Most Recent Additions

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

QUESTION: In a recent column you referred to a medical underground weekly called the A.M.A. News. I would like to place a subscription for my doctor to this paper. He is a real good doc and all but seems to have blinders on. Could you give me the address?

...

a review of

The Cream, “Wheels of Fire” (ATCO)

and

Donovan, “In Concert” (Epic)

I can remember when I was young, thinking how nothing in the music world ever stayed constant. Later in my life I was to be proven wrong. Cream had nothing to do with it, unfortunately, as nothing in the world would give me greater pleasure than to admit that they were the group!

...

In the past two weeks since the last issue of this paper a bunch of new developments have taken place: Almost every job for the MC5 brings a new and different creep scene into being.

At a Wednesday night job in Tecumseh, Michigan, at the local teen center, guitarist Wayne Kramer ripped a pair of pants early in the second set and went off to change them. Later in the same set he ripped the second pair of pants, this time accidentally exposing his genitals to the tender crowd.

...

The Trans-Love Energies commune is now offering three new services in which you may be interested:

Dave Sinclair, manager of the UP and now resident at 1520 Hill Street in Ann Arbor, next door to the MC5-Trans-Love house, is now taking orders for custom-built speaker cabinets for guitar and p.a. amplifiers and for hi-fi and stereo sets. He will build what you need at a wholly reasonable rate. For example, a new SUNN speaker cabinet for a 200S bass amp would cost you $330 list (without speakers); Dave can do it for under $100. His cabinets are endorsed by the MC5 and the UP—these bands play and praise them.

...

“Elvira Madigan,” as advertised, may well be the most beautiful movie ever made. In any event, it is one of the most popular foreign films to come to Detroit in quite a while. However, I have a feeling that the capacity crowds that fill the Studio-North each night are not completely satisfied with what they see.

...

An interesting entry to the TV “talk show” circuit locally is “Haney’s People,” at 11:15 p.m., on Channel 7 (WXYZ-TV).

Host for the new show is Don Haney who is dark black in color, but not very black in philosophy. For instance, in discussion July 7 on bias in the mass media, Haney kept on insisting that TV had played an important role in magnifying the image (with a clear implication that this was detrimental to “good race relations”) of Stokely Carmichael and Rap Brown.

...

a review of

Soul On Ice by Eldridge Cleaver. 210 pages. Ramparts (McGraw-Hill).

The Texas Outlaw’s Kerner Commission told the nation that the black and white races are moving rapidly in different directions. Eldridge Cleaver tells it better in his new book.

When one sits down to think about it, he realizes that real communication and understanding between black and white Americans is virtually nil. As Herb Boyd, of the Wayne State Association of Black Students put it, “White students really assimilate what they learn here, but after we dig Freud, we go home and read Le Roi Jones.”

...

NEW YORK, N.Y. June 25 (NEW YORK DAILY NEWS)—A group of about 40 hippie types, bearded, beaded and foul-mouthed, invaded the studio of WNDT-TV, Channel 13, last night and, within sight and sound of thousands of viewers, tried to take over the station.

Reality was performed on Channel 13, WNDT-TV, Tuesday night, June 25^th, at 10:30 p.m. A live reenactment of chaos sent shock waves through the New York metropolitan area as thousands of viewers witnessed the first physical confrontation between the underground and the establishment media. What was happening in Paris, in Vietnam, in Berlin, in Tokyo, in practically every major city in the world was happening at that exact moment on the third eye of living room consciousness: REBELLION.

...

FIFTH ESTATE #58, July 18-31l, 1968, Vol. 3 No. 6

EDITORS

Harvey Ovshinsky

Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Cathy West

CIRCULATION

Tommye Wiese

NEWS EDITOR

Alan Gotkin

MUSIC EDITOR

John Sinclair

DISTRIBUTION

Eric Watkins

ADVERTISING

Gunnar Lewis

CALENDAR

Resa Jannett

STAFF

Bill Allen

...

It is ironic that the recent “Freedom Festival” in Detroit was celebrated primarily in Detroit’s Grecian community.

