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Resa Jannett in cooperation with Detroit Adventure

1913: TROOPS called into Washington, D.C. to protect women’s suffrage.

1918: D.C. Court of Appeals drops all sentences and arrests against women from 1913.

THE EPIC THAT Never Was, and The Passenger at Detroit Inst. of Arts. 8 pm.

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i’m scared walking

so i hold lori’s hand

and she says, its a trouble, mommy,

but don’t worry.

her strong little hand squeezes mine,

then she skips on ahead and i try

to be brave.

loreie j

i go to prepare a worki for you

the pain of it too much i want

you to live free breathe clean

drink clean walk safe, i

...

These are two interviews with women who experienced abortions. One was illegal, the other was a legal.

I didn’t know where to go when I found out I was pregnant. My boyfriend didn’t have enough bread to support a kid, and I work as a waitress in a bar. I was going through changes trying to decide what to do. I was in a desperate position.

...

Michigan women will demonstrate in Lansing March 13 for one aspect of our liberation—the right to abortion. Our demands are: free and legal abortion on demand; no forced sterilization; repeal of all existing abortion laws.

Abortion should be a human right. To a woman who has no choice but to bear children, liberation is no more than a bad joke. When we can control our own fertility, we can each work and plan our future. We will be better able to fight against the other forms of oppression that we encounter. We must be free to govern our own bodies and it is for this basic freedom that we will march in Lansing.

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Cuban women are beginning to see solid results of the many years of struggle that they have been through. Before the revolution, there was little or no work for any women. The only way a single woman could get money for her children or herself was to beg or else sell herself. Most women were totally dependent upon their husbands or fathers. A divorced woman was considered to be nothing but a prostitute, because that was the only way she could support herself. Virginity became even more of a prize for a marriage dowry. Young women were “protected” to the point where they couldn’t leave the house without a chaperone.

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My image of the few women mentioned in history texts in school is completely one-dimensional. There’s Betsy Ross, smiling at George Washington as she sews stars onto the flag...and Dolly Madison, the super-hostess, who saved the President’s portraits from the burning White House.

I get furious now when I think about it. I never even noticed that women (not to mention non-white or working people) were practically non-existent in the history books. That is why I really became excited while reading the life of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a heroine of the American Labor Movement.

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The history of the Vietnamese people is clearly a history of struggle, of choosing what to tolerate and what and how to change. No Vietnamese man, woman, or child has been spared the struggle because it is one of survival and the protection of the freedom to define how to live, once in the face of Chinese occupation, then, French colonialism and Catholicism, and now American imperialism.

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American Civil Liberties Union, 961–4662

Ad Hoc Citizens Committee, 923–0610

Centerhouse Switchboard, 399–9090

Community Reporter, 833–5085

Detroit Anti-War Coalition, 874–4410

Fifth Estate Offices, 831–6800

(Distribution Centers, KOTC, 831–1574)

Fire Department, 962–0400

Gay Liberation, 923–7749

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Following is an excerpt from an interview with Angela Davis done by the Guardian.

How do you see the women’s movement? Also, do you consider it to have a special role for black women?

Let me begin by saying this: no revolutionary should fail to understand the underlying significance of the dictum that the success or failure of a revolution can almost always be gauged by the degree to which the status of women is altered in a radical, progressive direction. After all, Marx and Engels contended that there are two basic facts around which the history of mankind revolves: production and reproduction. The way in which people obtain their means of subsistence on one hand, and in which the family is organized on the other hand.

...

Being a revolutionary, the threat of spending time in prison comes down on me from time to time. Not knowing much about the day-to-day life of women inside the prison walls, I have always been uneasy at the thought of that unknown world and put it out of my mind. The letter that follows was written by Jane Kennedy, an angry voice from inside the prison walls, running down the systematic pain and humiliation suffered by the women prisoners she lives with.

...

My hips are a desk.

From my ears hang

chains of paper clips.

Rubber bands form my hair

My breasts are wells of mimeograph ink.

My feet bear casters.

Buzz. Click.

My head

is a badly organized file.

My head is a switchboard

where crossed lines crackle

My head is a wastebasket

of worn ideas.

