Most Recent Additions

The opening shot in Airman Ted Goldflies versus the Air Force, Round Two, was printed in the last issue of the Fifth Estate [FE #83, July 10–23, 1969]. That was a letter of “Admonition” from Major Fred Smith, Commander of Selfridge Air Force Base, to Goldflies, warning him that he would face prosecution under Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice for “conduct unbecoming a soldier” if he continued to distribute either The Fifth Estate or The Ally either on base or off base.

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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 have six children and would like to find a way to present my soul-mate with a more shrunken area to play in. Dig?

My physician told me that I had an unusually good pelvic floor for having had so many children (whatever that means). I have exercised my vaginal muscles but I think I have accomplished all that can be done that way. My husband is sweet and says it doesn’t make that much difference, but...

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“We might as well leave, Fred.”

Not many of us are fortunate enuf to have parents like the above.

For a book directed at (against) the establishment & the reaction, Tuli Kupferberg is seeking info about young people with ideas radically different from their families: case histories of the generation gap. For example: at the last great Pentagon demo, the daughter of Gen. Hershey’s first assistant was arrested. “A colonel’s son was arrested in Lawrence, Kansas, for parading in front of the local draft board with a sign reading: “Fuck the Draft.” An admiral’s son is a member of the Cornell resistance. Sen. McGovern’s daughter has been busted for dope, &c &c. (He is looking for people in all branches of the establishment, not just the military: i.e., in industry, finance, government, education, &c.)

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Greet The Man!

Be the first in your commune, home, block, etc., to wear the latest in fashion—“All Power to the People” and fist on finest quality T-shirt; sizes S, M, L and X-Large. Send $2.50 to: T-Shirts, Box 1711, Ann Arbor, Mi. 48106. Also custom T-shirting for your group or club.

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I am a dumb old GI and I hate this MF Army. I want to subscribe to your underground paper. It’s not a very pleasant thing being here where I really don’t want to be.

The only thing that I want is to be back home (Detroit) and to be with my girl. I don’t want the war in Vietnam, or the Army or all of this unnecessary harassment. I’m not really proud of being in the Army although my parents seem to think so.

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The pre-trial examination of Rafael Viera, accused of murder in the New Bethel shooting, heard testimony that may clear him of the charge.

Viera is accused of murdering Patrolman Michael Czapski last march in a shoot-out between police and several armed citizens. Patrolman Richard Worobec who was shot also, testified from a bed in Detroit General Hospital that Viera did not resemble the man he saw shoot Czapski. He did say Viera looked like one of the dozen armed men he saw flee the scene right before the shooting began.

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The on again-off again break up of the Red, White and Blues Band is On-again-off again. After the original guitarist-harpist quit, he was replaced by two people, a singer-harpist and a lead player who never really worked out.

It was announced that the group was breaking up for good, then that they would just replace the singer and the guitarist with two new people. But bigger things were in the air, and now, it seems, piano player Skip has left the group to join the Wilson Mower Pursuit.

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NEW YORK: City officials have turned down, sight unseen, a plan to turn NYC’s individual subway stations into fascinating communities, more or less reflective of the areas in which they exist.

The vast space in Greenwich Village’s West 4^th Street station, for example, would be tenanted by a sort of miniature Mulberry Street festival with push carts selling vegetables, church-operated gambling wheels, an art show and second-hand bookstalls of the type found along the banks of the River Seine.

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<strong>

Woodstock Music & Art Fair presents</strong>

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Moving from ideas to action has always been central to the anarchist project. Our work has long been inspired by visions of a transformed world, one in which prevailing institutions and relationships are overturned to create more liberatory ways of living and relating to each other.

Yet powerful forces stand in our way. Not only the entrenched ruling order with its vast resources including its repressive apparatus and cultural spectacle, but perhaps even more of a bulwark against change, a deeply ingrained mass culture of submission to authority which generates a fear of living liberated lives.

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SAIGON (LNS)—To stem the gold flow and inflation caused by six-hundred thousand Americans spending large monthly salaries in Vietnam, the PX and the military clubs have gone to great lengths to provide for the needs of the Americans in Saigon.

