Victor Mansfield
Dietrich Wins in Plymouth

Plymouth pigs went down in defeat in a frontal legal attack by Rolf Dietrich on December 18th.

As reported earlier on these pages, the pigs of suburban Plymouth have hassled Dietrich from the beginning of the year when they first arrested him on a phony traffic charge and confiscated 15 copies of the Fifth Estate which he had on the back seat of his car. [See articles in FE Archive.]

...

David Hilliard
“If you want peace, you got to fight for it”

The following speech was delivered by David Hilliard, Chief of Staff of the Black Panther Party at the November 15th anti-war rally at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.

He was charged with threatening the life of the President as a result of it.

There’s too many American flags out here, and our Minister of Information, Eldridge Cleaver, says that the American flag and the American eagle are the true symbols of fascism. ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE. Black power to Black people, Brown power to Brown people, Red power to Red people, and Yellow power to Ho Chi Minh, and Comrade Kim II Sung the courageous leader of the 40,000,000 Korean people.

...

Josh Newton
Josh Newton Letter

Brothers & Sisters:

After a long literary silence, I write again to the people of the planet. Joshua Newton, the phantom bomber, is still alive and carrying on the struggle. Are you?

The sooner we unite to off the oppressor, the sooner we will be able to live free lives by our own principles and our own values.

...

Fifth Estate Collective
Masthead

Fifth Estate

“To Serve the People”

EDITORIAL GROUP

Alan Gotkin

Peter Werbe

Cathy West

MANAGING EDITOR

Bill Rowe

DISTRIBUTION

Keep On Truckin’ Co-op

ADVERTISING

Steve Dunn

STAFF

Jane Capellaro

David Gaynes

Jim Kennedy

Rick London

Nick Medvecky

Bruce Montrose

Claudia Montrose

Marilyn Werbe

...

Liberation News Service
Not again

SAN FRANCISCO (LNS)—People are determined not to allow the murderous police raids which have been carried out in Chicago, Los Angeles, Kansas and other areas to occur in Berkeley and San Francisco.

A constant vigil has been established at Panther headquarters in both cities. The offices are filled at all times with thirty to forty people—black and white, very old to very young (some mothers with infants.)

...

Jon Wiener
“They planned to have no one come out alive”

LOS ANGELES (LNS)—Over 5,000 people massed at Los Angeles City Hall on Thursday, Dec. 11 to protest the Dec. 8 attack on the Black Panther Party headquarters here in which 13 Panthers held off 300 police for close to five hours.

Speakers at the City Hall rally included representatives of NAACP and the Urban League as well as the Panthers.

...

Victor Mansfield
VFW to Wipe Out Smut

Plymouth City Attorney Charles Lowe told a Detroit News reporter recently that “the Plymouth City Commission felt that the Wayne County Prosecutor’s office will no longer recommend warrants for violations of the state obscenity law and thus it has become necessary for us to write our own law.”

This comes on the heels of a well financed campaign by the local chapter of the VFW to “rub out smut” in Plymouth. They collected, according to a spokesman, more than 3000 signatures on petitions in support for new anti-obscenity legislation in the City of Plymouth.

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J.R. Kennedy
Christmas at Northland

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“We are all outlaws in the eyes of America.”

—Jefferson Airplane

“The chickens are going to come home to roost.”

—Malcolm X

Years of police harassment of young people at Northland Shopping Center finally came home on Saturday, December 20, as hundreds of Detroit and suburban youths clashed with police for several hours in the center.

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Bryan Tucker
Sanity & Identity Repressive Society’s Sleight of Hand

A tentative existence is what society’s current trajectory offers us: alienation from others simultaneous with chronic concern about perception by others. Futile attempts to persist in these conditions takes the form of claiming an identity, espousing sanctioned banalities, and various other nonsense that renders us drained and pained.

...

Fifth Estate Collective
Front page text

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One afternoon a thousand years ago a Chinese administrator named Cao Bien was sitting by the River Lo in Vietnam. He had been sent by the Emperor of China to conquer Vietnam and make it part of China.

As he sat there on that afternoon, 500 years before the first white man ever set foot in America, scheming of ways to get the riches of Vietnam back to China, he saw something huge and terrifying.

...

