Full list of texts

Participants in the 400-person anarchist contingent carry banners from the New York-based Autonomous Anarchist Action group at the Jan. 26 Washington DC march. —photo/Mitch

The following is a brief summary of the many anti-war actions which occurred in the Detroit area since just before the January 16 U.S. air assault on Iraq. The numbers involved here were considerably lower than anti-war actions in other large metropolitan areas such as San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, Chicago and New York, where tens, and even hundreds, of thousands participated. Reasons for the small numbers in Detroit are linked to racial, geographical and political patterns of our city (a story best told another time), but we did what we could with the people we had to impede the war machine and express the depth of our rage against the government.

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During the American Civil War, Detroit’s population scarcely exceeded that of a modern day university. But, with 1,400 blacks and 43,000 whites, it wasn’t too small to have a race riot.

On March 6, 1863, rampaging whites left one dead, dozens injured, and scores of homes burned.

About 500 troops had to be called in from Ypsilanti to restore order.

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Compiled by Cathy, Peter and the Crotchpuller with a little help from their friends. Send your scandal to Seen c/o The Fifth Estate.

Turning over the 7^th Floor of the Student Union to WSU strikers cost Wayne State over $53,000 according to “U” officials. The total included stolen furniture, repairs, overtime to pay employees, and $13,000 for sandblasting slogans off of walls. David Baldwin, WSU vice-president said it “was a small cost t& pay for peace at the school”...

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Answer to last issue’s quiz: The designer of the nationally known Willow Run bomber plant was Charles Lindberg, former Warren-Forest resident and grandson of John C. Lodge, of X-way fame...

Rumors of the week: The J.L. Hudson Co. will announce after this Xmas that it will abandon its downtown Detroit store due to lagging sales. The last day of business will be after Xmas of 1971 (of course)...

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Welcome to our Summer 1997 edition; the last one published was Fall 1996. This issue has been the result of numerous fruitful collaborations. Our visually stunning cover is the work of renowned artist Richard Mock. We used his work for the first time last issue and hope to have more in the future.

Pages 10–13, containing Allan Antliff’s fascinating study of Russian anarchist artists of the revolution, was designed by Alexis Buss, a member of the Wooden Shoe collective in Philadelphia. See page 5 for details On the fire that destroyed their bookstore.

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Amazing! This issue follows the last faster than any one since we became a quarterly ten years ago. In good part it is motivated by the quickening pace of political events throughout the world and the sense that revolution is once again afoot in the land (even in the United States and even in Detroit!).

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For submission of articles and art, contact Sunfrog, PO Box 6, Liberty TN 37095.

For new subscriptions, renewals, donation, or other business matters, please continue to use our old address at Fifth Estate, 4632 Second Ave., Detroit MI 48201.

A 1972 Fifth Estate office meeting. photo/Millard Berry

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Welcome to the Fall/Winter 2000 Fifth Estate which follows our Spring 2000 edition. This issue marks the 35^th anniversary of this paper, now the longest running English language anarchist publication in U.S. history.

It’s quite a legacy, one we continue to build on, but only with your ongoing support. Thanks to everyone who subscribed, renewed, sent donations (especially our Sustainers), bought books, came by, wrote articles and letters, sent graphics and photos, and a hundred other things that make issues happen.

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It’s a pleasure to launch our Summer 1999 edition with a rare splash of color on our front page and center section. The other art and photos also provide an excellent setting for a diverse set of articles.

There are probably more people contributing to this issue than we’ve had in a long while. We haven’t had a color front page in six years, but Stephen Good-fellow’s terrific art and the page one photos made it almost a necessity.

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Welcome to the Winter 1999 issue of the Fifth Estate, #352. This edition follows our Summer issue by about six months. Maybe, like Anarchy has in its recently published issue, we should stop any pretense of quarterly publication, and openly state that we are publishing twice yearly for the time being. One problem with that is the Post Office demands a four time yearly schedule for us to remain eligible for our special mailing status. This issue was delayed even longer than normal due to the great Blizzard of ’99 which hit Detroit.

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We can tell when it’s been a long time between issues when we start getting letters from subscribers asking if they’ve missed an issue or it we’ve stopped publishing. This issue is the third we’ve published this year, which doesn’t meet our official status as a quarterly, but this should not be taken as a measure of our enthusiasm for our project. While this past year has seen both personal and other commitments interrupt our plans for publishing more issues, 1989 could be an improvement. We are simultaneously preparing a special issue along with this one which will feature a further investigation by George Bradford into the philosophy of deep ecology, the grounding of environmental ethics and concepts of wilderness. This will come out hopefully early in February.

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Hi, remember us? We put out a paper called the Fifth Estate every once in a while. Seriously though, we hope the reports of events in this issue such as the protests against the Detroit incinerator and the Toronto Anarchist Gathering give the idea that we’ve been doing more than just lazing about since our last issue. In fact, the last seven months have probably been the most active ones we’ve experienced in recent memory.

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You may note the repetitious opening to each of these columns: a plea to subscribers to respond to their renewal notices and a thanks to those who have made special contributions when re-subscribing or ordering books. These donations are the life blood of this newspaper, and although their mention may appear, at times, automatic, please know that they are nothing we take for granted. We have no special funding and other than the support of our readers, no means to finance this project. When we offer our thanks for your continuing support we recognize that distinct quality of mutual aid which enhances the libertarian vision present in each donation.

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As usual, let us begin this column with an apology for the lateness of this issue, as well as an appeal to readers who have been notified of their subscription expiration to send us their renewals. Also, a heartfelt expression of gratitude to those who have made a special contribution to help sustain our project.

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All of us at the Fifth Estate want to extend our warmest greetings and wishes for a happy, healthy and revolutionary New Year to those of you who have supported our project through your subscriptions, donations and participation. We made it through the long-dreaded 1984 and although the megamachine of the state seemed all but undeterred in its vicious reproduction of itself, our capacity to maintain our ideals, our dreams and our resistance seems heightened. It may be too early to declare the resurgence of a mass anti-authoritarian/anarchist movement, but from much of what we receive at the FE office, there is a definite upsurge in libertarian activity. 1985—the year to go for the master’s throat.

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Thank you for your patience in waiting for our Spring (almost Summer) issue. Our normal problems (or excuses) were compounded in the last few weeks by a broken typesetter which remained unfixed for a week due to IBM’s reluctance to dispatch a repairman to work on our almost two decades old machine. We are faced now with the decision to forge on into the computer age (choke!) or see if we can nurse along the mechanical nightmare that has served us for so long. A part of the problem is that the new technology of photocomposition is unsuited to our sporadic typesetting needs and is damn expensive to boot.

