Most Recent Additions

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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“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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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;

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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.

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“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).

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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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On Saturday, March 26, demonstrations protesting the war in Vietnam were held in Detroit as this city’s effort in the Second International Days of Protest. In preparation for this event, sponsored by the Detroit Committee to End the War in Vietnam, Women for Peace, Detroit Citizens for Peace and Trade Unionists for Peace, more than 20,000 leaflets were distributed and advertisements appeared In the Detroit News and various campus and community newspapers.

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“Let the politicos with their deals, their puerile ambitions, their desperate greed, their advance division of the spoils, not meddle with the revolutionary process. Let the hack politicians become revolutionaries if they will! But let them not transform the Revolution into degenerate politics, because too much of our peoples blood is being spilled today, and too many enormous sacrifices have been made to deserve such a worthless deception tomorrow.”

—Fidel Castro

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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.

Send to: THE FIFTH ESTATE, 1107 W. Warren, Detroit, 48201

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Making a bid for the Wallace vote, Spiro Agnew (sic), allegedly the Republican Vice Presidential candidate, has been sounding like Rip Van Winkle just waking up from the ‘40s. Particularly astute analysis of what’s happening on campuses, was offered at a New York press conference Saturday, September 7.

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Steve Wildstrom, managing editor of the Michigan Daily in Ann Arbor, Mich., was recently beat to the ground and roughed up by deputy sheriffs attempting to keep him from covering a welfare rights demonstration that the regular press was allowed to cover freely.

On Wednesday, Sept. 4, Steve went to the local Washtenaw County courthouse where welfare mothers were attempting to talk to the county board of supervisors about a needed change in the welfare program after reporters from the Michigan Daily had been harassed for two days. As he placed his hand on the courthouse door to enter, he was ordered away by deputy sheriffs. When he asked rhetorically if it wasn’t a public building and if it wasn’t open, he was told that orders had been given to let no one in.

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A reader spoke to us about a letter that appeared in the last issue from a homosexual named Paul who was being harassed by the police. We didn’t ignore this letter, but wrote him back and suggested that he contact the American Civil Liberties Union. We don’t know how he made out.

Those new subscribers who took advantage of the free offer of an ESP record with their subscription will have them sent as soon as possible. There may be a delay of a few weeks, but you will get them.

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Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: Could you please tell me how and where I can get a convenient contraceptive?

Unfortunately, it is impossible for me to get any by prescription as I am 17, single and living with my parents.

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The Black Panthers have begun a campaign for the immediate admission to bail of their Minister of Defense, Huey P. Newton, who was convicted Sept. 8^th of voluntary manslaughter in the shooting death, Oct. 28^th of last year, of an Oakland, California policeman.

Eldridge Cleaver, Panther Minister of Information and Peace and Freedom Party candidate for President, said in San Francisco, that the verdict in the eight week trial was “totally unacceptable...a compromise verdict,” and stated that petitions were being prepared for circulation demanding that Newton be allowed to post bond.

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LONDON, England—Liberation News Service—Europe’s left, new and old, has been brutally unanimous in its criticism of the Soviet military intervention in Czechoslovakia.

The Communist Parties of England, France, Italy and other nations issued long statements describing the Soviet action as an unjustified interference in the internal affairs of a Communist Party and socialist state.

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In regard to the events of Chicago during the convention week, I would like to submit the following information:

On August 26, 10:30pm, a friend and I went to Lincoln Park. At this time a large group of people, mostly young, was gathered in the park listening to different speakers, chanting and sitting near fires talking. Soon some of the people began “antagonizing” the present police with name calling.

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By the time the narcotics squad pinpointed him last month, Dick Swafford, 28, had probably stashed two or three hundred thousand dollars away in Swiss banks. Once a week he’d leave his home in L.A. and drive to San Diego to meet the incoming grass supply from Mexico. After a bit of business in California he’d fly across country, sometimes stopping at Chicago long enough to stuff a suitcase full of shit into a parcel locker (leaving the key to the locker for his contact there to pick up later in the day.

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Approximately 150 white off-duty patrolmen and detectives, and civilians attacked and beat a small group of Black Panthers and white sympathizers in the Brooklyn Criminal Court Wednesday, Sept. 4^th. The attackers, many shouting “White Power” and wearing George Wallace for President buttons, were responding to a pamphlet distributed by the Law Enforcement Group of New York which urged “all patrolmen and loyal Americans” to “stand up and be counted in court.”

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To get some idea of what “Poor Cow” is like, one need only imagine what “Elvira Madigan” would have been like if it had been filmed in the slums of London.

The two pictures are remarkably similar: both deal with impractical young lovers; both use the same impressionistic film techniques; both employ many short, carefully composed scenes; and both follow a visual, rather than a narrative, plot line.

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A plainclothes policeman who infiltrated the Youth International Party has claimed that Yippies planned in advance to riot and provoke police attacks on them during the Democratic National Convention.

Robert L. Pierson said he was given a leave to serve as an investigator for the state’s attorney’s office, won the Yippies’ confidence and became bodyguard for Jerry Rubin.

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Fifth Estate, A Newspaper Of Detroit

EDITORS

Harvey Ovshinsky

Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Cathy West

CIRCULATION

Tommye Wiese

NEWS EDITOR

Alan Gotkin

MUSIC EDITORS

Tony Reay

John Sinclair

OFFICE MANAGER

Debbie Quigg

PHOTO EDITOR

Mike Tyre

ART DIRECTION

Blallen

ADVERTISING

Gunnar Lewis

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Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley has strongly defended the actions of his police department during the Democratic National Convention. A specially prepared 77 page report issued Sept. 6 by the mayor’s office stated that the disturbances and police actions were provoked by demonstrators led by out-of-town “revolutionaries.” The report also stated that police used the minimal amount of force necessary to control the protesters and added that demonstrators were encouraged by the news media to prolong confrontations with the police.

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a review of

The Diary of Che Guevara, edited by Robert Scheer, Bantam Books, Inc., NYC, $1.25 paperback.

The recently-captured Bolivian diary of Dr. Ernesto “Che” Guevara has now been published on the heels of his death. Since his canonization is nearly in full swing, it will probably be a long time before an objective un-handwringing account of the broad “meaning” of the diary will be apprehended. So before I wax into his charisma myself, I should like to make a few remarks I consider important about the diary.

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