Most Recent Additions

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

...

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.

...

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

...

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.

...

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.

...

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.

...

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.

...

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.

...

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.

...

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.

...

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.

...

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.

...

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.

...

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?

...

“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.

...

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.

...

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.

...

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.

...

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.

...

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.

...

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).

...

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.

...

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.”

...

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.

...

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.

...

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.

...

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.

...

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.

...

a review of

Suosso’s Lane by Robert Knox (Web-e-Pub 2016). web-e-books.com/suosso/paperback.html

During the Red Scare following World War I, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were the perfect candidates for judicial murder. Italian, immigrants, and anarchists.

They were convicted in 1921 of murdering a paymaster and a guard during an armed robbery at the Slater and Morrill Shoe Company in Braintree, Massachusetts. Although their innocence became increasingly evident, they were executed in the electric chair in 1927. Mass demonstrations protesting the trial and the verdict took place across North America and the world.

...

a review of

Judas and the Black Messiah

Director: Shaka King 2hr 6m (2021)

“You can kill a revolutionary, but you can’t kill a revolution.”

—Fred Hampton, 1969

But what if killing a revolutionary does kill a revolution?

—Curious Film Critic

Until recently, few high school social studies classes, let alone the general adult population, ever stumbled upon COINTELPRO, state terrorism, or Fred Hampton, the last of four prominent African American leaders assassinated during the 1960s, after Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. As the mainstream seems even less aware of our essential protest past, perhaps Hollywood has oddly begun to fill a disturbing void.

...

New York City. March 2020, the first days of the crisis that would define the year. The words “mutual aid” began to appear where they’d not been seen before, from lamp post flyers to Reddit neighborhood forums.

Everyone from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to Britney Spears was using the expression. Loosely organized groups ran errands and made deliveries. Friends sewed masks for friends, then for friends of friends. And well before the summer’s boiling-over of righteous rage at police brutality, sustained protests attempted to hold Cuomo and the prison system accountable for leaving incarcerated at-risk people in facilities like Rikers Island, which became a hotspot for COVID.

...

a review of

Van Morrison “Astral Weeks” (Reprise)

Van Morrison is partially responsible for people leaving the beach early in New York.

There is a song called “Gloria” that is sung by every would-be rock and roll singer on the beach.

G-l-o-r-i-a, it starts, never stops, and seems to have no other lyrics. Van Morrison wrote “Gloria.”

...

Police are always complaining about what dangerous jobs they have.

Some of this is justified; some of it is of their own making. When you are part of an occupying army, the people do tend to get a little uptight and unfriendly towards you.

Still, it’s not as dangerous a job as all that. In New York City (noted crime in the streets center) policemen rank third in hazardous city jobs behind sanitation workers and firemen.

...

For two weeks now I’ve been trying to write a letter to William Leach, the Black Panther who attacked what he calls the “white left” in the Fifth Estate last time as being jive and untogether. [See “The White Left—Serious or Not?” FE #70, January 9–22, 1969.] Brother Leach displayed his unfortunate ignorance when he attacked the White Panther Party as “silly” and “the movement’s biggest headache.” I don’t know that much about the YSA or SDS, since I’m not a Young Socialist or a Student for a Democratic Society, but I do know about the Yippies and I do know about the White’ Panthers, and I do know about the Black Panthers too.

...

“One day at noon in a busy street of Athens, a refrigerator crate was unloaded to the pavement and soon the thing began talking. ‘Patriots,’ it boomed, ‘listen and do not interrupt me. Anybody who touches me will be blown up.’

“A long speech from the Greek Patriotic Front followed, interrupted at intervals by the warning: Do not touch! Danger of explosion!’ When, in spite of this, a policeman touched the crate, sparks flashed out from it. He jumped back and the speech continued.

...

Twenty months after the coup d’etat of April 21, 1967 Greece is still under a military dictatorship which rules by decree and the gun. Fundamental democratic and human rights of the people are still denied. Many Greeks have been murdered. Thousands have been imprisoned and are being tortured by means comparable to the Gestapo tactics of Nazi Germany and the purges of Stalinist Russia.

...