One commodity in great demand, however, cannot be found in the PX shelves or at the bar of the Officers’ Clubwomen.

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Murray Bookchin is the editor of Anarchos magazine, a periodically appearing journal of anarchist thought published in New York City. Copies of his magazine and other writings are available from Anarchos, P.O. Box 466, Peter Stuyvesant Station, N.Y., N.Y. 10009 or may be picked up in person only at the Fifth Estate office.

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Most of us don’t like dealing with conflict in movement politics. There are times when our projects are rolling along smoothly and then we hit a point of contention and suddenly the room is full of tension and discord.

For many people, the reaction is to try and restore order by quelling the discontent and moving onto other matters.

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Rarely is an entire region of the world so caught up in the collapse of hierarchical politics as Eastern Europe of a year ago. The infamous “spectre of anarchy” astonished and horrified Communist, dissident and Western politicians alike as millions suddenly demanded control of their own lives. [1]

Tragically, but predictably, politicians of all sides—Party members and bureaucrats of the old regime, oppositional leaders and Western “advisors”—moved rapidly to protect their interests. Thus, Polish General Czeslaw Kiszczak, Interior Minister of the Jaruzelski regime, began talks in February 1989 to restore Solidarity’s legality in order to prevent the “anarchy and destruction” of its original phase (1980–81). [2]

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The art of Ricardo Levins Morales is rooted in the soil of the struggles that shape our lives. Inspiring, empowering and validating, his images both document and embody collective visions of unity in the face of power.

As a result of working with the Northland Poster Collective in South Minneapolis for over thirty years, Levins Morales has developed core insights about how art can be a powerful part of strategy in movements.

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Our courageous contemporaries in Eastern Europe had clear ideas about the urgency to do away with a malignant growth which usurped their self-powers and which claimed to be indispensable to social well-being. They were less clear about what, if anything, might replace it. The toppling of governments in Eastern Europe was the opposite of a palace coup. Did the people who came out to challenge the entrenched regimes realize how insecure the position of the bureaucrats was?

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The League of Revolutionary Black Workers has moved onto the Wayne State University Campus.

In a move to combat racism in employment and bad working conditions, members of the League have organized a group of thirty to forty black secretaries into the Ad Hoc Committee to End Racism, Exploitation and Oppression at Wayne State University.

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a review of

Man’s Rise to Civilization As Shown by the Indians of North America from Primeval Times to the Coming of the Industrial State by Peter Farb, E.P. Dutton, 332 pp. 1968, $8.95.

Man’s Rise to Civilization As Shown by the Indians of North America from Primeval Times to the Coming of the Industrial State is quite an eyefull title. Don’t be fooled.

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The past week has seen an effort by the Army to give undesirable discharges to three anti-war GIs. All three are known for their anti-war views and their active struggle for the constitutional rights of American servicemen, and have been defended by the GI Civil Liberties Defense Committee.

At Fort Jackson, S. Carolina, where GIs United Against the War in Vietnam was founded, Pvts. Joseph Cole and Tommie Woodfin, two members of the famous Ft. Jackson Eight have been given official notice that they will receive undesirable discharges from the Army.

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According to a recent article in the Detroit Free Press only 17% of “deprived” families eligible for State aid under the Federal Food Stamp plan have taken advantage of it.

Food stamps are purchased from the Michigan Department of Social Services for, say $56 a month, and are redeemable at most supermarkets for $86 worth of groceries. That is a bonus of $30.

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Yas, free music. Free livin’. Free heads. Free Old Tarter Field for awhile at the WABX free Sunday afternoon concert.

After three solid days of rain, the sun shone on Old Tarter Field July 20. Deep in the crotch between the John C. Lodge and Edsel Ford Expressways five bands jammed for the whole afternoon.

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A Joint Declaration by

Amphibians for Decolonization

Inner Island Surrealist Group (‘Kómoks/Pentlatch territory)

Ottawa Surrealist Group (Algonquin Anishnaabeg territory)

“It took me a long time to find out my mistakes But I’m not fattenin’ no more frogs for snakes.”