...

Motor City Labor News is a regular feature of the Fifth Estate. In this column we want to provide a space for people from different parts of the Detroit labor scene to exchange their experiences—experiences of the struggle to gain control over the rate and conditions of work, as well as experiences of the fight to regain control over their unions, where these have gotten bogged down in bureaucracy.

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We know that sterilization was used as a technique of genocide by Nazi doctors. Today in the U.S. welfare mothers are being punished by forced sterilization. Often in New York, women must choose between sterilization or loss of welfare payments. Elsewhere, poor women must agree to sterilization before they can receive an abortion.

...

sounds that come from the soul are always the same

free

open sounds

giving

the kind that reach out

and touch—

that’s what our sisters did/minimum

touching maximum/sharing oppression

and the wish for its

removal...

feeling those sounds

seeing them felt on others

watching faces smile for the first time in months—

...

This article was written by Debby D’Amico and was reprinted from Up From Under (the August-September 1970 issue), a magazine by, for and about women.

We are the invisible women, the faceless women, the nameless women...the female half of the silent majority, the female half of the ugly Americans, the smallest part of the “little people.” No one photographs us, no one writes about us, no one puts us on TV. No one says we are beautiful, no one says we are important, very few like to recognize that we are here.

...

An interview with Lorraine, of the women’s band GOLDFLOWER, which has played for many enthusiastic women, including Erika Huggins and the other inmates at Niantic State Prison in Connecticut.

Lorraine grew up in a Long Island suburb. At 14, she was playing bluegrass guitar and hanging out with Washington Square folk musicians. At 16 she met a guy named Bobby and married him just before her 17^th birthday. They moved to the lower East side where their daughter Magdalena was born. Lorraine left, taking Maggie with her after about a year of marriage. She went through a lot of heavy stuff: unsatisfying relationships, trying to bring her daughter up herself, no money, a brush with hard drugs. A good psychiatrist really helped her a lot. After a while, she felt good enough to start playing guitar again. Singing and playing with Bev and Laura in Goldflower has given her confidence that she lacked even when she was already quite good. But she’s still learning and struggling, doesn’t think of herself as having “made it.” I thought some of the changes she’s gone through in the past couple of years would be meaningful to other women, whether you’re trying to be musicians, or just starting to find out what you’ve always wanted to be.

...

In this column we’d like to share with you some of the work and ideas of women in Detroit. There are many more things to be done, like starting your own rap group, theater group, women’s newspaper, child care center, male baby-sitting service, a women’s union, women’s history classes, auto mechanics and carpentry classes, and women’s legal aid services. How about a women’s center so we can meet each other and coordinate our activities? We need to pool our energies to get some new things started in Detroit. Let us know what you are doing. Maybe we can work together.

...

Four Michigan women have filed a suit in U.S. District Court charging that the Automatic Retailers of America, Great Lakes Steel Division, discriminate against women by stabilizing them into job categories; in other words, freezing them into dead-end jobs. They also charge that ARA requires women to undergo burdensome training requirements not required for men and deny women equal opportunity to work overtime.

...

The second issue of the Youth News Service was sent out on February 25. The news packet was sent to some 43 high school and youth collectives who are putting out underground newspapers or are thinking of starting them.

The Fifth Estate is turning over a back office to the Youth News Coalition to use as a general Office.

...

Fifth Estate: Jackie, what were some of the main obstacles that confronted you while growing up’?

Jackie: Well, first of all as a child I really didn’t consider any profession that influences society as being for women. Every profession that influences rather than servicing people is male.

When I was very young, 8 or 9, I had a diary. I was very interested in art, particularly literature because that’s all I was exposed to, but I automatically assumed that it was impossible for me to be an artist. I could appreciate art, but that was it. I got into a very defensive idea about appreciating art because I didn’t think I could actually do it. At a very early age I had already got that idea fixed in my head. There are very few women artists for a young girl to identify with, and in my neighborhood and family, women were wives and mothers, certainly not artists.

...

