Most Recent Additions

LONDON (LNS)—The Beatles are considering doing a series of free concerts in the U.S. next spring or early summer, according to a report in the rock tabloid, Rolling Stone. The concerts would be an expression of the Beatles’ thanks for support from their American fans.

The latest issue of Rolling Stone is chock full of other good Beatle data, such as:

...

CHICAGO, LNS—City Hall sources were buzzing this morning as the mayor’s office shamefacedly admitted to what may be one of the greatest blunders in the history of law enforcement. A mud-splattered blue Chevrolet van carrying 14 dangerous political criminals had passed through the clutches of the city’s police and was allowed to escape through what Mayor Daley called “criminal negligence” on the part of his force early Sunday morning.

...

When the President appointed a Commission to study violence after Chicago’s freak-out Convention activity last August, not even the most turned on prophet in the movement could have suspected the bombshell report which would become, after a single day on the stands, a runaway best seller.

Maybe hippies, Yippies, Panthers, college students, politicos, and assorted freeks have been saying it all along, but now the Establishment has come out and said it.

...

Nothing much to report or rap about; so just a few brief notes.

Our abortive record deal with ESP records is still fouled. We wrote the record company in New York and asked if they could mail the bonus records to our new subscribers, but they have not answered to date.

A few people have come into our office to pick up their albums, but the majority of them remain here in the office confronting us accusingly. If you live in the Detroit area please come and get your record or if you live a distance away write us a note and we will send it to you.

...

A “National GI-Civilian anti-war Action Conference” has been called for Chicago on December 28^th. This conference is part of a weekend series of meetings between GIs and civilians to plan joint projects and call a mass anti-war action in the spring.

The conference will be held during the Christmas holidays and in centrally located Chicago to make it easier for GIs to attend during their holiday leaves.

...

Since their seems to be some controversy about calling police “Pigs,” I would like to say that when you call any group any one name, that you are generalizing.

Whether you call a policeman a pig, a long haired freak a hippy, or a black man a nigger it’s all the same.

Believe it or not police are people and by classing them together as one name, you are guilty of exactly what their doing. Not to say that the majority of police aren’t sadists, I’m sure they are, but you have to realize that police work naturally caters to sadists.

...

Last issue we hinted that perhaps Detroit Police Commissioner Johannes Spreen was trying to do something about the brutal and racist nature of his police by disciplining officers involved in incidents of brutality at the Veteran’s Memorial Building and Poor People’s March. Criminal charges were even brought against two officers for their roles in brutalizing two teenagers.

...

Fifth Estate

A Newspaper Of Detroit

EDITORS

Harvey Ovshinsky

Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Cathy West

CIRCULATION

Tommye Wiese

NEWS EDITOR

Alan Gotkin

MUSIC EDITOR

John Sinclair

PHOTO EDITOR

Mike Tyre

ART DIRECTION

Blallen

ADVERTISING

Gunnar Lewis

CALENDAR

Resa Jannett

DISTRIBUTION

...

MIAMI (LNS)—A variety of musicians and singers will get together for the 1969 Miami Pop Festival set for Dec. 29–30 at Gulfstream Park, Hallandale, Fla.

The following will perform:

Saturday, Dec. 28: Jose Feliciano, Country Joe & the Fish, Buffy Saint Marie, Chuck Berry, Infinite McCoys, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Booker T and the MGs, Dino Valente, Fleetwood Mac and the Blues Image.

...

Breakthrough and Donald Lobsinger’s tactics may have backfired in their most recent confrontation with the Establishment—tackled from the right.

Lobsinger could do with some tactical pre-protest advice from some of those who confront from the Left, on how to stay exactly within the law until you are ready to get busted. He was arrested again and faces trial Jan. 15 on disorderly conduct for breaking up a meeting Dec. 3 at St. Lucy’s Catholic Church in St. Clair Shores.

...

Editors’ Note: This article was sent to us by an airman stationed at a weather station in Florida. His name has been omitted to protect him from reprisal.

A few months ago it seemed that the military was more up-tight than usual. As it turned out, this is the understatement of the year.

