Fifth Estate Collective
Women’s Rights

In a concerted effort to reform the outdated Michigan abortion laws, Michigan Women for Medical Control of Abortion has launched an all-out action program. The program has been set up to involve as many people as possible in working for the medical control of abortion in Michigan.

“Until there is a concerted effort on the part of hundreds of Michigan women, the legislators will not make changes in our abortion laws,” said Mrs. John H. Tanton of Petosky, President of the state organization. Mrs. Tanton pointed out that in a recent test of the old California abortion law, which was similar to Michigan’s, the Supreme Court of that State recently reversed the abortion conviction of a California physician, ruling that the law was invalid “because it infringed on a woman’s right to privacy without legislative reason.”

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Fifth Estate Collective
Black Workers’ Power

Another letter has been engraved on the tombstone of the dying United Auto Workers bureaucracy as 300 members of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers gathered outside Cobo Hall Sunday morning, Nov. 9, to protest the racist practices of the UAW leadership.

The demonstration was to coincide with the UAW special convention to be concluded on Nov. 9. UAW president Walter Reuther, however, in an attempt to avert a confrontation with the militant rank-and-file movement arranged for the convention to be terminated on the previous evening.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Chicago Conspiracy Act One May, 1886

When revolution is in the air and extremist groups take to the streets, the Establishment smells a conspiracy to commit violence, usually led by outside agitators.

So it was in August, 1968, when 10,000 of us took to the streets of Chicago for six days of protest and eight of us were selected and are being tried for conspiracy to incite riot and crossing interstate lines with the intention to incite riot.

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Victor Mansfield
Default

Rolf Dietrich, the scourge of Plymouth, let loose a barrage of legal fireworks in pursuit of his damage suit against Plymouth officials for confiscating 15 Fifth Estates from him earlier in the year.

Dietrich says that he has won his suit by default when the defendants failed to appear on Nov. 6. A postponement had been ordered by Judge Richard Hammer, but Dietrich insists this was improper and that the defendants were required to appear.

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Liberation News Service
Dix Coffee House Evicted

WRIGHTSTOWN (LNS)—The GI movement at Ft. Dix is the largest and most advanced in the country, and this is due partly to the Coffeehouse for GIs in Wrightstown.

The organizing efforts of the Coffeehouse bring hundreds of GIs every week to relax, listen to music and talk about fighting imperialism, and they pulled off the first demonstration here when thousands of civilians invaded an Army base last Oct. 12.

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Liberation News Service
Fort Dix Riot Trial Starts

But in two days of court martial proceedings (Nov. 4 and 5), the Army has been able to get only two scared young GIs—both of whom admit having been threatened with charges of their own if they refused to help the prosecution—to testify against Jeffrey Russell, first of the four to come to trial.

The Army’s other two eyewitnesses, Pvt. Alan Farrell and Airman. John Lisk, brought shocked and angry flushes to the faces of the Army’s two ambitious young prosecutors when they refused to testify against Russell.

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R.B. Mandarin
Interview: Roman Gribbs

Fifth Estate: First of all, let me congratulate you on your victory.

Roman Gribbs: Thank you.

Fifth Estate: I understand that Mr. Austin issued a statement calling for brotherhood and unity between his supporters and yours.

Roman Gribbs: Yes, Mr. Austin did that. He ran a fine dignified campaign. He has earned the respect, admiration, and adulation of many people in this city. We plan to work together. We must work together to make Detroit the city where we can live together and prosper together.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Keep the 2nd Coming

The Second Coming, a new underground newspaper at Eastern Michigan University, is locked in battle with the administration of that school over its right to distribute on campus.

University president Harold Sponberg (called the Phantom by students) is largely responsible for the hysteria, having freaked out after seeing issue number two of the Second Coming.

