Most Recent Additions

Bulldozers for all of Michigan? This was the fear of liberal delegates to the recent Democratic state convention in Grand Rapids as Patti Knox, wife of “Bulldozin’ Bob” Knox—Detroit Housing Director, was elected vice-chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party.

The Cavanagh “Irish Mafia” was in full evidence on behalf of the candidacy of Mrs. Knox as the “old guard” Democratic leadership of Staebler, Williams, and Scholle left open a big vacuum into which the well-oiled “Jerry-boys” could easily move.

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Michelangelo Antonioni’s BLOWUP, to paraphrase Archibald MacLeish, is a film that means more than it is. Even if people are lost souls, as those in the film certainly are, their relationships to one another, to their surroundings, to the work of art in which they figure should be firmly apprehended and made convincing. Instead, the film’s meaning is wide-open, so much so that I wonder if the Detroit release did not have sections necessary to the development extracted.

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JOHN COLTRANE LIVE AT THE VILLAGE VANGUARD AGAIN! (Impulse 9124) just might be the greatest work of art ever produced in this country -not to mention the greatest selection of jazz music ever to get set down on wax.

Regardless of what you have read, regardless of what anyone has told you, you must give this new music a chance to speak for itself; only you will be the loser if you fail to do so. The place to begin is with this album. Not a day has gone by since I first heard it that I don’t play it at least once, and sometimes twice or even three times. If I were in charge at Impulse, I would sell the record on a money-back-if-not-satisfied basis—it’s simply that good, and that policy would insure that it was heard as widely as it deserves to be.

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A minor illustration of the contemporary disappearance of chivalry is the extensive use of a new rifle by United States forces in Vietnam: the M-16. It shoots a tiny, .223 calibre, 55 grain bullet at the very high muzzle velocity of 3,185 feet per second. Its power to inflict wounds is of the magnitude usually associated with the soft-nose and exploding bullets outlawed by the Hague Conventions.

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“No man knows what vibrations he sets in motion in his lifetime.” —Loren Eisley

So too, it is too early to judge completely the effects of the General Strike for Unity called in support of Adam Clayton Powell for last February 13.

That the city failed to grind to a halt as a result of the strike is certain. Most of Detroit’s Negro community admittedly did not participate. In the absence of any apparently unified sentiment on the part of the nation’s black people the Congress is moving toward a severe punishment of Rep. Adam Powell.

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As is the woeful and morose custom, late February salutes George Washington, who reputedly fathered a nation of sheep, and the motion picture industry boosts itself despite its fathering a low grade of mutton in the disguise of art.

1966 proved the physics maxim that nature abhors a vacuum as the field raised some rather substantial fare to credit with this year’s Academy Awards. No lily white fields for shuffling Negroes to help make nuns in or out of, but rather what approaches an honest effort at resolving the elephantine puzzle of the year’s best performances by actresses, writers, cameramen and directors.

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(This column discusses basic “tune in” methods. The next installment suggests harmonious “dropout” methods.)

Psychedelic drugs make it possible to reach a wide range of consciousness. The experienced psychedelic religionist can move consciousness from one level to another, just like focusing a microscope or telescope.

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The Arizona road dipped suddenly out of a high serpentine ridge and fell straight out like a great javelin dropping ever faster and deeper down, down until it was lost from sight in the blinding rays of a white-hot sun.

To all points stretched the desert. Off in the dim, shimmering distance were the brooding, purple peaks of the incongruously snowcapped Vulture Mountains.

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EDITOR: Harvey Ovshinsky

MANAGING EDITOR: Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT: Cathy West

ART: Dave Carlin

CIRCULATION: Wilson Lindsey, Rita Cole

TRAVEL EDITOR: Sheil Salasnek

MUSIC & LITERARY EDITOR: John Sinclair

CALENDAR: Rhona Whipple

ADVERTISING: Leon Brenner

FILM EDITORS: Joe Fineman, Shirley Hamburg

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The DAILY COLLEGIAN (the school newspaper), was the subject of attack at the Wayne University campus this past month. The Wayne Committee to End the War in Vietnam, Students For a Democratic Society, Young Socialist Alliance, National Student Association, Young Democrats and the Wesley Foundation have published two issues of an 8-page paper, the Wayne Reply, to counter the ineffective and inaccurate coverage of campus political events by the DAILY COLLEGIAN.