—Sonny Boy Williamson

The Unist’ot’en are the Big Frog clan of the Wet’suwet’en nation. They defiantly croak at the colonizer’s yoke without reservation. They are hungry for decolonization. We honor their spirited resistance to colonial authority and offer our wholehearted solidarity.

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After messing around with Tom Sincavitch’s “Discharge for the good of the service” and finally turning it down, the Army has offered him a deal.

If Tom agrees to plead guilty to the charges of violating the orders of a sergeant and a captain they will drop the charge of violating an Army regulation, give him nine months confinement at Fort Leavenworth and then give him a Bad Conduct Discharge.

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NEW YORK, N.Y., July 1—The national office of the American Servicemen’s Union announced that two revolts had taken place in army stockades recently; on June 14 at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina and on June 22 at Ft. Riley, Kansas.

The uprising at Jackson was touched off by the beating of a prisoner, Julio Rivera, who had refused to pull K.P. Rivera was severely beaten by three sergeants and had to be hospitalized.

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Editors’ Note: The so-called “riot manual” described on the opposite page [FE #84, July 24-August 6, 1969] should be seen for what it is—a battle plan for the subjugation of the black community, demonstrators, and anyone who challenges the way this system is run. Its ruthlessness and cynicism should be ample evidence that the police are not an agency to protect the people, but rather to terrorize them.

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Some ways to think about the meaning and significance of three white, Christian males, two of whom are members of the armed forces, going to the moon.

“This is it,” said Cal Rogers, an elderly Oklahoman, who stood beside a tent and sipped a container of coffee. “This is what we’ve been working and paying for so long? That’s why I’m here to see what its all about.” (N.Y. Times Wednesday July 16, 1969).

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(via The Ann Arbor Argus) When the insurrection of July, 1967 began, Detroit police were ready with Schutzstaffel rules.

The Argus secured an official copy of the police riot manual issued in 1966 and signed by Ray Girardin, police commissioner, 1961–68. Among the manual policies still in force are the following.

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Editors’ Note: As of this writing the Woodstock Rock Festival may not happen. It seems the town council of Wallkill, N.Y. (the site of the festival) voted unanimously not to allow the festival to be held in their town. This came after almost a quarter of a million dollars in advance sales had been taken in.

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SAN FRANCISCO—“Naked Angels” is the best movie I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen “2001” four times, and I thought that was better than “Wild Angels” which I saw only 3 times.

A new genre of films is being born from the low-count B-movie trade: Motorcycle flicks. They are destined to become as classic as Westerns—only Westerns were legends and dealt with the projected past. Motorcycle flicks define our future, and our future is one of gangland violence, measured in horsepower cubic centimeters and steel tonnage. Get ready.

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The Fifth Estate

“To Serve the People”

EDITORIAL GROUP

Alan Gotkin

Peter Werbe

Cathy West

DISTRIBUTION

Bruce Montrose

Fred Frank

BUSINESS & ADVERTISING

Bill Rowe

STAFF

Dena Clamage

Rick London

Claudia Montrose

Dave Watson

Marilyn Werbe

Tommye Wiese

The FIFTH ESTATE is published every other Thursday of each month by the Fifth Estate Newspaper, Inc., 1107 W. Warren, Detroit, Michigan 48201. Application to mail at second-class postage rates is pending at Detroit Michigan. Subscription rate is $3 for one year; $5 for two years. Canadian is $3.50; all other foreign are $5 per year. Phone: 831–6800.

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South End Editor Cheryl McCall speaks at July 14 press conference flanked by Art Johnston (l.) and Attorney James Lafferty (r). Photo—A. Gotkin.

