Most Recent Additions

Editor’s note: Investigation of the murder of John Leroy reported in the last issue of the Fifth Estate is continuing. (See “Who Killed John Leroy?” FE #36, August 15–31, 1967.) News editor Frank H. Joyce has talked with two of the national guardsmen who were on the scene, the photographer who took pictures immediately after the shooting stopped and additional witnesses. His report of new information appears below.

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One of the biggest problems of “rebuilding Detroit” after the July 23 rebellion will be the attitudes and actions of the very powerful “white liberal” leadership in our community.

These paternalistic gentlemen have not, I can assure you, learned any significant lessons from the events of the past few weeks and are still insisting on keeping up with their meddling with their dirty paws in the growing determination of Black people to truly emancipate and govern themselves.

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Playboy magazine’s June Playmate of the Month, June Gibson, was convicted August 23 on a charge of prostitution in Hollywood, California.

The platinum-blond Miss Gibson was arrested in an apartment July 12 with another woman and a man. In the June Playboy story she said, “I am my own woman. I lead my life according to no social standards other than my own. A Playboy spokesman said he felt the bust (forgive pun) would not stain the girl-next-door image of the Playmates.

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NEW YORK (UPS)—Paul Krassner was supposed to appear on the Joe Pyne show Sunday, July 16, but the tape was never shown. Paul had doubts that Pyne would show the tape even though his guest appearance was announced in the TV section of every paper.

As Paul tells it the producer of the show explained “If Joe don’t like it, Joe won’t show it!”

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Last winter at a Draft Conference held in Central Methodist Church in downtown Detroit a Soviet flag was hurled at the speaker’s platform by Don Lobsinger, head of Breakthrough, a local kook group.

Despite the urgings of some draft resisters that the left join the right in stamping on “that dirty revisionist flag” it was rescued and remains intact. The flag is a beautiful revolutionary red with a gold hammer and sickle in the corner. It is a full five feet by three feet in dimension.

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Editor’s note: Ron Cobb is one of the most brilliant contributors to the Underground Press Syndicate (UPS) and the Fifth Estate. His cartoons originate from the Los Angeles Free Press as does the following article.

The big, massive shouldered artist with the square-cut beard arrived in the lobby of the hall where Realist editor Paul Krassner was holding forth prior to another Los Angeles one-man show.

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Janis Ian’s “Society’s Child” was banned in Detroit last year by all the major radio stations. WKNR’s Paul Kannon refused to air it because he felt it was too sensational for a radio audience. “Society’s Child” is currently the number one song in Detroit. Below Janis talks candidly about Janis Ian and her life as a 16 year old sensationalist.

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A good voice and a standard arrangement just are not enough for today’s ears. Within that thought lies a lot of truth and a lot of music conforms to just that formula.

Creativity: if the record medium is to mean anything in that light, then the effort, big E, has to be there from the outset. To wit: Joan Baez’s latest cuts on Vanguard are what some would call competent, but to me they just sound lazy and uninspired. Joan’s ventures into the rock idiom, even if you called them interpretations, are almost funny due to their lack of fortitude or GUTS!

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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.

ALL UNCLASSIFIEDS MUST BE PAID IN ADVANCE BY MAIL OR PERSONAL DELIVERY

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1) Subscribe. Send $2.50 for a one year subscription and 26 issues of the paper. Send a gift subscription to a friend.

2) Sell the Fifth Estate at school, on the streets or at public places. Our sales people earn 5 cents on each paper they sell. Call 831–6801 or write to: 1107 West Warren, Detroit Michigan, 48201.

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Dear Ann Landers: I am a person of simple taste. I don’t need much to make me happy. A can of beer, two good baseball teams, a freeway and a tank of gas. A sunny day in early June. A brisk run at sunrise. A pretty girl who smiles when I look her way. A short story by William Faulkner.

None of these will pay the rent, so I have to work—which I hate, but I realize a person must be practical. What I need to know is why should I kill myself to meet someone else’s definition of success?