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On Valentine’s Day at WSU a strange coalition was effected and the Student-Faculty Council ended up sponsoring a “Bitch-In” on campus, which was an honorable attempt to move from the usual “left-hippy” practice of simply haranguing everyone, to pointing out the similarities of concern and interest among all students and young people generally and making those similarities known by attempting to gather the different people together to “bitch” at the University for all its weird practices. The general purpose of the Bitch-In failed to make itself known or felt, but one or two beautiful things happened which made the attempt really worthwhile.

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Violence in our society will be discussed in a day-long conference sponsored by Detroit Women for Peace on Saturday March 18. Beginning at 9:30 a.m. with luncheon at 12:30; the sessions will be held at St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church, Woodward at King in Detroit. A registration fee of $3.00, $2.00 for students, includes coffee and the luncheon.

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The Conference on Drug Abuse at Oberlin College sponsored by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) came off not quite as planned. The weekend of Feb. 17, 18 and 19 found a gathering of the drug elite crowded into this tiny collegiate community with the purpose of presenting an objective view on the abuse of drugs.

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Editor’s note: The West Central Organization is a “poor people’s organization” founded in June of 1965. It is modeled after the militant community organizing projects of Saul David Alinsky, executive director of the Industrial Areas Foundation, who is retained by WCO as a consultant two days per month at $200.00 per day.

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The greatest alienation that capitalism has wrought on humanity is perhaps not labor power, as posited by Marx, but rather the ability to live a life reliant on nature. Where once humanity was in intimate contact with the natural world, cityscapes, abstract economies, and industrial technocracy now dominate our lives.

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a review of

War of Dreams: A Field Guide to DIY Psy-Ops by Jason Rodgers. PM Press, 2024

At the height of the zine movement in the 1990s, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands—what could be thought of as armies of people—would march off to their post office boxes every day to engage in an ongoing assault on mainstream culture using low-circulation publications as their weapons of choice.

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FILM

FILM Famous Early Movie Series. Bringing Up Baby, with Cary Grant & Katherine Hepburn (1938). Henry Ford Museum Theatre. 2 & 4 p.m. Adm. 2/19

FILM Famous Films of Famous Directors III. Dreyer’s Day of Wrath, at Rackham Educ. Mem. Aud. 80 Farnsworth. 8:15 p.m. Adm. 2/25

FILM Film Arts International. Sadko, Liberal Arts Bldg. , Marygrove College, 8:15 p.m. Adm. 2/17

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To the Editor:

The recent bust of the Artists’ Workshop and surrounding area is indeed a tragedy. [See Narco Agents Raid Artists’ Workshop, [FE #23, February 1–15, 1967.] It’s a sign of the times too, for we are presently living under a totalitarian police state system and it’s getting worse all of the time.

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Dr. Sheil Salasnek addressed a crowd of over 130 people at the LEMAR Legalize Marijuana meeting Feb. 2^nd in Lower DeRoy Auditorium.

The paranoia from the recent bust was evident as everyone originally sat in the back of the room, avoiding the (bugged for what?) front rows of seats. However, after Joe Mulky urged everyone to move UP, and the doctor started talking, the meeting turned to a relaxed and comprehensive discussion of LSD and the psychedelics.

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One doesn’t expect to read much about spectator sports in the Fifth Estate. The multi-underground nature of professional boxing today, however, makes it and perhaps cock-fighting, an apt subject for followers of deviant American culture. Moreover, there is something of a tradition of writers, self styled or otherwise, commenting at least on heavyweight championships.

