As an ex-Detroiter, I know of your fine paper and your service to the people. Over here in Toronto we read your paper and pass it on to our brothers and sisters.
In Toronto some of the people are forming small revolutionary cells. For reasons of security the number of cells is not known and there is no formal leadership or set plan. Everyone does whatever needs to be done as they see fit.
The ball has started to roll and I can assure you its effects will be felt in New York and Detroit in the near future. One day we political exiles will return to Babylon victorious.
Power to the People,
Revolutionary Cell No. 3
You may wonder just what a hick Canadian freak knows about your scene in the Motor City, but really what are you doing? You have a good underground scene—stores, Open City, papers, radio and all the other good shit real people need to live on. But when are you going to get it all together? All of it: every radical, weird, stoned person and organization for the people all together to present a “united front” to the people who don’t know yet.
That Laurel and Hardy team that rules your nation has a rather strong front: just ask anyone in a Tactical Mobile Unit.
Could you see calling a meeting of all the stores, radio stations, papers, schools and assorted shit? If there was one council for coordination and cooperation between all the groups of people, a lot of bread, time and hassle could be avoided.
Carmen Dawson (male)
111 Livingston St.
Pt. Edwards, Ontario
Editors’ Note: Getting it together is important, but also hard. There is an organization such as you suggested—the STP (Serve The People) Coalition that has put on several benefits for John Sinclair and Open City. This system works with everything at its command to keep people separated and feeling their oppression individually rather than collectively. When we can overcome the barriers the Man has erected between the people we will be on our way to winning.
The condition of the oppressed peoples’ medical situation is not due to the lack of knowledge medically or the lack of technological progress, but is due to the fact that this system is not based on the needs of the people in general, but, according to the needs of a very few people, thus being very oppressive in many ways. The National Committee to Combat Fascism (NCCF) is working in the community to fight all kinds of oppression, however this letter is mainly concerning the medical problem.
We have observed our communities’ health problems and the treatment that all poor people receive in the general and country hospitals. The people are treated as a group rather than a specific case.
Many people in our community are unaware of the different kinds of care they can receive when they-really need attention. A lot of times the people are sick, but the cost of medical attention has gone up so much that they cannot go to the doctor and survive in other ways, such ways as housing, food and transportation, which are all great needs.
In order for our communities to receive the best help possible, the community and the National Committee to Combat Fascism realizes that there must be a peoples’ clinic in the community, run by the community. And most important, the doctors and nurses will be more concerned with human life rather than the profits for medical care.
We are now working on setting up the clinic, but we have not decided on the location. We have Some very dedicated doctors and nurses and medical students; also we have some medical supplies and materials. However, we need more doctors and nurses and medical supplies.
If you would like to know more about the clinic and what we are going to do, please come or call to The National Committee to Combat Fascism at: 2219 Indiandale, 868–9836.
All Power to the People,
Donnettea Brewer
Please print this letter to show that all women are not as naive and stupid as the girl to whom this letter is directed. It is directed to the girl who wrote Dr. Schoenfeld about how she was going to stop taking birth control pills and how free she felt [FE #102, April 2–15, 1970].
I am a girl who didn’t take them and had to have a baby before I learned better. This girl speaks of what a burden pills are to carry around. Lady, speaking of burdens, wait til you have a six-pound kid to tote around in your belly. That will really be a burden. If you call constant fear of pregnancy “freedom,” I wonder what your idea of being tied down is.
Speaking of being tied down, you’ll know all too well what that means after you’ve had a kid or two. Exactly what do you mean by your statement to the effect that the sole purpose of a woman’s existence is to bear children? I don’t know about you, but that’s sure not my only opinion; if anything in the world has helped free women from the ball and chain of their biological role and wake them up to the fact that they are individual human beings with other purposes in life besides being fucked and having kids, it’s modern birth control methods.
Chris
Now that the warm weather is coming and along with it the planting season, I got to thinking that maybe an article on the planting and raising of Indian Hemp would come in handy for those of us who have not done this or have had bad luck in the past. It seems to those I have talked to and through my own experience that the soil, where to plant, and curing are some of the main things that are not known.
Two years ago a friend and I planted some seeds and when we came back to collect our treasure we found that weeds also grow high and thick in the forest where we planted. So I ask for myself and others for some help for those of us who are gardeners.
