Full list of texts

Amid all the media saturation about oral sex in the Oval Office, it went almost unnoticed that Bill Clinton considered use of nuclear weapons against Iraq to take out Saddam Hussein’s underground complexes, or to retaliate for an Iraqi chemical or biological attack by issuing Presidential Policy Directive 60 (PPD 60).

...

<strong>Related: Playing in the Key of Clown

</strong>

when you can join the Rebel Clown Army instead?!</strong>

The U.S. army is no picnic and actually is far worse. Tons of money is poured into the recruiting campaign offering false promises. Our soldiers are being manipulated, fooled, and thrown into horrific situations. For the benefit of corporations and war-profiteers far away from the battlefield.

...

The Committee for Nonviolent Action has issued an urgent request for additional financial backing. CNVA and the War Resisters League are mutually considering a merger and the CNVA Executive Committee has already authorized the partnership. The major obstacle, however, seems to be the current CNVA deficit of about $7500 which must be greatly reduced before the merger can be completed. UPS member, WIN magazine, currently behind in its printing bills, will be unable to publish an October issue unless new and immediate financial help becomes available. CNVA staff members have not received salaries for the last several weeks.

...

Police mass for attack on peaceful demonstrators / Photo: Ken Hamblin

“I really got this one guy who called me a fascist pig. I beat him to a pulp.”

— A Detroit Policeman (Detroit Scope Magazine, November 9, 1968)

The October 29 rally for George Wallace at Cobo Hall in downtown Detroit ended in what can only be called a full scale police riot. Events inside the Arena set the stage for what later occurred after the rally when 350 club-swinging Detroit pigs attacked a group of about 1,000 demonstrators who had assembled to express their opposition to Wallace’s candidacy.

...

A rose, is a rose, is a rose, is a rose.

And a racist judge is, in fact, a racist judge.

This is how attorneys for Kenneth Cockrel developed their case that the young black attorney should not be cited for contempt of Detroit Recorder’s Court.

Cockrel was ordered to show cause why he should not be cited for contempt after he accused Recorder’s Court Judge Joseph E. Maher of being “a criminal judge violating the law.” The remarks came following the April 19 pre-trial examination for Alfred Hibbitt, accused of assault with intent to murder in the shooting of Patrolman Richard E. Worobec outside the New Bethel Baptist Church March 29.

...

Muldraugh, Kentucky is a small town that lies just outside the gates of Fort Knox. Like most small army towns, it is tightly controlled by the Army. Thus, all has been quiet and conservative.

But when a group of GIs and civilian friends decided that Muldraugh’s old meat market would make a fine GI coffee house, all hell broke loose. And nobody’s keeping secrets.

...

‘Pour myself a cup of ambition’

—Dolly Parton, “9 to 5”

And we pour cup after cup of coffee to the tune of almost 16 pounds per person a year for the 100 million coffee drinkers over the age of 18. This works out to a staggering consumption rate of 800 cups annually and that’s only-the average. The Statistical Abstract of the U.S. (100^th Edition) shows that 40% of us (I’m drinking a cup while writing this) drink 2 to 5 cups a day while 11% get really whacked out on six or more per day.

...

I.

flat gray surfaces

curved metal architecture a cold sphere in space

the earth died screaming

epidemics, plagues

starvation, dead ground

above, we orbit

clean children, good water

Caucasian intellectuals

the holograms of

vermont skies or florida

glades o’er white steeples

til one day the burned

...

The Coca Cola Bottling Co. extends its hand in congratulations to the People’s Republic of China on the occasion of the 30^th Anniversary of its Revolution and on its ambitious plans to become a modern technological society by the year 2000. We at Coke are proud to be part of that process!

...

As the Covid-19 epidemic spread through the world at the beginning of 2020, the governments of many countries, including Greece, enacted emergency quarantine and stringent lock-down measures. There was a fear among social activists that collective action would be stifled.

Nonetheless, collective action emerged in Greece, mainly on two fronts. There was a mobilization of health workers against the government’s inadequate funding of public health care, as well as grassroots forms of mutual aid. The latter took shape mainly in Athens through two distinct networks.

...

Colonel Arthur Holmes, Director of the Selective Service System for the State of Michigan, announced that at his order, all male students from Michigan now entering their Freshman year of college will automatically be classified I-A by their local draft boards. After taking a pre-induction physical examination, all students over 19 will be served with induction notices. The students will then have to apply for the 1 year statutory deferment for registered students, I-S(C). At the end of the Freshman year, the students will be drafted unless they prove to the satisfaction of their local boards that they deserve a II-S student deferment.

...

U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, a hero?

A patriot?

Shit! This guy is a fascist and a war criminal!

Less people than it appears are willing to stand up and salute this creep who bears great responsibility for the slaughter of thousands of Nicaraguan peasants at the hands of the U.S. financed, North directed, contras.

...

You were mad about Iran, mad about Afghanistan, mad about that and a whole lot more. You want to fight communism and the foreign scurvy who undermine our American way of life? Well, are you ready to go toe-to-toe with the Ruskies, no holds barred, for an all-out fight? Be prepared, America! Don’t lag behind your leaders! We’re doing it all for you—Presidential Directive Number 59 has given us the go-ahead to prepare for a prolonged but limited nuclear war, with cruise missiles, neutron bombs and first-strike capability!

