Most Recent Additions
John Sinclair
The Coat Puller
a column
It looks like straight people will do just about anything in their power to keep the love organism from growing and spreading, just because they can’t “understand’ it and don’t know what’s happening in the world around them. If you haven’t noticed, straight people are always putting love people down, sending their kids to psychiatrists to get “straightened out, calling the police on their kids, beating hippies who try to start honest and loving business operations, stealing from hippies and terrorizing their homes and gathering places, hitting and kicking people who have no eyes to fight back, and things like that. I’m tired of it, for one, and I just wish these people would wake up and start seeing what their stupid lives are all about and how vile they are being in their relationships with each other and with us.
Feb 5, 2017 Read the whole text...
anon.
Eye Witness Report
L.A. Police Riot
The monitors were doing a hell of a job maintaining order; the cops, on the other hand, were looking more and more uptight, and more and more of them were showing up from somewhere.
A man who identified himself as a physician kept saying they can’t stop us from exercising our rights of free speech.
Feb 4, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Trans-Love Closes “See”
The SEE, the new concerthouse opened last month by Trans-Love Energies Unlimited of Detroit, closed its doors after only two weekends in operation.
The hippy-run coffeehouse, which featured music by the MC-5, the Spikedrivers, the Passing Clouds, Billy C. and the Sunshine, and the Charles Moore Ensemble during its brief history, along with lights by the Magic Veil Light Company, ran into business snags that made operation of the cooperative concerthouse impossible, according to former manager and Fifth Estate staff member John Sinclair.
Feb 4, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Contents of print edition
Cover photo: Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army in Edinburgh, Scotland.
4 Insurgent Rebel Clown Army
L.M. Bogad
7 Cultural Appropriation & Shaming
Rod Dubey
9 The Myth of Che Guevara
MLB
11 Ukrainian & Russian Repression
FE Staff
12 The Legacy of Omar Aziz
Leila Al Shami
14 Left Abets Genocide in Syria
Feb 2, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Fuck Authority
The Poster That Keeps on Going!

When someone on the Fifth Estate staff over 40 years ago came up with the slogan, Fuck Authority, it was printed as a 29” X 22” poster and tucked inside a 1975 issue of the publication, then a monthly tabloid.
On the reverse side was a catalog of titles offered through the paper’s bookstore which was housed in the same space as its public office.
Feb 2, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Grimshaw Convicted for Obscene Kite
The infamous Grimshaw kite case has reached its first conclusion, with an astounding miscarriage of justice.
The case, as you may recall, concerned a kite, made out of an American flag, with the inscription: “Fuck America—Go Fly a Kite” and an Egyptian peace eye symbol. The kite was hanging from a light fixture in The Sun office, 4863 John Lodge.
Feb 2, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Issue intro
Time to Begin!
As we send this issue to the printer, the ghastly Shit Show known as the 2016 American presidential election has not yet concluded, although it will be over when you read this.
While one of the candidates expressed definitively more openly bigoted and authoritarian ideas, neither challenged the basic equation of life within the state and capitalism. The horrors of war, racism, environmental collapse, and oppression will continue regardless of the electoral outcome.
Feb 2, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Jefferson Airplane Lands in City
Nearly 4,000 young people jammed Into the Ford Auditorium on Friday June 30 to hear the Jefferson Airplane.
Three thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine people enjoyed themselves.
The Detroit News didn’t.
Their reporter came on like a middle aged Brenda Starr equipped only with platinum hair and a super-hostile attitude towards rock and roll, folk-rock and Grace Slick:
Feb 2, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Lawyers for LEMAR?
A number of Detroit lawyers have indicated to Detroit LEMAR (Legalize Marijuana) that they would be interested in setting up a legal aid service for busted marijuana users if a general fund could be set up which would insure a nominal fee for those attorneys involved.
Their suggestion was that interested heads and sympathetic persons pledge a dollar or two per month to such a fund so that a backlog of available money would be made available in cases of arrests on marijuana charges.
