Most Recent Additions

“Paroli Esperanton estis iam esenca parto de anarkiismo.”

(There was a time when speaking Esperanto was an essential part of being an anarchist.)

When 97-year-old, Barcelona-born Eduardo Vivancos walks down the streets of Toronto where he has lived as an exile since 1954, he never comes across another Esperanto speaker.

...

Reprinted from Learning Good Consent: On Healthy Relationships and Survivor Support Edited by Cindy Crabb. AK Press, akpress.org 2016

FE Note: With people today left adrift to face conflicting social cues coming from every direction, this collection looks directly at the complications which arise from sex, consent, abuse, and survivor support. This, and the other essays in Learning Good Consent, is a guide to preventing sexual violence, helping survivors heal, and creating lives which correspond to our ideals. This essay has been shortened by the Fifth Estate editors.

...

Last spring, I became a prisoner in a rural California county jail for 90 days having been sentenced for a non-political offense.

I did some research before surrendering to the authorities, so in many ways I knew what to expect when I arrived. Nothing, however, can really prepare you for the full range of indignity and repression you experience.

...

Letters of Thanks from Gen. Westmoreland to “Breakthrough”

22 November 1965

Mr. Donald J. Lobsinger, Chairman

Breakthrough P.O. Box 3061

Detroit, Michigan 48231

Dear Mr. Lobsinger:

Your letter and the accompanying signatures of over 6,000 citizens of the Detroit area indicating support for the efforts of our armed forces in Vietnam are reassuring and deeply appreciated.

...

“Grooving,” which we’ve been doing since birth, has recently taken on some formal definition as the Kulchur Kritiks attempt to sympathetically dig the spirit of the multimedia art forms. Grooving, they say means to yield yourself to the flow of activity around you. Grooving requires a lot of personal freedom, and a lot of self assurance. It is the opposite of uptight perception, the opposite of categorizing experience, the opposite of traditional logical “understanding”. Grooving is the ability to receive several clashing stimuli simultaneously, a form of perception dictated by the new urban environments.

...

Editor’s Note: On Thursday, June 6, the House gave final approval and sent to the President for his signature or veto, the Omnibus Crime Bill of 1968, the effects of which may be on us for years.

Liberation News Service — Now a person can sit on his chair in his home and say, “I sure am enjoying this grass!” and be sent to federal prison for five years based on that statement—when and if the President signs the 109-page Omnibus Crime Bill. A local cop might have bugged the pot smoker’s house, on the tip of a member of a new style police private vigilante group which the new bill also provides for and would finance.

...

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.

This newspaper will not accept ads that slander other persons (institutions are OK). Also, ads that have as their purpose meeting others or receiving phone calls must be accompanied by the name and address of the person placing the ad. This will not be put in the ad, but will allow us to check if we doubt The authenticity of it.

...

Two Detroit policemen, Sergeant Fred T. Wright and Lieutenant Teddy Sikora were suspended from duty over the weekend of June 1 for “conduct unbecoming a police officer,” and “bad judgment” in connection with the May 13 clash at Cobo Hall between Detroit fuzz and a group of Poor People’s Campaign marchers (FIFTH ESTATE, June 4–18). The suspensions will remain in effect until a police trial board decides what disciplinary action, if any, will be brought against the pair.

...

The author of the following helpful hints is an attorney employed by the federal government of the United States of America in Washington, D.C. Obviously, he prefers to remain underground in our interest and his own. —eds

One. Take photographs of undercover narks„ as it destroys their psychological stability. These pictures may then be either published in the underground press (preferably nationally, as narks in federal service get transferred). Additionally or alternatively, posters could be made up in “Wanted” style. These could be simply satirical: (“Wanted by the Free Community”) or made up as federal wanted posters, but if the latter, don’t get caught with them, since that is a violation of some federal statutes as well as libel laws.

...

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

QUESTION: Last weekend my boyfriend and I were picking mushrooms in the woods and found some funny yellow ones with long stems. Could these have been hallucinigenic mushrooms?