I have a VW mini-bus that is painted with pop art, stars, signs of the zodiac, etc. In the rear window, I had painted an anti-war symbol.

...

The author is editor-in-chief of Wayne University’s South End newspaper, former editor of the Inner City Voice and is an employee of the Detroit News.

Within the last four months, the management of the Detroit News has turned the News printing plant, located on the corner of Third and Lafayette, into a fortress.

...

(by the Demolitions Editor)

“Send a boy to do a man’s job and naturally you can expect those involved to start falling apart when they get caught.”

This is the opinion of one of the defense attorneys for those accused of setting eight terrorist bombs in the Detroit area.

Halfway through the preliminary examination, where the prosecution is required to show the commission of criminal acts and the defendants’ connection with them, Judge Thomas Poindexter agreed to drop charges against six persons.

...

Al Kooper, one of this country’s leading rock artists, was in town a couple of weeks ago. He has been performing, writing, and now producing rock musts for ten years and is best known for his work as an organist for Dylan, a member of tire Blues Project, and organizer of Blood, Sweat and Tears.

His latest album is “Super Session” with Mike Bloomfield and Steve Stills. In the next few months he will be releasing a double album that he recorded with Bloomfield at the Fillmore, a solo album, and an album he produced for the Don Ellis Orchestra.

...

Where is Eldridge Cleaver, Minister of Information of the Black Panther Party?

Every pig from Oakland, California to New York City is looking for him since he failed to turn himself in for parole violation on November 25^th.

Like Spartacus or Zapata he is rumored to be everywhere. Word has reached this office that he was in Detroit, but most think that he has left the country and will wind up in Cuba or is living underground in an urban ghetto.

...

“Once upon a time, or maybe twice, there was an earthly paradise called Pepperland, which existed 80,000 leagues beneath the sea...”

And so it was, a land of brilliant color and elegant people and Ming music, with words such as “love” and “know” and “yes” dotted about the landscape.

But Pepperland had enemies, the Blue Meanies, who hated music and bombarded Pepperland with rockets and Apple Bonkers and Hidden Persuaders and Snapping Turtle Turks—and an evil flying Blue Glove.

...

Thursday November 28

AN ODE TO WILHELM REICH A sexual intellectual play in two acts. At the Red Roach Coffee House. 8:30 p.m. Plum St. at Filth St

THANKSGIVING SPECIAL. The Underground Cinema will have two special showings at 7:30 and 9:30 because it is a holiday. Films will run all weekend and include “The Breath of the Bones,” “Now that the Buffalo’s Gone,” “Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome,” “Sacred Mushroom Version,” “A Cherry Tale,” and “Voyage Optique.” Detroit Repertory Theatre, 13103 Woodrow Wilson Cali 868–1347 for information.

...

Sometimes it seems that history does, indeed, repeal itself. The mistakes of a radical movement are sometimes repeated several generations later by another radical movement. At other limes, a radical movement will repeat its own mistakes within the same generation. Mistakes are, of course, inevitable. They ate not bad in and of themselves if the factors which caused the mistakes are recognized and corrected. Ignorance is our greatest enemy. To know what to do, when to do it and why it is being done is the preeminent task at all times. When mistakes are repeated, it 1 an indication that there is a serious, perhaps fatal, hick of revolutionary consciousness.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

One in every 40 deaths in the United States is caused by lung cancer, and this ratio is expected to increase in the next ten years. according to the October 7^th issue of the Journal of the A.M.A. But this year sales of cigarettes declined for the first time: hopefully a snowballing trend. What has been the response of cigarette manufacturers?

...

(by the Fifth Estate Creep Scene Editor)

Creep scenes abound from the Detroit area to Florida as power-authority heads try to suppress the Fifth Estate.

In Royal Oak, the Gas Company, at 290 W. Ten Mile Road, a head shop run by Andy Gingold, has had its request for an operating permit denied by the Royal Oak city commission solely on the grounds that he is selling “lewd and lascivious literature,” i.e., our paper.

...

Just how do you go about opening a good movie in this town without getting jumped on? Ingmar Bergman’s Hour of the Wolf is the best film to appear in Detroit since his earlier Persona, yet by the time you read this, it will probably have already left the Studio North Theatre.