It is actually tragic, when you consider that modern Greece lies dying at the feet of fascist armies, and that many, perhaps most, of the inhabitants of Detroit’s so-called “Greektown” are monarchists at heart, actually supporting the current Greek dictatorship. “Greektown, in short, is one Helluva place to celebrate a “Freedom Festival.”

...

Other Scenesman, John Wilcock, has begun one of his frequent around the world trips. This report is filed from Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia. We will publish his impressions of his visits to other European and Asian cities as they are received.

Beethoven concert in the Rector’s Palace, a centuries-old stone castle with inner patio open to the sky. Cheapest ticket 10 dinar (80 cents) with which I race up two impressive stone staircases to recline comfortably on a stone ledge overlooking the middle-aged German tourists sat stolidly in stiff-backed chairs 20 feet below.

...

BOSTON, July 10—Dr. Benjamin Spock and three other defendants were sentenced today to two years in Federal’ prison for conspiring to counsel evasion of the draft.

The four stood quietly in Federal District Court as the clerk read the sentences imposed by Judge Francis J.W. Ford, who presided over the case. Execution of the sentences was waived pending legal steps for appeal.

...

Bridegroom Tom Nixon and Bride Kate Tomaino stand with Ali of Monkey Boutique after their wedding ceremony at St. Joseph’s Church. Photo — Rick Burner.

To the sounds of Dylan’s “Love Means Zero—No Limit”, Tom and Kate were married Sunday, July 7. Tom Nixon, ex-chairman of the Draft Resistance Committee, and Kate Tomaino, of the Cambridge Book Stall on the Wayne Campus, chose St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church as the scene for their Episcopalian-Hindu rites wedding.

...

THURS., JULY 4

INDEPENDENCE DAY CELEBRATION’ International Freedom Festival sponsoring a “Let Freedon Ring” ceremony. Bring your American flags and apple pies. 12 noon, Greenfield Village.

ART EXHIBITS along Washington Blvd. to coincide with the International Freedom Festival.

PARADE—march along the streets or ride your bicycles to Patton Park. Starts at Beard & Dix at 12 noon, for more info call 843–1950.

...

As the Fifth Estate goes to press we received word that the Michigan Secretary of State has certified the Michigan New Politics Party to appear on the November Ballot.

In a telephone interview with state party chairman, Bert Garskoff, he stated that the party will quickly hold a state convention where many feel Black Panther leader, Eldridge Cleaver’s name will be put in nomination as the party’s presidential nominee.

...

For a number of years, the Fifth Estate has been writing about the crisis of Western civilization and its industrial/technological plague. At the same time we have been profoundly interested in primitivism and the cultures of earth-based peoples, realizing that their demise came with the subjugation of nature by the advances of the civilized world. The view that our planet faces a grave, man-made ecological threat is certainly not unique to us, and the last few years have seen the emergence of an international green or ecology phenomenon which demands an end to environmental abuse and seeks a reconciliation between humanity and nature.

...

Marshall Rubinoff, former Fifth Estate rock and roll columnist, died of injuries sustained in an accident while he was riding his motorcycle in San Francisco July 7.

Marshall was known in this area for his work as lead singer and rhythm guitarist for the second edition of the Spikedrivers. While he was with the band he wrote much of their material. He left Detroit for San Francisco shortly after the Spikedrivers broke up and after trying unsuccessfully to form a new band here.

...

Much attention in the community from now on will be focused on the primary election to be held Tuesday, August 6. Perhaps the largest effort will be that of the McCarthy for President Committee, together with the Michigan Conference for Concerned Democrats, to get their 2,000 candidates for precinct delegates in the Democratic party elected throughout the state. A substantial success in this campaign could effect some changes in the internal structure of the Democratic party, since there are only a total of 5,000 precincts in Michigan.

...

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.

Wanted: Singer for Experienced RadicalRock—Jazz Ensemble. Must be good, versatile, and over 18. Contact Wilson, 14 W. Elmhurst, Highland Park, Michigan.

...

A few days ago a friend of mine asked me to amortize my obligations to RFK’s assassination by rendering a stirring Stars and Stripes article titled something like—Ban the Guns (it occurs to me that we haven’t even Banned the Bomb yet). His idea was that I should create apiece of literary magic that would induce Fifth Estate readers (against their better judgment) to go out and contact their congressmen with personal letters, informing these panderers of democracy that some of their constituents are outraged by the inadequacies of existing gun laws.