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Having surveyed the recent New American Cinema products, one might easily be tempted to remain silent until an achievement of greater substance presents itself for evaluation. Yet, since an authentically New American Cinema is the concern of any conscious film artist, he must accept what is available as a concrete basis and subject it to a definite scrutiny, before he can discard or transcend it. For, assuming the existence of talent, it has precisely been a view of life without ideas, and a conception of art without theory that has prevented most of the New American Cinema film-makers from becoming true artists and thus the true spokesmen for their generation.

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Nothing demonstrates more clearly the intertwined nature of politics and the new music than a concert that I had the good fortune to be able to attend over the recent holidays. The concert was in New York’s Village Theatre, and it featured, besides the artistry of Jackie McLean, Marion Brown, Archie Shepp, and their respective groups, a short speech by none other than Stokely Carmichael.

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I visited the Grande for the first time in quite a while. Seems to have grown up. The lights are better, more people, wild pop clothes, and less self-conscious of ‘freaking out.’ The MC-5 played what has got to be the sound of the Big City. They come on with a rush of muscle; like being in the middle of a factory. It crashes and bangs and swirls you around; and it’s not a particularly easy trip. You sweat with them through some hard music.

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A deadly drone war rages between Ukraine and Russia. A.I.-generated images are appearing on restaurant menus and as logos in grocery store aisles. Students all around the world are flooding ChatGPT essays into their online courses.

And, for some reason, the world’s richest man is now tampering with the secure government data banks of one of the world’s most powerful nations because the country re-elected a third-rate reality TV star who has a meme coin worth $180 billion dollars. Despite all of this, the assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December by 26-year-old Luigi Mangione may be the most cyberpunk event of the 21^st century.

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Are the officials of Dow Chemical Company, the local Selective Service system, and the Wayne University administration guilty of complicity in war crimes? This will be the subject of public hearings to be held at Wayne University between April 8 and 15.

The decision to hold the hearings was made unanimously at a planning conference for Vietnam Week in late January. The conference was called by the Wayne Committee to End the War in Vietnam and was chaired by Charles Larson, president of the Student-Faculty Council at Wayne. Also represented to the Conference were Detroit and Oakland Students for a Democratic Society, the Fifth Estate, the Detroit Committee to End the War in Vietnam, Detroit Citizens for Peace in Vietnam, and the Young Socialist Alliance.

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a review of

World War 3 Now? World War 3 Illustrated, Issue #54 by Jordan Worley, Nicole Shulman, Seth Tobocman, Sue Simensky Bietila, eds. AK Press, 2024

The new issue of World War 3 Illustrated, the 54^th, is one of the biggest in the history of this long-running project, with over 50 artists and writers contributing.

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The draft law (Universal Military Service and Training Act) will expire in July of this year. Because this country is supposedly run democratically, there will be debate on the renewal of the bill in Congress. Because there is a war being waged in Viet Nam, the flow of men to Southeast Asia will not be hampered.

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EDITOR

Harvey Ovshinsky

MANAGING EDITOR

Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Cathy West

NEWS EDITORS

Robert Fleck, Frank Joyce

ART

Dave Carlin

CIRCULATION

Wilson Lindsey

TRAVEL EDITOR

Sheil Salasnek

MUSIC & LITERARY EDITOR

John Sinclair

CALENDAR

Rhona Whipple

ADVERTISING

Leon Brenner

FILM EDITORS

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On Thursday, February 23 at 8 p.m. the editorial board of GUERRILLA will present a program of new Latin American poetry in Lower Helen DeRoy Aud. at Wayne State University. The program will include a film on the Venezuelan guerrilla struggle and a lecture on Hugo Blanco, the imprisoned Peruvian peasant leader. The evening will be presented in cooperation with the Committee To Defend Latin American Political Prisoners.

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a review of

The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic by Alan Moore and Steve Moore. Top Shelf Productions and Knockabout Comics, 2024

Two writers, life-long friends, became practicing magicians and decades later decided to share what they have learned. Alan Moore is almost certainly the most important comics writer of the last half-century, having greatly expanded both the range and the depth of the medium, subverting, deconstructing, or reinventing every genre in which he has worked.