Feb 2, 2017 Read the whole text...
S. Laplage
Literature not Flyers
Review
a review of
Small Beauty by Jia Qing Wilson-Yangas. Metonymy Press, 2016, $16.95 CAD
During a discussion hosted by Montreal’s L’Insoumise anarchist bookstore and DIRA anarchist library, the novelist Lola Lafon was asked how she includes her politics in her novels.
(A review of her 2014 We Are the Birds of the Coming Storm appears in the Summer 2015Fifth Estate.)
Feb 2, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Rev. Gracie to be Honored
Letters were mailed July 12 inviting hundreds ‘of Detroit area activists in the peace, civil rights, civil liberties and religious reform movements to a testimonial dinner honoring the Rev. David M. Gracie.
The Dinner will be held on July 21, 1967, at U.A.W. Local 174 Hall at 6495 W. Warren (at Livernois) at 7:00 p.m.
Feb 2, 2017 Read the whole text...
Ben Habeebe
The Press of Peace
Draft Resistance in Vietnam Summer
A good peace never did come easy.
One of the real tough things about involvement in a resistance movement is your total lack of power. When LBJ (of “Hey, Hey” fame) addressed a thousand-dollar-a-couple Democratic Party fund raising dinner in L.A. a few thousand people gathered outside to tell Lyndon they didn’t like his policy in Vietnam.
Feb 2, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Calendar
The calendar is prepared by Fifth Estate calendar girls Karen Kovac and Naiomi Epil with cooperation from Detroit Adventure. Copy deadline is the 6th and 22nd of each month and should be sent to the Fifth Estate, Calendar, 1107 W. Warren, Detroit, Michigan 48201.
Sat the 1st
CONCERT—Meadow Brook Music Festival. Detroit Symphony with Sixten Ehrling. Oakland Univ. 8:30 Adm. 338–7211, ext. 2301. 7/1
Jan 31, 2017 Read the whole text...
Various Authors
Letters
Our readers respond
Send letters to fe@fifthestate.org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220
All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length.
I appreciate Chellis Glendinning’s criticisms of modern, Western civilization, including modern agriculture, which has been highly detrimental to ecological and social balance in the world. (See “Linear Perspective, Fences & Nature’s Glory,” FE #396, Summer 2016.)
Jan 31, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Unclassified Ads
Send to: The Fifth Estate, 1107 W. Warren, Detroit, Mich. 48201, phone 831–6800
Unclassified costs 50 cents per line per week. Figure 5 words per line. A word is a word, including 1 and 2 letter words. A phone number is a word. Street numbers are words. Abbreviations should be sensible. (No limit on number of lines)
Jan 31, 2017 Read the whole text...
Sue Lack
Beach Boy Carl Wilson Indicted
...for Refusing Army Induction
UPS — Shouts of “draft-dodger” and rumors of a FBI arrest have threatened the clean-cut All-American image of the Beach Boys since Carl Wilson, 20, lead guitar, and “cuddliest,” youngest of the three Wilson brothers, refused to submit for induction into the Armed Forces on January 3, 1967.
Claiming Conscientious Objection on the basis of a conflict of values (“My duty to God is far greater than any mortal demand”), Carl’s request was rejected ostensibly on the grounds of late filing. He was indicted by a federal grand jury on April 5 and entered a plea of “not guilty.”
Jan 30, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Birmingham Student Paper Assails Fifth Estate
Editors note: The Fifth Estate continued to win readers and supporters throughout the Detroit Metropolitan area.
The following review of the paper recently appeared in the school newspaper of Covington Jr. High School in Birmingham.
Covington student Claudia Marcun II forwarded the story to us.
