Most Recent Additions

ALGIERS, Algeria (LNS)—Eldridge Cleaver, Black Panther Party Minister of Information, has had his request for a U.S. passport denied.

Conrad Drascher, a U.S. diplomat acting for the State Department, denied Cleaver a passport, offering instead papers good for a one-way passage to the States plus plane fare with immediate arrest at port of entry guaranteed.

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“THERE IS NO LAW IN AMERIKA TODAY—only the racist power structure and its victims. The revolutionary youth of this weirdo country are an oppressed people—the victims of a calculated cultural repression movement instigated and carried out by the Government and certain monied interests who are committed to maintaining a decadent status quo. They will kill us if they can; they will incarcerate their own children and have them beaten if they can get away with it. They would jail us all if they could—all in the name of freedom, democracy and the unspeakable obscenity they call the Amerikan Way!”

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Fifth Estate

“To Serve the People”

FIFTH ESTATE #96, January 8–21, 1970, Vol. 4 No. 18, page 2

EDITORIAL GROUP

Alan Gotkin

Peter Werbe

Cathy West

MANAGING EDITOR

Bill Rowe

DISTRIBUTION

Keep On Truckin’ Co-op

ADVERTISING

Steve Dunn

STAFF

Jane Capellaro

David Gaynes

Jim Kennedy

Rick London

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TO SERVE THE PEOPLE. Brothers and sisters all over pigamerika are waging war, making revolution. To so serve the people, the STP coalition has been formed.

As brother Fred Hampton said: “...theory’s cool, but theory without practice ain’t shit. You got to have both of them—the two go together.” He was talking the truth.

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Wayne State University is about to be confronted by an angry Warren Forest community.

The University, which has been in the process of destroying the community surrounding it for the last five years, is trying to keep community people from using its gym facilities at Matthaei Building.

The gym complex, on Warren across from the Fifth Estate office, was built on land that previously housed 4,000 local residents. It now includes large areas for indoor and outdoor recreation that is denied to the very people that were removed to allow it to be built.

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She was known as either Maria or Marusya Nikiforova, a fearless and feared, bad-ass Ukrainian anarchist warrior who led her own army during the Russian Civil War and peasant rebellions in the early 20^th century. But few people have heard about her, either in Ukraine or elsewhere.

A contemporary of another famous Ukrainian anarchist, Nestor Makhno, Nikiforova (1885–1919), was at one point better known in parts of Ukraine than him and also considered more important. But because she was a woman, she is mostly ignored in histories of the period, including anarchist ones. There are also few documentary sources about her life since she spent most of it underground and only surfaced in the public eye as part of the Makhnovist movement for two remarkable years from 1917 to 1919.

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Despite the appeal of nationalism among today’s Ukrainians, the legacy of anarchism in that tormented region has not been forgotten. In fact, it is resurgent, though not always in ways that anarchists in more comfortable lands might like.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s claim that Ukraine is historically part of Russia is almost accurate. However, Russia is the child of Ukraine. The ancient state of Kievan Rus grew up around Kyiv, the pivot of a Baltic-to-Constantinople trade route.

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a review of

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Milkweed Editions, 2020 (original: 2013)

Don’t mistake the long lifespan on bestseller lists of Braiding Sweetgrass as something superficial. Certainly, Kimmerer’s excellent prose style attracts a broad range of readers. Yet the complexity of her ideas surely challenges those for whom nature equates to the landscape videos they capture on their smartphones.

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As a result of a pre-Christmas anti-war march the brass at Selfridge Air Force Base are trying to bring down a cloak of repression on GI activists.

The Detroit Coalition to End the War Now sponsored a candle light march on the evening of Dec. 23 in support of anti-war GIs and for an end to the war. Approximately 1,200 persons joined the parade in a driving snow storm that soon left almost all the participants with extinguished candles.

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American Civil Liberties Union 961–4662

Ad Hoc Citizens Committee (Police Brutality Complaints) 872–2828

Creem Magazine 831–0816

Draft Resistance (info on counseling) 874–4334

Detroit Anti-war Coalition 873–4322

Fifth Estate Office 831–6800

Fire Department 962–0400

Grape Boycott Office 825–4811

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Unlimited rewards offered for the elimination of Republicans, Democrats and other politicians.

Known to be engaged in conspiracy to further spread diseased and death-oriented politics.