...

The almost two-year-old labor battle against the Motor City’s two corporate daily papers is almost at its conclusion (see the first page of The Rumble insert for latest details). Belatedly, the national AFL-CIO has called for a mass mobilization in Detroit June 20 and 21 to demand an equitable settlement of the strike. Attendance is expected to be over a hundred thousand.

...

a review of

1919: A Graphic History of the Winnipeg General Strike. Graphic History Collective and David Lester. Between The Lines (2019)

Although the term graphic novel may seem used simply to gussie up what many would call a comic book, the phrase generally describes a publication with more serious content than what you find in Marvel’s superhero tales of Captain America, Iron Man, The Hulk, Spider-Man, and the rest.

...

Shoppers in Downtown Birmingham found themselves window shopping for open occupancy on Saturday, February 26.

The Birmingham-Bloomfield Committee on Open Occupancy distributed 10,000 leaflets encouraging a re-examination of fair housing in that area. The pamphlet is reprinted below.

...

Related: see Letters in this issue.

The discussion regarding Black Rose Books, Ltd. (BRB) and concerning what constitutes a libertarian project has taken two distressing and, in our opinion, unproductive directions. The first is the absolute indignation on the part of BRB supporters that we would even question “the fine work BRB has done,” and that such an inquiry, which tries to assess the nature of their activity, is on the face of it objectionable. The other is the argument that all of us are compromised by living within capitalist society, that “pure” activity is impossible without a revolution, so why are we being so self-righteous when we, like BRB, exhibit numerous contradictions to libertarian ideals?

...

Fifth Estate:

I want to offer some criticisms of the latest issue. The Vietnam article [Web archive note: This article first appeared in FE #320, Spring 1985. With an added Introduction by Richard Drinnon it was reprinted in FE #346, Summer, 1995.] was a bit strange: even with the understanding that the author, George Bradford, used to be a supporter of the stalinists in Vietnam, it offered no analysis of “wars of national liberation” (much less of one that lasted so long), which formed an integral aspect of the war. Space limitations aside, at least an attempt to approach that aspect of the war needed to be addressed. (It also seems that Bradford still idealizes the NLF.)

...

John Zerzan’s essay, “Agriculture: Essence of Civilization,” appeared in FE #329, Summer 1988 and is available for one dollar from 4632 Second Ave., Detroit, MI 48201. It is also part of a collection of John’s essays entitled Elements of Refusal and can be obtained through our book service for $9.00.

...

Dear F.E.:

It would be very interesting to know more about the character of the N.Y. looting but it is not clear to me that we can tell anything from the figures which the Zerzans passed on to us from the San Francisco Chronicle in your August issue [see “New York, New York: The blackout of 1977” by John Zerzan, Paula Zerzan, Fifth Estate # 285, August, 1977].

...

Hi FE Folks,

After reading the two letters (FE #287, October 28, 1977) responding to my article in the August FE (#285, August, 1977), I have decided to abandon the use of the term “terrorism,” because I think it does tend to obscure more than it clarifies.

I agree with Laurance Kisinger that there is nothing essentially terrifying about an empty government building or an isolated utility being blown up; but I don’t think that there is necessarily anything revolutionary about it either. I don’t think that this kind of activity is “mindless violence” as Ervin—who obviously refused to really read the article on principle or perhaps sent his letter to the wrong address—asserts. But we all have to become more aware of what challenges and what perpetuates the status quo.

...

In the mid- to late 19^th Century, the rapidly expanding Industrial Age provided the impetus behind the expansion of the public school system. Reading, writing and arithmetic were pressed into service in order to form a needed literate labor force.

At the same time, it was important to assure that this newly educated proletariat remained obedient and submissive to authority. Subject matter such as history was taught from the perspective of great men and the victors of wars. Mathematics inculcated the presumption that the world is comprised of generalized numbers to be counted, manipulated and exploited. Reading and writing silenced languages older than words themselves.

...

On Sunday, May 18, from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m., the Detroit Artists’ Market, 1452 Randolph will open an exhibit entitled “The Common Ground” which will include new work by 22 artists of the Common Ground of the Arts.

The exhibit will continue through Saturday, June 14.

Contributors will be Patricia Duff, George Ettl, James Lewandowski, Jonnie Russel, Marilyn Schechter, G. Alden Smith, Jerry Gibbons, Al Hebert, Stanley Rosenthal, Bradley Jones, William Jordan, George Rogers, Arthur Wenk, Marie Tapert, Gary Boyll, Stanley Dolega, Edmund Morais, Jean Pollack, Nolan Ross, Michael Frantz, Bette Klegon, and Aris Koutroulis.

...

Is it possible or desirable to build large-scale anarchist organizations? Maybe the question is premature. Re-building a human order is not a matter of a group of theoreticians or activists imposing its program on intractable people. Reclaiming a human existence depends, first of all, on people fashioning cooperative forms of life.