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Well, we hope that those of you who have complained for the last two years about our full-sheet size are happy about a return to a tabloid. However, after doing the layout for this edition in the smaller size, it confirms our contention that it is more time-consuming to put together, more difficult to find graphics and actually results in a loss of copy space. No decision yet on the size of the next issue; maybe we’ll even go further in the other direction and put it out in magazine size.

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Yes, you’ve noticed; we’re damn late with our Fall edition. The reason is that we were forced into a hurried move to new quarters due to a total lack of heat at our old place. The move was an unfortunate one beyond just the disruption of our production schedule since it has also effectively ended what had turned into a very nice cooperative situation with the Layabouts and Private Angst bands.

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[two_third padding=“0 20px 0 0”]We have finally firmed up plans for the Fifth Estate 20^th Anniversary celebration. It will be held at Alvin’s, 5756 Cass Ave., Detroit, on Dec. 7. Hopefully, the event will bring together many of those who have worked on the paper over the last two decades, as well as all those who want to help us celebrate. Music will be by the Layabouts who will have just released their album by that time. Also, there will be a dinner the same night for present and former staff members, so if you were part of the paper at any time, please write so we can plan a grand reunion.

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Welcome to the Winter 1995 Fifth Estate. This is only the second edition we’ve published this year, so you probably have not missed any issues. This issue also marks the 29^th anniversary of continuous publication of the Fifth Estate. We probably should have a giant, wild celebration for our 30^th next year, but if the 25^th was any indication, the date may just slip by. However, if there is anyone in the Detroit area willing to organize a gathering/celebration event, let us know; we’re up for it.

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Welcome to the Summer 1994 Fifth Estate. Our center eight pages feature the return of the once-a-decade Daily Barbarian, which last appeared as an FE supplement in 1984. Just wait until 2004! Also, this 40-page issue is the largest in our 28-year history.

We are late again with this edition. Our last was marked Fall/Winter 1993, Vol. 28, #3, and this is Summer 1994, Vol. 29, #1; no other issues appeared in between. Best way of keeping track of issues is by their whole numbers. This is issue #344; the previous, #343.

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Welcome to the Spring 1993 edition of the Fifth Estate. You probably noticed, it is different in two striking respects. First, the elaborate use of color by two of our favorite illustrators, Tony Doyle, on the cover, and Sean Bieri in the centerfold.

Color is normally an expense we think inappropriate to incur (particularly full-color), but the cost for this issue was picked up generously by the people responsible for the back-page Mao poster, which meant it could be used in the other sections as well. Contributions to further printing of the poster and to offset the cost of the color work in the FE, can be sent to their address listed elsewhere in the issue.

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Welcome to the Spring 1993 edition of the Fifth Estate. Our promise of a third issue for 1992 never materialized, so you are reading the edition which follows our Fall 1992 publication. Subscribers receive four issues even if the period extends beyond a calendar year, so fear not if we don’t produce the expected annual number. You can check whether you are receiving sequential issues by looking at the total number of issues printed since our founding in 1965. This issue is #341 and Fall’s was #340.

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Welcome to the Fall 1992 Fifth Estate. No, you didn’t miss an issue. Summer just sort of went by and we never got an issue out. As usual, you can probably expect only one more edition this year. Even though we print only three times a year (officially we are a quarterly), it is heartening to continue to receive the support we do from readers. Our usual thanks to all of you—sustainers, subscribers and book store buyers—for making this project continue.

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Hello, and welcome to another issue of the Fifth Estate, our Summer edition 1991, Vol. 26, No. 2, total number, 337. Fortunately, our basement office provided us with a cool respite from the blistering heat we’ve experienced in this part of the country, so we have no tales of martyrdom to relate.

As usual, our gratitude to all of you who constitute the community of support for our project through your subscriptions, donations and book purchases. It is your generosity and consistency which allows us to keep publishing and to maintain a public office which functions as one of the centers of libertarian activity in Detroit (see below for the other).

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The chaos of a hundred packing boxes has finally been cleared away, lost correspondence found and misplaced book orders filled, and our new office space is beginning to take on the feeling of home. It’s quite a change since the paper was in its last office for 12 years, but the fact that we are sharing quarters with three other groups has made the transition one of positive expectations. The large building we are occupying is just a few blocks uptown from the old address (in the shadow of the General Motors world headquarters) and features office space in front with a large performance area in the rear. The latter will be utilized by the Layabouts, a new wave band (three of whose members also contribute to the FE), the Dramatic Research Company (the old Freezer Theatre Players), and the Duck Club Players (from the infamous club of the same name), so music, satire and plays will abound. We had a big, bang-up, Detroit style grand opening and May Day celebration (Workers of the World Relax!) and a small Fifth Estate open house to show off our new quarters and bookstore. A full schedule of events is not yet set, but with the above crew situated, events in the manner of the old Grinning Duck and Freezer Theatre can be expected.

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The birthdays seem to be coming around faster and faster. This November marks the 18^th anniversary of the Fifth Estate’s appearance as an “underground” paper in 1965. Several of us were recently looking at some back issues and smiling at the lavish language they contained-“ALL POWER TO THE BROTHERS AND SISTERS WHO UNDERSTAND THE REVOLUTION AND WHO ARE WORKING TO MAKE IT HAPPEN.” But we were also marveling at how well much of it has stood the test of time. Is it to early to prepare for our twentieth anniversary celebration?

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Welcome to our Spring 2000 issue. The last one we published was dated Summer 1999, so subscribers and libraries, please take note; you haven’t missed any intervening papers. This edition is numbered 354, the previous one, 353, so we are trudging along, even if not very quickly.

We’re grateful to have Maurice Spira’s inspiring and hilarious graphic grace our front page, and are pleased to be able to give extensive space to the discussion regarding tactics and strategies following the Seattle WTO demos. As David Solnit suggests in our page one article, we could very well be on the cusp of a new period of contestation.

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Victor D. Schumacher
January 27, 1922 — January 28, 1991

This issue of the FE is dedicated to Victor Schumacher, a mainstay of the Detroit antiwar movement and activist community, who was killed by a car late in January during his morning jog. Vic was a pacifist and a member of the War Resisters League whose resistance to militarism dated back to the time he spent in prison for refusing to serve in the U.S. armed forces during World War II. Vic refused to do alternative service as well. While working in a New York hospital tending many war victims, he saw wards cleared of war wounded for security reasons so that Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, the wife of the Chinese Nationalist dictator, could have cosmetic surgery. Seeing the soldiers lying in gurneys in the hallways to make room for the privileged, he vowed to resist the system of injustice in every way he could.

