Letters

Dear Beautiful People,

As I was sitting in Grant Park in Chicago August 28 what to my tear-gassed eyes should appear but a beautiful young girl with a free copy of the Fifth Estate.

She handed me a copy with a smile on her face so I immediately began to read every page, through the tears in my eyes. It was beautiful to say the least.

Enclosed find 3 dollars cash (I don’t trust banks) for a subscription. I’ll look forward to receiving the true facts in the news from now on.

Love and Peace to all

Phil Stewart

Gary, Indiana

Editors’ Note: Brother Phil sent this poster he picked up in Chicago along with his letter, and we certainly appreciate it. If anyone of our readers has something laying around that they would like to share, by all means.

Dear Fifth Estate People,

I feel somehow compelled to come to the defense of John Sinclair, since no one else, even John, seems to be doing so.

The Fifth Estate must remain censorship free. If we are to listen to Miss Celia Alderson, John’s column should be cut because he just isn’t “leading” us in the “right direction” of “the movement.” In other words, Celia’s viewpoint is different from John’s. So Celia doesn’t want you to print John’s articles because they further John’s point of view and not hers.

Celia, baby, why not write your own column? You seem to have a nice free flowing big-word journalistic style. The Estate has given you a full quarter page. Why not stop attacking John and his thing and simply further your own thing’?

I find John and his writing interesting, informative, and often entertaining. What more can a column or a columnist do?

It’s good to know what goes on behind the scenes, and all the shit that a band has to take, John has had many valid gripes, and he’s aired them. and it is his right and duty to do so.

Celia, do your thing, let John do his. You are both good people. Don’t waste your time cutting each other...good god! Wallace might be our next president! Good vibrations to you.

Peter McWilliams

Allen Park

Dear Brothers!

I write to you, because I know that only you are able to understand a guy who is being suffocated by a fucked-up anachronistic establishment. Lately I’ve been feeling the cruelty of these heavy-handed pigs, but there is nothing that a free thinking freek who intensely feels this incredibly cruel phantasmagoria can do. One has only to look at the political scene, to realize that the whole system is so syphilitic, that it destroys the possibility of any rational perspective for the future.

But the worst thing about the current shit played on the American people, is the gradual expansion of the social oppression of minorities, to a general economical exploitation of the whole population. Thus the fat-heads who are on the top of the economical pyramid are cooly aligning themselves with the political “elite,” thus strengthening their front. Consequently, the grinding machine of the establishment, will start to hurt more and more, and its functioning will be assured by the oiling effect of the club swinging pigs.

There is no doubt that the current exploitationary tricks employed by the automobile manufacturers of Detroit, are setting the pace in the industrial scene all over the country. They tell the people that they will increase the price of their cars by $200, and they will make a generous present to the people by making an actual increase of “only” $100. This, my brothers, is the dirtiest kind of exploitation, and these mother-fuckers will not stop until they bring the people to their knees.

R.P.M.

Detroit

To the Editors:

I just now got around to reading “letters” in FE #59, August 1–14, 1968. Now, I’ve moved to Highland Park from Mt. Clemens, and I want to say that the pigs in H.P. are just as fucked up as any other fascist pigs.

My first week in H.P. was a complete shock. Pigs everywhere! They know where we live and where we’re from. They watch our house constantly.

Shit! My friends and I can’t even go down to the corner bench without three pig cars going by (waiting?). The only reason H.P. pigs haven’t been beating people’s heads in is because the people run.

Well I sounded off and just wanted you and others to know, not everyone in H.P. is a pig lover.

Joanna,

Highland Park

Dear Editor:

Well now, it appears that there have been some people who read the 5^th Estate that can’t really get next to John Sinclair’s column on Rock&Roll&Dope. It seems they don’t like to hear John rap about the MC5.

I’d like to run some stuff down that may turn some people on to a few things, if it don’t then fuck ‘em.

The first thing to remember is that to be a revolutionary, one must live a revolutionary life. There are no two ways about it. Either you do it or you don’t! There is no such thing as “part time” revolutionaries!

