Most Recent Additions

A team of medical men is in South Vietnam on a mission that might result in a group of napalm-burned children coming to Detroit for surgery and treatment.

The team consists of Dr. John Constable of the Committee of Responsibility and four other doctors. Doctor Constable is a plastic surgeon.

According to Dr. Paul Lowenger of the Lafayette Clinic here the medical men are doing a survey of badly burned children in the war-torn land. They are preparing dossiers on children who are to be brought to this country.

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a review of

To Rob a Bank Is an Honor: Lucio Urtubia, (translation Paul Sharkey) AK Press, 2024.

Lucio Urtubia’s name is not well known in anarchist circles. He produced no philosophical or polemical writings, and is mainly remembered for a successful scheme to rob–not with guns, but with fake checks–one of the world’s major banks.

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John B. Logan, a professor at Notre Dame University, has been named the Miles Memorial Poet for 1967 at Wayne State University.

Professor Logan, currently a visiting professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo, will accept the honor, which includes a $1,000 grant, at 8-p.m. Sunday, April 23, in the Community Arts Auditorium on campus. Logan will also read his poetry at the event which will climax the 21^st Annual Miles Modern Poetry Week at WSU.

The champion fighter for civil liberties in this town may turn out to be that famous right-winger Donald Lobsinger, chairman of Breakthrough. His sometimes puerile and offensive tactics may help fortify our always precarious constitutional rights.

The latest Lobsinger incident raises a host of exciting issues which must elicit the sympathies of the civil libertarian.

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Every third corner of Paris has a commemorative stone to honor those who died for the liberation of the city in August 1944. Every provincial town has some plaque to name its mort pour la France. As testimony to the nation’s suffering, these slabs of stone and steel are laudable, but as remembrances of glory and duty they should be destroyed.

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Reviewed

The Marijuana Papers: A comprehensive reference work of the essential classic and contemporary documents on marijuana. Edited by David Solomon. New York: The Bobs-Merrell Company. 448 pp. $10.00.

If one considers the huge tax loss that would result from a substantial public shift to marijuana from alcoholic beverages and the power of the liquor lobby, it is easier to understand why this mildly stimulating and relaxing herb has been the victim of such repressive laws.

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A dinner to celebrate the Fifth Anniversary of the American Civil Liberties Union will be held at the Rackham Building on Saturday, April 29.

The dinner will feature a tribute to Dr. Walter G. Bergman, a Detroit educator for more than 40 years and a leader in civil liberties organization in Michigan.

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Twenty-five members of the Detroit Amsterdam Committee walked down Cass avenue on April 1 to protest the pollution in our city.

Headed by Monteith professor Jonathan Schwartz, the protestors wore surgical masks and carried signs demanding that “Citizens, Reclaim your City.” Professor Schwartz told the FIFTH ESTATE, “For the future, we need music. I propose that we develop rhythm bands with extra instruments so that anybody who wishes to join in can do so.”

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“Hey people now smile on your brother.

Let me see you get together and love one another right now.”

The Detroit tribes will gather together for the first time in many moons for the first modern Michigan Pow Wow on Belle Isle, Sunday, April 30.

The gathering, which will begin at noon and continue through into the night, will center on the Belle Isle bandshell and spread out from there. Everyone will be safe and in the company of friends, in many cases friends he never knew he had. Detroit, the city of instant paranoia, will overcome its self-induced fears on that day and move into the future with the fire of love burning through its citizens’ beings.

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Arrangements are being completed for 100 poetry readings in the classrooms of 43 inner city parochial and public junior and senior high schools by 26 locally and nationally known poets. The Poetry Readings are being sponsored by DETROIT ADVENTURE and the Academy of American Poets in cooperation with the Detroit Public Schools.

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At first glance, Les Biederman doesn’t appear to be the martyr type. He requested an assignment several years ago in the so-called “inner-city.” Placed in Jefferson Junior High School, just across from the Jeffries Housing Project, he found a sufficient challenge with those now popularly termed the “disadvantaged.”