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That’s as good a reason as any for why the observance of our 25 years of publishing is reduced to a short mention in this column. We had intended more, both self-congratulation and perhaps a deeper discussion about our origins and political evolution. But the idea of a retrospective special issue began to slip as this issue became overwhelmed with articles.

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According to our staff box, this newspaper is officially a quarterly, but in reality, we have become an “episodic,” corning out between or in conjunction with our political, cultural and environmental projects. It has been common practice in this space to offer explanations for our long printing delays and infrequent publishing schedule which is now about three issues a year. That is contrasted to twenty years ago when the Fifth Estate appeared weekly. It is perhaps time to formally declare that three-four times a year will be it for a while and devote this column to matters other than apologia.

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It might seem self-indulgent, in the face of mounting worldwide horror, to call what has occurred around the FE the past several months a “crisis,” but a more precise word fails to come to mind. In August we were told by our landlord that we had one month in which to vacate the FE office, in order to allow construction workers to tear out the ceiling and undertake renovation of the building.

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Thanks to those of you who so promptly answered your subscription renewal letters we sent out after the last issue. Thanks, also, for sending along your comments on the paper; it’s always good to get your feelings about our effort, even if it’s sometimes critical. And a special appreciation to those who contributed money beyond the price of their subscription. If you haven’t mailed your renewal letter back yet and intend to, please don’t make us have to spend more money on postage; it could much better be spent elsewhere. Also, this is your last opportunity to subscribe at the old rate of $4.

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A shortage of staff, and not money problems, kept us from putting out this issue sooner. For the first time in a long time we are in good financial shape, thanks to your numerous and extremely generous contributions. The contributions have helped tremendously, but they haven’t solved our logistical problems. Most of us work, and those that don’t, scrape, and we find that our commitments to Capital—jobs, survival, cars that break down on an increasingly regular basis, all the vicissitudes of what is commonly referred to as “normal” existence—keep us from our true commitments and our projects. So be it; we’d be the last ones to deny the gulf that separates our desires and the pleasure we derive from this project and others like it on the one hand, and the struggling and daily despair on the other. Thanks again for your support. Hopefully we’ll have another issue in your hands within two months at most. We know you’ve heard that one before, folks, but this time we really mean it...

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October marks the 16^th anniversary of the Fifth Estate and a little over five years since we’ve been publishing this paper as an explicitly libertarian project (see the Oct. 1979 FE for a brief history), and we are pleased to report that the ship of anti-state remains healthy. We say this even though the Post Office has reduced our status to that of a quarterly. This has served as a reminder of how we’ve let our publishing frequency precipitously slip from that of a monthly to, in this case, once every four months. Readers write to us all too often complaining that they have missed an issue, when it’s just been our sloth. Please be assured, all of you will get the six issues you subscribed to no matter if they don’t fall into a given calendar year. Financially we’re holding our own (contrary to a year ago when we were dead broke), but please, don’t let this declaration act to forestall the generous donations that many of you have been sending to the paper, because it is exactly those extra dollars or two or $20! with a book order or subscription renewal that have carried us in the direction of solvency. We can rarely do so individually, so let us thank all of you collectively who continue to have faith, not so much in this paper, but in the ideas it embodies, Who have helped us so much over the last year. And as usual, a special debt of gratitude must go out to our Italian comrades on both coasts and in Florida who continue their lifelong commitment to anarchist ideals by support of the world libertarian press including this one.

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This issue is in your hands for two reasons: 1) your generous and numerous response to our plea for financial assistance and 2) the feeling of support we got from the accompanying letters you sent in. Our problem was really two-fold, but we only told you about the money side of the difficulties we faced. The other, a feeling of demoralization and a questioning of the purpose of our project, was really a more serious matter, but your desire for the Fifth Estate to continue infused a similar determination in us as well. We did discriminate, though, in a manner we should apologize for; we sent direct letters of thanks to large contributors and left our small donors to receive our appreciation in this space. We know that often it is as hard for some of you (and us) to find a spare five dollars where others are fortunate enough to have larger sums to contribute. We meant no slight but just couldn’t possibly thank everyone personally. We were exceptionally fortunate to have gotten the money we did as we had several large expenses relating to our office plus sent off several hundred dollars to book publishers such as Partisan Press, Cienfuegos, Black & Red, and Bratach Dubh. These important projects are experiencing much of the same difficulties as we are and we thought the least we could do was to pass along your donations to us for the debts we owed them. We don’t know what the future looks like financially, but we feel that if we can publish fairly regularly and offer an interesting selection of books, we can continue our projects. Still, we were just informed by our printer that his price is going to rise by 50%, our postage costs are already up, and we may have to switch mailing companies, all of which will entail a goodly sum. Ugh! So, any of you who feel the spirit to pledge a certain sum per month to the maintainance of the paper, you can join the small group of sustainers who receive the paper first class mail each issue and are a vital part of keeping us afloat...

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When we start receiving letters asking if we are still publishing, we know it’s time to get an issue out. One reason that the gap between our last issue and this one must appear so large to those who receive the FE by mail is that the edition published at the time of the Republican Convention was not mailed to subscribers. Because of a shortage of staff and funds at the time, we distributed it in Detroit only. Unfortunately, none remain available for distribution but a reproduction of it is on the opposite page as well as a selection from the text.

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Last issue we reported that the local Freezer Theater had been torched and that the people who performed there were looking for a new place. Well, all you ardent Freezer fans will be glad to know that they’ve opened up shop in a storefront on Cass, between Selden & Alexandrine in the Cass Corridor. They’re back to performing the “beyond the fridge” plays that only they can do, and have started poetry readings on Sundays. It’s well worth checking out...

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Just when everything starts to look gloomy on a cold Detroit winter’s day, along comes one of those rays of hope that helps keep up everyone’s morale—a bank closing! This time it’s those sleazes at the Feminist Federal Credit Union.

Writing in their newsletter, Financing Feminism, these bankers expressed a sense of loss over having to withdraw their Detroit offices from the balance sheet because of waning interest. They’ve decided to throw all their capital behind an Ann Arbor office. Too bad, bankers, but as they say in the world of high finance: “your loss is our gain.” We only hope that your brothers in the money business will soon cash in their chips...

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Welcome to our Winter 1992 edition. This was our final issue for the 1991 year. continuing our recent pattern of three papers per year. As we’ve said in the past, the fact that we publish so infrequently comes neither from a lack of will nor is it a measure of the growing anti-authoritarian movement.

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Although we got a lot of positive response to our last issue (as well as our fair share of abuse), no one noted a major error in our Hungary poster which attributes the date of the events to being “13 years ago” (making it 1966) rather than 23 years ago. Every one of us must have looked at the layout twenty times and never noticed the obvious blunder. Oh, well, we can tell people it’s a reprint of a ten-year-old poster...