Now I’ll use a quote you all should have heard before, “the duty of the revolutionary is to make revolution.” The way to make revolution is to attack and destroy. You must attack everything! Everything! The MC5 and Trans-Love Energies does just that. If any of you were at the Grande Ballroom Sat. Sept. 21, you know what I’m talking about.

The MC5 attack the American flag, sexual mores, economics, they destroy the old concept of music. The MC5 get people up off their asses and on their feet and movin’. I guess people don’t realize the great organizing power of music.

Music is one thing everyone has in common. Music will draw a great number of people together so they can be organized and educated. Every time the MC5 get on stage they tell people to be free, to fight for freedom, to destroy the old culture, to expand their consciousness. to FUCK! These are revolutionary acts.

The MC5 were the ONLY band to play in Chicago! Out of all the entertainers and bands who are supposed to be dedicated to change, the MC5 were the only band to show up and start the battle. Now this should be reported in the Underground Press, but the only place you’ll read anything about it is in the 5^th Estate.

I KNOW that John Sinclair, the MC5 and Trans Love are engaged in revolutionary activity and this revolutionary activity must be reported. Now if any of you dudes want to “work within the system and all that bullshit and blah, blah, blah,” then knock yourself out. but the only way to change the system is to change it, destroy it! Get rid of it!

This is what Trans-Love is doing, and if everyone would get it together I wouldn’t have to waste my time making an ass of myself by writing such an obvious letter.

Love & Peace,

Pun Plamondon

P.S. If you think John Sinclair is heavy on the MC5 you better hope I don’t start writing about them, I’ll burn ya down.

To the Editors:

I’m writing this to let you know that it really blew my mind when I found a copy of “The Fifth Estate” in the “Oleo Strut,” (a coffee house for GI’s in Killeen, Texas).

The last time I had an issue of “The Fifth Estate” it was to find out where I could receive some draft counseling assistance. I’m sorry to say I was a little late for any real help. Anyway, I really enjoyed reading what’s going on back home. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to subscribe to “The Fifth Estate.”

I would also like to put in a little plug for the “Oleo Strut. It really does my mind good to go there. Even if it’s just for a couple of hours a day, maybe a couple of days a week. The Army is doing its best though to try and close the “Strut. Man, they just want you to be a machine or something.

Pvt. Donald

Ft. Hood, Texas

Dear Fifth Estate:

It’s strange how one’s bias colors his veracity. Your writer had visited a number of progressive bookstores around Detroit, among them Global Books. Of this bookstore he says:

This is the only place in town with a large collection of periodicals from foreign communist parties (many from Africa), publications from Hanoi, books of socialist publishers, the Moscow News and translations of Russian writers...

After reading this, Michael Smith writes:

I read last week in your paper that your reporter took a “Detroit Book Trip Holiday” to Global Books Inc. and was dejected by the grey melancholy of the place.

Having established this premise, he continues:

This reaction is understandable, for the Communist Party, which runs Global Books, practices...Stalinist...Russian bureaucrats...which could produce nothing more than a depressing effect on any young revolutionary.

And it all started with a visit to a number of progressive bookstores, among them Global Books, and a description of the store and its books!

I suspect that what really depressed this “young revolutionary” is that the writer speaks well of the books at Global. among which, he says, “ is a large collection of periodicals from foreign communist parties, many from Africa.” This is anathema to Mr. Smith!

Him I would like to ask: do you have to red-bait at this late hour? This is the same kind of virulent anti-communism of the Social Democrats in Germany which produced a Hitler. The same kind of anticommunism in this country that started with McCarthyism and ended with Vietnam. What else and where else will it lead to?

Irma Alexander

Dear Sirs:

This concerns one of the letters from a 5^th Estate subscriber in the Sept. 5–15 issue [FE #61] Letters column.

I also am a subscriber, and I feel that the cat who criticized John Sinclair and the MC5 has a funny point of view. Of course everyone has their own saying, but when my friends and I buy the Fifth Estate we just look at the Sinclair column and admire the things he writes about the MC5.

How can we get to know such a fine group if no one writes about them? The MC5 are always hassled about everything, so why can’t everybody just do their thing and dig a great group that’s worth digging?

Keep those MC5 articles coming, Sinclair, we surely love them.

A Chick They Call Buckwheat