...

a review of

Communities Directory: A Guide to Intentional Communities and Cooperative Living, Third Edition, Jillian Downey and Elph Morgan, eds., 2000, $30 from the Fellowship for Intentional Community, www.ic.org, or RR 1, Box 156-D, Rutledge, MO 63563

“We tried living communally in the Sixties and it didn’t work.” “I didn’t know communes still existed, except in California.” “Do you all sleep in the same room?”

...

a review of

Dreams of Anarchy and the Anarchy of Dreams by Ron Sakolsky; Illustrations by Rikki Ducornet. Autonomedia 2021

In Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland, the Mad-Hatter poses the famous riddle, “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?” It is not a question that has a predefined answer, but which projects itself, through a lightning-bolt of poetic analogy, into some future resolution—one that we feel pulsing like magic just outside our current field of perception.

...

It’s Friday night, and a hundred sweaty freaks are dancing their asses off to the sounds of a Cyndi Lauper cover band. Courtney is standing on a stool by the front collecting money, but no one’s ever turned away for lack of funds around here. The cash she collects will go to benefit the local women & transgendered health collective. Paintings from the last art opening are still hanging on the walls, and out front dozens of beautiful, grungy people are smoking cigarettes and networking like mad.

...

As an alternative to listening to music from a crowded, noisy, over-priced and smoke-congested barroom, two area residents have set up a series of six weekly Tuesday evening concerts at the 1^st Unitarian Church on Forest and Cass.

According to Program Director Ralph Koziarski, he and his partner and fellow Church caretaker, Terry Youk, put together these six introductory concerts in an effort to both allow local musicians an outlet to perform their music in more comfortable, intimate and accessible surroundings and to gauge interest in continuing such a venture.

...

People Concerned About Urban Renewal, representing the community that Wayne State has exploited for over ten years, once again marched against the University Feb. 28, demanding free community access to the Matthaei Physical Education Complex.

The Wayne State Department of Public Safety once and for all shed their liberal front and turned on the community people in a fashion that would make the DPOA proud. At no time during the entire demonstration did these Wayne Toy Police wear or display their I.D. badges.

...

The Committee for Independent Political Action (CIPA) on the West Side of New York City was formed at the end of the summer of 1965, on the basis of a draft statement prepared by two editors of Studies on the Left, Jim Weinstein and Stanley Aronowitz. The initial CIPA nucleus consisted of about twenty people, all conscious “radicals” from a diversity of activist backgrounds—single issue and housing groups, reform democratic clubs, “old left”, SDS and others. They all came to CIPA with some sense that the actions they had been engaged in were inadequate: those of us from the anti-war movement felt that a certain saturation point was being reached with demonstrations: that they were no longer bringing in or educating significant numbers of new people, and that the old people were beginning to feel frustrated and discouraged.

...

Primitive culture, Marshall Sahlins has argued, is not fetishized utility. “The practical function of (primitive) institutions,” he tells us, “is never adequate to explain their cultural structure....People employ customs and categories to organize their lives within local schemes of interpretation, thus giving uses to material circumstances which, cultural comparison will show, are never the only ones possible.” Consequently, diversity is the rule in the primitive world, as much because of the multifarious systems of meaning and interpretation peoples employ to constitute their worlds, as because of the varying climates and landscapes in which they are situated.

...

Staff writers at the Fifth Estate collective have been vigorous critics of technology for more than two decades. Rather than isolate particular tools or situations for a contextual attack, our challenges to the totalitarian tenets of the megamachine look to the deeper motivations that propel producers and consumers to make and want more and more automobiles, nuclear power plants, computers, televisions (to mention only a few of the gadgets of modernity that have gouged biological communities).

...

a review of

Keeper of Concentration Camps: Dillon S. Myer and American Racism, by Richard Drinnon, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1987, 340 pp. $24.95.

Although it was his profession, “a keeper of concentration camps” was hardly Dillon S. Myer’s self-image. He considered himself to be an enlightened administrator, a tolerant, generous individual who incorporated what is best in the American tradition. In focusing on Myer’s career as chief of the War Relocation Authority which incarcerated Japanese-Americans during W.W. II and later as commissioner of the Bureau of Indian affairs, Richard Drinnon agrees that Myer is a typical representative of the American tradition but insists on the odious effects of his practice.

...

Mayor Jerome P. Cavanagh last month ordered the renewal of a concert hall license for Concept East Theatre.

His action was taken on an appeal submitted by the theatre group after its application for a license renewal had been summarily denied without charges on a hearing some weeks ago.

The Theatre has been subjected to harassment based upon its production of the Leroi Jones plays “The Toilet” and “The Slave.” Initially, an ordinance violation ticket had been issued to the theatre manager for permitting the use of “profane or indecent language”. This charge was dismissed in traffic court by Judge Andrew C. Wood because of defective service. The following day the theatre received notice that its pending application for renewal of license had been denied.

...

WASHINGTON, D.C. (LNS), — In an unprecedented lawsuit filed in Federal Court May 11, the Reservist’s Committee to Stop the War moved to expel 122 Congressmen from the Armed Forces Reserves and the National Guard.

Claiming that it is an unconstitutional conflict of interest for a congressman to hold any military position, the Committee cited Article 1, Section 6 of the Constitution: “...no person holding any office under the United States shall be a member of either house during his continuance in office.”