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EDITORS: Harvey Ovshinsky, Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT: Cathy West

NEWS EDITOR: Frank Joyce

ART: Gary Grimshaw

MUSIC & LITERARY EDITOR: John Sinclair

CALENDAR: Rhona Whipple

FILM EDITORS: Joe Fineman, Shirley Hamburg

ADVERTISING: Leon Brenner

CIRCULATION: Wilson Lindsey

TRAVEL EDITOR: Sheil Salasnek

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Abortion is the current controversy in the Michigan Senate.

Senator John E. McCauley, Wyandotte Democrat is sponsor of a new abortion bill, and feels it could be passed, if released for discussion by the Judiciary Committee. The bill, somewhat limited in its scope, is nonetheless liberal in its attempt to revise the existing laws.

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UPS — The San Francisco Mime Troupe seems to be out of the frying pan and into the fire, Canadian style.

The Troupe, which performs social satire, had just been acquitted on an obscenity charge in Denver (FE #26, March 15–30, 1967) and had left for the University of Calgary in Canada for a scheduled performance of their production of “Minstrel Show, or: Civil Rights in a Cracker Barrel.”

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Over 70 major multi-media artists, poets, dramatists, dancers, happening and event producers, scientists and musicians will be involved this summer in an extensive inter-arts collaboration near Woodstock, New York.

Participating intermedia artists include Lindsey Decker, Dean Fleming, Daniel Larue Johnson, Peter Forakis, Allan Kaprow, Mike Kirby, Jay Milder, Marta Minujin, Charles Ross, Carolee Schneeman, Michael Snow and Phyllis Yampolsky. Other representatives include Dizzy Reece (jazz musician and European critic), Steve Reich (tape composer), John Vacarro and the Playhouse of the Ridiculous. Directors of the poetry and film projects at St. Mark’s Church In-the-Bowery, Joel Oppenheimer and Stanon Kaye. Editors Dick Higgins (the Something Else Press), Alan Katzman (The East Village, Other) and Richard Schechner (Tulane Drama Review).

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As part of Vietnam Week, April 8–15, there are activities taking place in hundreds of communities across the nation. Everything from teach-ins to demonstrations have occurred giving evidence of increased opposition to the war in Vietnam.

Locally, Vietnam Week began early with a scheduled debate between the Wayne Committee to End the War in Vietnam and Wayne University Young Republican Club on April 5^th.

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The Detroit Love-In, to be held on Belle Isle April 30^th, will be the first large-scale manifestation of the New Spirit of Detroit, and everyone who feels that spirit and believes in it, and everyone who doubts it or would deny it, should be there to make it public once and for all.

Other events scheduled for the Trans-Love weekend include a tree dance/concert Friday night in the Mart Room at WSU (on the second floor of Mackenzie Hall, Cass and Putnam), with the great Seventh Seal donating their music and energy for their people. Everyone is welcome. On Saturday night, the 29^th, Trans-Love will sponsor a huge music explosion in the Community Arts Auditorium, Cass and Kirby, on the Wayne campus.

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a review of

Taking the State Out of the Body: A Guide to Embodied Resistance to Zionism by Eliana Rubin. PM Press, 2024

A disclosure at the outset: Parts of this book lie outside the competence of this reviewer, notably sections at the end of each chapter called “Embodied Practices.” These are hands-on exercises intended for collective and individual healing from various forms of trauma and harm resulting from our colonial-settler, sexist, and oppressive system. Interested readers can evaluate their use for themselves.

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FILM

FILM: April 1, Luis Bunel’s “EL” (This Strange Passion -1953) at 8:15 p.m. in Community Arts Aud. WSU Campus. Adm. 75 cents for students and $1 for general public. Info: 831–4310

FILM: Friday, April 7^th — Movie Night. “Way Out West” Laurel and Hardy, “La Chein D’Angelieu’ (dir. Dali 1928) & ‘Music Box” Laurel and Hardy. Lower DeRoy Aud., WSU campus. 8:15 p.m. Free.

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Sol Plafkin is way off-center in his remarks about Congressman John Conyers, Jr. and the Powell case [FE #26, March 15–31, 1967].

He forgets that Mr. Conyers was against stripping Powell of his seniority, even to breaking with the Democratic Study Group over this; he apparently does not know that Mr. Conyers fought vigorously for the most lenient recommendations of the special committee and voted to seat Powell on all votes that were taken. His judgment in accepting appointment to the Special Committee cannot be questioned—Powell needed his advocacy there.