...

Jake Frankhouser is a gentle, revolutionary who has good and practical ideas about food. Jake’s good discipline has gotten him an undergraduate degree in landscape architecture and this year, a Masters in urban planning. Beyond all that, Jake’s interest is urban recreation; and he has some fantastic plans for neighborhood recreation facilities, planned and built by the neighborhood.

...

Richard Sharvy, an assistant professor of philosophy at Wayne State University, has been indicted by a Federal Grand Jury for refusing induction into the U.S. Armed Forces.

Mr. Sharvy refused induction September 5 of last year after both his student deferment (he was working on a Ph.D. at the time.) and his application for conscientious objector status were denied.

...

Unaccustomed though I may be to giving advice which will earn money for someone other than myself I feel duty bound to give you some information concerning two forthcoming attractions at the Grande Ballroom.

Foremost, by date of appearance only, is the Jeff Beck group. Some of you will probably remember Jeff as being the guitarist in whose shadow stands, and always will stand, Jimmy Page, present “Lead Player” with the Yardbirds, who having now disbanded leaves him as the lead player to Chris Dreja, bassist.

...

On June 19 a group of young men declared their intention to confront the draft. The ceremony, originally scheduled for St. Patrick’s Church had to be quickly rescheduled for St. Joseph’s Church when church authorities declared the meeting would not be of a suitable nature for a church setting.

Father Michael J. O’Hara of St. Patrick’s Church began his talk by denouncing the war in Vietnam. He declared that conscientious opposition to the State is part of his religious heritage. He then read the letters from the Archdiocese of Detroit which had closed St. Patrick’s to the meeting.

...

“Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom...of the press.”

—First Amendment, United States Constitution

“It’s a free country, but it’s their thing.”

—John Sinclair, Detroit House of Correction, July, 1966

Once again censorship has reared its ugly head in the Detroit area. The latest chapter in the campaign of the city’s self-appointed moral guardians to destroy what vestiges of a free press that still exist here was at the Inner City Voice, Detroit’s black revolutionary newspaper.

...

Detroit’s only operating daily newspaper, The Detroit American, today was named “Uptight Honkie of the Month” for June by Detroit Area People Against Racism (PAR). The Detroit American was cited for its flagrant use of the “crime in the streets” issue to produce anti-Negro hysteria.

In announcing the award, Detroit PAR’s Executive Director, David P. Kramer, said, “The media are always in a position to reinforce racist fears. During the month of June, The Detroit American has shown an outstanding ability in this normally subtle role.”

...

John Wayne BIFF! has made a new movie POW! called “The Green Berets” AAP! It’s currently appearing at the Adams Theatre, and I want all you weak-kneed, yellow-bellied draft dodgers out there to double time down to see it.

The real-life John Waynes display their handiwork in Vietnam. The photo was sent to Vietnam GI, an anti-war paper edited by Vietnam Vets in Chicago. Photo courtesy of Vietnam GI/LNS.

...

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

QUESTION: My wife had her first baby about a month ago and a couple of days after they returned from the hospital the baby began crying every night at about nine and usually continued until my wife finally fed him again around midnight.

...

Editor’s Note: Ed Sanders, founder and lead singer of the fuck-rock group The Fugs, is a legendary figure on the avant-garde poetry-peace-dope-fucking in the streets scene in the Lower East Side of New York City. A native of Kansas, Sanders made his first splash on the national scene as one of the peacefreaks who boarded the atomic submarine Polaris in 1962. He served 90 days in jail when he was apprehended and later had his account of the scene, “Poem from Jail,” published as a pamphlet by City Lights Books (1963). In New York City in 1962 Sanders founded the mind-shattering magazine Fuck You / a magazine of the arts, which published such American poetry giants as Charles Olson, Michael McClure, LeRoi Jones, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley, et al.

...