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

Of necessity, much of the black and white radical movements have been involved in a cultural revolution. For blacks it has led to an affirmation of blackness, an affirmation of self, for I must know who I am before I can know that I cannot be destroyed. For young whites, the cultural revolution has been a process of creating psychic liberation zones which embody the seeds of new values and new attitudes. A man cannot begin to be involved in the revolutionary process until he looks at himself, and thereby others, with new feelings and new ideas. The cultural revolution has been a dominant factor in this.

...

Threats of possible disciplinary action by the Navy against Seaman Norman Gelnaw for distributing copies of The Bond, the newspaper of the American Serviceman’s Union, to fellow GI’s at Metropolitan Airport, January 4, have evidently been dropped. (See last issue.)

The Navy’s decision came after one of the nation’s top military lawyers, Mike Kennedy of the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, had expressed interest in using the incident as a test case in Federal Courts.

...

One of the hazards of youthful ferment seems to be paranoia. Second is pessimism. “Everybody’s against us, and things are going to just get worse.”

This is a story that won’t relieve those feelings.

A military court, on January 12, in Munich, Germany, has acquitted an Army sergeant of the charge of mistreating stockade prisoners. Sgt. Wesley A. Williams a 24-year-old Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, man was exonerated after his lawyer pleaded that he only carried out lawful orders.

...

We all know how lousy Detroit winters are. The snow is gray after an hour, then it turns to slush. It’s bitter cold. Your car can’t start and when it does it skids. You can’t take it anymore and want to split to Florida or California.

And then one nice day comes along. The temperature might only be twenty-five degrees, but it’s no longer bitter. There is no wind and the sun is bright and warm. The snow seems white again. You walk (and don’t even cut through buildings). The snow sparkles. You feel good and your blood tingles. You feel alive and radiant and for a poetic moment winter’s almost worth it.

...

I was dismayed, but not overly surprised, upon reading William Spencer Leach’s article [“The White Left—Serious or Not?” FE #70, January 9–22, 1969]. Brother Bill has made several good points and suggestions.

He is right in the need for “white revolutionaries” to work in factories (and in fields, I might add). He’s also correct in his call for going into churches with the Word; some of the most important work can be done by going into “straight” gatherings.

...

Eighteen State Senators—16 Republicans and two Democrats—are demanding an investigation into “left-wing” student activities at all of Michigan’s State Supported universities.

While Sen. James Fleming (Rep.—Jackson), who is the principle sponsor of the resolution, has stated that SDS activities at the University of Michigan were what he was most concerned about, the investigation would also look into campus “morals.”

...

a review of

The Strange Odyssey of Howard Pow! by Bill Hutton, Detroit Artists’ Workshop Press, 1967. $1.00.

“Ed Dream pushed the big barn doors open and the morning light poured in. The cow mooed. She was in her milking stall. The bull rubbed his horns against the slats of his pen and the goat was eating some straw. The chickens squawked and laid a few eggs. “Good morning, cow,” sang Ed Dream, setting a bucket under the cow and pulling a milking stool up for himself. He jerked the cow’s tail twice. ‘That’s for good luck,’ he said. ‘I’ve never milked a cow before.’

...

LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. (LNS)—Dr. Timothy Leary, his wife and teen-age son, John, have been arrested here for possession of marijuana.

The long time and old time guru said that the arrests were part of a continuing campaign of police harassment.

Leary and his wife were released on $2,500 bail each. John was held “because of his condition.” Authorities refused to elaborate.

...

[Note: authors listed in print original as Stew Albert & Gumbo.]

WASHINGTON, D.C. (LNS)—The Justice Department has admitted that during the past year they have been electronically bugging Jerry Rubin’s life.

In official government document 2660, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals 4^th Circuit, and signed by C. Vernon Spratley, Jr. U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, they stated that: “the government is tendering.. a sealed exhibit containing transcripts of conversations in which appellant Rubin was a participant or at which he was present which were overheard by means of electronic surveillance.”

...

Mackenzie High School, located on Wyoming and Chicago, has been the scene of picketing, walkouts and militant assemblies since the beginning of the fall semester in September. The cause of the conflict, as in many Detroit inner-city schools, has been racial tension and hostility over poor education building up to a point where the whole thing had to explode. As a spokesman from the Black Council, a militant student-community organization, put it, “The spark lit the fuse that blew up the place.”

...