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The August mayoral and Common Council elections in Detroit are worth no more than a casual brickbat if for no other reason then their irrelevance. Unlike many other cities, where political machines were powers to be reckoned with, in the Motor City the politicians occupy a position not even a distant second to the city’s real rulers—the auto companies. Barely rating even a few copy inches in the mass media, the usual collection of opportunists, careerists, and thieves are waiting to feed at the public trough. Perhaps even more despicable is the same gaggle of socialists, ex-militants, and other leftoids vying for a shot at a small piece of power in the state apparatus. In elections like these, participation is even more of a humiliation than normally—don’t vote or if you do have a voter’s card—piss in the voting booth...

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Learned recently that funds for the arts have been cut drastically in Detroit or Michigan, and that a “state representative” Wierzbicki defended the policy by saying that music, art, and dance have nothing to do with people’s lives. Of course, Wizbugger, or whatever his name is, is correct. As dadaist Richard Holsenbeck once said, “Art regarded from a serious point of view is a large scale swindle.”

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Millard Berry

Alan Franklin

Ralph Franklin

Pat Halley

Pat O’Bryan

Arnold Washover

Kathy Horak

Tina Nachalo

Bob Nirkind

E.B. Maple

Stuart Perry

Paula Zerzan

Nana Saffioti

Marilyn Werbe

Peter Werbe

Jay Kinney

Michael Lucas

John Zerzan

Peter Rachleff

Richard Rollins

The Fifth Estate Newspaper, a non-profit Michigan corporation, is published monthly at 4403 Second Ave., Detroit MI 48201; phone: (313) 831–6800. Office hours are sporadic, so call before coming down. Subscriptions are $4.00 for 12 issues; $5.00 for foreign. Call 259-1888-for retail sales outlets: Second Class postage paid at Detroit, Michigan. No copyright. No advertising.

WASHINGTON, DC—A noted New Jersey physician of social malaises, Dr. Maynard G. Krebs, recently told a federal panel investigating the causes behind the current epidemic of job refusals, “The less you have to do, the more you must ask a high salary for it, because even this modest employment is the sign of the even more evident absurdity of your forced presence.”

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THISTED, Denmark—Police are looking for a jobless worker who bit off the ear of a labor exchange official and left it wrapped in paper with the handwritten message: “This is your ear.” The victim was Arne Jensen, head of the Koldby labor exchange office near here.

Police identified Jensen’s assailant only as a 34-year-old worker who had been jobless for a long time and repeatedly had refused to take the jobs offered by the labor exchange. Police said he came rushing into the office after Jensen phoned him to say there was a job for him as a farm hand. The man made it clear he did not want that kind of work and then reacted violently at the prospect of losing his unemployment relief.

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Ammunition Books

4403 Second Avenue Detroit, Michigan 48201, Tele. No. (313) 831–6800

Bookstore hours vary, but we are generally open on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and at scattered other times. Please call before coming down to be sure we are here.

HOW TO ORDER:

(1) List the title of the book(s), amount and price of each;

(2) Add 5% for mailing (not less than 25 cents);

(3) Total (Michigan residents please add 4% sales tax), and mail to us.

Please write all checks and money orders to: DROP-OUT PRODUCTIONS, but mail to: AMMUNITION BOOKS, 4403 Second Avenue, Detroit, Michigan 48201

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When a reader sent us this page from the December ’76 issue of Granma (the official organ of the Cuban Communist party) pictured at the right, we thought the goose-stepping troops must have been from the army of Argentina or Chile. The pictured style of marching has always been identified with fascist armies and represents the extreme to which the male body at the service of the state can be distorted. Any leader knows that once troops have been submitted to the sort of discipline necessary to create a well-oiled military machine, the individual components lose any uniqueness and become a faceless, headless mass willing to follow any order that comes from above.

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Acceding to the exigencies of global capital, the U.S. and Cuban governments finally admitted their mutual interests after some 16 years of mutual denunciation.

The first trade agreements are being hashed out in the Congressional carnival while fishing accords are already operative, confirming a 200-mile coastal limit which will put Cuban and American trawlers in equal competition off the Florida coast.

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Well, there’s not much “organized” activity for June, since all the cinemas have run their course until the Fall. But with nice weather here at last it shouldn’t be too hard to enjoy ourselves.