...

a review of

Food Not Bombs: How to Feed the Hungry and Build Community, C.T. Lawrence Butler and Keith McHenry, New Society Publishers, Philadelphia, 1992, 120 pp., $8.95.

Street Lives: An Oral History of Homeless Americans, Steven Vanderstaay, New Society Publishers, Philadelphia, 1992, 244 pp., $14.95.

...

[three_fourth padding=“0 25px 0 0”]In response to “Beginning of Time, End of Time” by John Zerzan, FE #313, Summer, 1983.

A project such as ours, based as it is on our mutual desire to abolish technological civilization, capital and domination, had to eventually take up the problem of time. All of us know with a visceral vengeance the horrid role of the clock in our lives. We don’t have to be convinced: we measure out our precious, limited im/mortality against the days, the hours and the minutes of captive time. So it was with great sympathy that I began John Zerzan’s ambitious essay on time. Unfortunately, my enthusiasm was dampened significantly by what I think were flaws not only in the form but in the intention or trajectory of the piece.

...

CHICAGO (LNS)—The coercive machinery of nationwide political repression is high-powered and well-tooled. The use of laws which blatantly restrict the basic precepts of Constitutional democracy-the abstract freedoms of speech, press and assembly—is constantly growing.

While a frame-up on non-political charges (from possession of marijuana to -trespassing) is still the most frequent form of repression, the government is now turning to more direct methods of silencing its opposition.

...

The U.S. ended the trial of the Conspiracy Eight with all the subtlety of a bludgeoning. Despite the messy close and the muted cries of the professional observers in the press gallery, the defendants’ demise came by club rather than through rapier thrusts. But then there is something to be said for the club. It’s effective.

...

Like God before her, Reason is dying. Her fast life has taken its toll: God took a millennium or two to live out His days, Reason has had a mere three centuries of gallivanting to the moon and back.

People now find her insufficient to explain their experience of nature just as they once found God unnecessary.

...

CHICAGO (LNS)—It was beginning to look like the Democratic National Convention all over again.

The “conspirators” were back in town, people were fighting the pigs in the streets and there was the bejowled mayor of the city muttering darkly on TV.

Wednesday the 24^th was opening day.

By noon, 5,000 young people had turned out for a rally at the Federal Building in support of the eight men on trial whom the government would like to put away for possibly ten years.

...

Every edition of Fifth Estate could be our last. This issue, originally scheduled for summer, did not hit the press until early September, thus making it our Fall 2006 edition; subscribers and distributors, please take note. Back in June, when this issue was due, our bank account was depleted, and our volunteers needed a break. But thanks to all the writers and artists who gave us material and to all the readers who answered our perennial plea for funds, we can publish another time. Without the contributions of art, prose, and cash, we would not exist.

...

Welcome to our Summer edition with its theme of Belief/Disbelief/Unbelief.

Our essays don’t so much investigate beliefs themselves as much as belief systems, our cognitive constructions which determine our perception of reality. Beliefs can either chain us to repressive ideas or free us with visions that go beyond dominant paradigms. The entire modern era has been one of contestation as to which belief systems will rule in societies--ones that link us to submission and acquiescence to hierarchal authority, or those which rebel against them and eliminate the categories of rulers and ruled. Comments are welcome on the essays which follow.

...

Letters, page 2

Issue intro, page 3

The Logic of the Telescope Against the wisdom of Hawaii’s Native People

STEVE KIRK page 4

Seattle Far-Right Shooter’s Trial Ends in Hung Jury: How can we get justice in an unjust system?

RUI PRETI page 6

Museum Chronicles Fightback & Victories Against Gentrification: The storefront housing the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space in NYC.

...

Cover photo: Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army in Edinburgh, Scotland.

4 Insurgent Rebel Clown Army

L.M. Bogad

7 Cultural Appropriation & Shaming

Rod Dubey

9 The Myth of Che Guevara

MLB

11 Ukrainian & Russian Repression

FE Staff

12 The Legacy of Omar Aziz

Leila Al Shami

14 Left Abets Genocide in Syria

...

4 The Future is Now!

Jesús Sepúlveda

7 Sabotage & the Flows of Capital

Jeff Shantz

10 Transgender Struggle in Prison

Anonymous

12 Image Worshipping

Panos Papadimitropoulos

13 Mega-Cities

Bellamy Fitzpatrick

16 Wolf Patrol

Rod Coronado

Vietnam: The Resistance

Pages 17–30

Mutinies at the Outposts of Empire

Rob Blurton

...

5 Letter from New Orleans

15 Psychic Liberation 6P the Almost Revolution

17 The War Against Imagination

20 No Borders

22 Retalin at Fifty

25 Poisoning the Poor

29 Psychology of Empire

30 Passion Fruit

27, 32–33, 37–38 Reviews

34 Both Sides Now

...

Class & Solidarity 15

Intro to Economics 16

Last Ticket to Utopia 17

Political Economy, Perennial Economy: Marx, Thoreau, & Us 18

Land & Liberty 22

Refusing The Marketplace 24

Communalism of Desire 26

Pastoral Letter 28

Give it Away 32

Burning Man 33

Wildcat Reprint 34

Nietzsche & The Anarchists 36

...