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WANTED

for attempted murder of the New Spirit of Detroit

VAHAN KAPEGIAN ALIAS “LOUIE” OFFICER NARCOTICS BUREAU, DETROIT POLICE

Description:

Kapegian is approximately 30–35 years old. He is of medium height and build; has brown hair and eyes; he has a dark complexion. He has been a member of the Detroit Police for 13 years; 4 of them as an undercover agent. When working in a role as an informer he may appear as in the photos above. However, when he is in Recorders’ Court testifying against innocent marijuana smokers he will appear in a suit and tie and be clean shaven. Look for him, and others like him, in either garb.

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“Quack, Quack

I am a duck,

You are probably human

You can wear White Levis

Some people have all the luck”

—The Jefferson Airplane

Some people aren’t so lucky. Strikers against the Levi-Strauss Company in Blue Ridge, Georgia have called for a national boycott of all Levi products.

The strike action was called after 460 of the 570 Strauss workers walked off of the Blue Ridge plant to protest terrible working conditions there. The workers, mostly women, charge that the Strauss plant had located in Blue Ridge in order to exploit the underemployed workers of that region.

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The anthropologist James Campbell Scott, who passed away on July 19, 2024, approached the world from an egalitarian perspective. While not identifying as an anarchist, he brought an anarchistic sensibility to his study of the dynamics of power relations and the varied ways peoples have resisted authority in the past and present.

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a review of

Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023

Naomi Klein’s most recent book is a worthwhile analysis of fascist and reactionary organizing that began with the Covid-19 pandemic and continues to the present. Encompassing both liberatory and electoral politics, her jumping off point is the persistent confusion in public between herself and highbrow feminist-cum-MAGA acolyte, Naomi Wolf. But this is like the McGuffin in a detective story: it’s the animating ghost—doppelgangers often showing up as poltergeists—that takes us through a much more interesting journey than the initial question portends.

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W.D. Snodgrass, professor of English at Wayne State University and a Pulitzer Prize winning poet, will be the third poet in the “Dialogues on the Art of Poetry’ series at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 4, in the Community Arts Auditorium on the WSU campus.

Snodgrass’s volume of poems, “Heart’s Needle,” won both the Pulitzer Prize and the $1,000 award in poetry of the Ingram Merrill Foundation.

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Trans-Love Members Pose on Top of Artists’ Workshop

A group of Detroit artists and craftsmen have banded together to form a cooperative called Trans-Love Energies Unlimited. The participants will work to draw the local “underground” community closer together and help market its services in the aboveground world. Included in the organization will be rock bands, jazz groups, graphic artists, photographers, hip merchants, light-show companies, and other individuals and groups who can make use of its services.

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“This is a lot of shit,” was the reaction of one Cass Technical High School student to a recent Underground addition to the growing number of publications at Detroit’s largest inner-city school.

South Hampton Illustrated Times, better known to the student body as SHIT, arrived on the scene without the thunder and lightning that usually accompanies the appearance of an unsponsored (or rather, uncensored) school publication. Officials were concerned, but didn’t know who to blame, and the students were more than slightly tongue-in-cheek in their acceptance.

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I couldn’t believe it when they shook me down at the door of the Grande. A cop insensitively feeling my pants. It didn’t exactly make me feel welcome. They said they were looking for booze and weapons. What! It seems our psychedelic love-hall has turned into a greasy high school drink arena.

The MC 5 came on, though, and I got under the strobe light and just grooooved. They turned on waves of love-energy onto the people, who I hope were listening to the music. It’s too bad the hippy population here can’t support a showcase for good sounds where people could feel safe to go and get out of their minds. It can’t happen soon enough.

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EDITORS NOTE: In addition to serving as the Fifth Estate news Editor, Frank Joyce is the Executive Secretary of People Against Racism (PAR). According to its literature, PAR was formed several months ago by those who agree that the problem of race relations in this country is much more a white problem than a Negro problem and that the responsibility of whites is to eliminate white supremacy, discrimination and prejudice in the white community.

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Every revolution in jazz is fundamentally a revolution in the mode of sensing jazz rhythms and that is of course as true of the jazz revolution of today as it was of the bebop revolution of some two decades past.