Please do remember that this calendar is yours to contribute to, if you have any interesting events you would like to publicize. Mail us the information as early as possible in order to get it into the upcoming issue. We will print notices of most non-commercial, out-of-the-ordinary (?) and free events.

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Though we do not accept commercial advertising, this Unclassified ad space is free for our readers’ use. We do not accept ads over the telephone, so please send your ads in writing to our office at: 4403 Second Ave., Detroit 48201

PRISONERS: Due to limited space and the many letters we receive, we are unable to reprint the correspondence from prisoners, but we will print their names and addresses—they would like to hear from you.

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Just as in George Orwell’s 1984, “opponents of the working class” in China not only disappear physically, never to be heard from again, but also historically. A case in point are the two photographs printed here which demonstrate one of the most cynical ways to re-write history: the use of doctored photos.

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From the May 3 Wall Street Journal comes some interesting information about the United Mine Workers (UMW) union that bears heavily on future energy schemes, especially those dictated by our peanut president. Carter’s new energy policy calls for increased use of coal as a major energy source, but the underground miners of Appalachia are not showing much enthusiasm for digging it out.

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The author of the following article, Joe Jacobs, was an English comrade and one-time member of London Solidarity (one of the two organizations mentioned in the discussion) who, we learned, died shortly after sending us this manuscript. Though we’ve devoted considerable space to this subject in previous issues we think that Joe’s thoughts on the matter after many years of radical activity shed some light on “the organization question” that has too often been ignored.

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The following was sent to us by a friend of the Fifth Estate living in West Germany and lays out the political implications of the “Nuclear State,” and gives a report on several mass anti-nuclear actions. See also “Turn on the Light and Say Goodnight” in this issue.

It is important to point out an aspect of the nuclear energy program which lies—independent from the deathly danger of nuclear energy—in the danger of the loss of personal freedom of each individual. Nuclear power plants do not only imply poisonous radiation, but also inevitably lead to the establishment of a totalitarian “nuclear state” and in the end to a complete control over the individual. Only in this way, argues the state, can the danger of sabotage be prevented. A recent example is the Traube case.

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“A nuclear power plant is infinitely safer than eating, because 300 people choke to death on food each year.”

— Dixy Lee Ray, former head of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), now governor of Washington

“You can’t have a riskless society.”

— Nelson A. Rockefeller on the leakage of radioactive water from the two million cubic feet of buried radioactive trash and 600,000 gallons of highly radioactive liquid wastes at the West Valley, New York nuclear waste recycling plant

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This article first appeared in Open Road newspaper.

The Walla Walla Brothers had figured they’d seen just about everything in anti-human treatment during their years of resistance at the Walla Walla State Prison in eastern Washington. But that was before the establishment of the “mental health unit” (MHU) there two years ago to make Walla Walla a laboratory for behavior modification experiments.

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Next time you are at a party, or any of the other bad excuses for festivity that our time has to offer, notice the behavior of the couples there. See how they clutch at each other constantly, how they can hardly bear to be separated for one second, how one will suspiciously follow with their eyes any attractive person passing by.

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“You are going to complain? You? And just who are you? You are no American. Prove it. Come, come, show us your passport. Or your sailor’s card...You have no passport. In any civilized country he who has no passport is nobody. He does not exist for us or for anybody else.”

— from Death Ship by B. Traven

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Zodiac News Service—A Washington, DC research group contends that, despite industry claims to the contrary, the U.S. nuclear industry has been plagued by worker deaths, plant accidents, acts of terrorism and other serious mishaps during the last three decades.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest alleges that a careful study of government atomic energy records reveals there have been more than 300 worker deaths, no less than two dozen “meltdowns” or other serious accidents, dozens of threatened and actual terrorist acts, and numerous cases of lost nuclear material and human error.

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During the last score of years there have been numerous prison outbreaks and attempted prison escapes throughout the United States. The media has invariably labeled these as “riots” and acts of “dangerous criminals.” What the media deliberately fails to reveal are the conditions within prisons that lead prisoners to risk their lives in attempting to escape or daring even to protest (as took place at Attica when more than forty prisoners and guards were massacred).