Aim of this conspiracy: Complete domination of our lives and destruction of all human freedom.

Recent crimes include promotion of global poverty, genocidal war plans, moronic christian morality, debasing of all human life, and rape of the planet.

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What with all the hoopla going on around the Republican Convention—free parties, banners and balloons every where, a city-wide clean-up and the media trying to make us forget the depression—it’s easy to ignore the mammoth police state apparatus the politicians have also brought to town.

Seizing an opportunity to cash in on the convention, the cops have used the “security” needs of the political parlay to extend even further their technology and ever growing presence. Detroit, State and Wayne County police have secured over $3.6 million in federal grants from the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) which will provide funds for the convention, but much of the “special” projects will remain as a permanent part of the police machine.

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REPUBLICANS! We mean it: pack your bags and leave Detroit! Take your vile political party, your cadaverous candidate, your stinking love for the state, your vicious racism, your blatant sexism, your hatred for the poor, your insane war plans, your nauseating patriotism, your putrid Christianity, your antiquated sexual morality, your contempt for the rest of the world, your millionaire officials, your middle-class sensibilities and your pathetic lack of vision and get out of our city!

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“What really has me scared is I remember, I was ten years old during the last depression. There had never been much to worry about before. One time I asked my mother what there was for dinner. She told me, “Nothing.”

“I didn’t believe her—there was always something. Not this time though. There was really nothing at all...

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a review of

The Impossible Community: Realizing Communitarian Anarchism, Second Edition by John P. Clark. PM Press, 2022

Hurricane Katrina, the disaster that hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in 2005, was “the most devastating experience I have lived through, but also the most uplifting and inspiring,” writes NOLA native John P. Clark, whose family goes back generations in the Crescent City.

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a review of

Welcome Home by Clarrie and Blanche Pope. Minor Compositions 2022

When I picked up Clarrie and Blanch Pope’s Welcome Home and saw the tower block on its cover, it shook out of me a memory of watching the BBC documentary series The Tower: A Tale of Two Cities about the privatization of the Aragon Tower at the Pepys Estate (housing estate is the British euphemism for public housing, or projects for Americans unfamiliar).

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In order to convey some indication of the unique technical challenge represented by “Fantastic Voyage,” including the never-before-encountered photographic problems which it posed, it becomes necessary to present a brief synopsis of the extremely off-beat story:

Grant, a special American agent, delivers Czech scientist Jan Benes to an airport in the USA after helping him escape from behind the Iron Curtain. The entire Secret Service is involved in getting Benes safely from airport to city. But still the enemy manages to make one last desperate attempt to destroy Benes and the precious secret he carries in his brain. Benes suffers a severe head injury. A normal brain operation is impossible.

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An open letter can be read by anyone. You are welcome to read it or not, but let me explain what this letter is about and to whom it is addressed. It is a letter about Vietnam and Johnson and Death.

If you support the war in Vietnam because you want the National Liberation Front to win, this letter is not addressed to you. (I admire and respect the courage of the N.L.F. but I think I respect the Buddhists there more, struggling without guns, and in their naivete hoping to touch the mechanical heart of McNamara through self-immolation. They have died without killing—the greatest courage—and if anyone were to have my loyalty it would be the Buddhists.)

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Leftovers from the Right-wing Film Phantasmagoria [see FE #14, September 15, 1966] came in the form of letters to and from Fulton Lewis, III. Peter Werbe, News Editor of the Fifth Estate and Executive Board Member of the DCEWV, wrote to Mr. Lewis thanking him for his cooperation in helping to raise funds for this paper and the Vietnam Committee. Being the producer of the right-wing films and a key figure in exposing ‘communists’ and tennis-shoe wearers, Lewis sent a quick reply to Werbe. Both documents are reprinted below.

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In the last issue of the Fifth Estate [FE #14, September 15, 1966] I said that film was dead in Detroit. I wrote that shortly after arriving in San Francisco, and have since managed to see what film makers here are doing to promote films and film making in the Bay area.

The film makers in this area have banded together and are forming the Canyon Cinema Co-op, patterned after the Filmmakers Co-op in New York, the arrangement being that anyone who has a film that they would like to see distributed arranges to have it listed in the co-op’s catalogue, and every time the film is rented the film-maker receives 75% of the rental fee and the co-op gets 25% to help cover operating expenses.