ANSWER: Before you go tripping off in the woods again, you should realize that only experts should try to distinguish between edible mushrooms and poisonous toadstools. Toadstools (Amanita muscaria, A. verna, A. Phalloides, A. Brunnescens) may give a kind of trip but collapse and even death may follow. Amanita muscaria has a sudden (1 to 2 hours) onset of action and causes confusion, excitement, thirst, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, wheezing, salivation, slow pulse, tremors, weakness, collapse and perhaps death. Amanita phalloides, brunnescens and verna have a delayed onset of action (12 to 24 hours) and cause confusion, depression, headache, convulsions, coma, nausea, vomiting, bloody vomitus and stools, jaundice, reduced flow of urine and fluid in the lungs.

...

There is a rumor going around, a rumor of great tremors. Last week Chief Reddin called in the National Guard, set up an emergency morgue in the Pan Pacific, and declared L.A. a disaster area. You may already have heard: earthquakes are expected this summer, perhaps even this month.

California is going to break away from the continent and drop off into the Pacific Ocean.

...

I am more than happy to state my opinion of the Army and the war in Viet Nam. I’ve been in the service nearly a year now and I have had several unpleasant experiences with the foolish and incompetent leaders of this organization.

I have been very fortunate and I have not had to kill to save my life, but many of my friends here have not been so fortunate. Three weeks ago we had 10 men killed and approximately 40 others who were wounded in an ambush just North of this city.

...

EDITORS

Harvey Ovshinsky

Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Cathy West

CIRCULATION

Tommye Wiese

Pat Klees

DISTRIBUTION

Eric Watkins

ADVERTISING

Gunnar Lewis

ART DIRECTOR

Ed Bania

CALENDAR

Naomi

STAFF

Cindy Lee

Marlene Tyre

Michael Tyre

Marilyn Werbe

The FIFTH ESTATE is published on the 1^st and 16^th of each month by the FIFTH ESTATE NEWSPAPER, Inc., 1007.W. Warren, Detroit, Michigan 48201. Subscription rate by third class mail is $3 for one year; $5 for two years. Canadian is $3.50 per year, all other foreign countries are $5 per year. Phone 831–6800.

...

Of the many comments made following the shooting of Sen. Kennedy, perhaps the most incisive was given by Sen. McCarthy:

“It is not enough in my judgment to say that this was the act of one deranged man, if that is the case. The nation, I think, bears too great a burden of guilt, really, for the kind of neglect which has allowed the disposition to grow here in one’s own land, in part a reflection of violence which we have visited upon the rest of the world, or at least one part of the world.” Sen. McCarthy was talking about the violence that America has been and is still inflicting in Vietnam.

...

The May 28^th performance of “Lysistrata and the War” at Community Arts Auditorium was permanently canceled, due in part to the war which the opera opposes: one of the leading male singers was drafted.

The people in charge of the production postponed the performance until June 14, to be held, with a new singer, in a room with much smaller seating capacity.

...

Millbrook, that renowned dropout shrine in upstate New York, is closed and padlocked, its tribe scattered, its guru Tim Leary now living in Berkeley. And the end of an era was marked last month with a “farewell” party for Uncle Tim at NY’s Village Gate: the Group Image played, Paul Krassner and Allen Ginsberg did their respective things, and the Gate’s management tossed out a tablefull of people for passing a joint around...

...

A strange polarization (or maybe it’s a natural one) seems to be happening with rock and roll fans right now, with white teenage audiences turning toward either total freek scenes or greasy reactionary hostility when confronted with the revolutionary guerrilla theatre tactics of the MC5. Three incidents in the last three weeks illustrate the current scene:

...

Capitol Records thought so highly of this West Coast group that they saw fit to shell out a reputed $50,000 in advance to record them. On record Steve Miller’s band is deceivingly extraordinary. Listening to this L.P. for the first time was painfully boring. They are not obviously exciting the first time around. The album is so smooth and uncluttered it may give the illusion of childish simplicity.

...