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Things can only get worse for auto workers with the election of Doug Fraser as president of the UAW. Beyond just being a run-of-the-mill hack, Fraser has a record of strike-breaking that old Henry Ford’s security department would have admired. Fraser engineered the suppression of four major wildcat strikes in Detroit during 1973 through 1974 at Chrysler Corporation’s Jefferson Ave., Detroit Forge, Mack Ave., and Dodge Truck plants. The worst case was at the Mack Stamping Plant where a mini-occupation had taken place and Fraser put together a goon squad comprised of over 1,000 union officials armed with clubs to force the strikers back to work and to “deal with radicals”. When Detroit Police Inspector Joseph Areeda saw the gang of union officials at the plant he said to Fraser, “I’m glad we’re on the same side.” And so it is...

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Note to Writers

Due to space considerations, we ask that letter writers make their remarks as concise as possible and when typing please double-space. It’s not our desire to trim ideas to fit the space available, but practical limitations do confront us and we would appreciate this being taken into account. In general, two pages is ideal—anything longer would better be considered as an article.

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In the most recent development in the Noel and Marie Murray murder trials, Marie has been sentenced by the Special Criminal Court in Dublin to life imprisonment after being found innocent of capital murder, but guilty of shooting policeman Michael Reynolds on September 11, 1975 following a bank robbery.

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VANCOUVER, British Columbia—Eldridge Cleaver, Black Panther “revolutionary” turned evangelical Christian, had a pie pushed into his face on May 1, while speaking to an audience attending a christian crusade in the Orpheum Theatre.

As the white, gooey cream streamed down his face, Cleaver met the onslaught and turned his newly-found Christian cheek, saying: “I seem to have changed color.”

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Millard Berry

Alan Franklin

Ralph Franklin

Pat Halley

Pat O’Bryan

Kathy Horak

Tina Nachalo

Bob Nirkind

E.B. Maple

Stuart Perry

Joe Jacobs

Donna Saffioti

Marilyn Werbe

Peter Werbe

Danylo Tkach

Marcus Graham

The Fifth Estate Newspaper, a non-profit Michigan corporation, is published monthly at 4403 Second Ave., Detroit MI 48201; phone: (313) 831–6800. Office hours are sporadic, so call before coming down. Subscriptions are $4.00 for 12 issues; $5.00 for foreign. Call 259–1888 for retail sales outlets. Second Class postage paid at Detroit, Michigan. No copyright. No advertising.

A statewide Negotiation Now campaign, sponsored by the Metropolitan Detroit Chapter of Americans for Democratic Action, is now in operation at full speed, according to John A. Fillion, director of the campaign.

The Negotiation Now effort—sponsored nationally by prominent civic leaders, including John Kenneth Galbraith, Dr. Martin Luther King, and Victor Reuther—seeks to petition for new U.S. attempts to end the war in Vietnam in accordance with recommendations for settlement made by United Nations Secretary-General U Thant.

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One of the resolutions adopted at the recent Students for a Democratic Society national convention in Ann Arbor under the heading of “Cultural Revolution” calls for SDS endorsement of and participation in the Provo Conference Tribal Gathering which is scheduled for the Fall.

New Left Notes, the official SDS newspaper, will also shortly be applying for membership in the Underground Press Syndicate (UPS). SDS is the largest student radical organization in the country and has draft resistance as its main program. Sample copies of New Left Notes or information about the group may be obtained by writing its headquarters at 1608 W. Madison, Chicago, Illinois.

The filthy streets of Detroit’s Warren-Forest Area, center of the city’s hippie community, will be the scene of a giant Sweep-In Sunday, August 20.

The Sweep-In, planned by Trans-Love Energies as a last-ditch effort to rid the Warren-Forest Area of such foul elements as discarded beer bottles, garbage and old copies of The News, was decided upon after Trans-Love tried unsuccessfully to convince the DPW that it should exercise its craft in the stricken area.

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Everybody should make films.

Film-making is a beautiful thing and it’s something that anyone can do. Really.

Sure there’s a lot of strange professional things to get hung up on, but it’s like the cat hustling Wurlitzer organs on television: “you can be playing your favorite songs in minutes.” You’re not going to be ready to take over for Boot if he doesn’t make it to a gig with Billy C., and it’s the same thing with film.