On March 27 a conference—learn-in sponsored by the May Day Coalition will be held to educate people concerning the war in Indochina and its effects on the United States. The conference will also give people a more complete idea of what the April 30 march on the Chrysler Tank Plant in Warren is all about.

...

“Mother, what is a feminist?”
“A feminist, my daughter,
Is any woman now who cares
To think about her own affairs
As men don’t think she oughter.”
—Alice Duer Miller, 1915

On March 8 in 1857 hundreds of women textile workers marched from a poor, working-class district on the Lower East Side of New York City to a wealthy area nearby. They were demonstrating against poor working conditions, low wages, and a 60-hour work week, and demanding equality for all women. They were dispersed by the police who “were just protecting property.” Many women were trampled and arrested.

...

STAFF COLLECTIVE: Barbara B., Barbara C., Barbara V., Betty B., Betty M., Carol, Carolyn, Carrie, Cathy, Cinda, Cindy, Colleen, Collette, Debbie B., Debbie S., Elizabeth, Fran, Gronya, Jackie, Janet, Jean, JoAnne, Judy, Julie, Lauren, Lona, Lorraine, Marge, Marie, Marilyn, Mary Jo, Nalda, Pat, Resa, Terry, plus assistance from the regular Fifth Estate Staff.

...

This issue of the Fifth Estate, appearing on the 61^st anniversary of International Women’s Day, is dedicated to all our sisters around the world. It is the product of the Fifth Estate staff, women front the Women’s Media Co-op and women involved in other activities around the city.

In this issue of the paper we wanted the chance to express our ideas, art, anger and feelings about our own lives. We wanted to publicize and support the struggles of women in other countries. We also hoped that by making available a list of women’s organizations and services, we would make it easier for women to meet together and find activities they would like to participate in.

...

Many women are going to take part in the anti-war activity being planned for the Spring. A group known as the Mayday Coalition is planning a march to the Chrysler Tank Plant in Warren on April 30. Several groups of women are planning to form a contingent named after Angela Davis to be part of the march.

...

Deadline: September 15

Publication date: October 15

Themes

* FE — Celebrating fifty years of promoting revolution everywhere

* Resistance to the U.S. Vietnam War

Before contacting us, please read our Writers’ Guidelines.

<strong>Submit manuscripts for short pieces and proposals for longer essays, along with graphics and photographs, to:

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While many of us dream of green forests and a restored natural world, there are others who embrace the machine to the extent of desiring to become one. Echoing the horrors of dystopian sci-fi novels, transhumanism and singularity advocates celebrate the merging of the human brain with computers. But, this grotesque movement comes at a time when there is growing apprehension of what technological Frankensteins have created.

...

The MC5 from promotion photo for their debut album, “Kick Out the Jams.” (photo: Leni Sinclair)

It was fifty years ago this summer that the lead singer of a band from a working class Detroit suburb screamed into a mic, “Kick out the jams, motherfucker,” inaugurating a wild ride into rock history.

The music of the MC5, whose combination of rock and roll power, attitude, and connection to the revolutionary White Panther Party, made them, and their poet, marijuana advocate manager, John Sinclair, frequent targets for police suppression, arrest, and violence.

...

COVER: “St. Mary of the Machines”--Stephen Goodfellow BACK: Joey Salamon

3 AnarchoShorts & Other tales from the planet

3 Letters

4 Fifth Estate celebrates 50^th year

5 The Rojava Revolution

Andrew Flood

6 All Organizing is Science Fiction

adrienne maree brown

7 When the War Comes Home

Marieke Bivar

...

Send letters via email to fe<AT>fifthestate<DOT>org or Fifth Estate, P.O. Box 201016, Ferndale MI 48220. All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten. Letters may be edited for length.

I had just thought about Pat Halley yesterday. (See “FE Staffer Puts a Pie in God’s Face,” FE Spring 2015)

...

Audiences at the 10^th Annual Montreal Anarchist Theatre Festival, May 19–20, saw excellent anarchist theatre performed by professional and amateur participants, troupes and monologues from Quebec and elsewhere including Belgium, France and the US.