FIFTH ESTATE #363, Winter, 2003/2004, Vol. 38, No. 4, page 3

Miami: The War Comes Home 5

APOC Report 11

Tales From The Planet 12

Lessons From Cancun 13

Against the Wall 14

Uprising in Bolivia 16

Sex and Lies in Cuba 18

Intro 22

Pencils Like Daggers 23

Anarchist Panther’s Journey 26

...

Cover: Occupy Wall Street, Zuccotti Park, NYC 2011, MTT mttphoto.com

4 Seattle Shooting

CP Et SM

6 A Fascist by Any Other Name

Bill Weinberg

8 The Struggle to Get Back to Zero

Peter Werbe

10 Veil of the Vile

Jesús Sepúlveda

12 Eat Your President

The Mormyrids

14 The Russian Revolution Unfinished

...

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

...

Fifth Estate, #393, Spring 2015, Vol. 50, No. 1

2 Letters

4 Anarchy in Kurdistan

Bill Weinberg

7 Eric McDavid Freed!

FE Staff

8 Armed Madhouse

Bryan Tucker

9 Justice for Franco Fascists?

David Porter

11 Sam Mbah Dies

Kelly Rose Pflug-Back

12 Florida’s Burnpile Press

Matt Keene

13 An Anarchist in Berlin

...

“We are going to inherit the earth. There is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie may blast and burn its own world before it finally leaves the stage of history. We are not afraid of ruins. We who ploughed the prairies and built the cities can build again, only better next time. We carry a new world, here in our hearts. That world is growing this minute.”

-- Durruti

...

Fifth Estate #381, Summer-Fall 2009, Vol. 44, No. 2

2 LETTERS

4 MARIE MASON INTERVIEW

5 RNC FRAME-UP UPDATE

6 THE SHIT HITS THE FAN by Ron Sakolsky

8 KILLER APE THEORY DISPROVED by Tim MacGowan

10 THE FUTURE OF LEARNING by Christopher J. Schneider

12 MURDER IN OAXACA by John Gibler

13 TUNING INTO THE ILLEGALIST CONTINUUM by Ron Sakolsky

...

Intro: Primitivism & The Wild, page 17

Derrick Jensen on the Future, page 18

Green Anarchy & Oil Depletion, page 23

Peter Wilson On Domestication & Luddism, page 27

Our Enemy, The State, page 31

All Isms Are Wasms, page 34

Swamp Fever, page 38

Wolves, page 41

Mars First, page 42

Against History! page 45

...

Fifth Estate Issue #377, March, 2008, Vol. 43 No. 1

4 Readers’ letters

6 Green Scare News: Police Terrorize Earth First!er in Ohio

7 Powerlessness & the Power of the Prank from La lettre versatile de Jimmy Gladiator

8 Bowling with the Bonobo Bashers by Pieter Primatus

10 Stronger Wine! Madder Music! A manifesto by Apio Ludd

...

FIFTH ESTATE #392, Fall/Winter, 2014, Vol. 49, No. 2

Cover: D. Sands

4 Welcome to the Idiocene

Max Cafard

5 Logistical Anarchism

Jeff Shantz

7 VR Troopers:

Jason Rodgers

8 Seattle’s Left Bank Books

Sylvie Kashdan

9 Anarchist Golf?

Joseph Winogrond

11 Free Marius Jacob Mason

12 Dirty Yeti: DIY House

...

Cover photo: Pierre Garine: Bridge across the Yalu River to N. Korea

4 Mutual Aid in Times of Crisis scott crow

6 Mutual Aid in Action Dr. Zak Flash

8 16 Theses on the Cell Phone Jason Rodgers

9 “You are not welcome in New Zealand. Mr. Rovics.” David Rovics

10 Grand Jury Resister Margaret Killjoy

...

5 Occupied Iraq: The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill

7 First They Came For Ward Churchill

9 The New McCarthyism: On The Recent Purge Of David Graeber

11 Fear And Loathing At The University

12 Introduction: Wobblies At 100; Work At 4,000

15 Why I Was A Burglar

...

FE Histories & Memoirs

No Anarchy, No Money page 6

Offices as Autonomous Zones page 7

The History of the Fifth Estate by Peter Werbe page 8

Music as Revolution page 20

Giving Up the Gun Fetish page 21

Zapping the Pyramid by Don La Coss page 22

Notes toward a history by David Watson page 26

Detroit’s Jovial Community by Lorraine Perlman page 40

...

Woodstock Music Festival, 1969. The Fifth Estate was in its fourth year of publication and was part of the counter-culture music scene as much as the anti-war and resistance movements of the times. The festival gave the then-tabloid paper press passes and bought a full-page ad.

On the Cover

Stephen Goodfellow’s art once again graces our front page as it has in numerous previous issues. The Non Serviam ball is also his creation. See goodfelloweb.com

...

*Articles with Asterisk have extended versions on our web site.

4 Anarchists & Sex Work

Aaron Lakoff

6 Wholly Shit — Church Reviews

Stephane

7 Grand Jury Resister Freed

*8 Education as Domestication of Inner Space

Layla AbdelRahim

11 Agriculture History Misses Mark

John Zerzan

12 Ken Kesey & the Merry Pranksters

...

