Most Recent Additions
Liberation News Service
Police Power
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.
Aug 22, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Read All About It!
“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.
Aug 22, 2021 Read the whole text...
John Sinclair
Rock & Roll Dope
The Legal Self Defense (LSD) benefit February 4th 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.
Aug 22, 2021 Read the whole text...
Liberation News Service
Students Join Workers
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.
Aug 22, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Students Occupy U. of Windsor
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.
Aug 22, 2021 Read the whole text...
National Guardian
Workers Join Students
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.
Aug 22, 2021 Read the whole text...
anon.
Bombers Bound Over
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.”
Aug 20, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
In memoriam Malcolm X
February 21st 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).
Aug 20, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
TV-2 Interview—POW!
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 6th. Ken Cockrel is his attorney.
Aug 20, 2021 Read the whole text...
Liberation News Service
Unsung Hero Dept.
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.
Aug 20, 2021
Fifth Estate Collective
Masthead
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
Aug 19, 2021 Read the whole text...
David Gaynes
Open City Meeting
On Monday evening, February 20th, 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.
Aug 19, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Events Calendar
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.
Aug 17, 2021 Read the whole text...
International Werewolf Conspiracy
Instructions
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
Aug 17, 2021 Read the whole text...
Various Authors
Letters
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.
Aug 17, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Unclassifieds
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.
Aug 17, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Briefs
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.
Aug 13, 2021 Read the whole text...
Mike Kerman
Class Clash
The Beatles vs. The Rolling Stones
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.
Aug 13, 2021 Read the whole text...
Marieke Bivar
Diane di Prima (1934–2020)
Beat Poet & Activist
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.

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.
Aug 13, 2021 Read the whole text...
Julius Lester
From the Other Side of the Tracks
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.
Aug 13, 2021 Read the whole text...
William Allen
Getting Away with Murder
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.
Aug 13, 2021 Read the whole text...
John Wilcock
Other Scenes
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.
Aug 13, 2021 Read the whole text...
Ernest Larsen
Prison Abolition
It’s Time!
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.
Aug 13, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Read All About It!
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.
Aug 13, 2021 Read the whole text...
John Sinclair
Rock & Roll Dope
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.
Aug 13, 2021 Read the whole text...
Tony Reay
The Daughters of Albion
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?
Aug 13, 2021 Read the whole text...
Penelope Rosemont
The Paris Commune, The Right To Be Lazy & Surrealism
The People Ruled the City for Three Short Months
“Work, now? Never, never. I’m on strike.”
—Rimbaud
This year marks the 150th 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.
Aug 13, 2021 Read the whole text...
Dennis Raymond
The Queen
a lovely human being
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.
Aug 13, 2021 Read the whole text...
Hank Malone
Voodoo in Detroit
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.
Aug 13, 2021 Read the whole text...
Giuseppi Slater
Big Bust at S.F. State
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.
Aug 7, 2021 Read the whole text...
Dennis Raymond
China is Near
...or is it?
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.
Aug 7, 2021 Read the whole text...
Allen Young
D.C. Inhoguration
WASHINGTON, D.C. (LNS)—A river of young Americans flowed up into downtown Washington from 14th 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.
Aug 7, 2021 Read the whole text...
Judie Davis
Eat It
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).
Aug 7, 2021 Read the whole text...
Eugene Schoenfeld M.D.
HipPocrates
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.

ANSWER: Buy the John Lennon-Yoko Ono album. Neither John nor Yoko is circumcised.
Aug 7, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Michigan Witch Hunt
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.”
Aug 7, 2021 Read the whole text...
Michael Dover
More Bombs
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.
Aug 7, 2021 Read the whole text...
Harvey Ovshinsky
Detroit Renaissance
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.
Aug 6, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Masthead
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.
Aug 6, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Events Calendar
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.
Aug 3, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Unclassifieds
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.
Aug 3, 2021 Read the whole text...
S. Laplage
A Sacco and Vanzetti Mystery with a Modern Twist
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.
Aug 1, 2021 Read the whole text...
William R. Boyer (Bill Boyer)
Death Squad
Thy Name is FBI
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.
Aug 1, 2021 Read the whole text...
Carrie Laben
The Booksellers of our Better Nature
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.
Aug 1, 2021 Read the whole text...
Mike Kerman
A New Van Morrison
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.”
Jul 31, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Police Your Local Support
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.
Jul 31, 2021 Read the whole text...
John Sinclair
Rock & Roll Dope
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.
Jul 31, 2021 Read the whole text...
anon.
Fighting Fascism in Greece
“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.
Jul 28, 2021 Read the whole text...
anon.
Friends of Democracy
Greece is still under a military dictatorship
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.
Jul 28, 2021 Read the whole text...
Julius Lester
From the Other Side of the Tracks
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.
Jul 28, 2021 Read the whole text...
Bill Steele
GIs Fight Army Brass
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.
Jul 28, 2021 Read the whole text...