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As you may have noticed in our staff box this issue, the Fifth Estate is now officially designated as a bimonthly. A reduced staff and the availability of those remaining has dictated this change and will also allow us to conform more closely to postal regulations governing the second class mail rate which demands specific publication schedules. Ah, another of the great FE contradictions. The Fifth Estate has mailed at this controlled rate for a decade, long before the paper too was explicitly anti-State. The decision to be immersed in the postal bureaucracy is based on our ability to mail an entire issue including bulk orders to bookstores for under $20. Fred Woodworth, editor of the now defunct Match, steadfastly refused to involve his paper with any government agency and would spend over six times our figure to mail each of his issues. Of course, if we took that course we would still be using U.S. postage stamps....

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Emily’s, the downtown shop where all the nicey-nice smile faces go to get their over-priced touchy-feely thingys is apparently plagued with the same problem as any other Motor City store—shoplifting. The proprietor has displayed a sign reading, “Free double-dip ice cream cone to anyone fingering a shoplifter!” and another cutesy plea, “We don’t steal from you! Don’t steal from us.” Nothing more could drive us to a life of crime...

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We dedicate this issue to the memory of the 14 women slaughtered in Montreal December 6 at the hand of a patriarchal maniac. As he lined up his victims and methodically shot them, he expressed a hatred for all women and said he wanted “to kill feminists.”

In the memory of these dead sisters, we pledge, “We’re all feminists here!”

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A happy new year thank-you to all of you who responded so quickly to our request in the last issue to please renew your subscriptions promptly. Thank you also for all the very generous donations and requests for papers to distribute to friends—we love to see those piles of papers disappear. Remember that we always need people and places to distribute the FE; we’ll send you papers on a consignment basis and you pay only for those you sell and keep half of the proceeds for yourself. If you wish to give the papers away free, send us the postage and we’ll send you a corresponding amount of FE’s.

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Welcome to our Summer 1998 edition. Thanks to everyone who had a hand in creating our 351^st issue. This issue follows our Fall 1997 edition, so please note that there was not an issue designated Winter or Spring.

As always, you can keep track of issues by noting the number in parentheses. Subscriptions expire after you have received four issues, not a calendar year. Special thanks to our Sustainers and to those who made generous donations with their subscription renewals. Also, to our writers and artists whose works grace our pages.

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Welcome to our 30^th anniversary issue—although you are reading this as we are already into our 31^st year. 1965 seems like ancient history or just a heartbeat away, depending on your current age. The cover logo on page one over our chronicle comes from our 1968–71 period.

As always we would like to express our gratitude to each reader, each Sustainer, each contributor. On the occasion of this anniversary, we feel this sense of gratitude even more deeply. Without your support, none of this would happen. We appreciate the patience with which all of you tolerate our sporadic publishing schedule although we have given up promising to appear more frequently.

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Welcome to the long time coming Summer edition of the Fifth Estate. It is our first since the Winter 1995 issue which was published Dec. 31, 1994. Subscribers (and particularly libraries) frequently think they have missed issues when six months go by between our papers. For instance, they’ll understandably inquire, “Where’s the Spring 1995 edition?” although there wasn’t one.

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Welcome to the Spring 1992 issue of the Fifth Estate (Vol. 27, No. 1, our 339^th paper)! As usual, we are later than we had planned, due in part to our worst nightmare: the breakdown, in the heat of production, of our IBM Composer. Most of this issue has been typeset on Macintosh computers by a host of busy friends stealing time at work, home and in school computer labs.

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Greetings to all and as usual, a special thanks to those who have added a contribution to their subscription renewal or book order. Also, to that small group who have elected to become Fifth Estate Sustainers—those who donate a fixed sum each issue. One of the reasons why Sustainers are limited is that we rarely promote the category or indicate how important it is to us. Sustainers are sent the issue first class, receive publications from time to time and free admission to local FE events. This issue we sent Sustainers a tabloid we produced in conjunction with the Evergreen Alliance as part of the opposition to the Detroit Incinerator, and the next issue will be accompanied (hopefully) by the soon-to-be published last book by Fredy Perlman, The Strait. So, if we have enticed you, please drop us a line and let us know how much you can pledge each issue.

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Good news! The Fifth Estate has a new office and bookstore quarters with public access, plus it provides a better atmosphere for working and receiving visitors. The move has provided the spark for increased activity around the bookshop, with one of us taking responsibility for expanding its book selection and starting regular hours.

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Where are the Bulgarians now that we need them department: Get ready Detroit! As the archbishop and the mayor slap each other on the back for bringing the pope himself into town in September, local entrepreneurs are geared up to produce all the exciting papal potpourri to be hawked in the wake of the holy parade as it cruises up Woodward Avenue and out to Pontiac’s Silverdome to pray that the roof doesn’t cave in. What will it be—tee shirts, buttons, pinwheel beanies, and, undoubtedly the classic style commemorative Popa Cola for a taste that refreshes. Rumor has it that the Pope plans to personally bless the site of the City’s world’s [as in print original] largest trash-to-dioxin municipal incinerator. Local fundamentalist christians are understandably horrified to see the antichrist and Whore of Babylon himself in these Yewnited States, and plan mass baptisms of born-again christians down at the Rouge River. Rumor also has it that there will be a huge pagan festival (more to our liking, though we’d enjoy seeing the born-agains fending off the bloated rats down at the Rouge as they go down for the third time) to coincide with the papal visit, to call up all the old Indian spirits of these lands to drive the blackrobes and their ilk away. Of course millions will be spent (and made) and security is going to be hard-core. Since, as Stalin once cynically but aptly pointed out, the pope has no military divisions, he’ll be relying on Detroit’s finest and lots of plainclothes pigs from every imaginable agency (and some we’ve never heard of, probably) to make sure the holy daddy-o doesn’t trip over his gown. Detroiters! Here’s your chance—a once-in-history opportunity: MOON THE POPE:

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Our offer of bulk copies of our back issues turned out better than we expected and we were swamped with requests. With a reduced volume, we can now make available issues only on a single copy basis. We have a list of back issues available for those who are interested.

Those of you who were sent subscription renewal notices last issue responded in greater numbers than any time in our memories. Thanks, since we hate doing bulk mailings and it saves greatly on postage when we don’t have to send a second reminder. By the way, some of you who have not responded to a second notice are getting this issue anyway since we wanted you to see our coverage of the Chicago gathering, but if you haven’t renewed, this is the last one you will receive.