FIFTH ESTATE #376, Halloween 2007, Vol. 42, #2

Issue Theme: End of the Worldism

Cover, centerfold, & back page art

Tammy Wetzel

http://tammywetzel.zenfolio.com/

End of the Worldism (but not for us), Editorial

“Great Dismal Mercenaries” Blackwater & Iraq

Don LaCoss

“Elves Sentenced” ALF/ELF Activists Sentenced

...

FIFTH ESTATE

ANARCHIST FICTION ISSUE

FIFTH ESTATE #385 Fall, 2011, Vol. 46, #2, page 1

2 LETTERS

4 COPYRIGHT OR WRONG by Walker Lane

6 INTERNATIONAL DAY OF SOLIDARITY WITH MARIE MASON

9 HOCKEY RIOTS IN VANCOUVER by Ron Sakolsky

11 A BRIEF HISTORY OF ANARCHIST FICTION by Margaret Killjoy

...

The response to last issue’s “Contest of Contests” [FE #289, January 24, 1978] was underwhelming to say the least, but we did receive enough entries to fill the first three winning spots (in fact, exactly that number). The contest was to describe what you could imagine doing at the gathering of ghouls assembled for Hubert Humphrey’s funeral at the Capitol in Washington D.C. Here are the winners:

...

Buster Brown

Bob Brubaker

Angela Di Sante

Alan Franklin

Ralph Franklin

Jim Gilman

Blue Jesus

E.B. Maple

Richard Rollins

Primitivo Solis

Larry Talbert

Mr. Venom

Marilyn Werbe

Peter Werbe

John Zerzan

Suzie

The Fifth Estate Newspaper (ISSN 0015–0800) is published bi-monthly at 4403 Second Ave., Detroit, Michigan 48201 USA; phone (313) 831–6800. Office hours vary, so please call before visiting. Subscriptions are $4.00 for six issues; $6 for foreign including Canada. Second class postage paid at Detroit, Michigan. No copyright. No paid ads accepted.

The Detroit Police are out of control. They have completely slipped out from under the authority of the Mayor and his Police Commissioner and now comprise a vigilante force dedicated to maintenance of the status quo.

They have resorted to criminal methods and produced a string of murders, mass assaults, and severe injuries to citizens engaged in lawful conduct. Their connection with the Mafia and right-wing groups is well known and documented.

...

The central argument in the New Bethel Incident is over the administration of law in Detroit’s Recorder’s Court. [See The New Bethel Incident, FE #77, April 17–30, 1969.]

This was underscored by what transpired during the pre-trial examinations of two suspects in the shooting of Patrolman Richard E. Worobec outside the New Bethel Baptist Church on March 29.

...

As we were completing work on our current issue, we received a letter for publication from the Wooden Shoe collective in Philadelphia regarding the vandalism of their bookstore last October. At that time the premises were entered with a key, a sink stopped up with towels and books and periodicals thrown into the overflowing water. A quantity of record albums and $150 in cash was stolen as well. Although the damage was extensive, collective members worked all through the night and were able to open the next morning.

...

We should have realized that the anti-convention efforts in Detroit were going to be a flop when only two people responded to the FE article about planned activity which invited others to “join us in a game with no rules” (See FE #301, Feb. 26, 1980). And a flop it was. Only about 200 people turned up here to greet the Republicans July 13–16 coming mostly from cult/sect/political groups like the Communist Workers Party but also including a few valiant Yippies who refused to believe it wasn’t 1968. A sponsoring coalition of leftists and liberals (the FE declined to participate) planned a series of protests aimed at the delegates and the media but each event proved to be more disastrous than the one preceding it.

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NEW YORK, NY — August 31 (Dissociated Press) The campaign to re-appoint George Bush President is in full swing as a heat wave continued with Central Park recording its third consecutive 95 degree-plus day.

Delegates to the Republican National Convention (RNC) were arriving in droves. Tens of thousands of anti-Republican demonstrators were already in the city, gearing up for massive protests and showdowns with New York’s finest storm troopers. The corporate media was set to cover the coronation and the expected melee. They were looking for some new spin on a story they were billing as a rerun, as in “The Battle of Seattle, Part 6: Republicans at Ground Zero.”

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Two interviews with the poet on life, death, sex, poetry, Kerouac, and meditation—the first from 1991, published here for the first time; the second from the October 1969 issue of Fifth Estate.

Note: In October 1991, Fifth Estate staff member Peter Werbe interviewed poet Allen Ginsberg on the radio talk show he hosts. Ginsberg was in Ann Arbor for the performance of his opera, “Hydrogen Jukebox,” a collaboration with composer and pianist Philip Glass. As were so many of Ginsberg’s Michigan appearances, the opening was a benefit for Jewel Heart, an international organization of Tibetan Buddhist and cultural centers.

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The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) expressed its regret and dismay July 25 that the conviction of Arthur Kinoy for disorderly conduct had been affirmed by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. The conviction of Prof. Kinoy stems from the attorney’s forcible ejection by the House Un-American Activities Committee during its probe in August, 1966, of anti-Vietnam War groups.