Bill Keast sent Cheryl McCall a telegram at 2:30 am July 11 which read:

I REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT I HAVE FOUND IT NECESSARY TO INSTRUCT THE PRINTER OF THE SOUTH END NOT TO PRINT THE ISSUE PLANNED FOR FRIDAY JULY 11. I AM CONVINCED THAT ITS PUBLICATION WOULD DO SERIOUS DAMAGE TO WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY AND TO THE FUTURE OF’ STUDENT JOURNALISM HERE. FURTHER I AM SUSPENDING PUBLICATION OF THE SOUTH END UNTIL THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER PUBLICATION BOARD HAS HAD AN OPPORTUNITY TO DEVELOP POLICIES AND GUIDE LINES CONSISTENT WITH THE RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE STUDENT FACULTY COUNCIL AS APPROVED BY THE BOARD OF GOVERNORS OF WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY AND IN THE LIGHT OF THESE DEEMS IT APPROPRIATE FOR PUBLICATION TO BE RESUMED. WM KEAST, PRESIDENT, WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY.

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The Hill was run by lanky Louie, an ex outrider with the Highwaymen. “The Grand Dude,” as they called him now is sort of manager of a couple scraggly rock and roll bands that lived on and around The Hill. There was the Sun, but most notably, perhaps, were the Tate brothers, Terry and Hawg, who form the nucleus of the Tate Blues Band.

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A demonstration against Iran’s execution of gays during a Christopher Street Day gay pride parade in Berlin.

My name is Arsham Parsi, a 37-year-old gay man born and raised in Iran. Neither of these facts were my choice. Discovering my difference from other men—not being interested in women—terrified me because I could be killed for who I was.

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Last October 3 marked twenty-five years since eighteen US soldiers died in Mogadishu, Somalia during a famous firefight that most Americans know as Black Hawk Down, for the crashed US helicopters. The loss is embedded in the American consciousness through a self-pitying book and film, and was widely commemorated on the 25^th anniversary.

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As has been the case throughout colonial conquest, the military police force of the Canadian state, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) have facilitated the occupation of Indigenous lands by resource capital. Most recently, the state forced its way onto Wet’suwet’en territories in northern so-called British Columbia to secure access for a Coastal GasLink liquified natural gas pipeline (LNG).

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Longtime Fifth Estate friend and contributor, David Porter, died December 29; he was 79. A dedicated teacher, anarchist researcher, and grassroots community activist, Porter applied his anti-authoritarian principles to many projects.

David Porter in his office, 1975

Growing up near Chicago, Porter graduated from Oberlin College near Cleveland in 1961. He then attended the Institute of Political Studies in Paris. His doctoral studies in politics at Columbia University included a year in Algeria learning directly about the workers’ self-management movement there.

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I traveled to Dharamsala, India in 2005 to set up a one-month summer study program, in collaboration with the Louisiana Himalaya Association, and have taken groups of students there periodically since then. During last summer’s trip, we visited renowned ecofeminist theorist and activist Vandana Shiva’s Navdanya Biodiversity Farm. We toured the fields and the seed bank, heard lectures by staff members specializing in various areas of agroecology, and were extremely fortunate that Shiva herself could speak to our small group about Navdanya and the ecofeminist politics of Earth Democracy.

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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.

Bi-guy Wants to go straight. Send suggestions to: L.P.G., 2152 Dorchester, apt. 104, Troy, Michigan 48084.

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COLUMBIA, S.C. — The Army brass at Ft. Jackson is still trying to screw GIs for exercising their Constitutional rights. (See last issue, p.15 [“Free Speech for GIs: Analysis of a victory” by Michael Smith, FE #82, June 26-July 9, 1969] for background story.)

Pvt. Tommy Woodfin, one of the founders of GIs United Against the War in Vietnam, has just come through a second court martial. He was acquitted on two counts, but plead guilty to a third count of being Absent Without Official Leave. Woodfin went AWOL on Memorial Day to visit his sick girlfriend in a New York hospital. He was sentenced to one month at hard labor and busted in rank.

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in Cooperation with Detroit Adventure

THURS. JULY 10

DETROIT SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA at Meadowbrook, Ehrling conducting; Itzthak Perlman, violinist. 8:30 pm.

AUDITIONS FOR TALENT SHOW at the Rappa House See July 11.