SK
Cuba: Independent Self-Activity vs. the State Pride & Anarchism Against All Odds

This May was a very exciting time for anarchists in Cuba, full of both inspiration and anxiety. On the positive side, the Anarchist Social Center and Library (ABRA: Centro Social y Biblioteca Libertaria) hosted the Fourth Libertarian Spring Conference in Havana, from May 4 to 11.

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Cuba Pride March, May 11, despite being banned by authorities.

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Fifth Estate Collective
All Power to the People! Newsreel, Fifth Estate, PAR, Revolutionary Printing Co-op

Part of American Revolutionary Media / Detroit insert

When 300,000 people marched in Washington for civil rights in 1963, a lot of people felt as good as they did in November when 750,000 people marched in Washington for peace. But the civil rights movement has not liberated Black people. And the peace movement has yet to end the war in Vietnam, let alone “bring the boys home” from the 53 countries’ in which they are stationed around the world.

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Resa Jannett
Events Calendar

(in Cooperation with Detroit Adventure)

THURS. DEC. 11

HEAR COME THE REVOLUTION (too bad its about the American one) a gallery talk with Glenn Still, Curator of Fort Wayne Military Museum. At the Det. Hist. Museum. 3:30 p.m. Free.

DETROIT SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA in concert with Alexander Gibson guest conductor. Soloist: Wanda Wilkomirski, violinist. Ford Aud. 8:30 p.m.

...

Ken Cockrell
Get Down American Revolutionary Media / Detroit

Part of American Revolutionary Media / Detroit insert

Ken Cockrell is a Black revolutionary, “so-called attorney,” and a member of the central staff of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in Detroit. His rap was taped, transcribed and edited by Newsreel for this ARM issue on the day of the Los Angeles police attack on the Panther office, before that news was made public.

...

Ria
Giving Back Wild A Guerilla Guide to Re-wilding Earth

Consensus is boiling that humans have become hyper-exploiters, impacting and taking so much from nature that remaining ecosystems are entering death spirals. Is it possible for human’s bred-in exploiter culture to shift from a taking lifeway from the wild to a way of giving?

Just as humans can turn civilization’s wrenches against logging machines to halt destruction, they can turn their civilized brains and bodies to recovering earth’s wild.

...

Eugene Schoenfeld M.D.
HipPocrates

Dear Dr. Hip Pocrates,

I seldom read your column, it usually actually makes me sick to my stomach to know there are such vulgar, uncivilized, people.

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

Today my husband showed me your column about the man who liked to wake up his wife by making love to her in the morning. He’s an early riser and I’m not (he relaxes in the evenings while I take care of dinner, children, and chores). He remarked that he might try that sometime. I told him and I’ll tell you, if he ever does, in that manner, I’ll probably kill him and blame you for contributing to the cause.

...

Various Authors
Letters

Fellow Good Vibrationists,

Ever since I’ve been reading Hank Malone’s articles, I acquired the irresistible urge to blast his ideas out of our midst into oblivion, where they belong. Malone’s reflections on art are a classical example of revolutionary cretinism.

Malone’s views have been attacked (rather irrationally) by another reader before me, and his response is curiously analogous to vice-president Agnew’s: “I’m not for censorship” said Agnew, after subtly advocating censorship in a previous speech.

...

anon.
Movement Counterattack

Part of American Revolutionary Media / Detroit insert

Last summer, after beating a 13-month strike by its employees, the Booth family’s Detroit News returned to its standard racist and reactionary distorted news practices. The response of the white and Black movements was the total boycott declared below. But as, we all know, it is not just the News which distorts information to the people at the source, nor just the Booth newspapers, TV and radio stations which hold the people down by denying them full and accurate information about their place in the world, and what people are doing to change the world—it is the entire spectrum of the power structure media. Until the movement stops cooperating with the power structure media in the naive confidence that it is WE who will be using THEM, and until the people act on their knowledge that “you can’t believe what you read in the newspapers,” or hear on radio or see on television, our image of the world and ourselves will depend on the power-structure’s definitions, and we will never be free.

...

Bill Rowe
News Shorts

Blacks Stand Up At Harvard

Blacks at Harvard University seized the Administration Building December 5 demanding more black workers in administrative and service areas. Six hours later, the blacks gave up the building after an Administration promise to discuss the demands on the following Monday.

Atrocity In London

...