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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

STAFF

Jane Capellaro

Dena Clamage

Bob Fleck

David Gaynes

Joel Landy

Bruce Montrose

Claudia Montrose

Marilyn Werbe

Tommye Wiese

POLITICAL PRISONER

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Liberation News Service
Panther vs. Pig

CHICAGO (LNS)—Bobby Seale was sentenced to jail for four years Nov. 5 for repeatedly asserting his right to defend himself before Judge Julius Hoffman. The judge took an hour and a half to intone sixteen counts of contempt of court, each of them containing Seale’s firm insistence on his constitutional rights.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Peoples’ Print Shop

The movement in Detroit has a functioning print shop again.

Located two doors from the Fifth Estate office the shop can do leaflets, pamphlets, booklets, brochures, letterheads and small underground papers.

Originally begun by Joel Landy, who has split the city for Ann Arbor, the Revolutionary Printing Cooperative is a joint project of this newspaper, Black & Red magazine, the Printing Coop of Ann Arbor, and the Radical Education Project. Printers at this time include Mike Davis, Mike Gove, Fred Perlman and Dan Wilder.

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Victor Mansfield
Plymouth pigs bust Dietrich

On Halloween eve the Chief of the Plymouth pigs, in what was the culmination of an “extended investigation of the circulation and distribution of the Fifth Estate and the Ann Arbor Argus newspapers,” finally arrested Rolf Dietrich as he “did then and there” show, offer for sale, and sell an indecent or obscene paper(s) to wit: The Fifth Estate and The Ann Arbor Argus; contrary to the provisions of the ordinances of the City of Plymouth...” according to the warrant of the arrest.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Seale won’t be silenced

Editor’s Note: The following note was written by Bobby Seale in his Chicago jail cell, smuggled into the courtroom on Thursday, October 30, and given to Jerry Rubin, who released it later that day.

Section 198, title 42 of the United States Government Code says that a black man cannot be discriminated against in any court in any legal defense matter.

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Finn Black
Berkeley Free Clinic at 50 Mutual Aid Meets Health Care

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Volunteers and trainees in front of the Berkeley Free Clinic.

The Berkeley Free Clinic (BFC) is an all-volunteer, worker-owned collective that provides free medical and dental care, peer counseling, and information in Berkeley, Calif. We were founded in May 1969 on the ideas that healthcare is a human right, that professional licensing is not required to provide good medical care, and that medicine should not alienate people from their bodies. [See “Berkeley USA, 1969,” FE 81, June 12–25, 1969]

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Barbara Henning
We Wait

—and wait—for the wild power of nature—Om nama Shivaya—anything—could happen—to turn around—scream our lungs out—protesters in Gaza—under the burning—midday sun—Om Nama Shivaya—gun shots into the crowd—turn it off—turn it on—social programs slashed—corporate greed—protections for the environment—eliminated—the EPA rolls back—and David Buckel—self-immolates—in the meadow—in the park—Om Nama Shivaya—this winter—the coldest—since 1961—everyday when I hit—the sidewalk—I think—it will never end—and yet—slowly and surely—the temperature will rise—and the might and mystery—of the cold wind—will surely spread—Shiva—Brahma—Narayana—their seeds everywhere—Shiva—Brahma—Om nama Narayanaya—

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Hakim Bey
Anarchy and Ecstasy

a review of

Anarchy & Ecstasy: Visions of Halcyon Days by John Moore. Aporia Press, 308 Canberwell New Rd., London SE5 UK, 44 pp., $4. Available from FE Books.

Nineteenth century rationalist/materialist/atheist anarchists were wont to assert that “Anarchy is not chaos.” In recent years, a revaluation of the word chaos has been undertaken by a number of anarchist writers (the undersigned included) in the light of both “mythohistory” and science. Both fields now view chaos as more than merely violent disorder or entropy.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Design Competition U.S.-Saudi War Memorial

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THE FIFTH ESTATE ANNOUNCES:

A DESIGN COMPETITION FOR THE U.S.-SAUDI WAR MEMORIAL

Entries should be based on some of the following design elements:

* A war for oil.

* The slaughter of youth and innocents on both sides.