To the delight of the Black populace of Detroit, Stokely Carmichael, on a mission to raise funds for the incarcerated Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, the convicted H. Rap Brown and other up-tight black freedom fighters, came to town June 8 and with all the ardor and volubility of that other conqueror, he came, he saw and really rapped.

...

I have yet to read a really worthwhile movie review of “The Stranger,” and I’m not sure I can remedy the situation.

Like most film critics, I am tempted to write a long opinionated description of how well Albert Camus’s novel was transferred to the screen. I am even tempted to display my erudition, as many reviewers have done, by launching into a profound discussion of Existentialism.

...

SAN FRANCISCO, June 12 — Eldridge Cleaver, the Black Panther leader, was released from the California medical facility prison at Vacaville this afternoon on a court order that criticized the cancellation of his parole.

He had been held since April 7 as a parole violator. But Solano County Superior Court Judge Raymond J. Sherwin ordered his release on a $25 nominal bail. Judge Sherwin was critical of the California Adult Authority for ordering the parole revoked.

...

Liberation News Service, Washington, D.C.—Lyndon Johnson killed Robert Kennedy sure as you and I are alive. (Sure?) Robert Kennedy killed Lyndon Johnson sure as that man in the big white house is dead. (Sure?)

In America, life is power; power is expensive and physical life is cheap. The survival-of-the-fittest thing continues unabated over millions of years here. It is our national religion.

...

The color of the Statue of Liberty

Grows ever more deathly pale

As, loving freedom with bullets

You shoot at yourself, America.

You can kill yourself this way!

It is dangerous to go out

Into this hellish world,

But it is still more dangerous

To hide in the bushes

There is a smell on earth of a universal

...

Radical psychologists Wilhelm Reich and Eric Fromm answered the question of why people submit willingly to authority

While most of us were watching the 2016 presidential election with disgust, someone I’m very close to, looked at me with a fiendish grin and announced, “I’m voting for Donald Trump.”

This was perplexing. How could they be captivated by a racist, xenophobic, homophobic narcissist? Having starkly contrasting reactions towards the object of their affinity, I realized a lot of futile and draining arguments were likely to follow. Rifts, drama, and cut-offs between friends and family have become ubiquitous in American society over the past year, with many left bewildered by the resurgent appeal of authoritarianism.

...

Everyday sexual predation on women by men of power and prestige in the entertainment world, politics, business, and the university has been an open secret that has suddenly gained massive public attention. Women’s words have been listened to and prominent men have experienced almost immediate banishment from their fields after exposure of their abusive actions.

...

It’s a cold Friday night in November in Portland, Maine. Comrades from around the state have gathered at the Aphodian Theater to support our imprisoned friend, Herman Bell. The benefit features bands and speakers, including former political prisoner Ray Luc Lavasseur.

It is organized by our group of friends and family, Maine Anti-Racist Action, in order to raise funds to help pay for Herman’s family visits. We give out organic squash, anarchist papers including the Fifth Estate, and prisoner information.

...

The Detroit Police has begun a reign of terror in the Warren-Forest area near Wayne University.

Almost all of it has been aimed at the local freaks. “It’s getting to be too much,” said Skip Cooper, who lives in the Castle on John Lodge. “All the cops do is hassle with anyone with long hair.”

Other people in the area have reported a marked increase in illegal searches and entries by the cops. Mostly, the cops involved are from the Tactical Mobile Units and the “Big Four.” The latter is the precinct cruiser that travels in a Dodge sedan with three plainclothes (and they are) patrolmen and one uniformed driver.

...

A group of friends and myself recently decided to take on the problem of gouging by inner city food merchants. Calling ourselves ICHWAG, or Inner City Honky Women Against Gouging, five of us set out to prove the price differences between inner city and suburban stores. Wouldn’t you just know, soon as we got organized and set the next date for our coffee klatch business meeting, I find out that it is already being done: At a slightly more professional level, too.

...

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 5

RASHOMON, Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece at the Studio 1 Theater, Livemois at Davison at 7:30 & 9:30 pm. Adm. $2.

YOGA CLASSES at the International Institute at 7:30 pm. Call 675–1038 for information.