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Food Not Bombs is one of the fastest growing revolutionary movements in North America today and is gaining momentum all over the world. There are over 120 autonomous chapters sharing vegetarian food with hungry people and protesting war and poverty throughout the Americas, Europe and Australia. The first group was formed in Cambridge, Mass. in 1980 by anti-nuclear activists. Food Not Bombs is an all volunteer organization dedicated to nonviolence. Food Not Bombs has no formal leaders and strives to include everyone in its decision making process. Each group recovers food that would otherwise be discarded and makes fresh hot vegetarian meals that are served in city parks to anyone without restriction. The groups also serve free vegetarian meals at protests and other events. San Francisco chapter members have been arrested over 1,000 times in the city’s effort to silence protests against the Mayor’s anti-homeless policies. The Arcata, Calif. group faces civil contempt charges for sharing food and the Whittier, Calif. group has been issued tickets for feeding people. Seattle and Burlington, Vt. Food Not Bombs are being threatened by the cops. Amnesty International says it may adopt imprisoned Food Not Bombs volunteers as “Prisoners of Conscience.”

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On October 17 and 18, 2015, anarchists in the small Catalan city of Manresa held the first Gathering of Libertarian Infrastructures. Outside of English speaking North America, libertarian is a synonym for anarchist. The event was the result of over a year of informal debates and longer collective processes in which comrades sought the ideal forms of coordination and organization, and the best methods for spreading anarchist ideas and practices.

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Gang fever is sweeping Detroit. Everywhere the gangs are the main topic of conversation—the Black Killers, the Errol Flynns, the Coney Oneys, the Chene Gang. The cops are puffed with importance—they’re the thin blue line between the hordes and the populace; the media are ecstatic—they have found a story that can be milked every day to break the monotony regularly presented; and for the average citizen: a concrete discernible reason for why Detroit is falling apart—1,000 teenage gang members.

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Justice—Detroit style. Danny Royster was convicted last week of manslaughter in the slaying of the only pig killed during the July 1967 uprising. One problem—Danny didn’t off the pig and everyone including the State admits to that fact.

What happened was that Danny and a buddy were liberating some goods from a store on the near Eastside when they were discovered by the 13^th Precinct Big 4. One particularly vicious pig, Roy (Butterfingers) St. Onge who works the Warren-Forest area entered the smashed out storefront and whopped Royster upside the head with his shotgun.

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The Detroit Police has begun a reign of terror in the Warren-Forest area near Wayne University.

Almost all of it has been aimed at the local freaks. “It’s getting to be too much,” said Skip Cooper, who lives in the Castle on John Lodge. “All the cops do is hassle with anyone with long hair.”

Other people in the area have reported a marked increase in illegal searches and entries by the cops. Mostly, the cops involved are from the Tactical Mobile Units and the “Big Four.” The latter is the precinct cruiser that travels in a Dodge sedan with three plainclothes (and they are) patrolmen and one uniformed driver.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. (LNS)—The U.S. Justice Department has released results of a study conducted for it by the University of Michigan which states that twenty-seven per cent of all policemen “were either observed in misconduct situations or admitted to observers that they were engaged in misconduct.” Two-thirds of this group were seen “in some form of conduct that could be classified as a felony or misdemeanor,” while the rest admitted such naughty acts.

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a review of

“BlacKkKlansman”

Director: Spike Lee

135 min.

“The cops and Klan go hand in hand!”

—frequent chant at anti-cop demonstrations

Spike Lee’s latest film “BlackKkKlansman,” the story of an African American police officer’s infiltration of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1970s, has received generally excellent reviews in mainstream publications and from anti-racist activists.

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Police representatives from twelve suburban communities have been training in methods of riot control on the Cranbrook School campus once a month throughout the year.

The newly-formed Cranbrook SDS concentrated on their removal as a primary goal. A victory was scored May 8, when the pigs failed to appear, apparently aware of the increasing militancy of certain students at Cranbrook School. This eliminated the necessity of an open confrontation between SDS and the cops, as this was the date when such a confrontation was supposed to have occurred.

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The Stoepel Park Incident of Sunday, August 24 was not an isolated instance of police harassment [see “Pigs Riot in Park,” FE #87, September 4–17, 1969]. On-duty and off-duty, legally and illegally, police harassment of the young people who gather in Stoepel Park continues. But the latest round has been won by the kids.

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For once it appears that it pays to be black.

At least the sons of prominent black ministers and politicians.

The Detroit Police Department actually disciplined several of it’s men for their drunken and cowardly beatings of several black youths after a church dance Nov. 2 of last year.

Commissioner Johannes Spreen called the attack “unprofessional, uncalled for and unexcusable.”

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Fernando Gonzalez was 16 years old.

He won’t be getting any older.

As his name implies, Gonzalez was a Chicano youth from southwest Detroit. And in a wanton display of insane racism, four crazed pigs from the Fort-Green Station of the Detroit Police Department, savagely clubbed the man to death on a Detroit street.

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“Both police and armed forces follow orders. Orders. Orders flow from the top down. Up there, behind closed doors, in antechambers, in conference rooms, gavels bang on tables, the tinkling of silver decanters can be heard as ice water is poured by well-fed, conservatively dressed men in horn-rimmed glasses, fashionably dressed American widows with rejuvenated faces and tinted hair, the air permeated with the square humor of Bob Hope jokes. Here all the talking is done, all the thinking, all the deciding.”