The mechanics of film distribution is often a complicated and unfair process: The survival of a small specialized film—Alain Resnais’ classic La Guerre Est Finie, for instance—depends entirely on the support of local critics. Hard-core Resnais buffs can fill a small theatre for maybe four nights, but after that, the film is on its own, La Guerre Est Finie opened in Detroit during the newspaper strike and, despite the rigorous attempts of the distributor and exhibitor to save it, it barely stayed above water for two weeks. If a Resnais film results in financial loss, will that same exhibitor be willing to risk playing any future films by Resnais? We can only hope and pray.

...

UNCLASSIEIEDS cost 50¢ 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¢ per line.

I’m sending (blank) lines at 50¢ per line for a one issue run.

...

NEW YORK (LNS)—Tuesday night, Oct. 22, the inmates of the Lower East Side, inspired by Julian Beck’s Living Theater and led by Up Against the Wail Motherfucker, laid cultural claim to the Fillmore East. They needed the space, a motherfucker leaflet declared, “To survive, grow freaky, breathe, love, struggle and turn on.” Graham said over his dead body, Julian Beck said right on and the rest of the script of that real, living theater can be summed up by this exchange:

...

Frank Zappa

Mothers of the American Revolution

Zappa, in England. must wield much power. Granada TV, a semi-national TV station, has asked Frank to produce an hour for their station to show.

Frank, when asked of the proposed idea for the show, said, “Visualize a huge aircraft hanger with at one end a huge form, 15 feet high, completely concealed by canvas and screened off with velvet ropes, with armed sentries pacing up and down in front of it.”

...

People need music to live. We know that and act on it, all ways. Only straight people—honkies—think music is superfluous, that it doesn’t make any difference what you listen to, and their lives demonstrate their ignorance. Music shapes us and makes us whole, as we would never be without it. We have to have it. There’s no way you can get around it. For our generation music is the most vital force in most of our lives.

...

Talking-pre-holiday-pre-final-two-papers-due-blues. No feel for cooking; no money for eating out and Peter says get your column in.

Heat oil, brown pork on both sides, salt and pepper. Peel 5–6 onions, cut in slices and smother the pork. Pour in a little water, reduce the heat and simmer 20 minutes.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

Dear Dr. Schoenfeld,

Regarding your column warning about literal blow jobs.

A few years ago, one of the psychiatric journals carried a paper on an unusual accidental death of a woman following coital foreplay.

...

On the afternoon of November I, there was a demonstration in front of the 13^th precinct police station on Woodward. The purpose of the demonstration was to protest the brutal treatment which the police inflicted upon a group of anti-Wallace demonstrators at a rally earlier in the week.

...

The Living Theatre, triumphantly poised at the controversial edge of the avant-garde theatrical movement, will sweep into Detroit to take the chill off December.

The repertory troupe known as America’s most original and acclaimed by critics as the most artistic, Julian Beck and his energetic band will present three different productions December 12, 13, 14.

...

George Wallace stood up and said all the magic words, “Dope Fiend, Outlaw, Pervert, Cuba, Masses, Red, Mao, Free, Fidel, Workers, Black, White!” These are magic words in America. These arc the words that make white America go to its knees in fear George Wallace got 9 million votes, 9 million honkies are behind George.

...

by the Roach Editor

The Red Roach coffee house is open!

It’s hard to find, but look around the corner at Plum and Fifth, the barnwood door between two red and purple gaslights, go upstairs, you’re there,

The place is improvisional, a room for artists to meet, play their music, read they poems, just do their thing. There are two stages, one for the performer, one for the audience, a groove stage with bath tub and a large screen for light shows.

...

Liberation News Service/The Movement

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.—Twenty-seven GIs at San Francisco’s Presidio Army Base stockade face the death penalty for staging a non-violent sit-down to protest the Oct. 11 murder of a fellow prisoner.

The victim, Richard Bunch, 19, was mentally ill. He had gone AWOL, returned to his home in Ohio, and told his mother he had died and been reborn as a warlock, able to kill enemy soldiers at a glance.

...

Santiniketan, India

Special to the Fifth Estate

It’s weird.