John Wilcock
Other Scenes

SEX: Fifteen couples fucking simultaneously under the guidance of a clinical psychologist who told them how to get more out of it was one of the features at a recent encounter weekend at Ed Lange’s Elysium Institute ranch in California’s Topanga Canyon. Elysium (5436 Fernwood, L.A. Calif. 90027 for info) recently won its court fight to operate the first nudist camp within the LA city limits, overturning a law that had made nudity illegal even with your own family in your own backyard...

...

J.R. Kennedy
Robert Williams I will never return

The Detroit black community is moving again. They are mobilizing in support of Robert F. Williams and against the racist judicial machinery that is attempting to extradite him to North Carolina.

Williams, the revolutionary spokesman and former president of the Republic of New Africa (RNA), is accused by the State of North Carolina of kidnapping a “white couple” back in 1961. He returned to Detroit recently to denounce these charges and to renew his political and legal struggles.

...

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, per issue. (i.e. 2 lines in 5 issues cost $3.50)

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J.R. Kennedy
Crash the Gate!

When the Rolling Stones came to Detroit, 14,000 kids gave Mike Quatro over $100,000. The Stones were great and the whole crowd was really into it.

Around 100 SDS Weathermen were digging the Stones too. Only they didn’t pay anything; neither did about 200 other kids.

They didn’t pay because they were fed up with the entire bullshit line about paying money to establishment pigs just so you can dig your own culture. So all the Weathermen got together and crashed the gates at Olympia.

...

anon.
Ecology Manifesto The four changes

1. POPULATION
The Condition

Position: Man is but a part of the fabric of life—dependent on the whole fabric for his very existence. As the most highly developed tool-using animal, he must recognize that the unknown evolutionary destinies of other life forms are to be respected, and act as gentle steward of the earth’s community of being.

...

anon.
Law and Order? Murder! Stop political repression

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 8—25 Black Panthers were arrested, three wounded, during police raids on two apartments and a four-and-a-half hour gun battle at the main Panther office in Watts.

The office was surrounded at 5:30 a.m. by a force of between 300 and 400 police. They were refused entrance to the office. They began to break down the front door, but were driven away by shotgun fire; two cops were wounded.

...

Fifth Estate Collective
Media Repression Insert: American Revolutionary Media / Detroit

Movies, radio and television, newspapers and magazines consistently distort news, information and images of the Black and white liberation movements, here and around the world.

With Black Nationalist groups like the Panther Party, the effort is to present them as aggressively, violently militant organizations of anti-white Black racists. In the case of the Panthers, this slander has been accomplished entirely by slant and innuendo. The Panther Party has never been reported in an incident of violence that was not a case of self-defense. Spokesmen have continually emphasized that the Panther Party is not anti-white, but anti-racist, not concerned with the destruction of white people, but concerned properly and necessarily with serving, defending and liberating its own Black people.

...

anon.
R.W.P. Revolutionary Wall Painting

Reprinted from Fire

I. Necessity

The average Amerikan cannot help but read several hundred thousand words per day of pig shit in the form of advertising, slogans on police cars, etc. Revolutionary wall painting effectively combats this totalitarian bombardment of the mass subconscious.

“A dull-witted army cannot defeat the enemy.”—Mao

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David Gaynes
The Rolling Stones

a review of

The Rolling Stones, “Let It Bleed,” XZAL 9363, London Records

You must somehow listen to this album—whether you steal it, buy it, or play it with your nose is irrelevant, or rather, up to you.

As is everything.

If you do listen to “Let It Bleed,” and hear it, there’s not much I can say to you. If you don’t—nothing.

...

Fifth Estate Collective
Briefs

Winter Anti-War Offensive

The Winter Offensive against the war in Vietnam is beginning. The Fall Offensive culminated in 800,000 persons in Washington and people came back to Detroit with even a greater sense of the need to bring all the troops home now.

The December Moratorium will focus on organizing and support of anti-war GIs.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Cop Killer Goes Free

Justice—Detroit style. Danny Royster was convicted last week of manslaughter in the slaying of the only pig killed during the July 1967 uprising. One problem—Danny didn’t off the pig and everyone including the State admits to that fact.

What happened was that Danny and a buddy were liberating some goods from a store on the near Eastside when they were discovered by the 13th Precinct Big 4. One particularly vicious pig, Roy (Butterfingers) St. Onge who works the Warren-Forest area entered the smashed out storefront and whopped Royster upside the head with his shotgun.

...

Fifth Estate Collective
GIs Resist the War News Items

GIs Resist the WarFort Dix

FT. DIX, N.J.—The trials of the Ft. Dix 38 accused of a variety of charges stemming from a stockade rebellion last June are continuing.