NEW YORK, N.Y., June 15 (Liberation News Service)—Three plainclothes police arrested YIPPEE coordinator Jerry Rubin at his apartment late Thursday afternoon and charged him with possession of dangerous drugs—a felony. From the conduct of the police, it was clear that the bust was politically motivated.

...

EDITORS

Harvey Ovshinsky

Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Cathy West

CIRCULATION

Tommye Wiese

NEWS EDITOR

Alan Gotkin

MUSIC EDITOR

John Sinclair

DISTRIBUTION

Eric Watkins

ADVERTISING

Gunnar Lewis

ART DIRECTOR

Ed Bania

CALENDAR

Resa

STAFF

Laura Straight

Marlene Tyre

Michael Tyre

...

The Trans-Love commune of Ann Arbor (late of Detroit) was plundered by police June 18 when Grand Traverse County Sheriff’s Deputies took into custody Lawrence “Pun” Plamondon on a warrant charging him with “sale and dispension of marijuana” in Traverse City, Michigan, on the 17^th of March, 1968.

Also charged on the same warrant is artist Gary Grimshaw and editor of the Sun newspaper. Grimshaw has not yet been apprehended.

...

On Saturday, June 22, a demonstration expressing support for French workers and students was held in front of the office of the French consulate in the First National Building in downtown Detroit.

The demonstration, which protested the Gaullist government’s recent ban on public assembly and the suppression of French student organizations and revolutionary political parties, was jointly sponsored by the Young Socialist Alliance (Y.S.A.), the Socialist Worker’s Party (S.W.P.), the Inner City Voice, the Arab Student Association, and Black Conscience magazine.

...

The following is a press release I wrote for the MC5 this week; we’re running it here because we promised to take you behind the scenes in the rock and roll industry, and these events illustrate what bands have to go thru just to do their thing. If you just paid your money and sat and waited for MC5 at the ballroom last Sunday, you deserve to know that it wasn’t the band that kept you waiting in the heat—it was the people who took your money. Be advised.

...

This column is primarily concerned with contemporary jazz, relevant jazz, music with not only social significance, but sounds derived from environment, relating directly from experience. The very word jazz to many listeners conjures up stereotyped images. Most common is the movie image, the usual pseudo biographical tale of a musician tormented by the everyday series of musician’s “furies” dope, women and/or booze—not necessarily in that order. There is usually a social hangup or two with the hefty bleached blonde that quickly fades into oblivion leaving tons of grief in her wake. The musician, of course, is portrayed by Sammy Davis.

...

On Tuesday evening, June 4, just one hour before the polls closed in the California primary, I was being interviewed in Washington, D.C. by John Hightower over television station WEAN.

I was asked why Robert Kennedy appeared to accept the findings of the Warren Commission. For some months I had been aware of conversation between emissaries from Robert Kennedy to New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison. (Since the confidence was not originally shared with me, I am not at liberty to reveal the names of the emissaries. However, should Garrison be asked for that information by the press, It is conceivable that he might reveal the names.) Yet I felt that it would be unfair to breach a confidential relationship while the primary campaign proceeded.

...

The following essay is from Alien-Nation, an interesting first issue of a newsletter produced by several people in Olympia, Washington, who until recently were associated with Earth First! No one wants to have their worst fears confirmed, but in many ways that is exactly the effect this account had on us here in Detroit. Being isolated geographically from both the activities and organizational life of Earth First!, we have been concerned that perhaps there was more truth than we realized to the contentions of some that the only problem with Earth First! lay with the “Tucson group” and that it is “only Dave Foreman and Ed Abbey who have crazy views.”

...

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;

...

This special issue of the Fifth Estate is a collaboration between the Detroit staff and our friend and comrade, Freddie Baer in San Francisco. The essay on deep ecology was written and edited here, but with invaluable suggestions and criticisms from several people around the country. The typesetting, graphic selection and lay-out were done by Freddie, and for this herculean effort, as well as for her patience, her suggestions and her eye for graphically attractive design, she has our immense gratitude.

...

The Fifth Estate newspaper (ISSN No. 0015–0800) is published quarterly at 4632 Second Ave., Detroit MI 48201 USA. Phone (313) 831–6800. Subscriptions: $5.00 per year; $7.00 per year foreign including Canada. Second Class postage paid at Detroit, Michigan. No copyright. No paid ads. Postmaster: Send address changes to Fifth Estate, P.O. Box 02548, Detroit MI 48202.