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Franz J.T. Lee, South African liberation leader, will be the featured speaker on Friday, Oct. 14, 8:00 P.M., at the Hartford Avenue Baptist Church, 6300 Hartford. Mr. Lee will speak on the Freedom Struggle in South Africa and discuss the assassination of Henry Verwoerd. There is a donation of $1; 75 cents for students and the unemployed. The talk is being sponsored by the Alexander Defense Committee.

Just finished reading a friend’s copy of THE FIFTH ESTATE.

Enjoyed very much Mr. Ovshinsky’s article about Dr. Hoffer and LSD [FE #13, August 30, 1966]. It was refreshing to read an article that dealt with experimental facts and a word of expert caution, rather than a shocking expose attempting to scare the pants off you!

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A few days before recording artist Richard Farina died in a motorcycle accident last May, Random House released his first novel, “Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me.” The book, a story of the escapades of one Gnossos Pappadopoulis, shows Farina almost as skilled at prose as he was at folk singing and composing.

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“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”

—Ursula K. Le Guin

ChatGPT has lit up the West in the last three months evincing delight among enthusiasts of Artificial Intelligence (AI), but great fear and loathing among critics who see its entry into a world already diminished by machines as a further ratcheting downward of what it means to be human.

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The photo above of a traffic jam on a Brazilian highway could be a metaphor for life today. A scarred landscape littered with trucks filled with the everyday stuff of commerce going nowhere.

The trucks carrying what are now the necessities of modern society are stalled at a local level but reflect the entire global economy and culture. As the planetary integrated system becomes increasingly complex, so does its capacity for collapse.

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The American Civil Liberties Union asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case of a Richmond Professional Institute student who was kept out of the college for his senior year because he sported a beard and long hair.

The Virginia liberal arts college refused to allow Norman Thomas Marshall to register in September, 1965. In a brief filed with the high court on behalf of Marshall, a 26 year old scholarship student and past editor of the college’s literary magazine, the civil liberties group contended that the school’s “arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable” action refusing him registration on account of his groom violated the constitutional rights to free expression, due process of law, privacy and protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

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The court-martials for the three GIs who have refused to go to Vietnam began on September 6. All three were convicted—Pvt. David Samas and Pfc. James Johnson to five years at hard labor, forfeiture of pay and dishonorable discharges, and Pvt. Dennis Mora to three years at hard labor—and appeals are now being prepared by lawyer Stanley Faulkner. Each of the three were tried by a different trial panel of 10 officers, all of whom reached verdicts in less than a half hour.

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Well, attentive readers, I must say there is nothing like an occasional attack to sharpen up one’s reflexes... Having had several lately, I shall at this point contribute several counter-attacks...

To our friendly neighbor “Virile American”...(see letters, last issue) I would not ordinarily dignify such arch-type fascist ravings with a response, however I feel that this letter is representative of the thinking of a good many people, so therefore: Dear V.A.: Thank OM that there is no F.C.C. type of agency monitoring the papers... In the popular Press, the effect is much the same when you consider the fact that the AP and UPI must pass along to the public the obvious propaganda as delivered to them by the government news agencies, or risk losing their sources...There is, however, still room for some free journalism...The “pasty-faced faggoty followers” in my comparison were actually the “Virile Romans,” as they called themselves... As a humane person, genuinely concerned with the welfare of my fellow Americans, I hope, Mr. V.A., sir, that you will be able to overcome your rather psychotic hang-ups about “org**m”, “Pasty-faced faggots,” and “commie perverts”...Moreover, I am quite sure that your stated intention of being in Hell will be easily fulfilled...Just continue to be a “Virile American” and before long you’ll be living right in the middle of hell, right here in the good old virile U.S. of A...

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The San Francisco Mime Troupe, fresh from a successful ten months run in Northern California, and as a part of their nationwide tour, will bring its current production, “A MINSTREL SHOW/OR: ‘CIVIL RIGHTS IN A CRACKER BARREL’ “ to the Detroit Institute of Arts, Oct. 7, under the sponsorship of the American Civil Liberties Union. See ad for details and ticket information.

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A national conference was held in Cleveland Sept. 9–10 to plan for a united nationwide peace action this fall.