On Nov. 20 Pvt. Thomas Catlow was convicted at his court-martial of aggravated arson and riot despite the Fire Chief’s testimony that fire damage was of such a minor nature he did not even bother to examine it closely.

...

Fifth Estate Collective
Masthead

Fifth Estate

“To Serve the People”

EDITORIAL GROUP

Alan Gotkin

Peter Werbe

Cathy West

MANAGING EDITOR

Bill Rowe

DISTRIBUTION

Keep On Truckin’ Co-op

ADVERTISING

Steve Dunn

STAFF

Jane Capellaro

Dena Clamage

Bob Fleck

David Gaynes

Rick London

Bruce Montrose

Claudia Montrose

Marilyn Werbe

...

Tommie the Commie
Northland The time is right

“Gimme a p—P”

“Gimme a i—I”

“Gimme a g—G”

“What’s that spell—PIG!”

“What do they do—SUCK!”

Every Saturday afternoon the freeks and greasers from Northwest Detroit and the suburbs go to Northland shopping center to see their friends, get high and hang out.

Pigs at Northland, like all pigs, hate freeks and greasers and over the last year they have been busting the brothers and sisters on jive charges like “loitering” or for being “disorderly persons.” For months people have just kinda accepted that fucked-up harassment without complaining or anything. But Saturday, Dec. 6, the pigs busted one brother too many and all hell broke loose.

...

Liberation News Service
Songmy The Massacre

TROUNGAN, South Vietnam (LNS)—The inhabitants of this tiny village tell a story that one British Newspaper described as “The Massacre That Chilled The World”. They are the survivors of Songmy.

On March 16, 1968 a company of U.S. soldiers entered Songmy, meeting no opposition. They ordered all inhabitants out of their homes and gathered them together in three groups, about 200 yards apart. When the houses had been cleared the troops dynamited those made of brick and set fire to the wooden ones.

...

Kae Halonen
We’re gonna live here The development of people willing to fight for their land is all that will stop the University and the City.

Back in the “uncivilized” days of American history, when a company or government wanted land they killed or drove off the people who lived there and claimed the land as their own.

The Indians were the first to feel the Man’s wrath. The Indian land was needed for “progress”—factories and railroads—and so foot by foot the Indians were driven West with guns, firewater and treachery.

...

Fifth Estate Collective
Fifth Estate Archive Thousands of articles & graphics are accessible dating back to 1965 on the Web

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Some readers have wondered why a print publication with such a strong, longtime criticism of modern technology would bother with a website.

We are certainly not counting on it for building the social cooperation and solidarity we so desperately need to go beyond the current doomsday destination of modern societies. For this it will be necessary to create and nurture the direct bonds between living beings so vital for re-enchanting the world.

...

Resa Jannett
Events Calendar

(in cooperation with Detroit Adventure)

THURS. NOV. 27

THANK GOD! Just like your forefathers did. Kill a turkey for peace. Many places will be closed so call ahead before you go out.

FRI. NOV. 28

BEAUTY & THE BEAST directed by Jean Cocteau (This is not the version starring Bill Rowe and Peter Werbe). Presented by the WSU Cinema Guild at 7:30 & 9:45. Lower DeRoy Aud. 50 cents.

...

Peter Lamborn Wilson
Fool’s Day

Since the anti-wizard who disenchanted the world was Capitalism, we must assume that Capitalism will have to vanish by evolutionary necessity in order for re-enchantment to triumph.

Is it really possible to embrace such optimism? Let’s try.

An April 1, 2019 article in The Nation, “Warning: The Plastics Crisis is About to Get Worse,” begins with a “midrange” estimate of the amount of plastic garbage that is dumped in the ocean every year—eight million tons.

...

Eugene Schoenfeld M.D.
HipPocrates

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

QUESTION: I am a very early riser, strictly a morning man and my mate is a late sleeper. Therein lies my dilemma.

There is nothing I like better than having intercourse with her as she awakes or, more precisely, waking her up with the actual coital act. When first awakened, she is sometimes a bit irritable but quickly gets over this.

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Fifth Estate Collective
In case of...

American Civil Liberties Union: 961–4462

Ad Hoc Citizens Committee, Police Brutality Complaints: 872–2828

Creem Magazine: 831–0816

Draft Resistance, info on counseling 874–4334

Detroit Anti-war Coalition: 873–4322

Fifth Estate Office: 831–6800

Fire Department: 962–0400

Grape Boycott Office: 825–4811

...