Dennis Nelson
Jan 30, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Detroiters Migrating to California; Don’t
The S.F. Oracle recently sent a missive to the Fifth Estate office asking us to warn those who are traveling west to bring: (besides their flowers and bananas) money for food and rent, sleeping bags and rucksacks, extra food (brown rice and soysauce—100 lbs. bags at rice mills for $12), camping equipment, warm clothing for the cold times, and proper I.D.
Jan 30, 2017 Read the whole text...
City of Detroit
Detroit Police Describe Entrapment Campaign
Editor’s note: The following is printed exactly as it was released by the City of Detroit, Department Report and Information Committee.
Movie goers who once marveled at the disguises of Lon Chaney would be amazed at the many “faces” of Detroit police department detectives.

Jan 30, 2017 Read the whole text...
Various Authors
Letters to the Editor
Dear Editor:
Since you are one of the few progressive newspapers around, we have a special request for you. A group of citizens of Mill Valley, California are handling a National Stamp Drive to help equip our garage.
Over the past couple of years, we have been able to exchange stamps for a great deal of the equipment which keeps our cars operational for our field workers. Among the things which we have acquired are: electrical tire-changing apparatus, several battery chargers, analyzing machine, an air meter, voltage regulator machine, a wheel balancer, and three ’65 Falcon Econoline buses. This has been of invaluable service to us and our work.
Jan 30, 2017 Read the whole text...
Muhammad Ali
John Lottier
Muhammad Ali
The Loser and Still Champion
Editor’s Note: The following interview with Muhammad Ali appeared originally in two parts in the Michigan Daily. It was conducted by John Lottier of the Daily immediately prior to Muhammad’s departure to Houston, where he was convicted of violation of the Selective Service Act and sentenced to the maximum of five years in jail and a $10,000 fine.
Jan 30, 2017 Read the whole text...
Sol Plafkin
Off Center
The ridiculous bill in the U.S. House of Representatives to penalize flag-burners passed by a whopping majority (385 to 16) last week—but in their haste, the patriotic legislators forgot to include the specific term “burning” in their prohibition. They did ban mutilating, defacing, defiling or trampling the flag.
Jan 30, 2017 Read the whole text...
Simon Galubara
Studies Show LSD Might Damage Human Chromosomes
UPS — If you’re tripping, don’t read this now. Save it for later, and enjoy your trip Otherwise—Evidence, admittedly somewhat inconclusive, has been brought forth seemingly indicating that LSD can do damage to human chromosomes. Studies are being made in Buffalo, Bellevue University Hospital here, and at the University of Oregon. The first work reported on, that of Buffalo scientists, is the least significant.
Jan 30, 2017 Read the whole text...
Phil Ochs
The War is Over
Editors’ note: The following opinion was written by folksinger Phil Ochs and originally appeared in the LA Free Press. The article was written before President Johnson was in Los Angeles on June 23, when thousands greeted his holiness.

The war is over and what a relief. It sure was depressing—but now, thank God, we can celebrate. It has been called off from the bottom up, and now the only ones participating in it are those that still believe it exists.
Jan 30, 2017 Read the whole text...
Joe Fineman
“You Only Live Twice” at Palms
Review
When Saturday matinees were only two bits and weekly serials dragged on endlessly, James Bond was barely a flicker on a distant horizon. Broccoli and Saltzman with Panavision, Technicolor, United Artists, Sean Connery and a bottomless shipload of gimmickry have thrown us back to our childhood.
Until now, the most un-cinematic bait drew the fish out of the woodwork; Lesbians, homosexuals, a sadistic grandmother, a unique air corps and a frequently bedridden James Bond. The utter shock of the latest Bond thriller is that it really clears the deck and settles down to telling an exciting story.
Jan 30, 2017 Read the whole text...
Sol Plafkin
Council Rejects City’s Bike Ban
Intelligence finally reigned supreme recently when Detroit’s Common Council tore apart Ray Girardin’s stupid proposal to ban motorcycles from city parks without a special permit.
