Most Recent Additions

Ursula K. La Guin, photo by Eileen Gunn

Reprinted from Fifth Estate #382, Spring, 2010. Issues are available as single copies & in bulk.

Related, in this issue: “Le Guin’s Anarchism & Mine” by Andrew William Smith

In a writing career spanning nearly six decades, Ursula K. Le Guin pushed the boundaries of fiction, transcending genre and style conventions to create a unique and distinctive literary voice.

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In 1977, East German dissident Rudolph Bahro was arrested and accused of publishing “state secrets” in a book entitled The Alternative in Eastern Europe in which he used a Marxist critique buoyed by the principles of Rosa Luxembourg to scrutinize the socialist system of his time. After more than two years in prison, he was released to West Germany where his profound preoccupation with the ecology crisis led him to become immersed in the green movement, and he eventually became a leading figure in the Green Party. Bahro’s association was, however, marred by conflicts in which his constant insistence on fundamental precepts of freedom, peace and ecological balance made him an irritating thorn in the side of the Party’s more compromising elements. He resigned from the Greens in June 1985, pointing out that through parliamentary and electoral politics, the group had sold out to the system, and that an inherent error had been made in deciding to become a political party in the first place.

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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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It was perhaps an inappropriate time to ask a question since at that very moment two climbers from Greenpeace were struggling to unfurl a banner describing the pollution which would be emitted from Detroit’s giant trash incinerator. Their problems were compounded by the fact that they were hanging in the girders of the Detroit-Windsor Ambassador Bridge some 150 feet from the water below.

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she had quickly cleaned the house

now she waited

perched nervously on the kitchen stool

as if she were a bird ready to take flight

Finally, he arrives

dressed fashionably in grey and white

he cuts an elegant figure

and the interview begins—

he asks:

which do you prefer

the black enamel finish

or these soft, muted rose-tones

shall we discuss the various

textures of carpets

or do you prefer the sensual earthiness

of a fine wood floor

the stark simplicity of the modern

or the eclectic clutter

of the victorian?

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A rising new cause of severe brain dammage: Narcotics officers.

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As can be seen in this issue’s “Revolution Against the Megamachine” and past Fifth Estate articles, we support the environmental movement becoming a revolutionary movement. Only through such a transformation can it begin to adequately challenge the ecological and social relationships which threaten this planet. To that end, we endorse the idea of radicalizing the 20^th anniversary of Earth Week scheduled for April 16 to 22, 1990. The attempt to fashion it as a domesticated spectacle has already begun with every hack politician, mainstream institution and even notorious polluters declaring allegiance to the 1990s as the “Environmental Decade,” all the while planning business as usual. These fakes are preparing to make it a week of festivities celebrating “concern” for the earth and the system’s ability to fix its problems.

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“Without Borders,” this year’s Anarchist Conference and Festival was held in San Francisco from July 20^th to 25^th. Taking place at the Horace Mann Middle School in the city’s Mission District, the gathering drew somewhere between 1,000 and 3,000 people from North America and around the world. The exact number will never be known since only the lower number “officially” registered as participants, but thousands more took part in the six-day conference and other events which provided opportunities for learning and discussion, direct action, performance, play and celebration.

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Dear Ann Landers:

Right now I am so mad I could spit tacks.

My husband and I are seniors. We love to watch the soaps. We have come to know the characters so well that they are like members of our own family. Our favorite soaps are “Days of Our Lives” and “General Hospital.”

Recently, at the most critical moment, Peter Jennings cut in with a news bulletin. He reported that the Chinese government was executing students (which we already knew), causing us to miss out on the crisis involving Scorpio, Sean and Frisco in “General Hospital.”

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“Liberty without socialism is privilege and injustice; socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality.”