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The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) expressed its regret and dismay July 25 that the conviction of Arthur Kinoy for disorderly conduct had been affirmed by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. The conviction of Prof. Kinoy stems from the attorney’s forcible ejection by the House Un-American Activities Committee during its probe in August, 1966, of anti-Vietnam War groups.

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There is a Hebrew idiomatic expression, K’ninah Houra, which Joel Altus explained to me as sort of being equivalent to saying knock on wood after telling of some good fortune you have incurred and you want it not to change.

I certainly should have said aloud K’ninah Houra after writing in our last issue that no harm had come to the Fifth Estate office, Mixed Media bookstore or Plum Street. For no sooner had our issue hit the streets than pellets were shot at the windows of Mixed Media causing total damage. The window was replaced with boards and a sign which read “Holy Smoke, Don’t shoot—It’s Love.” Proprietor Barry Kramer assured us business will continue as usual.

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An important notice for your safety and survival

Reprinted from Berkley Barb (UPS)

(Time is short. If you haven’t already seen the following prophetic notice by the communication company, issued this weekend, take heed. And take heart.)

Sorry to bring you down, but this is about the riots our black brothers have planned for the city. There isn’t much hope that they won’t occur.

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Marijuana will become legal in the U.S. within one year, predicts the first issue of the Chicago Mirror, an underground satire magazine slated for publication this month.

According to the author of the article, whose source is an art director of an unidentified Chicago advertising agency, the legalization of pot “will be the result of one of the most fantastic public relations campaigns in the history of this country.”

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I thought that “yellow journalism” had a reputation as bad as Lobsinger. I thought it had gone out with the Hearst newspapers, that its only remains were in such rags as the Inquirer. I was wrong.The Fifth Estate has become, in recent issues, the worst piece of journalism that I have ever seen. The early editions seemed promising as spokesmen for Detroit’s youth.

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In effect, rock has become the white man’s jazz. Bob Dylan, had he been born black, would surely have found a place somewhere in the jazz revolution; and a white Archie Shepp (the mind boggles!) would feel quite at home in a rock group like the Mothers of Invention (who have, by the way, a composition dedicated to Archie in their book). Not that the two musics are actually merging.

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It couldn’t happen in Detroit!

That was the proud proclamation of our city’s leaders all summer long until that fateful morning of July 23. Detroit had supposedly been the nation’s leader among big cities in making civil rights progress.

That is, Detroit was tops in fake tokenism and self-deception. There was bragging that so many Black people here were in positions of prominence and relative wealth. But, obviously, these successful people only represented an infinitesimally small portion of the Black community—and even many of these middle-class oriented people, who still feel the brutal whip of discrimination, were quietly hoping for the summer revolt which finally exploded on one of the first hot Saturday nights in a relatively cool summer.

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Kitty Genovese died in Queens while fifty people watched.

Thomas Poindexter lost his seat on the Detroit Common Council when it was reported that he saw a crime being committed and did not even bother to call the police.

Two nameless hippies were arrested on Prentis on Tuesday night August 8, while all the flower folks and their bike-less motorcycle type colleagues just stood around and gaped. Two cops had just walked on their beat down Prentis, gotten lost in the shadows then reappeared from the alley at the end of the block where they had started out. They had two handcuffed prisoners. The prisoners, somewhere between teenyboppers and hippies looked to be about 19 years old. They stooped as they walked down the street hands bound behind their backs.

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Marshall McLuhan, better known as the Ombudsman of the Hipsters, hates the twentieth century.

Yet, in his cheerful 19^th 21^st century way he has patiently dissected the corpse (if haphazardly) and has shown us all a glimpse of the invisible Cancer of Media, without so much as flinching, without a single four-letter word. He obviously takes pride in his zealous but essentially dispassionate style—he has learned the scientist’s way of overwhelming; he has come up with his own version of E equals MC squared, and has categorically dared all onlookers to light the fuse.

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Under this seemingly innocuous heading we initiate what we think is the first joint effort music column in literary annals.

The Fifth Estate’s heroic radical stance required something more than a bland record review column and this added something is what we hope to accomplish. The format and topics of each column will constantly change as the mood strikes us. So in the words of Jim Gurley, of Big Brother and the Holding Company, “Watch Out!”

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