Most Recent Additions

The rhetoric is anti-State. “They picture me as a threat to the nation,” Robert Miles told Metropolitan Detroit magazine (June 1987), referring to the FBI. “But let me tell you the kind of threat I am: I publish a newsletter. I don’t harm or threaten anyone. Granted, I don’t like the government—I’m an anarchist, in fact. But these Ollie Norths see sedition in the five cows I have out in my pasture.”

...

FE note: Due to space considerations, some of the letters on these pages may have been excerpted. We ask that letter writers make their remarks as concise as possible. We will print the addresses of letter writers who request it.

Dear FE:

In general, I agree with E.B. Maple’s warnings about cozying up to the Left; (See FE #325, Spring 1987); anarchism’s blood-feud has always been with the Bolsheviks, even if its war has been fought against the Right. However, I get the sense of a subtext here, an attempt to “purify” anarchist ideology of all syndicalist, socialist & Left Revolutionary tendencies, to once again define who is & who is not a “real” anarchist.

...

FE Note: This letter was not written specifically for the FE, but was shared with us by William Koethke, whose article, “Earth Diet, Earth Culture,” appeared in FE #325, Spring, 1987. Our next issue will include a review and discussion of ecology and social critique, in particular the deep ecology perspective and movement.

...

The Poet’s Coven is a relatively new photocopied publication distributed free in the Vancouver, B.C. area. It consciously defies categorization and is open to a wide variety of expression—poetry, collage, fiction, articles. The Coven describes its vision as coming from an “eclectic assortment of inspirations,” and considers itself to be “a propaganda or counter-information project that would like to encourage creativity as well as debate and analysis within the anarchist/ social-ecologist/ ‘primitivist’ milieu.” The Coven seeks contributions from “anti-authoritarians, misfits, earth worshippers, optimistic and social nihilists, and underground rebels,” with a promise that all correspondence will be answered. Contributions in the form of money are also welcome.

...

A karate blow by a young Venezuelan policewoman to an escaping suspect brought an ignominious end to the career of the world’s most lethal terrorist. Stefano Delle Chiaie is the machiavellian figure behind numerous murderous outrages in Europe, Africa and Latin America over three decades.

Delle Chiaie, taken in a raid on an apartment in a suburb of Caracas in March of this year, had been living there under an alias for three years. After interrogation by Venezuelan security agents, 51-year-old Delle Chiaie was rushed to Caracas airport where he was handed over to waiting Italian agents. Captured with him were two boxes of documents, Delle Chiaie’s archives. He was put on a flight to Italy, where he was being tried in his absence for the 1980 Bologna railway station bombing in which 85 people were killed and over 200 badly injured. Other Delle Chiaie outrages include the December 1969 bombing in Milan’s Piazza Fontana which left 16 dead, the murder of a magistrate in 1976, and at least three attempted coup d’etats.

...

Dirk Leach began working on an assembly line at a Mercedes-Benz factory in 1977 to finance his studies at a German university. His work, and his reflections on the nature of modern technology intersected with his reading of existentialist texts by Martin Heidegger and Ernst Junger’s Der Arbeiter (“The Worker”).

...

Sometimes no news is good news, and that seems to be the case with the folks at Big Mountain. According to Matt Strasberg (of the Big Mountain Legal Defense/Offense Committee), the July 7, 1986 deadline passed quietly. Indian activists, supporters and the media showed up for the showdown, but U.S. marshals declined to make an appearance. Claiming that the deadline was merely a “target date,” government officials have been close-lipped about their inability to overcome Hopi and Navajo resistance and to complete the relocation project.

...

U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, a hero?

A patriot?

Shit! This guy is a fascist and a war criminal!

Less people than it appears are willing to stand up and salute this creep who bears great responsibility for the slaughter of thousands of Nicaraguan peasants at the hands of the U.S. financed, North directed, contras.

...

Since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in April 1986, much information has come out about its terrible effects. The irradiation of (particularly European) people, animals and vegetation has been devastating. Dr. John Gofman, a Widely respected expert on radiation effects, estimated that more than a million people will develop cancers, half of them fatal, as a result of the accident.

...

Collage by Freddie Baer

All the city mourns, and the crumpled masses languish at the gates, and the cry of all the freeways has gone up.

The politicians have sent their runners to the waters, but they have come with all their vessels empty.

The limousines fester in long lines like links of meat waiting to be roasted in the devil’s barbecue.

...

Chief Luther Standing Bear wrote in his autobiography, “The white man does not understand the Indian for the reason that he does not understand America. He is too far removed from its formative processes. The roots of the tree of his life have not yet grasped the rock and soil...But in the Indian the spirit of the land is still vested; it will be until other men are able to divine and meet its rhythm. Men must be born and reborn to belong...”

...

Political speculation concerning rapidly changing political events in a journal such as this which appears so infrequently puts the writer at a distinct disadvantage, Even by the time this paper is published, a new crisis may have been created and the current ones described herein discarded or resolved.

...