* Industrialism’s demand to sustain oil as the dominant energy source despite its ecological destructiveness.

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M. Steiner
Emma Goldman Bought & Sold

The Emma Goldman Papers Project, housed at the University of California at Berkeley, collects facsimile copies of the writings, letters and personal papers of Emma Goldman (1869–1940) and distributes them on microfilm.

The project is headed by Candace Falk, who discovered numerous lost love letters of Goldman’s in a Chicago guitar shop and turned them into a book, Love, Anarchy and Emma Goldman. They also became the first documents of the project’s collection.

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Fifth Estate Collective
FE Bookstore

The FE Bookstore is located at 4632 Second Ave., just south of W. Forest, in Detroit. We share space with the Fifth Estate Newspaper and may be reached at the same phone number: (313) 831–6800. Visitors are welcome, but our hours vary so please call before dropping in.

HOW TO ORDER BY MAIL:

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

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Fifth Estate Collective
News & Reviews

Bound Together Books, 1369 Haight Street, San Francisco CA 94117, a bookstore specializing in anti-authoritarian titles, has copies available of Paul Goodman’s The Black Flag of Anarchism and Other Essays, a 46-page pamphlet from the long dormant Employee’s Theft Press. Essays beside the title include, “A Touchstone for the Libertarian Program” and “Reflections on Drawing the Line.” Although we haven’t seen these essays, Goodman wrote in the dark days of the ‘50s as an individualist anarchist, so much of what he says may be of particular relevance to those isolated from co-thinkers today. Send $2.75 postpaid; also ask for their catalog.

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Bill Blank
Poletown: Community Betrayed

a review of

Poletown: Community Betrayed by Jeanie Wylie. 1989, University of Illinois Press

For centuries, capitalism has systematically destroyed or relocated minority and ethnic groups. A particularly repulsive local example occurred during the last decade in Detroit’s “Poletown” neighborhood, where a thriving community was destroyed to build a General Motors Cadillac plant nobody needed and few wanted.

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Lynne Clive (Marilynn Rashid)
Revolutionary Education The Modern School Movement

a review of

The Modern School Movement: Historical and Personal Notes on the Ferrer Schools in Spain, Contributions by Pura Perez, Mario Jordana, Abel Paz and Martha Ackelsberg, published by Friends of the Modern School, c/o Abe Bluestein, 55 Farmington Rd., Croton-on-Hudson NY 10520, 37 pages, $3. Available from FE Books.

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Lynne Clive (Marilynn Rashid)
Some Winded, Wild Beast Walking a Tender Line

a review of

Some Winded, Wild Beast, by Christina Pacosz. Black & Red (Detroit, 1985), 97 pages, $2.50.

This review is long overdue. Christina Pacosz’s voice has been an important one to many of us in Detroit ever since she and Fredy and Lorraine Perlman discovered each other, and Black and Red published this, her third collection of poetry, Some Winded, Wild Beast, in 1985. I have had the opportunity of hearing Christina read her poems and prose twice in the past five years, and both times I was struck by the strength and expressiveness of her voice and her vision.

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George Bradford (David Watson)
Swamp Rats & Urban Rats Unite!

a review of

Legend of the Great Dismal Maroons, Presented as a public service of the Grand Ludic Lodge, Ancient Scald Miserable Order, Great Dismal Maroons, celebrating 400 years of struggle for universal jubilation, 1589–1989, by James Koehnline. Panic Publishing, POB 1696, Skokie IL 60076–8696, USA. No price listed.

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Fifth Estate Collective
The Detroit Police Red Squad ...spied on more than 1,000,000 people. Are YOU one of them?

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For more than 30 years, a secret arm of the Detroit Police Department was tracking citizens to “root out” and “expose” subversives. Their targets were political activists, Vietnam War opponents, black nationalists, labor unionists, civil liberties advocates and many others engaged in social, cultural and other “dissident” activities.

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Val Salvo (Peter Werbe
The Primitive & Us

a review of

Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives by Marianna Torgovnick, University of Chicago, 1990, 328 pp.

