghetto edited by Stephen M. Joseph. Avon Books, 1969, paperback, 95 cents.

“On a nice cold September morning, I got up and was afraid to go to school.”

—Linda O., age 13

Our public schools aren’t educating most people whether in the inner cities or the suburbs. There is little learning going on—if learning means growth, understanding and increasing awareness of self and others.

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NEW YORK—Marijuana smokers are “significantly more likely” to report attending happenings, reading underground newspapers and participating in mass protests.

That is one of the unsurprising findings of a study of young people made by a Michigan legislative committee. Chairman Dale Warner, a young hip legislator who hung around with John Sinclair and the MC5 commune people, produced a report that’s basically sympathetic to the benevolent herb. One quote, for example: “It is our impression that adults often know less about the subject than the adolescents do.”

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a review of

Pimp, by Iceberg Slim, Holloway House Publishing Company, 1967, paperback, 95 cents.

This is the strangest bona fide bestseller ever published, appearing on no best-seller list; a kind of God-awful literary masterpiece and fluke, containing some of the lousiest writing ever conceived, and yet a kind of genuine-article taking the reader along on one of the most disgusting American journeys to the end of Night.

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Paul Lodico is the Socialist Workers Party candidate for Common Council. But he is not that interested in getting votes. In fact, he is not running to win the election.

Instead, Lodico is interested in “posing programs for struggle.” That is, he wants to organize committees of research teams to study such areas as housing, welfare, medical care, unions and other factors of life in the city. These committees will involve those already interested in each area. In the study of welfare, for example, Lodico hopes to use the aid of welfare workers and ADC mothers.

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The Stooges, a Trans-Love band from Ann Arbor, will be in New York City for an end-of-the-month recording session at the Elektra studios.

Produced by John Cale of Velvet Underground fame, the group expects Elektra to release their first single and album in early May.

The band, signed simultaneously with the MC5 will also be doing a number of gigs at Steve Paul’s Scene and some college campuses in the area.

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(Liberation News Service) The New York Daily News says these are our real enemies—the good wholesome American kids who hate beatniks and commies and unpatriotic draft dodgers.

They are the healthy kids, the good solid backbone of America who will hold the country together, who will not succumb to the creeping decadence which seems to have a frightening, unexplainable hold on so many of our young.

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(Other Scenes/UPS) Tom Cushing added the last line of his play about nudism 40 years ago, then wrote above its original title: “The Unplayable Play.” The play jocularly concerned a nudist girl who invited her swain home, on the condition that he observed all the customs her family observed. The suitor soon learned that this meant taking off all his clothes before sitting down to tea, as the family did.

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NEW YORK (LNS)—The Army is beginning to worry that too many “heads” are fighting the war in Vietnam.

The Pentagon released figures recently on the suspected use of “drugs” in the armed forces. Drug use in the military is on the rise, especially in Vietnam. There were 14,041 worldwide investigations in 1968 compared with 7,641 in 1967.

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(Guardian/UPS) One of the teeth-gritting things about living in Scum City is the opportunity to be insulted by the New York Times. That is why so many more “ordinary” people read the New York Daily News. It insults you on your own terms and in your own language.

What brings this to mind is a recent article about paperback books in the Times Sunday Book Review. This is the part of the paper in which all the college professors and second-division novelists review the books written by all the other college professors and second-division novelists. It smells like the inside of a literary cocktail party.

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“What we need is a Revolution!” (wild applause).

A rather flustered Joan Baez held up a hand for quiet...“I wish there was a way you could take back all the clapping you all just did,” she said embarrassedly.

“Now let me tell you what I mean by “revolution.”’

By “revolution” she means change, and the basis of her approach to life and to her revolution (everyone’s got one) is that “the ethical is the practical.”

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For once it appears that it pays to be black.

At least the sons of prominent black ministers and politicians.

The Detroit Police Department actually disciplined several of it’s men for their drunken and cowardly beatings of several black youths after a church dance Nov. 2 of last year.

Commissioner Johannes Spreen called the attack “unprofessional, uncalled for and unexcusable.”

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John Watson, editor of the WSU student newspaper, was acquitted March 7 of charges that he assaulted Joe Weaver, of WJBK-TV.

Watson had been charged with striking the TV-2 “commentator” on Feb. 10 when Weaver attempted to interview Watson at the South End office. (See “TV-2 Interview—POW!,” FE #73, February 20-March 5, 1969.)

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The scene is a church located in the heart of Detroit’s Inner City.

A small army of some 40 agents of the State roar up to the church, force their way in, and demand a man named Tom Sincavitch.

About 43 young men, all wearing nametags reading: “I am Tom Sincavitch,” identify themselves as the wanted man.