The 2016 festival deadline is Oct. 31. Information is at festivaltheatreanarchiste — AT — yahoo — DOT — ca. Application form is at anarchistetheatrefestival.com.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following story is a true one and illustrates the truth that police brutality in Detroit is not a myth. It is not entirely a black man’s problem either as this story points out. Solid oak is colorblind. It only sees red.

We were walking down Woodward thinking about which all-night movie to see. It was 1:00 in the morning and cold. We were walking fast with our heads down against the wind.

...

a review of

Freedom Summer by Sally Belfrage (Viking, 1965)

The many aspects of the movement are presented in the often chaotic way they presented themselves to Sally Belfrage in the summer of 1964. Facts which could be dry and even boring if given in abstract take on life and meaning in the particular. They are sometimes present in connection with the personality of the person who spoke of them. Sometimes they are part of the history of a friend who survived them. Sometimes, facts come in to give meaning to the efforts of an Establishment man—a Greenwood deputy, an FBI agent, a representative of the justice department, a television reporter—to deny them. And sometimes, they are summed up in what was, for Sally Belfrage, one more step in the long walk of understanding.

...

The word huelga means strike, and it’s fast becoming a word in the American language as the strike that began in the grape fields surrounding Delano slowly radiates out across the country. But to those in the strike area, those who grew up in these fields and are now standing up for a union to protest the long years of suffering and deprivation huelga means a great deal more. It means the small things, it means a decent meal for their families, a chance for a decent home and a choice for them whether or not their children will work in these fields; it means a vacation that is more than a flat tire, or an illness, or rain. And it means the big things; it means that finally, as a body the farm workers are standing up together to present a bill long overdue: a bill to be paid not only with decent wages and human treatment in the fields—but a debt of enormous respect owed to these men and women, and to their parents.

...

National days of protest March 25–26 constituted the largest concerted world-wide action for peace in history. Demonstrations to protest the war in Vietnam took place in 30 countries, according to the National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam—initiator of the campaign.

In the United States, the protests surpassed those called by the NCV last October, indicating that the anti-war movement has grown significantly in response to the Johnson Administration’s escalation of U.S. intervention in Vietnam.

...

Reprint from Vietnam Report Vol. 1, No. 1, the official newsletter of the Detroit Committee to End the War in Vietnam (DCEWV), April 1966

All the way with LBJ—and Nguyen Cao Ky! (reprinted from Weekly People)

Using the occasion of the Tom Hayden speech during the International Days of Protest. James T. Lafferty, Chairman of the Citizens for Peace in Vietnam, announced his candidacy for the 17^th District U.S. Congressional seat presently held by Martha Griffiths.

...

The Vietnam war is exacting a cruel toll in lives and resources, detracting from constructive domestic programs, and threatening to lead to a third world war.

I PLEDGE to support and vote for candidates in 1966 who agree to work vigorously:

FOR U.S. steps to scale down the fighting to achieve a cease fire;

...

The Detroit Committee to End the War in Vietnam (1101 West Warren) is not the most popular organization in town. It has had all but two of its nine windows stoned, shot through or broken into.

In early march, late in the evening, at least three bricks were tossed into the office via the glass windows.

...

“He who lives by the sword dies by the sword,” but the men who are now dying have no such simple entrance into their own lives—the swords they bear (whatever “side”) are not what they live by, not the terms of their living, but alien & unnecessary tools forced into their hands by men who have taken themselves so far from such actual simple tools.

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PHILADELPHIA—The police state atmosphere legitimized at the Democratic Convention continues to grow. The arrest of four people here September 9 dramatizes the fact that the “authorities” will no longer tolerate any form of dissent.

The four arrested were among those seeking to make a peaceful protest at the opening of Hubert Humphrey’s presidential campaign in Philadelphia. Three of the four were members of the Philadelphia Resistance. The fourth, Ronald Whitehorse, is a member of People for Human Rights (PHR), the Philadelphia affiliate of National People Against Racism (PAR).

...

Wed. Sept. 18

LUMBERJACK DAYS. Here’s your big chance to stock up on firewood for the winter. You can even pretend you’re Paul Bunyan in East Tawas, Michigan. And don’t forget your blue ox.