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The space which the Fifth Estate shares with three other groups has been the scene of a number of events recently, mostly rock performances, but also a smattering of theatre and comedy. They have been generally well-received with an exceptionally gratifying turnout for our benefit held March 2. We raised $261 to help defray the expenses of maintaining the space shared by the Layabouts band, the Freezer Theatre Players and the Duck Club Players as well as the paper.

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When you get to be our age, it seems easy to forget your birthdays, but it probably should be noted that last November marked the 17^th anniversary of our first issue. The paper has gone through a number of marked changes since those first days (we became an explicitly anti-authoritarian paper in July 1975), but we continue on, our commitment intact and looking forward to the next 17...

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Welcome to our Fall 1997 edition, #350. We think we’ve assembled numerous informative and challenging articles for you and are particularly pleased with the issue’s art work. Thanks to Stephen Goodfellow for the cover’s ominous drawing and no less to the creative talents of Richard Mock, Maurice Spira, Bill Koehnline, and Marilynn Rashid whose drawings grace our pages; also, to Alexis Buss for her tasty layout of Alan Antliff’s art and anarchy article. Thanks to all of you whose contributions keep our project going. Prisoners and GIs: if this is your first issue, please notify us if you want to be on our subscription list.

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The FE staff and friends celebrated our 30^th anniversary at the Cass Café in April, not only bringing in people from as far away as California, Maryland and Philadelphia, but even a picket by two very entertaining old-fashioned stillborn-again Jesus freaks who drew even more irreverent Cass Corridor types into our vortex of sin. Favorite FE covers and FE memorabilia were displayed, including a judge’s gavel that some enterprising ‘60s staff member stole from a courtroom and turned into a hash pipe. People danced to the music of Detroit’s Ghost Band, and enough money was raised to keep this ship afloat. Thanks to Chuck Roy and the Cass Café staff, to the Ghost Band, to David Furer for the music mix, to Julie Herrada, and to unnamed others for their help in making it a success.

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This issue of the Fifth Estate is only twelve pages due to both staff and financial problems. Several members of our collective are traveling and all others but one are working full-time. This leaves the paper to just a few of us working mainly at night after our jobs. Not being very good businesspeople, we have never been able to figure out why we are in flush times at one period and at the brink of going under at another, but we have reached a point not real far from the latter. In that we have a fairly low budget, this means we are only talking about $350 a month, but still it is enough to get our creditors knocking at the door. Finances haven’t quite reached the point they did a year ago when we had to send out an emergency mailing asking for funds, but that is a real possibility if the picture does not improve soon. We have just sent out 150 renewal forms to those people whose subscriptions are about to expire. We urge those of you receiving them to return them as soon as possible as the money from those renewals would put us back in shape. Book orders, new subscriptions, donations and our ever-faithful sustainers’ fund will keep periods like this from re-occurring. Also, look for an FE benefit in the near future....

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Once again we have to extend gratitude to our subscribers for their generous contributions to insure this paper’s continued existence. Every time we thought the flow of letters containing checks or cash had ceased, we would receive yet another with an explanation that the delay was due to a wait for an unemployment check or paycheck to arrive. It’s this sort of support that provides not only the money for us to continue, but also the motivation. Some of us felt that a notice of thanks this small is insufficient to thank those that provided the funds, but really the whole paper is our response...

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Sorry to be so late with this issue, but the FE staff had a lot of its time and energy sapped by Michigan Bell’s efforts to prosecute us out of existence. (See story elsewhere in this issue.) We just couldn’t pull the paper together after sitting in Recorder’s Court all day. However, our tardiness fueled more speculation (some of it gleeful) that we had finally gone under, but, after a rocky three months, the project has stabilized itself financially and has a functioning staff which is prepared to go ahead with long-range plans for the FE’s continued existence....We particularly want to extend our thanks to the many people who have shown their appreciation and support of our “new” direction by sending in subscriptions and donations--the money has helped cut into the still-large backlog of debts...Another reason we certainly don’t want to go under is that we want to be here to celebrate with you the 10^th anniversary of the Fifth Estate. We are tentatively planning a dinner/music celebration for Halloween evening, October 31^st at the Earth Center in Hamtramck. The first FE appeared in October of 1965--whew!

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Usually when a publication such as ours disappears for several months it is due to money problems, political differences among the staff or a combination of the two. However, we can happily report that neither of these maladies caused our hiatus, but rather a combination of sloth and self-indulgence. The days and then the months just slipped away as we traveled, tended our gardens, took leisurely bike-rides, worked our dumb jobs and generally laid about as much as we could. Now that our mail has slacked off to almost zero, and the rumors of our demise have begun to reach us once again, we figure it is time for another assault against contemporary reality. Perhaps, though, it understates our intellectual activity to suggest we were only doing the above mentioned pastimes, because every article in the paper has been the subject of discussion and debate; some of it extending back several months. This newspaper is much like letter-writing: you get back in accordance with what you send out. In that we value greatly the input we receive from readers, you probably can expect to see more of this paper during the winter months ahead...

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The Detroit primary elections, as usual, contained no surprises with a majority of both registered and eligible voters not bothering to venture out of their house to participate in selecting who shall rule them. Officials have even given up bemoaning the low turnouts and called this primary a success because 46% of the voters cast ballots...

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Wowie zowie!—this issue marks the beginning of the 12^th year of continuous publication for the Fifth Estate. In 1965, 17-year-old Harvey Ovshinsky came back from the West Coast after a summer of working on the Los Angeles Free Press with the idea of starting a similar “underground” newspaper in Detroit. After varying fits and starts the FE rapidly became part of the dope, rock and roll and marching in the streets phenomena of the ‘60s and early ‘70s. With the demise of the “Movement” and an accompanying reduction in circulation from a high of 14,000 in 1969 to a low of about 5,000 in 1974, the paper made one last stab at survival as a commercial, youth-oriented weekly. That effort collapsed in July 1975 when the present staff revamped the works into a monthly publication of libertarian communism having a circulation of 3,000. None of us feel an “awesome responsibility” or anything like that, to continue what has turned out to be an institution in Detroit, but we do plan to keep on rolling for the time being—at least as long as we can maintain a degree of relevancy and have a touch of fun...

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“We understand you tore the little tag off your mattress.” (Louisiana Worker/cpf)

To paraphrase an ex-president; we won’t have The Detroit Sun to kick around anymore—the city’s “hottest paper” collapsed financially after its Oct. 22 issue, ending several months of weekly publication. In a desperate attempt to raise needed cash (the staff hadn’t been paid in several weeks), Editor John Sinclair began a campaign of favorable publicity for the mayor and the police that even outdid The Sun’s previous performances. But even though grinning cops and politicians dominated the front pages of the last two issues, no one in the city administration was willing to secure the financial commitment the paper needed to continue publishing. The Sun was never like the other “alternative” liberal weeklies which appear in other major U.S. cities such as the Boston Real Paper or the Los Angeles Free Press with their combination of left-liberal politics and “hip” culture which meant that city hall is always fair game for investigative reporting.