Our Time Will Come
A Friend in Toledo
Editors’ Note: We have published cultivation articles in past issues (not available), but the best source for growing information, check your local library for US government Agriculture Dept. pamphlets on the growing of hemp. The penalty for cultivation of marijuana in Michigan is a ten-year maximum sentence, so be-careful.
I used to enjoy your paper but as of late I have been enjoying it less and less. It is fast becoming just like all the other one-sided crusaders for the narrow way of thought.
Just as sure as you can expect your local chiropractor to see every illness as some how caused by a screwed up back bone, one can expect the FIFTH ESTATE as well as all other “Marxist” papers, to see every social problem from mental illness to divorce as a result of an Economic policy. This is single-minded, stupid and dangerous.
Something as complex as human society cannot be reduced to a single mechanical concept. The reason this is done in Marxist papers is that the facts are twisted to prove a theory rather than making a theory after considering the facts.
At one time I thought the left was really trying to build a New World. Now I see they are no different from Hitler or all the other radical clowns, including the US who kill people (for their own good).
It is alright for the Marx-freaks to bomb buildings because it frees the people from Capitalism. They are just too stupid to see it.
Sorry I don’t buy it.
Respectfully,
Jack Evich
Grosse Pointe
(no, I’m not rich)
I was very interested in Sam Cohen’s reply to the letter by Izzie Wright concerning Sam’s article on monogamy. It’s really a groovy letter ‘cause it gives me a chance to point out a very common error which plagues the Left.
First, the reader should place Izzie’s letter [FE #100, March 5–18, 1970] next to Sam’s reply [FE #102, April 2–15, 1970]. Now look at both letters.
Izzie’s first point is that monogamy is neither inherently good or bad, but depends on the people in it. Sam “answers” by quoting Engels’ (the Scripture) description of the monogamous (nuclear) family. In this way, Sam sets up a straw man—the fact, which I’m sure Izzie would agree with, that the nuclear family is and has been generally oppressive. Of course, the question is whether a monogamous relationship has to be a bad one. Sam doesn’t come to grips with the real issue.
Point two concerns whether or not primitive man had communal sex relationships. Sam, in his original article, said they did and Izzie says they didn’t. What a pile of shit! Who cares about the sex life — of the caveman? This has nothing to do with the question of whether monogamy is good or bad. Does Sam think we should start eating each other just because some primitive people practiced cannibalism?
Point Three: Izzie says that “monogamy has nothing to do with the ruling class (see Cuba for example)” and that a “non-exploitative monogamous relationship is (or can be) as socialist as a communal sex one.” Sam distorts Izzie’s point by restating it thusly: “Monogamy can’t be all that bad since it’s bound up with socialism as well as capitalism, e.g. Cuba,” Is that what Izzie said? Sam has set up another straw man which he knocks down by saying Cuba is not socialist. Again Sam avoids the issues which are: does monogamy depend on a ruling class and can a non-exploitative monogamous relationship be as socialist as a communal one?
Sam wins on Point Four. The position of the Weathermen is irrelevant and Izzie shouldn’t have brought it up.
The point of all this is that far too often we treat arguments as ego trips. Sam doesn’t want to get at the truth—he wants to “win” the debate. In- order to “win” and thus build his ego, he resorts to rhetorical tricks designed to give the appearance of superiority to his Side of the argument. Instead of addressing himself to Izzie’s position, Sam distorts it, adding extraneous issues and then attacks the distortion and irrelevancies he himself created. He quotes Engels, using his prestige as a crutch, much like the fundamentalist who quotes the Bible as infallible.
We must begin to understand how serious a hang-up this is. The revolution is too important to waste time and energy listening to people who care more about their own self-image than about resolving the issues. Think about it next time you argue politics: are you just trying to “win” the debate by any means necessary? When in doubt do you wrap yourself in the prestige of Marx, Lenin, Engels or Mao?
Let’s struggle against this hang-up! Let’s quit this ego-competition between brothers and try to find the truth.
Venceremos!
Izzie Wrong
Wow! We don’t even get no beer and soda anymore. I hope you can print this picture in your paper.
Why don’t you editorialize on this lifer logic? These pigs have left me speechless!
Peace brother,
Short-71 days
SP4 Bopper
PS. Soon to make PFC. Do I care? Come June, Fuck the Army for good.
Sign reads: WANTED
DEAD OR ALIVE
“GOOKS”
REWARD
SGT. STRIPES and 3 Day R+R