— Michael Bakunin

When more than a million people- visibly break out of forty years of totalitarianism in a relatively spontaneous manner, their opinions, ideas, and fantasies inevitably vary wildly. However, the statements, interviews, and documents of the Chinese students’ and workers’ movements that have gradually become visible in the months after the June 1989 repression reveal distinct patterns and common attitudes among vast numbers of people. Even if this material doesn’t delineate an explicitly “revolutionary” program, the perspective that emerges still. provides a wonderful breath of fresh air in a country long stagnant with authoritarian ideas and practice. Through this we can see a Chinese democracy movement that contains a molten mixture of many different ideas, many half-baked but all of them subordinate to the exhilarating actions of people refusing to be submissive.

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a review of

Emma Goldman in Exile: From the Russian Revolution to the Spanish Civil War, Alice Wexler, Beacon Press, Boston, 1989, 301 pp.

The nature and purpose of “doing history” are at stake in Alice Wexler’s new book, Emma Goldman in Exile. America’s best-known anarchist endured numerous personal and political crises from her 1919 deportation to Civil War Russia to her subsequent odyssey throughout Europe and Canada, her immersion in the 1930s Spanish revolution, and her-death in 1940. Based on extensive research, Wexler’s book usefully describes this journey. But the book is more than this. Unfortunately so, since the interpretive voice of the author is usually louder than her subject.

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I pull up to the self service gas pumps,

all the clicking numbers, my windows dirty,

stuck. The gallons flowing, the gas arches

into the tank in a gush.

I look at what comes out of the hose—

diving ducks like black drips. Grebes

and cormorants unravel through the hose.

A warm belly

carries the deaths of Valdez.

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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; 2) add 10% for mailing costs—not less than $.90 U.S. or $1.34 foreign (minimum for 4^th class book rate postage); 3) total; 4)write check or money order to: The Fifth Estate; 5) mail to: The Fifth Estate, P.O. Box 02548, Detroit, MI 48202

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It already seems like a long time ago, but this past June three of us from the Fifth Estate staff headed out by train to New Mexico for our first Earth First! (EF!) Round River Rendezvous (RRR). This was the tenth annual RRR, which EF! describes as its yearly “tribal celebration.”

Needless to say, after the past couple of years of argument, discussion and heated exchange between Fifth Estate writers and people in EF! (see FE’s Fall 1987 through Spring 1989), we undertook the journey with excitement and a bit of trepidation. We were anxious to meet more of the faces behind the words, and though we had received warm invitations from several EF! individuals, we also received a few not so warm challenges to attend, and we weren’t sure we’d be welcomed by all.

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Since the arrest last May of four Earth First! (EF!) activists on charges of attempting to sabotage a nuke plant (see Summer 1989 FE), the federal government has widened its campaign against the radical environmental movement.

Throughout the summer and fall, the FBI fanned out across the Western states interviewing numerous people associated with EF!, and in several areas, grand jury subpoenas were issued, suggesting that more indictments and arrests could follow. On October 4, seven people associated with Wild Rockies EF! were called before a grand jury in Missoula, Montana investigating a tree spiking incident.

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Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust by Alon Raab is a thoughtful personal account of the struggle to save an old Portland community from demolition and “development.”

“These words are written with rage, sorrow, and amazement. They are brought forth with a fervent desire for a world without ‘developers,’ priests, landlords. They are written with a yearning for a world where a culture of death is replaced with one of life and love.”

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Both this newspaper in our last issue and Bad Attitude, No. 3 (POB 11589, Detroit Ml 48211) failed to give credit for the poem/ritual, “The Appeal of Anarchy.” It was taken from the compelling pamphlet by John Moore, Anarchy & Ecstasy: Visions of Halcyon Day.

The author states that the text “has been adapted from renderings of ‘The Charge of the Goddess’ by Starhawk and Charles G. Leland...Some maintain that it contains sentiments which have been uninterruptedly passed down the ages from prehistoric times, whilst others aver that it derives wholly from the fertile imagination of Leland, who first published it in 1899.”