THURSDAY, JUNE 6

REPUBLICAN GALA with such stars as ABBE LANE and the SERENDIPITY SINGERS at Cobo Hall at 8 pm.

...

Is it wrong to hope? Is it wrong to have a dream and to keep searching for the realization of that dream? I’ve been told that anything worth obtaining is invariably very difficult to obtain. To some people this means working overtime to get the resources for a long awaited vacation; to others it is the sacrifice of social position in return for personal integrity; and to still others (and these are few, unfortunately) it is the complete denial of oneself in order that someone else’s dreams be fulfilled. Of course, there are very few of us who are willing to go beyond the first mentioned sacrifice.

...

“Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) foment disruption on campuses around the country, and contribute nothing to Wayne State University.”

The pontificating prose belongs to J.J. Scott, WTAK (1090-AM) announcer. His apparent vendetta has one main objective: to rid Wayne’s campus of SDS by September.

...

“Your calendar June, 1968—The body has been there a long time...he has been dead a long time...those of you who want to understand, will understand. —Tom Sincavitch

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.

This newspaper will not accept ads that slander other persons (institutions are OK). Also, ads that have as their purpose meeting others or receiving phone calls must be accompanied by ‘the name and address of the person _placing the ad. This will not be put in the ad, but will allow us to check if we doubt the authenticity of it.

...

Seventy-five persons picketed the Federal Building in downtown Detroit May 20 to protest the trial in Boston of Dr. Benjamin Spock and four others for conspiracy to violate the draft laws. The demonstration was sponsored by Detroit Area Resist.

A delegation from the group made up of the Rev. Robert Morrison, Fr. Carter Partee, Catherine Zimmerman, Ronald Halstead, and Mary Ravitz entered the building on Fort St. and visited Federal District Attorney Lawrence Gubow.

...

Congress is still striving to preserve the American Way. The inventiveness of the House un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) has gone beyond the dangerous into the realm of ridiculous and petty harassment. The McCarran act of 1950, provided the President with powers to proclaim a state of Internal Security Emergency and have persons whom it felt would conspire with others to engage in sabotage put into places of detention.

...

Are we in the midst of a revolution now? Or, are we on the verge of one? Can the revolution be comparatively bloodless, basically non-violent?

These are interesting questions we ask ourselves as summer approaches and its oppressive heat threatens to ignite this nation in the greatest internal turmoil since the Civil War.

...

“Planet of the Apes” may turn out to be the “Bonnie and Clyde” of 1968.

Many film critics, after giving the picture an unfavorable review, are beginning to have second thoughts about it.

Richard Schickel, of Life magazine, said in a recent retraction: “I should have trusted my instincts, stood up and proclaimed my affectionate regard for the thing right off.”

...

Detroit’s racist cops apparently unsatisfied at being forced to live in the city they occupy militarily blew their cool at a Detroit Common Council meeting May 17.

Robert Tindal, executive secretary of the Detroit NAACP was speaking strongly against relaxation of the rule requiring officers to live within the city. Several hundred white cops began yelling “racist” and “bigot” at Tindal and then stormed out of the hearing.

...

This is my first column for the Fifth Estate in a long time and I’ll probably be a little rusty, so please bear with me, OK? and I’ll try to do something useful here.

I stopped writing for the Fifth Estate in January mainly for two reasons: I was tired of hassling the editors to get my columns printed intact, and I was even more tired of coming on like some kind of public personality and/or race-track tout in this space, and that was the context that’d been developed over a two-year period of writing a column almost every issue. I’d like to start over again now, if that’s possible, and do something different if I can get away with it.

...

I.

“Of the heavy losses we have sustain e d”, author-sentimentalist Charles Beaumont once said, “none can be regarded with more melancholy than the loss of the great movie theatres.” A generation ago they proliferated, today they exist like brontosaurus, slipping into the churning swamp of American history.

...

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

QUESTION: I recently, at the advice of my friends, drank a bottle of Romilar C.F. cough syrup. This was supposed to get me stoned. It did just that. After about 20 minutes my arms and legs got limp. I could hardly think and slurred when I talked. I laid down and found myself hallucinating.