During the summer solstice weekend of June 18 through 22, some 250 to 300 people converged on Minneapolis, Minnesota, to attend the Anarchist Gathering. It was the second of such continental gatherings, the last one having been held in Chicago in the Spring of 1986 to commemorate the Haymarket Affair. (See FE #323, Summer 1986 for a report on the Chicago Anarchist Gathering.)

...

Note about cover of print edition: This follows Vol. 21 No. 2

Wisconsin draft resister Gillam Kerley, 26, was sentenced May 29 to three years in prison and a $10,000 fine. This is the harshest sentence received by any convicted nonregistrant since the draft was reinstated by President Carter in 1980. Kerley has been an active and vocal resister whose employment by the Committee Against Registration and the Draft (CARD) was cited during the sentencing by Judge Shabaz, a Republican Reagan appointee.

...

Good news! The Fifth Estate has a new office and bookstore quarters with public access, plus it provides a better atmosphere for working and receiving visitors. The move has provided the spark for increased activity around the bookshop, with one of us taking responsibility for expanding its book selection and starting regular hours.

...

Last year when Detroit residents began their protest against the proposed municipal trash incinerator (by demonstrating, attending meetings, putting out informational flyers, hanging banners over the freeway near the incinerator site) there was some local media coverage. But the focus of the coverage was the Detroit City Council meetings where the building permit was being challenged by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). After the permit was approved and since construction has begun, there has been little mention of the issue, even though there have been numerous protest activities organized by residents and local environmental groups.

...

As predictions for the eventual toll of the deadly AIDS disease grow higher, speculation as to the origin of the virus remain unanswered. Reports continue to surface that rather than a natural occurring new strain, the disease was a result of U.S. Army germ warfare research conducted at Fort Detrick, Maryland in the mid 1970s.

...

July ’87 marks the twentieth anniversary of the Detroit riots: the largest American rebellion of the century. Reactions to an early morning police raid on a ghetto after-hours drinking spot began with stones and bricks aimed at cop cars and quickly grew into excited looting within hours. The retreating police were eventually reinforced by 8,000 national guardsmen and 4,700 federal troops (82^nd and 101^st Airborne). The official body count after one wild week of looting, smashing, and burning was 43 killed, 657 wounded—at least 30 were slain by police or government forces. Rumors of snipers provoked troops to fire wildly at people, windows, buildings, and each other. Of the 682 fires, 412 buildings were destroyed. Over 1,700 stores were looted as whites quickly joined blacks in a true communal uprising. The number one song in the country that week was The Doors’ “Light My Fire.”

...

Note about cover of print edition: This follows Vol. 21 No. 2

The Fifth Estate is a co-operative project, published by a group of friends who are in general, but not necessarily complete agreement with the articles herein. Each segment of the paper represents the collective effort of writing, typesetting, lay-out and proofreading.

...

Before the Bernhard Goetz subway shooting recedes completely from social memory, perhaps a few words can be said about what it suggests regarding race, class and crime in this country.

Goetz, as it will be remembered, was acquitted in mid-June of attempting to murder four black youths he shot who had confronted him, asking for money, on a New York City subway. Although never directly threatened by the four, Goetz testified: “My intention was to murder them, hurt them, to make them suffer as much as possible.” He saw the four ghetto youths as intent on robbing him, an experience he had traumatically suffered once before. Four of the bullets he fired hit the young men, leaving one permanently paralyzed and brain damaged.

...

Not content to sit by while the Central American rainforests are being bulldozed and burned for cattle grazing land to provide beef for fast food greaseburgers, fifty students and faculty from Macomb County College picketed the Burger King at 23 Mile Road and Van Dyke on June 29^th in protest.

The group also plans to participate in World Rainforest Week, September 7 through 13, which has targeted the garbage-food chain for international protest demonstrations. The Detroit-based Earth Community, 19731 Forrer, Detroit, MI 48235, (313) 493–0543, has called for a “picket and boycott (of) every Burger King in the country.” Contact Rainforest Action Network, 300 Broadway, San Francisco, CA 94133, for events in other areas.

a review of

Rebellious Mourning: The Collective Work of Grief, ed. Cindy Milstein. 37 essays, 412 pp. with 32-page color insert. AK Press, 2017

Rebellious Mourning is an ambitious edited volume by Cindy Milstein with enormous depth and breadth of highly relevant and timely cross-cultural case studies. This work by Milstein (sole author of Anarchism and Its Aspirations, AK Press) represents her third edited book project.

...

The idea of an “anarchist saint” might seem kind of silly at first, but that did not stop Autonomedia publishers from starting its annual jubilee calendars of radical saints, now in its 26^th year. If anyone who has recently died qualifies for the status of anti-authoritarian saint, I would nominate the author, Ursula K. Le Guin, who is featured on the calendar with prominent and lesser known anarchists.

...

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.

...

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.

...

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.

...

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.

...

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?

...

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

...

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.

...

“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.

...

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.”

...

“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.

...

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.

...

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.

...

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

...

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.

...

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.

...

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.”

...

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.”

...

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.

...

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.

...

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.”

...

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!”

...

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.

...

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.

...

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.

...

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.

...

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.

...