Future historians, in analyzing the causes of the Laotian War (or World War II as the case may be) will be stumped by a curious footnote which will cause them to take off (or put on) their spectacles, shake their heads slowly, and say, “it’s weird.” They will be amazed, of course, at the presence of “hippies” in Laps and the part they play politically in the games of intrigue that are so characteristic of Laotian government.

...

I’ve been in jail for so long now that I’ve lost count of the days, But such is the fate of the man who doesn’t have the money for bail ($10,000 or $1,000 for a bondsman).

I’ve found that there’s two types of justice in our illustrious nation: one for the rich, and one for the poor.

But if life in a “democracy” hands you a lemon, you don’t bitch. You find that there’s only steel bars to listen to you. So you do what any man who wants to make the world a better place to live would do. You squeeze the lemon and start a lemonade stand.

...

Editors’ Note: Art Wohl studied exercises in T’ai Chi Ch’uan with various Chinese practitioners in New York. He has taught body sensitivity and coordination to athletes, dancers, actors, singers, and the physically and mentally disabled.

He will lead a workshop in body awareness and control on December 3, from 2 to 4–30 p.m. at St. Joseph’s Church, Woodward at King. The cost will be $2 for the session which will be an intensive series of guided experiences bringing about a progressively deepening state of concentration and awareness of the body’s spontaneous tendencies to release tensions and rigidities, center and realign itself, establish a state of dynamic equilibrium and to enhance its use as a vehicle for self expression.

...

NEW YORK (LNS)—Mark Rudd has asked his local draft board to give him an occupational deferment on the grounds that he is a “revolutionary” working for SDS and engaged in fighting against “a small number of people who are bleeding and destroying our country.”

Rudd, a former chairman of SDS at Columbia and an active participant in last spring’s rebellion, wrote to his draft board in Irvington, N.J., on Nov, 14: “My occupation, revolutionary, is vital to the national interest of the United States.” Rudd was re-classified 1-A by his draft board in Irvington recently, after the Columbia registrar’s office notified the board that Rudd had been suspended from the college. The chairman of the draft board, Clifford Day, told the Columbia Spectator that the decision was not based on political considerations.

...

Movement people should be familiar with the “conspiracy trial,” Its a favorite government tool to stop a radical movement it can no longer absorb or put to good use. It parallels the “Committee Hearing” but doesn’t get the same publicity.

Conspiracy trials are easy for the government to initiate. They usually deal with planning to break a law, a useful device since it is bound to catch the leaders who are the planners. Leaders have to talk to their constituents in court if the plan is to break the law.

...

The pretrial examination of 14 street people for dynamite conspiracy has been marked by the incredible legal buffoonery of Judge Thomas Poindexter. the assault of a defendant by a bailiff. and the testimony of a freek turned stool pigeon.

The fourteen are charged with con-spring to dynamite several police stations, a draft board, the CIA office in Ann Arbor and several other sites in the Detroit area.

...

Reading the Fifth Estate last issue was sort of a magical mystery tour with none of the teasers on the front page corresponding to the proper pages and a number of other horrors.

This was caused by last minute surgery when our printer decided he would be unable to print a two-page spread photo of John Lennon and Yoko Ono posing nude because he felt it would hurt his other business.

...

DETROIT Nov. 14—In a joyous celebration at St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church, eight men returned their draft cards to the Selective Slavery System, including the pastor of the church.

In breaking their ties with the draft the men stated, “Young men are being forced to choose between being free to celebrate their existence and being forced to engage in acts of destruction. We choose freedom, life, and the joy involved in being true to ourselves.”

...

Fifth Estate

A Newspaper of Detroit

EDITORS

Harvey Ovshinsky

Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Cathy West

CIRCULATION

Tormnye Wiese

NEWS EDITOR

Alan Gotkin

MUSIC EDITOR

John Sinclair

PHOTO EDITOR

Mike Tyre

ART DIRECTION

Blalren

ADVERTISING

Gunnar Lewis

CALENDAR

Resa Jannett

IDEOLOGUE

...

Is Detroit Police Commissioner Johannes Spreen serious about trying to alter the brutal, racist and corrupt nature of the force he commands?