Gone Primitive is about the cliched, figurative concepts (now fashionably called “tropes” in academic, literary deconstructive and critical theory circles) of the primitive which haunt the modern West. However, the actual intricate complexities of the primitive societies not yet physically or culturally obliterated are of no real interest to most Western observers and never have been. According to Torgovnick, the fascination with those who the European invaders conquered and later came to see as discrete objects for inquiry, furnish a disguised way to talk about Western power relationships, particularly the issues of gender and sexuality.

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Ron Sakolsky
Toward A Surrealist Re-Enchantment of the World

Anarchy and surrealism have had many enchanting encounters over the years, and the convivial nature of their ongoing interplay is easy to understand. Much like anarchists, surrealists are dissatisfied with the impoverished version of reality that governs our relationship to the world and to one another.

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Bert Wirkes-Butuar (Peter Werbe)
Mary Wildwood
Lewis Cannon

Environmentalism and Revolution A Challenge to the Fifth Estate and Responses

Dear Friends at the Fifth Estate:

I was a bit disappointed with the Summer 1990 FE. Since when have the FE staff and paper become boosters for sacrificial reformist protest politics? There seems to be wholehearted support for “Redwood Summer, “ anti-nuke civil disobedience and rather unanarchistic (not even particularly “militant”) anti-incinerator protests to politicians.

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Jim Campbell
Indian Summer Canadian Army vs. the Mohawks

On September 26; 1990 a 78-day siege of two Mohawk territories near Montreal, Quebec, ended when the last group of holdouts walked out of a rehabilitation centre where they had been surrounded by Canadian army troops since September 1st. Rather than the unconditional surrender that the state wanted, the Mohawks were able to turn apparent defeat into symbolic victory.

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Rob Rifles (Rob Blurton)
The Lessons of Vietnam

It’s happening again. The tableau that has appeared so many times before resurfaces with bands playing and citizens cheering as the imperial army marches off to war. Now, an additional note is added to the traditional spectacle of men in uniform: departing women, with packs and rifles kiss weeping husbands and children goodbye.

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Ward Churchill
The Sand Creek Massacre

The charge that genocide was committed against the American Indian peoples of the United States in the process of that nation state’s formation is typically treated as a rhetorical device unsubstantiated by fact and designed only to attract “unwarranted” sympathy to North America’s indigenous population.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Detroit Seen

Threat of War Cancels Plans for Fifth Estate 25-Year Retrospective

That’s as good a reason as any for why the observance of our 25 years of publishing is reduced to a short mention in this column. We had intended more, both self-congratulation and perhaps a deeper discussion about our origins and political evolution. But the idea of a retrospective special issue began to slip as this issue became overwhelmed with articles.

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Kelpie Wilson
Redwood Summer Anatomy of an Action

The Concept

Redwood Summer was modeled after the “Mississippi Summer” of the civil rights movement. The conditions were similar to those of Mississippi in 1964. African-American victims of the system needed outside intervention to advocate for them in hostile territory. In Northern California in 1990, it was Redwood ecosystems that needed help.

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Orin Langelle
Shawnee Timber Sale Stopped

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Demonstrators blockade a logging road in Illinois’ Shawnee Nation Forest while a paid agent of repression looks on. —photo: O. Langelle

Beginning on June 20th, a determined group of Earth First!ers (EF!), Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and anarchists, maintained a blockade at the site of the Fairview timber sale area in southern Illinois’ Shawnee National Forest.

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Kelpie Wilson
Split in Earth First!

Redwood Summer seems to have sent some Earth First!ers over the edge. Many of the old-line EF! activists stayed away from the summer actions, feeling that “outsiders” had invaded their movement and diluted EF!‘s biocentric vision. Two EF! founders, Dave Foreman and Howie Wolkie, resigned in August (if one can resign from a “non-organization”) and the entire paid staff of the Earth First! Journal, which is closely associated with Foreman, announced in their current issue that they were resigning due to constant criticism of their editorial policies.