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What with all the straight media from TV-2 to the Ann Arbor Sun declaring us dead, we thought it was about time to bring out some proof to the contrary. On the other hand, maybe we shouldn’t be so cocky about it since this is only our third paper in four months, pretty well giving the lie to our proposed monthly schedule. But a fatal combination of laziness and a desire not to be bound by externally imposed deadlines has probably allowed us to become self-indulgent (like this column). Also, this is an explanation, not a promise for more frequent issue.

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Several people have asked us if the back page of last issue’s FE [#289, January 24, 1978] depicting the “thoughts” of Kim Il Sung was real or just another put-on. Well, we wish that it was something we had thought up, but unfortunately those tragic State comedians in North Korea beat us to the punch. Everything on the back page was taken from official North Korean propaganda publications—everything except, of course, the segment by the Italian fascist Mario Palmieri—or was it the other way around; it’s hard to tell. Also, we’d like to thank the members of the IWW group in Hawaii for sending us the info for the North Korean movie “The Engineers” which also appeared on the back page...

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Our finances present a decidedly brighter picture this month, although a few creditors like IBM are demanding large sums from us for back debts. The sole reason we are able to peek a little above the waterline is due to the generosity and support from our readers—from one-time donors, and especially from our growing list of sustainers. We will probably still need to hold a benefit in April, but we can get completely out of the entertainment business and concentrate on the newspaper if a score more people would become sustainers. If you are so motivated, please use the coupon farther back in the paper...

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The Fifth Estate benefit on April 10 was one of the best ever with Detroit bluesman Bobo Jenkins and his band turning everybody on to their strong rhythms and FE supporters and friends dancing and drinking the night away. Unfortunately, our paper didn’t reach people early enough and many of the usual revelers missed the festivities. We took in about $400, but that was just enough to make expenses.

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The Fifth Estate’s benefit party on February 20^th was a rousing success which saw the paper raise $400 over expenses and provided a party-down good time for about 450 revelers. Although the 5 kegs of beer went out faster than we expected, brilliant performances by the Shadowfax Band, creative theater by The Acme Theatrical Agency and Primitive Lust, and mystifying magic by Art DeAwful combined with the resources of the people in attendance made for a fun night for all.

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Special thanks to all those readers who sent in contributions and became sustainers in response to last issue’s plea for funds. Financially we are at somewhat of an equilibrium, but still remain on the edge, so although we don’t want to keep calling “emergency” before the situation warrants it, we still urge readers to become sustainers and to renew their subscriptions when the time comes....

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Rather than try to reconcile the obvious disparity between a newspaper that indicts the entire edifice of civilization and the technology it has developed with the fact that the FE mail subscriptions have just been converted to a computer list, we’ll just take another sip of beer. We think the transition (required of us by our mailing house) went fairly smoothly, but if there are any serious errors, please bring them to our attention....

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The August mayoral and Common Council elections in Detroit are worth no more than a casual brickbat if for no other reason then their irrelevance. Unlike many other cities, where political machines were powers to be reckoned with, in the Motor City the politicians occupy a position not even a distant second to the city’s real rulers—the auto companies. Barely rating even a few copy inches in the mass media, the usual collection of opportunists, careerists, and thieves are waiting to feed at the public trough. Perhaps even more despicable is the same gaggle of socialists, ex-militants, and other leftoids vying for a shot at a small piece of power in the state apparatus. In elections like these, participation is even more of a humiliation than normally—don’t vote or if you do have a voter’s card—piss in the voting booth...

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Things can only get worse for auto workers with the election of Doug Fraser as president of the UAW. Beyond just being a run-of-the-mill hack, Fraser has a record of strike-breaking that old Henry Ford’s security department would have admired. Fraser engineered the suppression of four major wildcat strikes in Detroit during 1973 through 1974 at Chrysler Corporation’s Jefferson Ave., Detroit Forge, Mack Ave., and Dodge Truck plants. The worst case was at the Mack Stamping Plant where a mini-occupation had taken place and Fraser put together a goon squad comprised of over 1,000 union officials armed with clubs to force the strikers back to work and to “deal with radicals”. When Detroit Police Inspector Joseph Areeda saw the gang of union officials at the plant he said to Fraser, “I’m glad we’re on the same side.” And so it is...

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Our Fifth Estate benefit and party at Alvin’s Back-room on June 25 worked out pretty well for us, both in terms of money (we made about $215 after expenses) and everyone seemed to have a good time. The entertainment was provided by the Acme Theatrical Agency and Primitive Lust satire groups, both who left folks rolling in the aisles. After them, Ted Lucas and the Spikedrivers provided the rock and roll for a night of dancing. Unfortunately, the pressure gauge on the beer tapper broke while we were into our fourth keg and left us with a lot of undrunk suds at the end of the evening. You can hear more of the Spikedrivers every Friday and Saturday nights at Alvin’s after hours from 11 pm to 4 am. Our usual thanks to everyone who helped put the benefit together including Mark for printing and Mike McCoy and Judy Adams of WDET for publicity.

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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....

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Thanks to everyone (musicians, performers and party-goers) who made the Fifth Estate 10^th anniversary party on December 6 one of the most entertaining and fun sets Detroit has seen in a long while. (See details and photos farther in.) Besides all of the joyous dancing and partying, the benefit managed to bring in enough money to print this issue, order some more books for our store and catch up on some nagging bills. Also, reaction to the affair was so overwhelming that numerous people have suggested that we sponsor events featuring Detroit talent on a regular basis, perhaps every two months. Sounds good to us and we are planning a meeting in a few weeks to discuss such possibilities.

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The Fifth Estate Benefit Party held Jan. 14 turned out to be one of the most enjoyable to date, with folks guzzling down six kegs of beer and dancing their asses off to the Shadowfax band. Special thanks are due to all the people who helped out including Mark Wenson for printing our leaflets; Carman Harlan of WWWW, Jack Broderick of WJZZ, Mike McCoy, Phil Marcus Esser and Judy Adams of WDET, and other stations and newspapers which helped publicize the event. A last minute bureaucratic hassle with the state liquor commission which threatened to stop the party was averted thanks to staff members of the Lansing Star (Box 24, Lansing, Mi. 48824) who made a special trip which saved the day—thanks folks. Still in all, this could possibly be the last benefit due to our staggering overhead—this time $455—for beer, band, rent and five smaller items—against door receipts of $608, which produced only a total income of $153. This is almost enough to print one issue but we were hoping for at least twice that. Any suggestions? And if we do have another benefit, will any readers give us a hand on setting it up?...