Some think he is.

He ordered the suspension on Nov. 13 of nine policemen in the unprovoked beating of several black teen-agers after a dance given by the Detroit Pig Officers Association (DPOA) at the Veterans Memorial Building. The youth were attending a church dance.

...

Centerfold insert

Special Fifth Estate Convention Edition 2000

A Direct Action Anarchist Newspaper

Active Transformation is a direct action anarchist newspaper that has been publishing in whole and in part since 1993. Two separate collectives make up the newspaper collective, one in Detroit and the other in Lansing. We mainly focus on the institutions and social relationships that oppress us in our daily lives. From the prison industrial complex, to homophobia to capitalism — we try and cover it all. Our struggle for freedom is as diverse as our lives!

...

The Anarchist Prisoners’ Legal Action Network (APLAN) is a prisoner-guided initiative formed to provide legal aid and outside support for imprisoned anarchists and their allies. Anarchists in prison experience the prison-industrial complex first-hand and are thus subject to a variety of unusual punishments and restrictions.

...

Centerfold insert

Special Fifth Estate Convention Edition 2000

I recently traveled to Los Angeles for the North American Anarchist Conference (NAAC) and Democratic National Convention (DNC). The NAAC was held August 11^th through the 13^th, while the DNC was the 14^th through the 17^th. Both events had an extremely strong anarchist presence. In my eyes, the NAAC was a major success. I was one of the first people to arrive, and I was energized by the numbers of people constantly outside the front doors waiting to sign in. All in all, over 500 people attended, but they were not all there at once. Many people were only at the conference for a day or so, or spent a lot of time at the events at the Direct Action Network’s convergence center, so it seemed like it was smaller because there were only 100 to 200 people at the conference at any given time.

...

Fifth Estate Letters Policy

We welcome letters commenting on our articles, stating opinions, or giving reports of events in your area. We don’t guarantee to print everything received, but all letters are read by our staff and considered for publication.

Typed letters or ones on disk are appreciated, but not required. Length should not exceed two double-spaced pages. If you are interested in writing longer responses, please contact us.

...

Centerfold insert

Special Fifth Estate Convention Edition 2000

“We make war upon the State as the chief invader of person and property, as the cause of substantially all the crime and misery that exist, as itself the most gigantic criminal extant. It manufactures criminals faster than it punishes them. It exists to create and sustain the privileges which produce economic and social chaos. It is the sole support of the monopolies which concentrate wealth and learning in the hands of a few and disperse poverty and ignorance among the masses to the increase of which inequality the increase of crime is directly proportional. It protects a minority in plundering the majority by methods too subtle to be understood by the victims, and then punishes such unruly members of the majority as an attempt to plunder others by means too simple and straightforward to be recognized by the State as legitimate, crowning its outrages by deluding scholars and philosophers...into pleading, as an excuse for its infamous existence, the necessity of repressing crime which it steadily creates.”—Benjamin R. Tucker, 1882

...

Centerfold insert

Special Fifth Estate Convention Edition 2000

What follows is a first hand account of a participant in the actions in Philly against the Republican National Convention....

Monday’s event was a march against financial inequality. Marchers were gathered at the base of the city hall building in the center of downtown. There were several helicopters overhead and it was clear that there were more police around than a typical Monday afternoon, but they were not excessively flaunting their numbers (yet).

...

Fifth Estate Books is located at 4632 Second Avenue, just south of W. Forest, in Detroit, in the same space as the Fifth Estate newspaper. Hours vary, so please call before visiting.

HOW TO ORDER BY MAIL

1) List the title of the book, quantity, and the price of each;

2) add 10% for mailing costs—not less than $1.13 U.S. or $2.00 foreign (minimum for 4^th class book rate postage);

...

The several thousand unapproved, pirate radio stations operating in the U.S. won a Pyrrhic victory in July when the Federal Communication Commission agreed to license hundreds of the low power broadcasting operations, many which feature anarchist, punk, black, and community programming.

The catch is that the FCC will demand that licensed frequencies broadcast a certain number of hours a week. Also, about half of the applications for licensing have come from right-wing, fundamentalist churches.

...