Various Authors
Letters

To Those People Who Like The Stooges:

I used to like ‘em too, just like everyone else, caught-up in that follow-the-other-people, emotional group-cohesion thing. But then I began to think! The Stooges are one example of a group that takes us (the audience) for fools and chumps.

Iggy goes thru all this sexual stuff and then he poses and finally JUMPS out into the audience on someone! He did this at Olympia, Halloween, and almost started a fight with the guy he jumped on! He cursed at the boy and called him names saying “Hit me, I dare ya” and stuff like that.

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Rick London
Marie’s Song

Your fingers twitch in your sleep

for a moment before you open

your eyes and roll onto your back

You brush a small critter from your face

and pull a twig from your hair

A pink grey sky envelopes the landscape

as you make your way along an outcrop

of shale thru a field

of wet greens and browns

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John Clark
The Dialectic of Enchantment What Enchantment do we Seek?

According to a certain conventional wisdom, there has been an unfortunate disenchantment of the world, and what is desperately needed is that we rediscover and recreate an enchanted world. This is, however, at best a half truth, and perhaps even a dangerous one.

True, there is a battle between disenchantment and re-enchantment in which we must rally to the aid of enchantment. But there is also a war between contending forms of enchantment that already exist, here and now This is the ultimate world-historical conflict that must engage our creative energies.

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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, per issue. (i.e. 2 lines in 5 issues cost $3.50).

...

anon.
Anti-war GIs March

WASHINGTON—In August 1968 forty-three GIs at Ft. Hood, Texas refused to go to Chicago for riot duty. Their protest was the first in what has been a long series of anti-war and anti-military protests that have led to the growth of a nation-wide GI movement.

On Nov. 15 the most radical of these GIs assembled to form their own contingent in the anti-war demonstrations.

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anon.
Coffee house busted

Muldraugh, Kentucky is a small town that lies just outside the gates of Fort Knox. Like most small army towns, it is tightly controlled by the Army. Thus, all has been quiet and conservative.

But when a group of GIs and civilian friends decided that Muldraugh’s old meat market would make a fine GI coffee house, all hell broke loose. And nobody’s keeping secrets.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Freedom is Money

“To be free you have to have bread to do free things. The more bread you got, the freer you become.”

—Mike Quatro (Hippie band booking agent, explaining how he equates making money off “the movement”) Detroit News, Nov. 16, 1969

FREEDOM IS MONEY, MONEY IS FREEDOM, FREEDOM IS MONEY. MONEY IS FREEDOM—just ask Henry Ford II. How do you get freedom? Sell people a piece of shit car for twice what it is worth and pay the workers in wages half of the value they produce. Or dress in hip clothes, put on rock concerts and charge the people $8 a head. Two sure-fire ways to get freedom. But how do the rest of us get free—“You gotta get the hog out of the stream if you want to drink clean, clear water.”—Chairman Bobby Seale, Black Panther Party.

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anon.
More Ft. Jackson Shit

FT. JACKSON, S. C. — In spite of the victory of the Ft. Jackson Eight last spring, when the Army was forced to drop all charges against eight leaders of GIs United Against the War in Vietnam, officials at Ft. Jackson are still trying to silence the voice of dissent on base.

Recently Pvt. E-1 Charles Carson was placed under arrest for “distributing petitions without proper authority.” The petition referred to was one circulated by the GI Press Service of the Student Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam.

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Fifth Estate Collective
This Time This Place Centerfold photo feature

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more joy

than fear

more flesh

than mask & it glowed

very clear that this thing

we are doing

evo / revolution

dance / seeding

is way too

important to leave to the joyless

the solemnserious

the hooded men

the power junkies

young or old

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Related

See Fifth Estate’s Vietnam Resource Page.

Liberation News Service
Washington Anti-war protest, November 15, 1969

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WASHINGTON (LNS)--Karl Marx once said that a revolution is the festival of the oppressed and exploited. Washington wasn’t that. But it was some kind of festival. It was Woodstock without the rain or the mud. It: was the great silent majority of American youth come together and digging it. Quiet kids, kids who didn’t get really excited about any of the speeches they had come to hear, come to hear nothing more than what they already knew--that the war was bad, that the killing had to be stopped.

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