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Robert D. Heinl Jr.
The Collapse of the Armed Forces Reprint

FE Note: The article reprinted here first appeared in the Armed Forces Journal, June 7, 1971, and is excerpted here from The Movement Against the War, Ramparts Press, 1972. Col. Heinl’s hawkish military columns were a regular feature in the Detroit News during the 1950s and ‘60s.

From original Introduction to article: When Colonel Robert Heinl published this article in the Armed Forces Journal in June 1971, it drew national attention. Hints of near-mutinous conditions among U.S. combat forces in Vietnam and in the fleet off its coast had occasionally surfaced in the press. There had also been some coverage of the week-long April encampment in Washington of a thousand Vietnam veterans, who had chanted pro-Viet Cong slogans outside the White House and hurled their hundreds of Purple Hearts and combat medals at the Capitol. But relatively few Americans were aware that by this time the anti-war movements at home and within the armed forces were often working in coordination, nor did many think of the U.S. military as close to “collapse.”

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Lynne Clive (Marilynn Rashid)
Detroit: demolished by design Violence, Racism and Collapse of Community

It’s Thursday afternoon, and I’m jogging my two or three miles on the track at the downtown Detroit YMCA overlooking the gym where a group of about sixteen mostly black men are playing basketball. The man and woman who were running when I started have finished, so I’m alone and keeping an eye on the game to fight the boredom of running on an indoor track.

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Various Authors
Letters to the Fifth Estate

Quite a Drag

Howdy, Folks!

(That’s the only non-sexist salutation I can think of.)

I’ve been an unaffiliated Anarchist for years. That’s mainly because I’m from a lower-class background and most Anarchists I’ve ever met have either been college students or punk anti-everythingers. It’s good to see that there are some serious people out there who realize the scale of the struggle we have before us.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Masthead

FIFTH ESTATE #335, Winter, 1990–91, Vol. 25, No. 2

Fifth Estate

The Fifth Estate is a co-operative project, published by a group of friends who are in general, but not necessarily complete agreement with the articles herein. Each segment of the paper represents the collective effort of writing, typesetting, lay-out and proofreading.

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Various Authors
Prisoners Respond to the Fifth Estate

FE staff note: Last issue we sent out 115 sample copies of the Fifth Estate to prisoners, the result of a listing as a free publication in a prison resource handbook. Rather than automatically granting free subscriptions to those who requested them, we asked that prisoners read and evaluate our publication and let us know if they wanted to be put on our list. Gratifyingly, more than a third responded with positive and strong replies, some of which are printed below.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Tales from the planet

SAVE MUMIA

Mumia Abu-Jamal’s battle to keep from being legally lynched by the state of Pennsylvania has reached a critical point. On October 1, the U.S. Supreme Court denied his petition for a review of his conviction and death sentence. In January 1990, Mumia exhausted his last avenue of appeal in the state (in)justice system. All that remains is for Governor Robert Casey to sign the warrant of execution.

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George Bradford (David Watson)
War in Iraq Imperial Death Trip to Nowhere

The Empire, gorged and sclerotic from its daily gnawing on the marrow of the world, has now called up its armies and declared its “new world order.” Its commander-in-chief, a mediocrity in a civilization of hollow mediocrities, lays aside his golf club and announces a holy war to “defend the American way of life,” its basis in the sacred nectar of capital, the “lifeblood of industry and the Western economies,” oil. Hundreds of thousands of troops, with more on the way, now await their orders to advance to the conflagration. Or perhaps as you read these lines, the armies have already clashed, littering the sand with corpses and industrial junk.

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Fifth Estate Collective
David Porter
Alice Wexler

Emma Goldman and the Russian Revolution an exchange

Dear Fifth Estate:

While I appreciate David Porter’s long and serious review of my book, Emma Goldman in Exile (see FE #333, Winter 1990), I’d like to take issue with some of his points. Porter criticizes my “intrusiveness” for allegedly imposing my own political agenda on Goldman’s life, without making my politics explicit. Possibly he is right that I should have laid out my criteria for judgment more clearly.