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“A top notch job” was the way Detroit Police Commissioner Johannes Spreen characterized the attack by 289 of his pigs on a peacefully assembled crowd at Cobo Hall last October.

Spreen said the blame for the clash following an appearance of Gov. George Wallace should be put on “those who provoke, those who instigate, those hurlers of missiles and invectives...”

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Several full-time movement activists in the Michigan area have been arrested in recent weeks on trumped-up felony charges.

At East Lansing, Bill Ayers of the SDS Regional Staff and Mike Price of East Lansing SDS were both arrested for allegedly assaulting a TV-2 camera crew with a dangerous weapon—supposedly a two-by-four.

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This newspaper, WSU’s South End, and the Inner City Voice are going to sponsor a revolutionary newspaper conference on April 11, 12, and 13. It will be held on the Wayne University campus.

The need for such a conference rises out of a growing movement in the Detroit area; in high schools, plants, colleges, and communities.

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Fifth Estate

A Newspaper of Detroit

FIFTH ESTATE #75, March 20-April 2, 1969, Vol. 3 No. 23, page 2

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

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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.

ALL UNCLASSIFIEDS MUST BE PAID FOR IN ADVANCE.

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I seem to be coming to a better understanding of what kind of cook I am. What this clarity can be attributed to is uncertain, but I’m digging it. Guess these past few columns are towards a philosophy of cooking.

I’m more of an eclectic, I suppose, borrowing what I can from whoever I can. I am not a gourmet: I rarely measure ingredients, unless it’s a complicated recipe which I’m trying for the first time. I am also not one for expensive cuts of meat or fancy, out-of-season vegetables.

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Those events marked with an asterisk (*) need Fifth Estate salesmen. If you want to earn some extra money, come down to our office and pick up some papers.

FRI. MARCH 7

*THE BONSTELLE THEATRE will present Tennessee Williams’ play, “A Street Car Named Desire.” 8:30 p.m.

CHRISTOPH ESCHENBACH, world famous pianist performs at the Detroit Institute of Arts Aud., 8:30 p.m. Tickets $2.50 and $5.

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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: Would you please explain what tachycardia is? I am undergoing treatment by an analyst for anxiety which is causing tachycardia in my heart. However, neither he nor my M.D. will explain tachycardia to me.

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The Canned Heat came to Detroit to do a gig at the Masonic Temple and got busted by the real heat.

Canned Heat’s drummer Adolph De Laparra was charged with being a disorderly person and the group’s equipment manager Ron Stender was charged with possession of grass. They and 25 other persons were arrested Feb. 20 in a Southfield home. The charges range from disorderly persons to sale of LSD and possession of marijuana.

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The Monteith Student Board will present a concert featuring David & Roselyn Wednesday and Thursday evenings, March 12 and 13 in WSU’s Upper DeRoy Auditorium at 8 p.m.

David and Roselyn bring an unusual blend of voices to the folk and blues medium. They are a self-contained unit using guitars and Kalimba, an African Thumb piano.

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A preliminary statewide planning meeting of a group formed to combat the special state Senate Investigating Committee looking into campus problems will be held March 15.

The Michigan Coalition for Political Freedom will meet at St. Joseph’s Church that Saturday at 10:30 am. The coalition represents student, faculty and citizen groups from across the state.

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There’s so much to say, man, that I don’t know where to start...maybe with the Five...the MC5 are a really classic example of environment and music coming together. There’s a Simple declaratory sentence for you...

The music affects the environment and...the environment affects the music. Dig? The machine, man. Detroit is a machine, The Machine even, and in the music of the Five...the frenzy, the anger...is the music of the Machine. Did you ever work in a factory? Jesus, I hope not. There’s music in the factory, but it’s the music of...metal crunching metal...a melody of violence...the Five are Man against Machine, baby, that’s all.

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NEW YORK (LNS)—Thirty thousand joints in the mail? Could be...It’s like you never know what you’re going to find in the mailbox—but free dope?

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” the letter said, “you are one of 30,000 lucky persons being sent free this freshly-rolled marijuana cigarette. We are doing this in order to clear the garbage from the air.”

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Editors’ Note: Rock and Roll Dope takes the form of a facsimile of the MC5’s Elektra album liner notes for two reasons. First, because Brother Sinclair was stranded in Buffalo after attending a national Lemar (Legalize Marijuana) conference in that city and was unable to get a column to us.

Second, and more important, that this revolutionary rap by John has caused a significant furor in the retail record business. Fully 70% of Detroit area record shops refuse to stock the album because of its use of “fuck” in the liner notes and on one song. One Northland record shop went through each album and crossed out the offending words. Both J.L. Hudson’s and E.J. Korvette stores refuse to handle it as well as many smaller shops.

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