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aborigines anticipate apocalypse...agriculture aggrandizes arable areas and allots acreage, assuming acquisition and alienation...arithmetic adds another abstract axis...authority appreciates art—already accepting abstractions’ ascendancy—as authenticating appearances...by banishing bounty, bureaucracy’s blackmail breeds bitterness between brothers behind benign banality; business believes boundless buying brings back bliss...commodity circulation controls current conditions completely, calculating career compulsions can continue consumption, constantly creating cruel contradictions, colonized consciousness, conveniently corrects...dreams distill dormant desires, darkly divining domestication’s demise...disrupting digital discourse dialectically demonstrates dash, dooming domination’s designer discipline...duplicity defeats double-driveling duplication...equations empower everyday economics, essentially encoding estranged enterprise; elegant ecstasy ebbs...“environment” equals earth?...formula for fusing formally fragments freed from function’s foundation: fully further facsimiles’ fulfilment; feature “forbidden” fantasies fully filmed; finally, fabricate fetishes fascinating feelings for fashion...grammar guards God’s grave...hell, having had heaven’s hallucinatory holiday haunting hearts held history’s hostage has hardly helped humanist hacks humble humanity’s heretical haughtiness...images interpose intermediating influences inside interests; insubordination is interested in insinuating illusion into identifying itself...insolence insists its intelligence is inimitably incendiary, illuminating irony’s impotence...just jeopardize jaded judges’ justice... know krime kan konjure komedy kontaining kommunist kontent...lush laughing lust launches life; lavishly littered likenesses, like, lessen life’s lure ...language licenses lucidity logically; licentious lucidity loosens letters’ lock laughingly, luminously liquidating leaden logic...langorous looting lampoons leisure...modestly managing masso(s)chism(s) mutilates multitudes...matchless money makes mastery meaningless: modern mutiny must make meaning menace mediation: mimickry means mirror’s measure matched...nowadays nihilism’s nothing new...our offense? outwitting our overseers’ overly optimistic overthrow of our original obliquity...private property produces parity—parity portends production’s ponderous planet-punishing progress piss-pure puns parody preyfully...quality’s quintessence quickens...relentlessly replicating reality ripens revolts rigorously resisting representations’ recuperations; rewinding reality readies really radical reversals...school separates subjects, subjecting subjectivity so separations seem sane...scholastic scavengers scrutinize signs showing signification scarcely sustains synthetic scarcity...theory that threatens to transform the totality transgresses tedium; tongue-twisters tend to turn topsy-turvy the tyranny that things talking to themselves typifies...the training that teaches these throngs to trade themselves to time trembles...ultimately, understanding urban upsurges’ unconscious urges uncovers undercurrents undermining uncanily utility’s ugly unwitting velocity vitality, VDT’s vacuous veneer veils vast vulgarities: we wage war with words, withering wage work’s wearying world whenever we wield wit which wickedly widens wild wholeness while working wonders...xamining xiled xistence’ xtraordinary xhaustion xposes xpanding xports xtending xchange, xplicitly xpropriating xtreme xperiences’ xquisite xtasy, xalting xpedience xercised xhaustively; xorcising xtremely xact xpressions xhausts xpedience...your yoke yields yet you yawn...zzzzz...labor of Ludd, po box 11492, eugene, or, 97440, usa

On November 24–25, 1989 I attended the Continental Anarchist Newspaper Conference in Chicago. Originally, I was a very enthusiastic supporter of this project and still endorse the concept of a continental anarchist newspaper.

However, after attending this particular conference, I have serious doubts as to whether the newspaper launched in Chicago over Thanksgiving weekend is the sort of publication that should serve as any sort of organ for the North American Anarchist movement.

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As one might expect, paranoia runs high in Earth First! at this moment with much of their boisterous self-confidence muted by the realization of the extent of the government’s attempt to stop their efforts. This is exactly what the intent of the infiltration, arrests and subpoenas are: to rein in a movement that refuses to play by the rules established for “nice” environmental groups. In that regard, it should be seen as an attack on all environmental radicals and defended as such.