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In a spasm of concern for the political education of Oakland University students, the O.U. Young Dems invited Donald Lobsinger, chairman of the ultra-rightwing Breakthrough organization, to address the student body on Monday, February 6.

It was a circus. Over 400 people packed Oakland’s Gold Room to point, gape, and laugh at the Superfreak. All the campus hippies were there. SDS came to chuckle. A festival atmosphere pervaded the crowd.

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The man responsible for the death of Oakland, Calif. social justice activist, anarchist, and baker, Jen Angel, was sentenced to seven years imprisonment for manslaughter and robbery. Twenty-year-old Ishmael Burch accepted a plea deal in August of last year.

Angel was dragged to death in February 2023 when she became entangled in the car Burch was driving after he had stolen her purse.

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Surprise “hero” of the recent narcotics bust—Recorder’s Court Judge Frank Schemanske. Lena Sinclair (John’s wife) and three others were going to be held a second night without being formally charged, pending a chemical analysis of the stuff seized in the raids. When Lena’s pregnant condition was pointed out to the judge, he called the Narcotics Bureau and ordered the prisoners’ immediate release without bond of any kind.

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There will be a meeting of the people who were illegally arrested and detained in the January 24^th “great marijuana raids” to discuss the possibilities of bringing suit against the Detroit Police Department for violation of their civil rights.

Attorney Dennis James will address the group and will answer questions about the legal problems involved. All those arrested who wish to look into this matter are urged to attend. The meeting will be held at the Artists’ Workshop, 4857 John Lodge, at 8:00 p.m. Monday, February 20, and will be sponsored by the 24^th of January Movement. People desiring more information can call the chairman of the subcommittee, Rita Cole, at 358–0425.

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The “great narcotics hoax” was pretty weird any way you look at it, and I’m happy too that this issue carries a “fact sheet” on the big “raids.” The daily “newspapers” and the idiot TV and radio interests do a good job as police propagandists, as well they should (like, when you consider the Commissioner Ray Girardin was a “newsman” for 30 years on the Times, you get the idea), and as usual the only source for anything even resembling the “facts” is this paper. But they know they haven’t got long now, and they’re doing everything in their power to hold off the revolution—which revolution, however, will not be stopped. Like the cop said to me, “I just hope those kids aren’t listening to you,” and all I could tell him was, well, they’re YOUR kids, baby, and they don’t HAVE to listen to me at all—you’re doing a pretty good job of alienating them all by yourself. They don’t NEED me to tell them anything. Yes.

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Smiling and serene Michio Kushi arrived in Detroit Tuesday, the 31^st day of January to talk about his life work, Macrobiotics. To audiences that night at the residence of Bill Reid and Ken Burns and at Jim Semark’s the next, he explained that Macrobiotics is a dietary approach to living based on the principle of yin and yang, two terms for which he has been unable to find an equivalent in our language.

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FIFTH ESTATE subscribers almost didn’t get their last issue because the Post Office couldn’t make up its mind whether the paper was pornographic or not.

A Postal Inspector Brown called the FIFTH ESTATE office and invited us to come down and discuss a new bulk rate. When our people arrived, the Inspector told them that he had to call the state postal authorities. Specifically, Brown objected to the ‘Poem for Warner Stringfellow’ by Detroit poet John Sinclair. The post office was upset about an alleged statement by Lt. Stringfellow that Sinclair was a “worthless prick.”

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On Tuesday night the 24^th of January 56 Detroit citizens were arrested and held at least overnight in the City Jail. Most of these arrests—43—were entirely illegal and unconstitutional, and there is considerable doubt as to the legality of the arrests of the 13 people who were subsequently charged with selling and / or dispensing (giving away), and/or possessing, varying quantities of marijuana.

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“Everything I say will come out just a little bit different, I don’t mean on the transcript, but as it leaves my mind and comes through my mouth, it gets a little bit messed up just around about the mouth, where the words start doing it.”

  ~

Miles: Are there any particular influences on your music?

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On Wednesday, January 18, the Ann Arbor Police Department confiscated Jack Smith’s film FLAMING CREATURES during a showing to 300 college students, hippies, and film buffs. This was, we suppose, an attempt to protect these people from having to see things that they weren’t supposed to see.