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Bad news for the Ann Arbor Sun. “Detroit’s Hottest Paper” (as they call it) was hit in January with a coordinated wave of vandalism which left 40 of their newspaper coinboxes disabled after a liquid solder was poured in the coinslots. Since the gang from Ann Arbor has offered a $100 reward to bring in the culprits to justice, we thought we could narrow down the list of suspects for them. (1) Any of the 650,000 members of Detroit’s black community who have been insulted by the blatantly racist attempt of a group of white college-town liberals to publish a paper for blacks without the slightest understanding of the dynamics of the situation; (2) Any of the 250,000 members of the UAW who have seen chief union bureaucrat Leonard Woodcock portrayed on the Sun pages as a friend of labor, rather than as the stooge of the auto companies which he is; and (3) Any of the thousands of radicals in Detroit who have seen the Sun try to divert criticism of the political system by uncritically praising every elected hack in the state. Hope that helps you out, fellas...

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With this issue of the Fifth Estate, the paper begins its thirteenth year of continuous publications with the first edition appearing November 19, 1965. Since that date 288 issues have been published, hundreds of people have come and gone from the staff, publishing schedules have varied from weekly to monthly and the politics contained within have flipped and flopped from liberal to New Left to Maoist to anarchist to its current perspectives. We keep on truckin’ through, sometimes with less of a sense of purpose than at others, but always with a desire for revolution and the demand for the sweetness of life. Hope you can dig a little of what we are doing, and are doing something we dig on as well. Through all of it, we always try to remember the immortal words of Sammy Smoot, “When you smash the State, keep a smile on your lips and a song in your heart”...

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Many thanks to those who continue to send donations both through our Sustainer’s fund (which is growing) and one-time donations. It’s been financially difficult trying to make it through three months without holding a benefit, and it’s the individual responses of so many subscribers that keeps us in the game. We’re going to have another rip-roarer in January (see details later on in the paper) so you can get ready to boogie...

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Last month the Detroit City Water Board was boasting to the news media that Detroit’s water was some of the cleanest in the country. By clean, City officials mean that the chances of there being any harmful (or non-harmful for that matter) bacteria in our drinking water is almost zero. But considering all of the chemicals added to the already polluted waters that surround Detroit, it’s not surprising. What is surprising though, is that we’re still alive! An example of the amount of chemicals the water board uses to clean up our drinking water can be found in the fact that people at the Detroit Print Co-op have found that the needed content p h for the fountain solution in their presses (the fountain solution is a mixture of water and chemicals that keeps ink off of the non-print areas of a printing plate), can be found in plain old Detroit tap water. Drink up...

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Good news on the financial front: the Fifth Estate is still cruising on the generosity of our growing list of sustainers and those making one-time contributions. Also, a thank you to all of those subscribers who have been renewing over the past few months. One note though: if you received a letter last month stating that your subscription has expired, this will be the last issue you receive unless we hear from you. (Hate to lose anyone, but...)

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If you are reading this newspaper and are not a subscriber, please be advised that you are able to do so only through the support and generosity of those who are. On about July 18 we realized that we had no money for our August print bill, the July rent and a multitude of other smaller obligations. We sent out a special mailing to our subscribers asking for $1.00 donations per person and the response was overwhelming, with some contributions as high as $25.00! The total was $500 and is enough to allow us to hang on another month. We were all really pleased with the tremendous response from our readers; we thank you all greatly for your support, and hope for your continued interest in our future...

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As promised in our March issue, the FE will be throwing another rip-roaring benefit, to raise money for the paper’s maintenance and provide a great time for all. To be held on Saturday, April 10 (9 until ?) at Formerly Alvin’s Delicatessen (on Cass between Antoinette and Palmer near the WSU campus), the $2.50 admission charge will include dancing to a great blues band headed by Detroit’s own BoBo Jenkins and lots of free beer. As before, all money goes toward the continued appearance of this paper and we are looking forward to your support and participation.

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Well this issue of the FE is a little late in coming out because three-quarters of the staff is off taking a much awaited summer break. This is the last FE you’ll see until September (this issue is a double issue—July/Aug.), when we hope to be back in the swing of things...

As usual, we’re operating the paper by the skin of our teeth and would like to thank all of those people who resubscribed and sent in those much needed donations—it saved us this month. If you received a “renewal” notice in the mail and haven’t re-subscribed yet, we hope that you do so soon since it’s your subscriptions that help us cover costs each month...

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In 1969 [when Fredy and Lorraine moved to Detroit], the “underground” newspaper the Fifth Estate addressed itself to the Detroit radical and counter-culture community. Fredy sought out the staff, and except for a brief period (when there was an attempt to make the paper a commercial success), was an ardent but critical supporter of the paper, extending his friendship to the numerous remarkable collaborators. In addition to his criticisms, Fredy’s typing skills were welcomed. Over the years, Fredy took part in the paper’s production. At his death in 1985, only one staff person, Marilyn Werbe, had more typesetting seniority than Fredy.

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May Day was celebrated in Detroit with a Smoke-In in Grand Circus Park, to call for the re-legalization of marijuana.

Hippies stood around and smoked joints made of Bull Durham, legal herbs, and bananas.

The demonstration started out with lots of rain, and a big hassle with the local constables about a permit they were supposed to have. As a result, the demonstration was temporarily moved to the lobby of the City-County building. Later everyone slowly wandered back to the park and nothing else was said.

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For all those world-weary visionaries fed up with ever doleful tones and anxious to hear something concrete and uplifting—didja hear the one about the Detroit People Mover?

It’s this big snakey rail on cement poles that winds around downtown Detroit and looks sort of like MGM’s yellow brick road except it’s not yellow (except in rusty streaks down the sides) and it won’t take you to Kansas. It only trails in a series of question marks back to the Renaissance Center (a maze-like fortress of glass and poured concrete, barricading the river) to which you may have come from Kansas, or to the new “Millender Center Luxury Hotel and Apartments” across the street (which, and this is the truth, prides itself on being “the Tallest Prefab Building in the World” and during construction had signs hanging off each floor, boasting for instance, “13^th floor—completed in 1-1/2 days!”). As things stand now, however, the People Mover won’t take you or anybody else anywhere and possibly, hopefully for everybody’s sake, never will.

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Imagine this scene: a bright cloudless warm May Sunday in Detroit. On days like this, rare as the purple wallaby, half the local population has suddenly taken cover indoors in a shroud of bubbling beercans, listening to Tiger announcer, Ernie Harwell, broadcasting his play-by-play commentary from New York.

