Detroit Seen

It’s party time again! The Fifth Estate will feature a rock concert, theatrefest, beer guzzling spectacular Friday, June 25, 9:00 pm to 2:00 am at Formerly Alvin’s Deli on Cass just south of the Ford Freeway. The admission is $2.50 and the entertainment will feature the Spikedrivers, Primitive Lust and Acme Theatrical Agency theatre groups, free beer, and maybe a guest reggae band. We hope you will attend, as these affairs are part of our life’s blood and also provide a damn good time. Call us at the office if you want more information or can help distribute promotional leaflets in your area. Although we are not entirely out of the clutches of the money monster, we want to thank people for their response to our last issue’s plea for financial assistance. We keep getting hit with back bills from when the paper was a commercial weekly and still need your support. We have just ordered several hundred dollars in new titles for our book store and hope you will find a few that strike your interest. The most solid support we can receive is from those who become Fifth Estate sustainers and provide us with an anticipated revenue each month. To subscribe or become a sustainer, use the blank on this page or order books further in....

In a concerted effort to promote higher rents in the area and an increasingly illusory humanity, local landlords of the Cass Corridor sponsored a “Renaissance Faire” on Canfield between Second and Third on June 6. The fair, which was an exhibition of artists belonging to the Detroit Artists Market, Detroit Adventure and Artist’s Guild plus a handful of others, was the farthest thing from a renaissance that could be. The fair was mostly the darling of local slumlord Bill Marsh (“no children; no pets; no welfare recipients”) who is using the creations of local artists as an informal ad brochure for the property he owns in the area. The fact that a hand-picked jury was set up to determine who would be allowed to sell their wares demonstrates the fear the entrepreneurs have of “troublemakers” trying to make social comments through their art that may offend the spirit of “goodliness” and provincialism that typifies bourgeois sensibility. A real renaissance fair would certainly have to include anyone who wanted to express themselves—thus opening-up expression— and would probably feature the barbequeing of Marsh’s pet jury as one of the highlights...

The week of June 19–27 is Gay Pride Week in Detroit and local gays will be “celebrating their identities” in a number of ways. There will be a march from Cass Park to Kennedy Square on Saturday afternoon, June 19, at 1 pm with a rally in the Square following the march. There will be a gay dance in Cobo Hall beginning at 9 pm. Also, the locals will sponsor a Gay Pride Fair on the 27^th but they didn’t tell us where. Such information will certainly be available at the march, but you can find out more immediately by calling the Gay Pride Week Committee at 963–7193. These events will dramatize the fact that gays have a legitimate right to express their identities and sexuality with each other in manners they choose....

The Detroit Theatre Collective has finally located a building and should be opening up at the end of June. The collective has moved into the old Willis Gallery (Cass and Willis, next to Cobb’s Bar) and will take the name of the Willis Gallery Theatre. The Theatre will feature original works by members of the collective, visiting groups from Detroit and elsewhere, plus established plays of a libertarian or progressive nature. The group will also sponsor a mid-week film program to provide an alternative to weekday boredom. Other prospects under consideration are an after-hours blues and jazz show (2 a.m. to 6 a.m.), small rock concerts, benefits, and a dunking stool from which people will have the opportunity to knock a clown, priest, politician or other idiot into a water-filled tank. This will give resident drunks a chance to express their hostilities in ways other than beating people up or setting fire to animals.

Actors and actresses are badly needed; call Pat (865–8208) if you can dig getting involved. Think of all the lovely trees on the planet being converted into the absurd Free Press, Sun, and News which devote so much space to the dog shows that go by the name of political primaries (apologies to the dogs of the world)...

A lot of good music still going on at the Unitarian Church, Cass at Forest, every Tuesday night at 7:30 p.m., and still at the low price of 75 cents. On June 15. the Community Music program presents the Felipe X. Trilce Review—a multi-media presentation of poetry, music, films, video, and dancers. Check them out...

Our annual plea: Does anyone have a commercial air conditioner they could lay on us to help beat the Detroit summer heat? If so, get a hold of us at the FE office....

Blues, blues, blues is being featured locally at the Gnu Bar (Cass and Palmer), with Bobo Jenkins and company playing Sunday and Monday nights, and The Copeland Blues Band knocking it out on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. Space is tight but the price is right (no cover)...

Friends at All Shades Books, 287 Passaic Ave., Passaic NJ 07055, have started an Emergency Fund to aid the Portuguese Anarchist and Libertarian and Syndicalist movement. Donations should be made out to the PLF and sent to the above address (a receipt will be sent back)....

Once again the Fifth Estate must come on to urge people not to register to vote and to scoff at the idiots and bumper stickers that do urge such superfluous pastimes. We cannot emphasize enough the disdain we feel towards political polyannas like the Sun editorial staff, which stated in a recent issue “Get out there and vote folks, you can bet the right-wingers will be there.”

We are glad that the Sun people spared us the trouble of exposing the unconscious affinity they have for the right wing, but disgusted with their latest attempts to give credence to a bankrupt process. Voting, no matter who is elected and what they say they will do, is a way of endorsing the system of passivity and powerlessness and shows the dogs in power that it is still possible to draw suckers into the shell game of the “democratic process.” We need only to point out Salvador Allende in Chile, who was elected into office as a “socialist” candidate, was merely snuffed out when he tried to graft socialist concepts onto a bourgeois social order...

His great mistake was in not distributing weapons to the workers and peasants, letting them establish forms of society suitable to their personal and biological needs, and defending their revolution. The mistake of the people was in believing that you could vote in a revolution. The revolution must be made from the bottom up and outside of any government channels. Anyone who tries to tell us otherwise is either an impostor, a fool, or both...Don’t vote, it only encourages them...