It was a very subtle bust, actually. Everyone was sitting there watching the film when the screen went black and the lights came up. There was confusion for a few minutes, people wondering if the film was over or what.

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In a sermon on Anti-Semitism on January 22, the Rev. David M. Gracie, St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church, called for stronger measures against Breakthrough, a local right-wing group, and its various disguises, better protection of community groups against their “disruption, harassment and embarrassment,” and “prosecution (of them) with at least as much zeal as was shown in the Hobart Street trespass case.”

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a review of

Fight for a New Normal? Anarchism and mutual aid in the Covid-19 pandemic crisis Ed. Jim Donaghey, Foreword by Ruth Kinna; Afterward by Rhiannon Firth. Freedom Press, 2024

People all over the world, including in the U.S., are facing increasing authoritarianism, natural disasters, industrially-produced destruction of the living environment and intensifying social breakdown. Nevertheless, there is some basis for hope because of the growing numbers of mutual aid projects with the potential to be part of strengthening community defense and decentralized liberatory communities, emerging everywhere.

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The floodlights and the TV cameras swung around in a wide arc to survey the results of a question asked from the podium. The question: “How many of you are willing right now to stand up and say you’re not willing to go and fight in Viet Nam?” In answer, more than one-half the 150 in the audience rose to their feet.

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I want to compliment you on the very fine article which you co-authored in the January 1 through 15, 1967, issue of the Fifth Estate [“Spare the Rod…?” FE #21, January 1–15, 1967]. I think that it was a well written article which discussed and documented very well the kinds of problems we have around corporal punishment here in the Detroit Public School system.

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Councilman Nicholas Hood’s recent “anti-crime” breakfast of Negro “leaders” may have been a lot more clever than one would think at first glance.

This writer’s first reaction was: What kind of crap is this—that, according to Hood, “Negroes should utilize the same energies devoted to the civil rights movement to the fight against crime.”

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A series of free entertainment on Friday nights has been organized at Wayne State University by a group of students known as the Friday Night Coordinating Committee (FNCC)

On February 3 there will be a classical music concert at Community Arts Aud., at 8:00, presenting Dr. & Mrs. Hockberg of the Wayne State University School of Music.

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The New Age of man finds more and more people interested in living together for the mutual benefit of one another’s growth and development.

While many communes have been set up in the past they have generally been of limited success. Despite all the difficulties that one encounters in communal living it is the belief of many that it is only through such living together and the sharing of lives that man can achieve his maximum potential.

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I have never talked with anyone knowledgeable about Harlem affairs who does not believe that Esther James, the woman who sued Adam Clayton Powell for libel, was a bag woman as the Congressman had called her.

The problem is that in order to prove it, since the defense against libel is the truth, Adam Clayton Powell would have had to produce witnesses willing to testify about corruption in the New York Police Department. Where is the policeman who is willing to admit that he took the payments from Esther James? Or that the N.Y. police department runs the numbers racket in Harlem? So when Esther James admitted on the witness stand, as she did that she was a police informer, that in itself was a tacit admission that she was a bag woman.

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Once, one approached Truffaut with satiate expectancy, awaiting only to be chewed up and spat upon beneath the marquee. In stark wonderment and in bitter tears one expected to be engulfed by the pleasures of cinema at its best. The mystery about him is depleted and this precious auteur now rates the same scrutiny as his far western brothers with only a slightly higher handicap. His reputation has been defiled through the medium of “Farenheit 451,” Truffaut’s latest endeavor, from the novel of the same name by Ray Bradbury.

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America—the world—lives in a period of transition of its entire way of life. On the one hand we live in utter confusion and yet on the other we are beginning to see the immense possibilities that are now available to us to construct a HUMAN society, a society in which man will be released from thousands of years of struggle and toil he has put himself to. Moreover, we live in a period of great spiritual discovery. We find ourselves at the beginning of a human epoch that will see each of us—all men—MAN flower into the beautiful creative animal he is.

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