Editors’ Notes

The shit is coming down all over America from Greensboro, N.C. to Berkeley, Calif. Blood is flowing in the streets as people battle for their rights.

The question of whether or not fascism will come to this country has been answered by the pigs with a hail of bullets aimed at our brothers and sisters. The long talked about and debated repression has come with indictments, jailings, police beatings and murders.

This sustained attack by methods of law and violence on the Black Panther Party, Students for a Democratic Society, college students, and street people is part of a conscious plan to destroy the revolutionary movement in this country.

The government is moving to spread terror in the movement and to isolate it from the people using the lie that “disorders” are the work of a handful of militants rather than the consequences of a decaying capitalist system and the inability of the State to meet the just needs of the people.

There is no need to defend the just and valiant actions of our brothers and sisters when they are moving to claim what is justly theirs. Rather, we accuse the ruling class of this nation and the pigs they employ with murder and a conspiracy to retain their unjust power and privilege through the use of any vile method at their disposal.

The response of the movement and those who support the cause of human liberation is crucial at this point. The government is waiting to see how we will react to their first steps toward fascism.

We must show resolutely that we will not be intimidated by these attacks. Rather, our efforts, our organizing, our strikes, our demonstrations must increase threefold.

Also, all provocative actions and rhetoric must cease. All individualistic acts must end. As Brother Art Johnston writes from the heart of one battle zone, “the Yippie philosophy of spontaneous confrontation will lead us only to graves and prisons.”

Unite, organize, and act must be our call. Power to the People.

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City Editor Chris Singer’s article on the Algiers murder trial in this issue is of immense importance. A good book for background information and for insight into the monsters that perpetrated these murders can be found in John Hersey’s account The Algiers Motel Incident available at most bookstores.

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Two Detroiters were named in the Federal indictments for conspiracy as a result of the police riot at the Democratic Convention last August.

David Baker, of People Against Racism and one Bo Taylor were named as co-conspirators, but not defendants. The defense team wants to get in touch with Taylor, but no one seems to know who he is.

Anyone who has information on his whereabouts can contact PAR at 862–7210 or the Fifth Estate office.

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Summer’s almost here and we want to flood the city with this issue of the paper to let people know what went down in Berkeley and to combat the news blackout in Berkeley.

If you want to sell the paper check the sales ad elsewhere in the issue for the distribution point nearest you. Also, we still have back copies available for free distribution.

These, passed out in quantity, are particularly effective in terrorizing high school administrations. Right on!

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Apparently the community boycott of the Detroit News, led by the Black United Front, is having an effect. Detroit’s other daily, the Free Press has surpassed the News in daily press run by 10,000 papers.

It is unusual to the extreme for any morning newspaper to sell more copies than an afternoon paper.

Remember, don’t support a pig paper; it certainly doesn’t support you. Don’t buy the News; cancel your subscription if you have one. Don’t advertise in it and tell advertisers you shop at not to.

If you read the News, you’ll never know.