HOLIDAY ON ICE show at the Cobo Hall arena.

Thurs. Sept. 19

DETROIT SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA at Ford Aud. Soloist: Gary Graffman, pianist. 8:30 pm.

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Reprinted from the National Guardian [New York City]

It is ironic to find the Pope’s recent encyclical on birth control to be in line with the statements of many black militants. The Pope, of course, tries to place his opposition to birth control on moral grounds-that is, he argues that to prevent a life from coming into being is as much an act against moral law as willfully to take a life. Some black militants oppose birth control because they see it as a genocidal weapon against the black community, which, in those instances of forced sterilization of welfare mothers, it is. However, both the Pope and those militants who oppose birth control are giving allegiance in their own ways to an old principle: there is strength in numbers.

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from Detroit Free Press, April 5, 1966

Gentlemen:

Regarding the issue of negotiation vs. withdrawal, it would be most unfortunate to allow the question to take up the working time of the peace movement. We are not Johnson’s special advisors, and our precise policy statements need not be unified, or even entirely compatible. What would appear to count most is visibility and persistence. There are, however, many who disagree with that statement. Some contend that the more extreme positions are too easily accommodated by the administration. The key question then is the difference in the operating code of ethics between these factions. I suggest the following. Once a group decides and plans an activity, all those who can in good conscience assist with its execution should do so in accord with the ground rules set by the originally responsible group. I see no contradiction in restraining my sign to “urge negotiations” even if I were personally to favor immediate withdrawal...

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I think that it is about time that the people in this town stopped paying vast amounts of money to see out-of-town groups purely because they are an out-of-town group, and start to take some notice of local people, who are generally putting out music and shows as good, if not better than, many of the top imports. I have been of this opinion for some time but I have generally left the criticism and appraisal of local talent to my learned co-editors, who, having been in the area somewhat longer than myself, are more adept in the local scene. However one group in particular I have seen twice within the space of two weeks and I feel duty bound to give them some of the praise and publicity that they deserve.

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Drums are rolling early and heavy in the Michigan Democratic Party’s forthcoming internal civil war with Detroit’s 37-year-old Mayor Jerome P. Cavanagh pitted against just-retired Asst. Sec. of State for African Affairs and former governor, 55-year-old G. Mennen villiams.

Unfortunately, the campaign promises to avoid discussion of pressing current issues (e.g. the war in Vietnam) and seems likely to center on a silly and meaningless battle of the “young” vs. the “old.”

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LONDON (LNS)—Millions of Catholics all over the world already staggering under the blow of the Pope’s controversial encyclical on the pill, are in for a new shock.

In a new edict published today by the Vatican press entitled “De Constipatone” the Pope slams down on the use of artificial laxatives to relieve constipation.

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The Beatles have finally dealt directly with the American radicals, politicos, and activists of the student movement who have been demanding that they say something.

The Beatles have said something and what they have said is not going to be popular with a great many. The more political you are, the less you will dig the Beatles’ new song, “Revolution.”

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It’s really good to see that Brother Ear is hearing the Detroit bands and digging them, especially since people around here have to be told how heavy the bands are. The Frost and the Thyme aren’t the only together groups working in this area, either—there are a number of bands whose music is consistently interesting and moving, and these bands are improving every day.

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Wes Montgomery—“March 6, 1968” (Riverside)

Wes Montgomery is simply one of the two greatest jazz guitarists of all time, the other being Charley Christian. A writer may go on and on and on about the innovations, contributions, and prestige this man gave to jazz but it may suffice to say that he undoubtedly was the best. This album was previously released on the old Riverside label and definitely doesn’t possess the clarity and forcefulness of his later Verve performances. (Due only to dated recording techniques.) But newly converted Wes Montgomery fans may find his old recordings a source of knowledge and a chronicled account of a great artist’s transition and maturation.

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And here we have a new album! Recorded right here in the Motor City before your very eyes and with living audience reaction.

Teagarden and Van Winkle, as many of you may know, consists entirely of two people who play organ and drums and occasionally drawl and sometimes sing. They do all of these things simultaneously and very well, as this album ably demonstrates.

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