The first thing that one does in striving to grasp the essence of a revolution—social or aesthetic—is to compare the new synthesis with the one it replaced. With respect to jazz rhythm, the transition is from the unvarying 4/4 pulse of bebop to a fragmented and polyrhythmic fabric which juxtaposes patterns of three beats, four beats, and beats of other bases against one another.

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a review of

Burning Rage of a Dying Planet: The FBI vs. The Earth Liberation Front (Second Edition) by Craig Rosebraugh. Microcosm Publishing 2024.

Burning Rage of a Dying Planet is a history of the rise of the radical environmental movement the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), as told by Craig Rosebraugh, who served as the spokesperson for the ELF during its arguably most consequential years, 1997 to late 2001.

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It’s a grey, wet day, so everyone who can find a spot is packed into the warehouse instead of spreading out across the grounds outside. In pockets around the space, people are skilling up or building art.

Doc is teaching a small group how to be street medics. Mass arrests, street battles, teargas, and more rain will come in the days ahead and people are readying themselves for the tens of thousands arriving to fight the machinations of global capitalism. It is April 2000, Washington, D.C.

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a review of

Dismantling the Master’s Clock: On Race, Space, and Time by Rasheedah Phillips. AK Press, 2025

In a discussion during the early winter of 2024 with radical political scientist Richard Gilman-Opalsky facilitated through Incite Seminars, there arose the essential thread of imagination and its usefulness as a tool for decolonization, along with the reaffirmation of future potentialities hidden within playful and creative anti-capitalist exercises.

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All those charged by police in the January 4^th “Great Reefer Raid” have by now been arraigned and examined and, with one exception, bound over for trial in Detroit Recorder’s Court. The exception is Magdelene Sinclair, charged with possession of marijuana, whose March 14^th examination was continued until March 31^st.

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(Special to the FIFTH ESTATE) LONDON—From the suburban sprawls of America where the language of LSD and grass is used to sell cars and discotheque tickets, the appeal of the country that produced Tolkien, “Morgan!,” and George Harrison is strong and readily fulfilled.

Unfortunately after nearly six months in “Swinging London,” I am willing to face General Hershey and his clerks of conscription and the napalm aces of the USAF rather than stay another six.

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The second annual Detroit Jazz Conference will be held on Saturday, April 8 and Sunday, April 9 at Wayne State University’s McGregor Memorial Conference Center, the Community Arts Auditorium and the Music Wing.

More than 75 musicians and speakers will participate in the week-end program of live performances, discussions and lecture-demonstrations. Headliners include conference artist -in-residence pianist Cecil Taylor and his quartet, guitarist Kenny Burrell, critic-author A.B. Spellman, and Frank Kofsky, FIFTH ESTATE jazz columnist.

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Editors’ note: The following interview by FIFTH ESTATE film editor Joe Fineman took place at the recent Ann Arbor Film Festival. Participants in the interview were film judges Henri Chapier, critic for COMBAT magazine; Gerard Malanga, superstar; and Andrew Lugg, U of M Cinema Guild. The winners of the festival will be shown in late April by FNCC Lower DeRoy Aud. on the Wayne Campus.

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The Eastern Market is one of those places you must love. She is quite an old woman by now, and part of her (the Gratiot Central Market) was recently gutted by flames: But you love her, for she is very real and genuine—the Lotte Lenya of our local architecture.

She lives just east of the city’s newest “Ditch,” on Vernor near Russell. Confined mostly to bed, she sprawls over a five block area, languishing in meat-packing houses, vegetable stalls, and exotic wholesalers of olive oil, dried apricots, noodles, and wine. She is always vaguely reminiscing her halcyon days, when she was a young immigrant speaking Yiddish and Italian.

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Here’s the political line-up for 1967, so far: There will definitely be a special election in the City of Detroit, and probably the rest of Wayne County, in November. The primary will be held either in August or September.

One of the most interesting races will be for two Detroit Common Council vacancies. Possible candidates are: Walter Shamie, Mary Ball, Rev. James Chambers, State Rep. James Del Rio, Asst. Police Commissioner Hubert Locke, and State Sen. Coleman Young.

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Support The Spring Mobilization To End The War In Vietnam.

