Most Recent Additions

The National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, which organized the massive April 15 demonstrations in New York City and San Francisco, is now arranging for a mass mobilization to confront the warmakers in Washington, D.C. It will be on October 21, with supporting demonstrations around the world.

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The worst thing one could say about the Algiers Motel Tribunal is that it was Recorder’s Court upside down.

If the tribunal was biased and weighted against the four white defendants, Detroit Patrolman Robert Paille and Ronald August, National Guardsman Theodore Thomas and private guard Melvin Dysmukes, then it was weighted in exactly the same way that Recorder’s Court proceedings are against Negro defendants.

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The Draft Resistance sold its Red Flag, but didn’t make one hell of a big profit. $5 to be exact. Maybe people thought it was contaminated by its previous owner.

Incidentally, there was a bad typo in the article offering the flag for sale (FE #37, 1–15, 1967). The story read “the left join the right in stamping that dirty visionist (sic) flag.” The word should have been revisionist. Big deal.

OAKLAND—Plans for a four-day siege of the Oakland Induction Center, October 16–21 were announced to day by spokesmen for National Stop the Draft Week Committee. Compulsory conscription was labeled “a criminal conspiracy against American youth that must be stopped.”

“We have picketed, protested, leafleted and argued against the draft and the racist war in Vietnam,” said Terence Cannon, member of the Stop the Draft Week Steering Committee. “There is only one way to keep young men from being shanghaied into the armed forces and that is to stop the draft from operating. We declare that we are opposed to the government’s policy and will do everything we can to bring it to a halt.

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NEW YORK—The national Committee of the Socialist Workers party has announced here that it has nominated Fred Halstead and Paul Boutelle as the party’s candidates for President and Vice-President of the United States in the 1968 elections.

Halstead, a 40 year old cloth cutter from New York, said that the war in Vietnam would be a central issue of the campaign. His running mate, Boutelle, a 35 year old cab driver, said that black power would be a twin issue.

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In one of the largest steps in its history, the American Federation of Musicians has drafted plans for a huge apprentice program for teen-age rock musicians which could alter the present music industry considerably.

The program, to be implemented by Detroit’s Local 5 under the supervision of business agent Dennis Day, calls for concerted action by the union on two major fronts: to convince teen musicians to join the union under its new “affiliate membership” plan, and to convince club owners that they should sign “union shop” agreements with Local 5 which would provide for employment only for union bands at union scale.

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There are only two paths open to a country whose internal and external empires are in the state of decay prevailing in the United States. That of the left or fascism.

The trend toward fascism in the United States is accelerating at an incredible rate. It is beginning to acquire the kind of mass base which served Hitler in Germany. The catalyst for tendencies always present in American society, is the equally accelerating struggle for black liberation.

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Editor’s note: The following article appeared on the Religion Page of the Detroit Free Press of August 19, 1967. It refers to the creative use of natural rhythm.

A leading doctor and editor of the national Journal of the American Institute of Hypnosis suggested that techniques of hypnosis be used to control riots in the future.

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a review of

The Impoverished Students’ Book Of Cookery, Drinkery, & Housekeepery by Jay F. Rosenberg. New York: Doubleday. $1.25.

Not so different from Chaucer’s scholar, students today are usually poor and this book is meant to ease the pains and help the limited budget. An impoverished student is defined as an individual who loves to eat, bates to cook, and cannot really afford to do either.

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Atlanta—On Saturday, August 12, a crowd of 175 supporters and newsmen gathered at Atlanta’s Piedmont Park to watch 25 Atlanta students and workers take off and burn their Levi pants.

The “burn-in,” sponsored by the Southern Labor Action Movement (SLAM), marked the kickoff of a nation-wide boycott of all Levi Straus products. The boycott is being organized in support of the 400 workers now on strike at Levi Straus’ Blue Ridge, Georgia plant.

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Each in its own way, the Draft Resistance Committee and the Highland Park Police Department both celebrated Anti-Draft Week, a week of intensive protest against the Vietnam war and the Selective Service System.

The new Detroit draft resistance movement attempted to communicate to the public through any means possible the discontent and resentment of young men being drafted to die in somebody else’s war in Vietnam.

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An ad in the July 15–30 Fifth Estate calling for unknown playwrights and aspiring actors to help rejuvenate the American stage has blossomed into the Detroit Drama Workshop. First performance... two original one-act plays—Joan Feret’s “The Nightmare” and Sam Cohen’s “The Library Room.” Dates are September 14, 15, 16 and 21, 22, 23 at 616 West Hancock.

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NEW YORK — Melvin L. Wulf, an ACLU Legal Director has announced that a brief was filed on August 18 challenging the right of US Attorney General Katzenbach to force the W.E.B. Du Bois Clubs to register with the Subversive Activities Control Board as a “Communist-front organization” under the 1950 Subversive Activities Control Act.

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1. More and more bombing, including population centers. More and more napalm. More and more poisoning chemicals. More and more U.S. troops.

2. Forced hat-in-hand negotiations. Ignore the Geneva accords. Permanent U.S. control of South Vietnam. Terms which the Vietnamese can never accept.

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ATLANTA, GA.—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has announced a nationwide campaign “to give Americans an opportunity to vote on the Vietnam war -through the time honored institutions of initiative and referendum.”

The campaign, supported by the organization Vietnam Summer, seeks to place anti-war referenda or initiative petitions on local and state ballots across the nation this fall and next Spring. Projects are already underway in over a dozen localities including Detroit and Ann Arbor.

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At this point, the only safe speculation regarding the New Politics Conference to be held in Chicago over Labor Day is that you shouldn’t believe what the underground press is going to say about it.

The key debates at the Convention will center on 1968 electoral strategy.

Should energy and resources be expended on a national presidential campaign or a series of local insurgent campaigns or both? Should campaigns be conceived as one-shot protests against the war and racism or should they be viewed as mere organizing devices to create long range radical institutions? Should campaigns aim to bolster Reform and “Concerned” ‘ Democrats and “peace candidates” or is it necessary to abandon attempts to reform the two party system, creating a third party?

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To the Editor:

May I say one thing, I hope that the Fifth Estate is not losing it’s awareness, love, peace and spiritual splendor.

From reading the August 1–15 issue, exploiting the Detroit Riot scene, and all—that excess-baggage that was written along with it was just too much for me to bare.

I’ve been very loyal to the Fifth Estate and I hope to continue, but please for heaven’s sake don’t drop your fine paper into the acid of terror, etc.

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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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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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