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Fifth Estate Collective
FE Bookstore

The FE Bookstore is located at 4632 Second Ave., just south of W. Forest, in Detroit. We share space with the Fifth Estate Newspaper and may be reached at the same phone number: (313) 831–6800. Visitors are welcome, but our hours vary so please call before dropping in.

HOW TO ORDER BY MAIL:

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

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Various Authors
Letters to the Fifth Estate

Tornado Warning

Dear Fifth Estate:

We appreciate your kind mention of our group in your last issue (see “300,000 at Pro-Choice Demo—Plus Us,” FE #333, Winter, 1990), but we are not “Storm Warning” as the article identified us.

Our name is Tornado Warning and we are a feminist action group devoted to Womyn’s self-determination, self-help, and self-knowledge.

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Fifth Estate Collective
News and Reviews

When I compare the straight columns, boxed graphics and even type of the Fifth Estate to the graphic wildness and literary adventure of the ‘zine Babyfish Lost Its Momma, it makes me wonder if the FE hasn’t gotten a little bit too straight-edged. Well, I guess you can’t force it, and Babyfish is tied solidly into a music, cultural, and lifestyle scene in Detroit’s Cass Corridor district where everything comes out a bit jagged and experimental. Issue No. 3 is a walloping 80 pages of Poetry, visuals, collages, music and literary reviews, fiction, communal action, radical sexuality and a lot of undefinables. Definitely for, as the lead editorial says, the “outlaws of Amerika.” A steal at $2.00. Available from: Babyfish at P.O. Box 11589, Detroit MI 48211 plus postage, or through FE Books.

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J.G. Eccarius
Writing an Anarchist Novel

FE Note: The anarchist novel that J.G. Eccarius wrote is The Last Days of Christ the Vampire, excerpts from which appear in the box below. It was first published in 1988 with a second edition featuring a new front and back cover which includes a quote from the Fifth Estate describing Last Days...as “one of the most wildly blasphemous books we have seen since the classics of sacrilege.”

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Bob McGlynn
Anarchy in Trieste Anarchists from East & West meet in Italy

The Italian group Germinal sponsored the first-ever large scale planning meeting of anarchists from the East and West in Trieste, Italy from April 14 through 17. Although they did not intend to have a huge gathering, 332 people registered from 23 countries. Among the groups represented from Eastern Europe were the Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists (USSR), the Czechoslovakian Anarchist Union, Autonomia (Hungary), Autonomija and A! (Yugoslavia) and Black Aliens and the Polish Anarchist Federation (Poland).

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George Bradford (David Watson)
An Exemplary Life A Memoir of Fredy Perlman

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Fredy Perlman with the cover of Letters of Insurgents at Detroit’s Black and Red Print co-op, 1976

referred to in this article:

Having Little, Being Much: A Chronicle of Fredy Perlman’s Fifty Years, by Lorraine Perlman, Black & Red (Detroit, 1989), 155 pages, $3.50

I cannot say with any certainty what kind of response this perceptive, if rather abbreviated memoir would elicit from a person who did not know Fredy Perlman or his writings. It was written, clearly, for those familiar at least with his work, and they without a doubt will enjoy this glimpse of the man whose voice played such a large role in reviving libertarian traditions and articulating the critical primitivism that has profoundly transformed anti-authoritarian ideas during the last decade.

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Lewis Cannon
Earth Day? We Want a Festival of the Oppressed! The Solution to Pollution is Revolution

Earth Day supplement page 1

1. Earth’s Day or Capital’s Spectacle?

If there was ever a need for an “Earth Day,” “Earth Week,” or “Earth Year” “to get people thinking creatively about the problems we now confront, and looking for new ways to tackle them,” in the words of Earth Day 1970 organizer (and Earth Day 1990 CEO) Denis Hayes, now is certainly the time.

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