After looking at the latest jam-packed issue of Factsheet 5, PO Box 170099, SF, CA 94117, “the magazine of record” for zines, it doesn’t seem like anyone should worry about the state of autonomous publishing. Still, a number of stalwart anarchist publications have either ceased publishing recently or are appearing much less frequently (like us?). Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed hasn’t printed an edition since December 1995 and even then didn’t get issues out to all its subscribers.

...

ANARCHY OR CHAOS by George Woodcock

Written as World War II raged around him, Woodcock’s brief history of anarchism is filled with youthful enthusiasm.

Lysander Spooner, 124 pp. $9.50

THE REVOLUTION OF EVERYDAY LIFE, by Raoul Vaneigem

First published in France in 1967, this book complements Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle which appeared the same year. The main programmatic statements of the Situationist International, these works played a large part in the gestation of the French 1968 May events.

...

Dear Fifth Estate:

As an Earth First! sympathizer and subscriber to many deep ecology principles, I read David Watson’s How Deep Is Deep Ecology? with great interest. I learned a tremendous amount from it. His criticisms were penetrating and well taken. I also appreciated the tone of sympathy despite profound differences.

...

It’s hard not to be distracted by the right wing Shit Show presently playing in the White House with its daily exposures of corruption, racism, xenophobia, and discrimination.

The most glittering of all the baubles dangled for our horror and enjoyment is Russian interference in the 2016 election and the collusion of the Trump campaign with President Vladimir Putin’s operatives. The accuracy of this charge is strengthened almost daily and denied only by the Trump camp, Fox News, and a surprising number of leftists and news sites like CounterPunch.

...

The text which begins on the following page is excerpted from Beyond Bookchin: Preface for a Future Social Ecology, a new title co-published in fall 1996 by Black & Red, Detroit, and Autonomedia, Brooklyn. Its author is Fifth Estate staff member David Watson.

In Murray Bookchin’s extensive writings on ecology and anarchism spanning four decades, he has tried to take us beyond Marx toward a more fundamental critique, a holistic rationality, a deeper freedom. He is recognized in many anti-authoritarian circles as an anarchist luminary and elder of significant importance to the extent that some identify themselves as “Bookchinites.” Under the watchword of “coherence,” Bookchin has sought nothing less than the full explanation. But David Watson’s latest book shows that Bookchin’s work ultimately falls far short of its pretensions, and thus fails to guide us toward the promised “pathways to a green future.”

...

Welcome to the 400^th issue of the Fifth Estate. Our first issue was published in Detroit in November 1965. It was born in the age of the 1960s New Left, civil rights, anti-war, feminist, and gay rights movements.

The Fifth Estate was soon joined by hundreds of other papers and small magazines locally produced by activists, many barely out of their teens. Together these publications became known as the underground press.

...

Send letters to fe — AT — fifthestate — DOT — org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220. All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length.

Taking part in protests is an act of defiance which may result in violent retaliation. “In Defense of Self Defense” by Paul Walker in the Fall 2017 Fifth Estate (#399) made this clear.

...

Fifth Estate Letters Policy

The Fifth Estate always welcomes letters commenting on our articles, stating opinions„ or giving reports of events in local areas. We don’t guarantee we will print everything we receive, but all letters are read by our staff and considered.

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 a longer response, please contact us.

...

Murray Bookchin must be getting cranky in his old age. Upon reading his latest broadside, Social Anarchism Or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm, I was rudely smacked in the face by déja vu. Evidently Bookchin is beating a dead horse, trying to breathe life back into an old controversy within the anarchist movement that dates back a century.

...

FIFTH ESTATE #400, Spring 2018, Vol. 53 No. 1

Fifth Estate

Radical Publishing since 1965

Vol. 53, No. 1, #400 Spring 2018

The Fifth Estate is an anti-profit, anarchist project published by a volunteer collective of friends and comrades. www.FifthEstate.org

No ads. No copyright. Kopimi — reprint freely