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On Sunday, November 12, approximately 300,000 pro-choice demonstrators, participating in a “Mobilization for Women’s Lives,” filled the lawn beside the reflecting pool facing the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC.

At one point during the four hour rally, the folk group, Peter, Paul and Mary sweetly sang choruses from Holly Near’s, “We Are A Gentle, Angry People,” but it was clear that the main sponsor of the event, the National Organization for Women (NOW), wanted the emphasis on “gentle” and not “angry.”

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We dedicate this issue to the memory of the 14 women slaughtered in Montreal December 6 at the hand of a patriarchal maniac. As he lined up his victims and methodically shot them, he expressed a hatred for all women and said he wanted “to kill feminists.”

In the memory of these dead sisters, we pledge, “We’re all feminists here!”

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The Fifth Estate newspaper (ISSN No. 0015–0800) is published quarterly at 4632 Second Ave., Detroit MI 48201 USA. Phone (3131-831-6800. 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.

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At a conference of the Anarchist Black Cross (ABC) (the first in twenty years) held in April 1989 in Bradford, England, member groups decided to activate one of the ABC’s original functions by establishing the Emergency Response Network (ERN) which will mobilize anarchists internationally to respond to immediate crises. A call to action would have demands such as the immediate release of anarchist prisoners, the dropping of charges, the cessation of torture, meeting the demands of hunger strikers or prisoner hostage-takers, etc. The meeting in Bradford decided that the ERN would only be activated in defense of anarchists.

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That breakup wuz a long time ago.

Wich breakup are you talking about? There bin so many and they keep getting more.

I’m talking about the first wun.

O. that wun. Yes. It wuz a long long time ago.

* * *

Wunce the people saw that Each Thing like Each rock or Each tree or Each bird or Each wind or Each fear or Each love wuz Diferent and hid its Name inside itself. If you looked inside it deep enuf or long enuf the Name wood come threw. If you did it with Each and Every thing and fit all the Names all together they wood make wun Name and that wood be the ansir. Wun Hole Thing. It wuz called Re Member.

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The following essay by George Bradford continues the discussion of environmental perspectives begun in these pages in our Fall 1987 edition. Our previous special issue, published at that time, “How Deep Is Deep Ecology? A Challenge to Radical Environmentalism” (also by Bradford), appeared as a major statement coming out of the theoretical work the Fifth Estate has been undertaking since 1979 in examining the character of technology, industrial capitalism and the worsening ecological crisis.

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BI ANY OTHER NAME: BISEXUAL PEOPLE SPEAK OUT edited by Loraine Hutchins and Lani Kaahumanu

Rejected by both Gay and Straight worlds, bisexuals have been a community in exile. With this rich and varied collection, however, bisexual women and men step forward into their own historical spotlight. The writing here can only deepen our discussion about passion and politics.

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a review of

Food for our Grandmothers: Writings by Arab-American and Arab-Canadian Feminists, Edited by Joanna Kadi, South End Press, Boston, 1994, $16.00

There’s sand in the pages of my edition of Food for our Grandmothers: Writings by Arab-American and Arab-Canadian Feminists. This is not a derogatory reference to those named in the title, but rather because I am reviewing the anthology of poetry and essays at Makena Beach, on Maui in Hawaii.

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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.

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The prolific III Publishing group, PO Box 1581, Guala CA 95445, recently released two new books. Saab Lofton’s A.D. is set in 2410 where society is organized according to libertarian principles, but a menace from the past threatens the future. J.G. Eccarius, author of the blasphemous The Last Days of Christ the Vampire, latest book. Resurrection 2027, is a post-apocalyptic thriller set in the year of the title where rebellion is the only way out for children resurrected from the dead. III is also publishing Anti-Christ magazine, formerly The Stake, and wants to exchange ads with other zines.

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a review of

Poetry Like Bread: Poets of the Political Imagination, edited by Martin Espada. Curbstone Press (Willimantic CT. 1994). 282 pages.