As members of the Detroit community we declare our opposition to the illegal, immoral, and unconstitutional war being waged against the people of Vietnam. We declare it particularly to the U.S. leaders who bear ultimate responsibility for the outrages being committed in our names. We indict them thusly:

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Violence in our society became real for over 400 people at a conference on that subject on March 18. Draft-age students came with their girl friends and young mothers listened as best they could while their children pulled at their skirts.

The conference at St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church was opened by Olga Penn, Chairman of Detroit Women for Peace. She introduced Dr. Paul Lowinger who talked about the effect of violence on young people:

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EDITOR Harvey Ovshinsky

MANAGING EDITOR Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Cathy West

ART Dave Carlin, Gary Grimshaw

TRAVEL EDITOR Sheil Salasnek

MUSIC & LITERARY EDITOR John Sinclair

CALENDAR Rhona Whipple

ADVERTISING Leon Brenner

FILM EDITORS Joe Fineman, Shirley Hamburg

NEWS EDITOR Frank Joyce

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The other day an old friend and FIFTH ESTATE contributor staggered into our office fresh from the local Ft. Wayne induction center. Bruised and bleeding, with chains, jewelry, and iron crosses hanging from his black leathers, he told a gruesome tale of unprovoked assault (well, almost).

At the draft center, our hero had understandable difficulty following military regulations. After several “incidents,” the unwashed beardo was sent to lunch. Calmly reading his FIFTH ESTATE in the cafeteria, he was approached by several MPs who had apparently been called by distraught cafeteria personnel.

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The great freak-rock New York band THE FUGS will be in Detroit the 6^th of April for a one-night only concert, under the auspices of the Friday Night Coordinating Committee (FNCC) of WSU. The Thursday night freak-out will take place twice that night at Wayne Comm. Arts Aud., with shows at 7 and 9 p.m. Tickets are on sale at the Fifth Estate and at Mixed Media, at $2 and $3.

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State Senator Roger Craig (D-Dearborn) has introduced a bill in the Michigan Senate that would exempt marijuana from the application of the general narcotics act.

Craig wants the judiciary committee to hold hearings to determine whether it’s appropriate to consider marijuana and opiate derivatives together.

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Twenty-three people stood silently at Grand Circus park on Saturday March 18 to indicate their support of the Phoenix, a peace ship sailing to North Vietnam.

The vigil was called by the American Friends Meeting (100 St. Aubin) to publicize the voyage of the Phoenix, which left Hiroshima under sail for Haiphong. Captained by Earle Roberts, the Phoenix is a fifty foot sailing ship which in 1958 was sailed into the Eniwetok nuclear test area by the captain and his family.

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The Marijuana Scare is getting weirder and weirder, with the grass police moving backwards faster every day, trying to bust everybody they can before the laws won’t let them do it any more. As far as I’m concerned the busts first in Detroit, and now at Grosse Pointe and Livonia high schools, are the best thing that could have happened at this time—short of legalizing grass altogether, of course. Because the only way the police have been able to keep up their screen of lies and fear is by keeping it all “under ground,” where no straight people could see what was happening. Now, with the silly narcotics police breaking in on their sons and daughters almost every day, the middle-class citizens of our time are beginning to wonder about marijuana prohibition—and it’s just about time.

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FILM

CINEMA GUILD PRESENTS: a series of films being shown on Thurs., Fri., Sat., and Sun. at 7 and 9:05 p.m. at the Architecture Auditorium in Ann Arbor. Adm. 50 cents.

March 16 & 17: Les Quatre Cents Coups (The 400 Blows) 1959

March 18 & 19: Tirez sur Le Pianiste (Shoot the Piano Player) 1960

March 23 & 24: Nuit Et Brouilard (Night and Fog) 1955, and Let There Be Light 1946

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Students confront Dow representatives

A determined three-day demonstration against UCLA cooperation with the makers of napalm bombs blossomed out at the university’s Student Placement Center last Monday through Wednesday.

Groups of picketers numbering between 20 and 30 gathered each of the three days inside the building and in front of the office which a representative of the Dow Chemical Company was using for job interviews with students.

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Acknowledging the existence only of individuals and families, Margaret Thatcher declared, “There’s no such thing as society.”

Mustafa Khayati went a little deeper, in one of my favorite quotes: “The university teaches everything about society. Except what it is.” Similarly, Peter Sloterdijk wondered what kind of “proverbial stuff” societies are made of.

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