The proposal was immediately condemned by the American Civil Liberties Union as unconstitutional and in violation of the civil liberties of individuals because of its vagueness.
Jan 29, 2017 Read the whole text...
Frank H. Joyce
Detroit Tries to Support Viet War
...as 500 March in Parade

The gentlemen of Grand Circus Park were not impressed. But then there wasn’t much to be impressed by.
Less than 500 people marched down Woodward Avenue in the great Flag Day parade on June 14. The March was called by a resolution of the Michigan Senate to honor the flag and “Support Our Boys in Vietnam.”
Jan 29, 2017 Read the whole text...
George Harrison
Miles
George Harrison Interview
Editor’s Note: Since the Beatles released their newest album (“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonelyhearts Club Band”), the American and British press have unleashed a variety of articles on the group. Below is an interview given to Miles of the International Times (London) by George Harrison M.B.E. (Courtesy UPS)
George: If you could just say a word and it would tell people something straight to the point, then, you take all the words that are going to say everything, and you’d get it in about two lines. Just use those. Just keep saying those words.
Jan 29, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Help the Fifth Estate Expansion Fund

The Fifth Estate is not reaching everyone that it should. Conservative distributors and frightened merchants will not handle or sell the paper because it is too controversial. Hence, there are many people who are not able to read what we have to say simply because there is nowhere they can buy the paper.
Jan 29, 2017 Read the whole text...
Frank H. Joyce
Hippies Confront New Left
...at Old Left Conference
On June 16, 1962 a group of students stimulated by the burgeoning protest movement of black young people in the south, met at Port Huron, Michigan.
After much debate they approved a long statement analyzing “the state of the society which they were inheriting.” Known as the Port Huron Statement, the document served as the organizational base for Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The Port Huron meeting is generally considered to be the beginning of the “New-Left.”
Jan 29, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
PAR Benefits at Concept
announcement
Benefit performances for People Against Racism will be given by the Concept East Theater on July 7th and 8th. Two plays, Edward Albee’s “A Zoo Story” and Leroi Jones’ “The Dutchman,” will be performed on Friday, July 7th. Laurence Blaine’s “Dark Nights, Angry Faces” will be performed on Saturday, July 8th. “Dark Nights, Angry Faces” consists of two two-act plays: “Prize Fight” and “The Meaning of Time.” Performances begin at 8:00 p.m. at the Concept East Theater, 401 East Adams. Tickets may be obtained by calling the PAR office, 962–3855.
Jan 29, 2017 Read the whole text...
Ben Habeebe
The Press of Peace
Nation, City Plan Vietnam Summer
Hey! Hey! LBJ—Look What’s happenin’ in America today:
Vietnam Summer, 1967. From coast-to-coast 4,000 people in 48 states have stepped forward to work on Vietnam Summer projects to end the war...and that number is on the rise.
Here in Detroit a hard core of 75 peace activists ranging from Democrats to Socialists have forged a nucleus for a summer of draft counseling, community and political organizing, rallies and demonstrations.
Jan 29, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
What to do
...if you are eating your breakfast on Thursday, June 15, 1967 and looking out of the window and see three narco police climbing around on the roof of the house next to your apartment...
Pull the window shade. Walk calmly to the nearest telephone and call the Fifth Estate.
We will immediately dispatch a reporter, perhaps even an editor, to the scene.
He will arrive in time to see Detective Walter Scott of the Detroit Narcotics bureau emerge empty—handed from the house which is the living quarters of several hippies and cyclists.
Jan 29, 2017 Read the whole text...
Bob Serling
Riot Eyewitness
It started around 10:30 p.m. Monday, July 24 on Prentis, while there was a small integrated group sitting in front of our apartment building, talking like they do every night, and the police came by and saw them and said “Get in the house, white boy, and you too nigger!”