The conference was called by the University Circle Teach-In Committee of Cleveland, with the assistance of the Inter-University Committee. The meeting was attended by a wide range of Peace, Civil Rights, and religious groups.

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Detroit’s first Participatory Zoo Dance, originally scheduled for September 16 and 17, was postponed, but an October opening is planned. Russ Gibbs, promoter of Detroit’s Grande Ballroom psychedelic dance, said that the original opening date had been cancelled due to technical problems.

The weekly dance, the first of its kind in Detroit, modeled in the San Francisco style, involves a great deal of electrical lighting equipment, and Russ said We ran into some unforeseen difficulties with the electrical wiring code in Detroit, but that has all been taken care of and we will open October 7 and 8 for sure.” Kicking off the grand opening will be the MC5 and the Woolies. Anyone interested in getting more information should call Russ Gibbs at 834–4904.

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THE MFS MESS: Emil Bacilla’s article on the Midwest Film Society last issue touched off a lot of under-the-table shit, which was, even weirder since Emil was in SF when the paper came out and couldn’t see what was happening. Briefly: Noel Cooper of the MFS contacted me through Peter Werbe about screening the MFS films at the Artists’ Workshop, which was for me a happy occurrence and was immediately implemented. JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS was shown at the Workshop Saturday, September 17, to a good-sized crowd, and flyers were passed out advertising the MFS fall lineup at the Workshop. Everything was groovy.

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Sept. 11^th the Green Berets came to town.

They got together for a little show at the foot of Woodward, about two dozen of them in the bright sunshine. Maybe 150 Detroiters turned out to see the military elite, vaunted in press and song.

The first thing that struck the viewer was their youth. They looked for the most part barely two and three years out of their teens. Young faces for the most part, smooth, unwrinkled and without real worries.

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Reprinted from the East Village Other (UPS)

What are the pot people doing? They are doing the next best thing to changing the world: they are changing the chemistry of the brain that perceives the world, as people have done in one way or another in every culture we know of since we know not when. People will chew herbs, roots, leaves, sticks and stones, anything, to get high. There’s no escaping it: getting high is apparently part of the human condition. It’s the question of what people use to get high, and how they get when they are on high, that is so vitally intriguing, because if you know how someone likes to be high, you also know how and why he doesn’t like not being high.

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Special to the Fifth Estate

Ann Arbor: Elise Boulding of Ann Arbor has begun a write-in campaign for Congress from the Second District of Michigan. The district, which consists of the counties of Washtenaw, Livingston, Lenawee and Monroe, is presently represented in the House of Representatives by Wes Vivian. Vivian has backed the administration’s policy in Vietnam and vacillated on HUAC. His Republican opponent, State Representative Esch, has an equally unimpressive record.

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It was with interest that I read an article on Dr. Abram Hoffer in the last issue of The Fifth Estate [FE #13, August 30, 1966]. As a medical researcher on LSD I have had the occasion to refer to Dr. Hoffer’s work many times and hold the greatest respect for him as a competent scientific investigator.

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To the Editor:

Several things. It’s a long term blues and bound for longer but I find, in the FIFTH ESTATE, some hope. For that, thank you. Also for:

A. Printing news items of conceptually strangulated editorial policies, conventional newspapers either minimize and bury with the obits or omit entirely. This is especially valuable to me, vitally involved and interested and yet geographically removed from the essential dialogues.

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Colonel Arthur Holmes, Director of the Selective Service System for the State of Michigan, announced that at his order, all male students from Michigan now entering their Freshman year of college will automatically be classified I-A by their local draft boards. After taking a pre-induction physical examination, all students over 19 will be served with induction notices. The students will then have to apply for the 1 year statutory deferment for registered students, I-S(C). At the end of the Freshman year, the students will be drafted unless they prove to the satisfaction of their local boards that they deserve a II-S student deferment.

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Film, the liveliest art, is, for all intents and purposes dead. At least in Detroit. Those wanting to attend services, needn’t bother, since there usually aren’t any for a stillborn that was just dumped in a garbage can for expediency.

Since the end of WWII there has been an increasing interest in film in this country. Foreign films developed an audience and in almost every city with a population over 200 underground movements sprung up, with independents making films from high art to low trash. In Detroit, however, nothing has happened. At different times different people have attempted to give life to some kind of movement, and each time all that ever developed was a few kicks that gave signs of life but ended in miscarriage.