In his forward to this anthology of 37 poets, all of whom have published or are soon to publish collections with Curbstone Press, the poet and editor Martin Espada defines the political imagination as a matter of both vision and language which “goes beyond protest to articulate an artistry of dissent.”

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a review of

Vice Versa: Bisexuality and The Eroticism of Everyday Life, Marjorie Garber, Simon and Schuster, 1995, 606 pp., $30.

Bisexual Politics: Theories, Queries and Visions, Edited by Naomi Tucker with Liz Highleyman and Rebecca Kaplan. Haworth Publishers, 1995, 358 pp., $14.95 paper (available from FE Books).

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The confluence of circumstances that creates openings for profound social transformation in America are few. Research reveals a pattern of repressive behavior by power structures in the United States when these rare historical opportunities for change occur. Extreme personalities such as J. Edgar Hoover become convenient scapegoats for the excesses of American political policing. In fact, the “reaction” of an organization like the FBI is more of an institutional knee-jerk dutifully carried out by a structure’s current billet-holders, combined with the more-or-less significant influences of historical personages.

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On Gogol Boulevard is produced for the Fifth Estate by New York City/Neither East Nor West, which links alternative oppositions in the East and West, and prints news and documents unavailable in the corporate or left media. OGB sometimes involves Third and Fourth World activists in these efforts.

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Every day for a week I peruse the crumpled quarter-page announcement I’ve been carrying around in my wallet. “MUDPEOPLE: 10^th Anniversary...We supply mud. Wear as little as possible. Bring drinks, food, towels, friends, wildness. Finally, the day is here.

Mudpeople confront the rich, Detroit Athletic Club, 1991 (Photo: Mike)

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In the old days, when the state hung somebody and the braided rope broke or the gallows came crashing to the ground it was taken by God-fearing men as a sign that a mistake had been made and the condemned soul was no longer theirs to take; the prisoner was reprieved.

Today’s wisdom, however, will abide no such mythology. Steeped in the profane religion of the New World Order, whose merchants of death trade haughtily in the machinery of holocausts, the only spirits that count are those that, indeed, count. Justice resides in the maintenance of profits, in preventing even for a moment the removal of pump from soil, head from noose.

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Last summer at Goddard College, social ecology luminary Murray Bookchin denounced the FE as “toilet literature flooding into the ecology movement and polluting it,” and a “manifestation of a middle class, petit bourgeois yuppie perspective.

AK Press recently published Bookchin’s diatribe, Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm, which excoriates this paper and others for—among other crimes—being both lumpen rebels and privileged yuppies. and even (horror of horrors), accomplices of a “Neo-Heideggerian reaction.”

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The December North Cass Community Union Newsletter gave some startling statistics about the 48201 ZIP Code the FE office is in.

Its population is a scant 13,010 and falling.

The median income is $10,001, the lowest of the 192 metro ZIP Codes. and the racial composition is 69 percent black.

“Nationalism offers them something concrete, something that has been tried and tested and is known to work.”

—Fredy Perlman, The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism

On the corner of my block lies an empty lot. One day fifty trees, mainly conifers, each set into a metal container, appeared in the space.

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Not if you want to succeed in business today. In the modern international marketplace, competition is tough. If the corporations which have brought us the standard of living we have recently come to enjoy are to continue doing so against an increasing foreign challenge, the killing field must be made level. The only way to do that is to do business with the Peoples’ Republic of China.

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Welcome to our 30^th anniversary issue—although you are reading this as we are already into our 31^st year. 1965 seems like ancient history or just a heartbeat away, depending on your current age. The cover logo on page one over our chronicle comes from our 1968–71 period.

As always we would like to express our gratitude to each reader, each Sustainer, each contributor. On the occasion of this anniversary, we feel this sense of gratitude even more deeply. Without your support, none of this would happen. We appreciate the patience with which all of you tolerate our sporadic publishing schedule although we have given up promising to appear more frequently.

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“The Fifth Estate supports the cause of revolution everywhere.”