Jan 28, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Calendar
The calendar is prepared by Fifth Estate calendar girls Karen Kovac and Naomi Epel with cooperation from Detroit Adventure. Copy deadline is the 6th and 22nd of each month and should be sent to the Fifth Estate Calendar, 1107 W. Warren, Detroit, Michigan 48201.
wed. the 2nd
DEMONSTRATION: LBJ in Detroit August 2nd. All opposed to the war, demonstrate on August 2nd at Cobo Hall, 7:30 p.m. For information call 832–5700 or 963–7711. 8/2.
Jan 27, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
International Days of Chalking
Activists in Brattleboro, Vt. are calling for an International Day of Chalking Against State Violence, on Saturday, June 3. Autonomous actions with no central coordination; just get your chalks, go out by yourself or with others, and chalk about war, racism, police killings, prisons, sexual assaults or other issues.
Jan 27, 2017 Read the whole text...
anon.
Jailed Residents Describe Experiences
Sunday night a bunch of us were over at a friend’s house. We didn’t have room to stay there so we thought we’d try to make it back to another guy’s apartment. We were almost home when five cop cars pulled up with guns sticking out of all the windows and stopped us.
We were in two cars. The cops that came over to our car stuck shot guns in our faces and made us get out. They handcuffed our hands behind our backs. The handcuffs were fastened very tightly just at the wrist joint so that today, Thursday, our hands are still numb.
Jan 27, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Vietnam Summer
What are you doing during Vietnam Summer 1967?
“It is time now to meet the escalation of the War in Vietnam with an escalation of opposition to that War. I think the time has come for all people of good will to engage in a massive program of organization, of mobilization. This is the purpose of Vietnam Summer. And I’m happy to join as one of the sponsors of what I consider a most necessary program, a program that may well determine the destiny of our nation.”
—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., at press conference announcing VIETNAM SUMMER, Cambridge, Mass., April 23, 1967
Jan 27, 2017 Read the whole text...
Steve Suffet
Why I Ate My Draft Card
from WIN Magazine (UPS)
Well, first of all, it wasn’t really my draft-card but my Selective Service Notice of Classification. My Registration Certificate, laminated with a rather untasty variety of acetate plastic, remains intact. Furthermore, I did not commit this act of ingestion by my lonesome, but rather with the aid of a dozen or more accomplices, most of whom I ran across at a DuBois Club concert in New York last November. But why should I devour my classification?
Jan 27, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate staffer
City Cops Hit Hog Riders
Ah rode all night, and all day long,
‘Cause ah’m in love with you.”
—old ballad
They wouldn’t let us into the bar. It was 2:30 a.m. and we wanted to get one last six pack of beer. We climbed on our scooters, pulled our “safety helmets” (as the state law now required), kicked over our hogs, and rolled out onto 14 Mile road. The light at Gratiot turned green, and with a healthy jerk of the right wrist, smoke and noise began to vomit forth from our high-rise pipes, as our rubber ground into the asphalt and the combined thirty-six hundred cubic centimeters of our three vintage Harley-Davidsons growled across Gratiot.
Jan 26, 2017 Read the whole text...
T. Brennan
“D.C. Only Hears Gunshots”
Reprinted from the Berkeley Barb
ALBUQUERQUE (UNS) — The mountains of Northern New Mexico’s Rio Arribba County, like Ken Kesey’s Sometimes A Great Notion Oregon, expect that they are drier, are scarce of touring campers, as two members of the Confederation of Free City States, wanted on felony charges stemming from the June 5th raid on Tierra Amarilla Courthouse, remain fugitives.
Jan 26, 2017 Read the whole text...
Hank Malone
Hippies—the new aristocracy?
“A lot of us have been smokin’ reefers and layin’ broads in the bushes at Belle Isle for the last twenty years...and nobody ever called that a Love-In.”
—anonymous
Greaser and Frat Rocker and Mod Lower-middle class versus upper-middle-class America.
The struggle for the supremacy of class values among the recent Young. Both begin more or less together, as Screamies. It is the Mod who characteristically veers off to become the Teeny-Bopper and eventually the Hippie.