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2000 may be the decisive year in the legal and political battle for the life of Mumia Abu-Jamal. As the campaign to save the falsely imprisoned journalist and ex-Black Panther gathers momentum, the police, politicians and media are stepping up their efforts to have him strapped to the execution gurney.

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“When you have $50 billion invested in defense what you need most isn’t allies but an enemy.”

— Nelson Algren said in Ramparts, May, 1967.

When you have policemen on horses and Tactical Mobile Units with little baseball bats and “riot-trained” commandos, what you need most is not a Love-In but a riot.

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HOUSTON, Texas—The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has requested the U.S. Attorney General to launch a “vigorous investigation” of Houston police who “engaged in a vengeful and destructive rampage” against students and property at Texas Southern University during a five-hour riot on May 17.

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OAKLAND, CALIF. (UPS) What began as an anti-draft teach in grew into issues of both anti-war and free speech and ended as 400 helmeted police, sheriff and California Highway Patrol officers using eye-stinging mace and swinging billy clubs broke up an anti draft demonstration along with some two dozen skulls in front of the Oakland Induction Center in the early dawn of Oct. 17. When the first of four groups of demonstrators arrived at the Oakland Induction Center early that Tuesday morning it was greeted by some 150 persons who had already gathered across the street.

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Most everyone knows that the small encircled, lower case letter “c” indicates that a piece of work is copyrighted, and that it designates legal protection of creative work and intellectual property. Perhaps the key word for this discussion is the last one in the sentence--property.

How copyrights are applied and the protection they provide for work that is intended as property within the commercial marketplace, on the face of it, wouldn’t seem to need much elaboration. However, its definitions and applications are quite complex, but fortunately aren’t what will be under discussion here. This article will center on how anti-statists can or should relate to state protection.

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Floyd McKissick, National Director of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), will be speaking in Detroit on Monday, November 7. The Detroit Committee to End the War in Vietnam and the Wayne Committee to End the War in Vietnam have announced that McKissick will be one of the main speakers at a teach-in which is scheduled for that day on the Wayne State University campus.

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On Saturday, December 4, CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) will hold: a rummage sale in its office at 8906 12^th St. The sale will run from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., with a great variety of articles up for sale: clothes, kitchen utensils, art objects and some furniture.

Anyone interested in articles to donate can bring them to the CORE office between 2 and 6 p.m. or call 872–8703.

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Prostitution may indeed be the world’s oldest profession mercenary soldiering is probably a close second place. Like so many other late-contemporary capitalist service commercial enterprises, soldiering-for-hire has undergone particularly ugly mutations in the last fifteen years as the bosses and clients have become more internationalized and more committed to the successful business strategy of plausible deniability. The latest globalized incarnation of the mercenary trade is the burgeoning $100 billion-per-year corporate military service industry.

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Although we’ve gotten an excellent response from last issue’s article, “Industrial Domestication” [FE #329, Summer, 1988] which originally appeared in the French magazine Os Cangaceiros, we were informed by the translators that we had inadvertently typeset it from a working, rather than final, version.

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Is this a class? It is at Corvid College.

Forty-two years ago, philosopher Ivan Illich wrote, “I also believe that the end of the ‘age of schooling’ could usher in the epoch of a global schoolhouse that would be distinguishable only in name from a global madhouse or a global prison in which education, correction, and adjustment became synonymous.”

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Intelligence finally reigned supreme recently when Detroit’s Common Council tore apart Ray Girardin’s stupid proposal to ban motorcycles from city parks without a special permit.

The proposal was immediately condemned by the American Civil Liberties Union as unconstitutional and in violation of the civil liberties of individuals because of its vagueness.

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The nexus linking resistance and protest movements with underground artistic practices is distinct, with significant overlap existing between the participants and qualities of both. It’s no surprise that overt resistance to existing circumstances intersects naturally with activities that are radically discontinuous with production/consumption-based existence.

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“Counterfeit coin is said to prove the existence of genuine--the terms being purely relative. But because there can be no counterfeit where there is no original, does it in any manner follow that any undemonstrated original exists? In seeing a spurious coin, we know it to be such by comparison with coins admitted to be genuine; but were no coin admitted to be genuine, how should we establish the counterfeit, and what right should we have to talk of counterfeits at all?

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The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in 1848, asserts that “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,” that social transformations grow out of the contradiction between productive forces and the relations of production when the latter become too constricting for the development of the former. In every epoch a revolutionary class incarnates these productive forces. [For Marxists, the classic historic example of a class struggle which is followed by a radical social transformation is the transition from feudalism to capitalism. In this example the bourgeoisie incarnated the new productive forces: the feudal relations of production (the way society was organized), were too inflexible to accommodate the increasing commodity production.

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a tree shivers shade

to protect the thief, the wolf

from the prying sun

.

it is no coincidence that

the gods of the forest

are the patrons

.

are the patrons of

witches, slaves, outcasts,

are the patrons of outlaws

.

for the earth was a sanctuary

before a mortar-mediated sky

imposed survival on the living

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