—FBI Report

In my estimation, the above twelve-word summary by the nation’s secret police serves adequately as an abbreviated history of this paper on the occasion of its 30^th anniversary.

However, it will definitely not satisfy my friends and comrades on the FE staff who urged me on our 20^th and 25^th anniversaries to write a comprehensive account of the newspaper’s long existence as a radical publication.

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“Hey! What are you guys doing here? You hate unions!”

—A strike supporter

The labor militant who aimed this question at us was surprised, almost shocked, to see a group whom she considers anarchists critical of unions, shoulder-to-shoulder with striking Teamsters and newspaper reporters, squaring off against the cops at a suburban Detroit printing plant late one night last summer.

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The Fifth Estate is a cooperative, nonprofit project, publishing since 1965. The people who produce it are a group of friends who do so neither to secure wages nor as an investment in the newspaper industry, but to encourage resistance and rebellion to this society.

The Fifth Estate (ISSN No. 0015–0800) is published quarterly at 4632 Second Ave., Detroit, Michigan 48201 USA; Phone (313) 831–6800. Our office hours vary, so please call before visiting. Subscriptions are $6.00 for four issues; $8.00 foreign including Canada. Second Class postage paid at Detroit, Michigan. No copyright. No paid advertisements.

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When Mumia Abu-Jamal’s date with Pennsylvania’s executioner was indefinitely postponed Aug. 7, 1995, ten days before scheduled, it came as a surprise to the ex-Black Panther’s defense team. Judge Albert Sabo, who displayed gross prejudice at both the original trial and the current hearing, had never before granted a stay in the 32 death sentences he has handed out to Philadelphia murder defendants.

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We want to save the world, and we want to save ourselves. It’s the same thing. The problems confronting us are enormous and at every level: personal, social, planetary. I will spare you a list. My aim is to suggest they are all symptoms of one problem, and to propose a solution.

The problem: to find a way to live on earth which promotes our health and happiness, is conducive to the full development of our innate potential and at the same time democratic; that is, available to all—which does not use more than our share, and is harmonious with the biosphere’s evident drive toward increasing diversity, complexity and stability.

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The British libel proceeding brought by McDonald’s against two activists with Greenpeace London over their fact sheet, “What’s Wrong With McDonald’s,” continued into the new year with no end in sight. The $26 billion a year junk food giant objects to the leaflet’s characterization of them as abusing animals, destroying the rain forest, conning kids, creating mountains of waste, and being anti-labor.

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At the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York on September 6, 1901 Leon Czolgosz became America’s third presidential assassin when he shot William McKinley with a.32-caliber revolver hidden in his handkerchief-wrapped hand. The president died eight days later. Apprehended at the scene, Czolgosz (pronounced chol-gosh) was tried, found guilty and executed on October 29, less than two months later.

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The Martyrs’ Farewell
That we lost and have to die, does not diminish our appreciation and gratitude for your great solidarity with us and our families. Friends and Comrades, now that the tragedy of this trial is at an end, be all as of one heart. Only two of us will die. Our ideal, you our comrades, will live by millions. We have won. We are not vanquished. Just treasure our suffering, our sorrow, our mistakes, our defeats, our passion for future battles and for the great emancipation.
Be all as of one heart in this blackest hour of our tragedy. And we have heart. Salute for us all the Friends and Comrades on the earth.
We embrace you all and bid you our extreme good-bye with our hearts filled with love and affection.
Now and ever, long life to you all, long life to liberty.
Yours for life and death.
--Nicola Sacco, Bartolomeo Vanzetti (Death House, August 21, 1927)

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With “These faggots kill fascists” emblazoned on their banner, an army of international volunteers formed the first LGBT fighting unit to “smash the ISIS caliphate. This July photo shows them raising the rainbow flag in Raqqa, Syria. According to an online statement, The Queer Insurrection and Liberation Army, or TQILA, exists to “smash the gender binary...and advance the sexual revolution.”

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