Jan 26, 2017 Read the whole text...
anon.
New Book on Radicals
Dr. David Herreshoff, assistant professor of English at Wayne State University, is the author of a new book published by the WSU Press.
Dr. Herreshoff’s book, American Disciples of Marx, From the Age of Jackson to the Progressive Era (216 pages, $7.95) traces the activities of the first Marxists in America, including Orestes Brownson, Joseph Weydemeyer, Friedrich Sorge, and Daniel De Leon. The book traces the pressures faced by the first American Marxists in their efforts to organize a socialist working class movement.
Jan 26, 2017 Read the whole text...
anon.
Peace Worker Slain
George Vissard, peace activist in Austin, Texas, was killed last week in an Austin grocery store. Vissard was found at about 11:00 a.m. with a shot through the back and shot through the arm; his body had been placed in the meat freezer of the drive-in market.
Early reports from Texas indicated that his death was probably due to political reasons and that no money was missing from the cash register of the store. Later reports claimed that a “sizable amount” of money had been taken—but not from the cash register. Austin police authorities say that they are moving under the assumption that the motive is robbery and that Vissard tried to resist, which brought about his death.
Jan 26, 2017 Read the whole text...
anon.
Study of Cops Shows ‘Pathological Hostility’
“The ghetto atmosphere was illuminated last week in a study prepared for the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement. In a survey of three cities—Chicago, Washington and Boston—the study found that four out of every five white policemen working in Negro neighborhoods have prejudiced attitudes towards Negroes.
Jan 26, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Unclassifieds
Send to: The Fifth Estate, 1107 W. Warren, Detroit, Mich. 48201, phone 831–6800
Unclassified costs 50 cents per line per week. Figure 5 words per line. A word is a word, including I and 2 letter words. A phone number is a word. Street numbers are words. Abbreviations should be sensible.
(No limit on number of lines)
Jan 26, 2017 Read the whole text...
Carl Robb
City Lights Journal 3
Review
a review of
City Lights Journal Number Three. San Francisco, City Lights Books. $2.50.
City Lights Bookstore is a bookstore, a publisher, and an institution. The Journal is a good indication of what can be found in the bookstore, from the publisher and the make up of the people the institution represents.
Jan 24, 2017 Read the whole text...
anon.
Supreme Court to Hear GIs
Fort Hood Three challenged government’s right to send them to Vietnam
The first GIs to publicly refuse to go to Vietnam, known as the Fort Hood Three, asked the Supreme Court to hear their suit against the war, and against the government’s right to send them to Vietnam.
Jimmy Johnson, 21, Dennis Mora, 25, and David Samas, 21, first brought this suit while on leave from the army in June, 1966. At that time, they made public their refusal to go to Vietnam.
Jan 24, 2017 Read the whole text...
anon.
Thoreau Made a Hippy

A new United States postage stamp commemorating the 150th anniversary of the birth of Henry David Thoreau has been designed by painter Leonard Baskin.
The stamp was first placed on sale July 12 at the writer-anarchist’s home town of Concord, Massachusetts.
The stamp came under fire recently from Thoreau devotees on the grounds that it makes bearded, long-haired Henry look like a “hippie.” Indeed, Thoreau’s appearance and his life style may qualify him as one of America’s first “hippies.”
Jan 24, 2017 Read the whole text...
Patricia Murphy
Two Hundred Honor Rev. Gracie
More than 200 peace, civil rights and church activists honored David M. Gracie at a testimonial dinner Friday, July 21, as the Rev. Gracie prepared to leave Detroit for a new job with the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania.
The gathering represented a wide cross section of Detroit’s “Left” community, ranging in age from late teens to late sixties, and in ideology from pacifism to revolution. They came to listen to perhaps the one man in the city who could speak to, and listen to, all of them.
Jan 24, 2017 Read the whole text...