...

It’s no secret that police departments around the country are arming themselves to the hilt in anticipation. They intend to get ready for anything and everything.

A couple of national magazines have even run features on all the new weapons now available.

One of the newest of these is mace, an extremely dangerous combination of chemicals which comes in pocket sized aerosol cans. A weapon specially designed for crowd control.

...

Editors’ Note: We neglected last issue to welcome John Wilcock back to the pages of this newspaper. John was one of the founders of the Village Voice and the East Village Other. He publishes his own paper, Other Scenes which is a 20 times a year newspaper produced from wherever the editor happens to be. This could be Greece, Japan, England or anywhere else in the world. Subscriptions are $5 and should be sent to OS, Box 8, Village Post Office, N.Y., N.Y. 10014.

...

New York, May 22, (LNS-NY) Round two of what has now turned into a naked fight for power between the striking students of Columbia and the Administration’s proxy, the New York Police, turned to European tactics in the hours before dawn May 22.

The night before, after a confrontation forced by the second student occupation of Hamilton Hall in four weeks, the University upped the ante to immediate suspension for anyone caught outside the dormitories. The students replied with bricks and flaming barricades.

...

The Detroit office of the Student Nonviolent Co-ordinating Committee (SNCC) was bombed on May 17. The office is located at 12322 Dexter.

Two SNCC members, Kinley Summers and Roy Swan were slightly injured by the blast and the flying glass. The police said they found the remains of what appeared to be a home-made bomb.

...

This band’s blues roots were first formed years ago during the British blues invasion started by The Rolling Stones. During this embryonic stage, many teenagers had suspicions that the Stones were copying...yes, copying, but from whom?

Some started research, combing through old Negro blues LP’s until they happened on a song title they recognized, and discovered that the Stones were drawing from many blues sources.

...

FT. ORD, Calif., May 5 (LNS-SCN)—At Fort Ord today, the U.S. Army launched into the famous flexible-response strategy that has lost it a war in Vietnam.

Ten days ago, soldiers and officers on the base began promoting a love-in. They posted mimeographed fliers showing a hand sign of the V, with the simple caption, “5 May, First Brigade Parade Field.” That was all. The word spread through the ranks, and by the middle of this past week the Army had reacted with all the cool of a spastic ogre harassed by ants underfoot. Trying to stamp out the troublemakers, the ogre stepped on a lot of innocent ones, amply proving the organizers’ point that the ogre is no friend at all to the common GI.

...

The King described the Poor People’s Campaign as being the last, great nonviolent movement. If tactical nonviolence met with failure in this movement, he felt, then nonviolence as a means to ends” was done for.

The Detroit Police Department seemingly tried their best, for reasons known only to them, to make nonviolence appear a rather poor tactic on Monday, May 13, when more than 6,000 persons marched to Detroit’s Cobo Hall in support of the Poor People’s Campaign The King inspired.

...

EDITORS

Harvey Ovshinsky

Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Cathy West

CIRCULATION

Tommye Wiese

Pat Klees

DISTRIBUTION

Eric Watkins

ADVERTISING

Gunnar Lewis

ART DIRECTOR

Ed Bania

CALENDAR

Naomi

STAFF

Cindy Lee

Marlene Tyre

Michael Tyre

Marilyn Werbe

The FIFTH ESTATE is published on the 1^st and 16^th of each month by the FIFTH ESTATE NEWSPAPER, Inc., 1007 W. Warren, Detroit, Michigan 48201. Subscription rate by third class mail is $3 for one year; $5 for two years. Canadian is $3.50 per year, all other foreign countries are $5 per year. Phone 831–6800.

...

Frank Zappa and The Mothers Of Invention, New York City, November, 1970

With his Groucho eyes, Punch nose and Howdy Doody body, Frank Zappa is a replete image for his particular brand of satire. The medium for his message is the presentation of The Mothers of Invention, who recently appeared at the Grande Ballroom.

...