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The May 16, 1966, murder of a former Wayne State University student, Leo Bernard, and the near-fatal shooting of two others, was reviewed last week by attorney Ernest Goodman who filed a petition with Detroit Common Council requesting funds for burial costs and for medical, hospital, transportation and rehabilitation expenses.

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There are some records around that are worth taking a look at...The Sunshine Superman album by Donovan is one of the best records of its kind ever done. On this record, we hear great writing, good tunes, excellent musicianship, and the main ingredient, imagination. Goodies are borrowed from almost every musical idiom imaginable and put together in totally new ways. The sitar is put to particularly good use. Donovan has overcome any labels that might have been attached in the beginning, and has become a singer-songwriter as good as or better than any we’ve heard.

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EDITOR & PUBLISHER: Harvey Ovshinsky

NEWS EDITOR: Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT: Cathy West

STAFF: Marlene Tyre, Frank Dedenbach, etc.

MEMBER: U.P.S. [Underground Press Syndicate]

On September 2, 3 and 4 the Lafayette Park Players presented their production of “A Thurber Carnival” at the Chrysler School Auditorium. The cast has worked together only once before last fall in “Monique”; and, although the program notes show that many members have extensive background in other plays, the amateur character of this attempt was painfully obvious.

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...was taken at Cam Che in South Vietnam by a U.S. news photographer. It shows a mother seeking to comfort her child burned by napalm dropped by a U.S. plane during “Operation Colorado.”

The child most likely has died since—and one is almost tempted to say, mercifully, because for most victims of napalm, survival is living death. You will note the care with which the numbed mother seeks to avoid touching her child’s skin. If she did, her fingers would sink into the destroyed flesh.

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The Fort Hood Three—the three GI’s who refused to serve in Vietnam—were tried last week by a court martial board and found guilty. Pvt. Dennis Moras received a three year sentence at hard labor and Pvt. David Samas and PFC James Johnson received five years of the same.

The Fifth Estate spoke with Marlene Sam as, wife of one of the convicted men. She said the trio would face at least two review boards, both of which have civilian members on them. Mrs. Samas asked that any donations or requests for information be sent to the Defense Committee at 5 Beekman St. NYC.

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After closing the office on Plum Street and selling my last “Sterilize LBJ” button, I walked downtown where the old Vanguard Theatre used to be. It provided a few minutes of indecision because two skin-flicks were playing and I had already seen one.

The last time I was in the Vanguard was two years ago. I remember seeing THE FIREBUGS there. THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH was good too, and e. e. Cummings’ HE did a pretty neat job of stoning (all twenty members of) the audience.

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Conformist Logic & The Political Question

(An open letter to the Artists’ Workshop and the Detroit Committee to End the War in Vietnam.)

“But for art to transform as well as reflect, there must be a great distance between the artist and life, just as there is between the revolutionist and political reality.”

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On August 9–12 a fantasy now known as the “East Side Riot” was staged by the Detroit Police with the assistance of the prosecutor’s office, city government and the press. The major villain of the drama was Alvin Harrison, Director of the Afro-American Unity Movement and spokesman for Black Power. Below is The Fifth Estate’s interview with Mr. Harrison.

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News of a new independent artists’ group in Detroit: The Instage, a gathering of musicians, dancers, painters, and others to present their own work in their own context, has been drawn together by pianist Kirk Lightsey, bassists Ernie Farrow and Dedrick Gover, trombonist George Bohanon and others. Now in search of their own performing facilities, Instage will present a program of its members’ work at the Community Arts Auditorium, Wayne State University, on Sunday, October 2, at 8:00 p.m. Featured will be paintings by Gloria Bohanon and seven others; a dance event featuring Barbara Willis, Don Hellimus, and Jackie Hillman, backed by Lightsey’s band; and a concert of music by the groups of Ernie Farrow, George Bohanon, and Harold McKinney. Tickets are on sale for $1.50 per person, $2.50 for couples, from Instage members and at the WSU box office.

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WHILE BRAVE MEN DIE had its Detroit premier on Saturday September 10. Sharing the bill at lower DeRoy Auditorium was OPERATION ABOLITION, a right-wing expose of communists in the peace movement. As expected, the entire evening of film phantasmagoria was an exercise in high cinema camp and low grade stupidity.

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