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The Eastern Market is one of those places you must love. She is quite an old woman by now, and part of her (the Gratiot Central Market) was recently gutted by flames: But you love her, for she is very real and genuine—the Lotte Lenya of our local architecture.

She lives just east of the city’s newest “Ditch,” on Vernor near Russell. Confined mostly to bed, she sprawls over a five block area, languishing in meat-packing houses, vegetable stalls, and exotic wholesalers of olive oil, dried apricots, noodles, and wine. She is always vaguely reminiscing her halcyon days, when she was a young immigrant speaking Yiddish and Italian.

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At their National Gathering last August, the U.S. Greens decided to embark upon a project they called “Detroit Summer” as one of their three major campaigns for 1992.

The idea was to express an urban consciousness for ecological issues through the establishment of a “Green alternative” for an economically and socially disintegrating urban environment. Part of this ambitious project involved the recruitment of Youth Greens, many of whom constitute the most radical and even anarchist wing of the Greens, to come to this city for the summer.

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Last year when Detroit residents began their protest against the proposed municipal trash incinerator (by demonstrating, attending meetings, putting out informational flyers, hanging banners over the freeway near the incinerator site) there was some local media coverage. But the focus of the coverage was the Detroit City Council meetings where the building permit was being challenged by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). After the permit was approved and since construction has begun, there has been little mention of the issue, even though there have been numerous protest activities organized by residents and local environmental groups.

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The news in March 2019 that, due to “financial and community concerns,” the Detroit trash incinerator was to be closed was weirdly reminiscent of news back in the spring of 1986 that it was going to be built: It came as a surprise to almost everyone in the city. This time, obviously, it came as good news; people who had been working to shut it for decades naturally celebrated the closing as “a glorious day for the city and its residents,” as Sandra Turner-Handy, a long-term environmental justice activist, member of the Michigan Environmental Council, co-supervisor of Zero Waste Detroit, put it. [1]

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Their bust of General MacArthur which caused so much trouble in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade was there.

The gentlemen of Grand Circus Park were not impressed. But then there wasn’t much to be impressed by.

Less than 500 people marched down Woodward Avenue in the great Flag Day parade on June 14. The March was called by a resolution of the Michigan Senate to honor the flag and “Support Our Boys in Vietnam.”

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Interview by Don LaCoss, April 2003, Chicago

Poet, storyteller, and cultural critic Paul Garon co-founded Living Blues, a periodical that, from its origins in the early 1970s, documented and supported blues music as an innovative and revolutionary African-American response to discrimination, abuse, and injustice by whites.

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a review of

Isle of Dogs by Jon Frankel. Whiskey Tit 2020

Every time Jon Frankel releases a novel it feels as if he’s managed to twist the English language into a new, illusory shape: a mobius strip made of words. Specimen Tank, his debut in 1994, is a lurid nightmarescape with one foot in the grimiest alley of 1980’s New York City and the other in the bizarro universe it took David Wong and all those Eraserhead Press writers another twenty years to finally tap into. If you strip down his latest book from Whiskey Tit, Isle of Dogs, it appears to resemble a political thriller—but it takes place in the year 2500 and all the politicians are multi-generational clones who ride flesh-eating horses around a war-torn, biopunk, feudalist-dystopian version of crumbling America. It’s like sitting down to watch a familiar courtroom drama and discovering your couch is releasing hallucinogenic spores while Netflix beams into your tv from two dimensions away. A word of warning: if you don’t first read Gaha: Babes of the Abyss (the sequel), you may ricochet off this book’s first chapter like a bullet shot into a centrifuge. Frankel must have snorted some Gene Wolfe recently, because he throws his reader directly into the center of the Sargon 4’s political web without wasting a single page on backstory, making it feel like a contemporary novel about life on Capitol Hill except now all the congress members have been replaced by techno-Spartans with delicate, epicurean palates. In a single scene, a couple of two-hundred year old clones might casually discuss mass genocide while drinking jasmine tea and referencing the latest issue of The New York Times, and Frankel continually mixes the familiarity of our modern day with his surreal vision of the future to keep the prose highly readable, yet somehow...askew. His style is a fusion of literary realism and highly imaginative science fiction that harkens back to works such as Philip K. Dick’s Martian Time-Slip, Samuel Delaney’s Trouble on Triton, and Ursula Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven. But compared to his other novels, such as The Man Who Can’t Die, Frankel has pumped the brakes on his graphic depictions of sexuality and violence, to the relief of some his readers and to the disappointment of others. This is possibly because Isle of Dogs is told from the perspective of the tyrannical Rulers rather than from their “genetically inferior” victims, and so the story has a familial warmth as the plot passes from character to character, almost as if the reader is peeking behind the curtains of the powerful kings or queens more typical of a high fantasy setting. Again, it’s difficult to pin a single genre on this or any of Frankel’s other works, but for the kind of reader who longs for a story that doesn’t have the slapped-together feel of too much of today’s popular fiction or the overwrought stylism of the literary novels hemorrhaging from Brooklyn’s coffee shops, this book will activate a part of your mind that you didn’t know was there before.

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Diane di Prima has died. Now we have no choice but to introduce her to each other, since she is no longer here to introduce herself.

Diane Di Prima, 1960s

On paper, you could say, “she was a poet, she was a feminist, beatnik, anarchist, Buddhist.” You could list her famous friends and lovers. Promote her books, her poems, her art. But she was so many things.

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a review of

Diane di Prima, Revolutionary Letters

San Francisco: Last Gasp, 2007.

160 pages, available for $15 from the Barn

Diane Di Prima, 1960s

Diane di Prima, America’s (and probably the world’s) leading anarcho-Hermetic poet, has issued a new edition (the fifth) of her famous Revolutionary Letters, containing all of the poems from the City Lights versions from 1971 through 1980, plus 23 new and more recent pieces. This new edition emanates--rather oddly but not inappropriately-- from Last Gasp, a publisher mostly known for underground comics.

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This is for all you young Crimestoppers who might be interested in reproducing one of Chester Gould’s best. Tracy can always be relied upon to get to the root of the matter without any minced words, and his is a lesson we could all learn a lot from:

The desire for easy money, tax-free, with a disdain for work and the law, marks a potential criminal.

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This article is the third in a series on Birth Control, compiled and presented with the aid of the Women’s News Co-op.

Because of the media’s big push for the “pill” over the last few years, little information has been readily available on other birth control methods. There are, in fact, many of us who are not even aware of the number of different medically approved methods which are both safe and inexpensive. There is presently no one method of birth control that is perfect for everyone. Since this choice must be made on an individual basis, correct and current information is necessary to aid in that decision.

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