FOLK MUSIC from 9 till midnight at the Red Roach Coffeehouse. Plum St., at Fifth.

DETROIT CONCERT BAND, Belle Isle Music Shell at 8:15 pm.

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QUESTION: I think my girlfriend and I have been screwing too much. The reason I believe this is lately I’ve been almost continuously tired.

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

Could it be that too much sex is wearing me out? We only screw once a day, six or so times a week. As far as I know, I’m getting a balanced diet and plenty of sleep.

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Special to the Fifth Estate

NEW YORK, N.Y., July 1—Five beautiful women, including Kathy Czarnik of Detroit, entered Manhattan’s 44^th Street draft board and destroyed 2,000 1-A files. They also broke office equipment and scattered other records across the office.

They were able to leave the office without detection and appeared July 3 at a noon rally in Rockefeller Center of 2,000 persons to explain their actions to the public.

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The Detroit area is getting desperately short of places for rock bands to play. Three months ago things looked really good with the Grande, the Hideouts, and the Crow’s Nests all doing well; the Eastown getting ready to open, and at least eight smaller clubs rumored to be opening by early summer.

But in the last month the prevailing winds seem to have shifted in the other direction. The Clawson Hideout was forced to close down because the city fathers and the Knights of Columbus (who own the hall) limited the capacity to 350, hardly enough to break even. The Crow’s Nest West has closed to remodel right at the start of the Summer.

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One of the basic fundamentals of conservatism, presumably, is to conserve what you’ve got (no matter how much somebody else might need it) and to this extent at least, William Buckley, heir to a $100 million fortune, is true to conservative principles. Several hundred or thousand subscribers to Buckley’s magazine, the National Review, received a heart-rending plea in the mail last week: unless somebody gives the slick right-wing magazine $250,000 “it is quite literally true that the nation’s only conservative journal of opinion will have to close down.”

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On the night of July 3 the staccato of machine-gun fire rang out across the Jeffries Housing Project bordering on the Lodge Freeway. The sound was accompanied by the appearance of flickering letters on the wall of one of the high-rise concentration camps spelling out the name: NEWSREEL.

The sound and the letters are the trademark of Newsreel, a radical filmmaking and distribution organization which had an outdoor film showing at the housing project.

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Within the past year, America has suddenly found time to experience something called the “rebirth of the blues.” On magazine covers, in underground journals, in popular music—the blues.

Blues has surfaced into the popular culture. It has surfaced not from the so-called underground or “hip” subculture but from an underground far deeper—the black culture. For blues, the only purely native American music, ironically was spawned and nurtured by a man often considered as less than an American, the black man.

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Madison Avenue seems determined to co-opt and make a profit on everything, even revolution.

What the movement has to do is politicize every facet of Amerikan life and relate to people everywhere they are—in this case, at the movies.

For the last couple of weeks several people from the SDS summer program have been spending spare time at “CHE!” (“A man who created a nightmare of violence and terror”). We went to theatres all over Detroit passing out the June 12 “Che!” issue of the Fifth Estate [FE #81, June 12–25, 1969], and rapping about what Che and Cuba really are about.

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Tom Sincavitch, the Detroit GI who took sanctuary in St. Joseph’s Church this Spring is facing another court-martial the last week in July.

Sincavitch is being held in the Ft. Riley, Kansas stockade for refusing to report for duty. He had been put on active duty following his refusal to attend his Army Reserve meetings in Detroit. He called the training he was receiving “racist.”

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You jump into Toronto all of a sudden after driving four hours through the Ontario countryside.

Our first thought as we drove the station wagon downtown on Yonge St. was, “The youth revolt is international!” It was partly the pop festival that weekend, but all of downtown Toronto looked like Beverly St. when the Grande is playing.

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NEW YORK (LNS)—Top secret operations are being launched in Vietnam to kill or capture American deserters fighting for the NLF, according to a London Express story reprinted June 24 in the New York Post.

The operations have been ordered as the problem of troops going AWOL in the war zone becomes increasingly serious.

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