Full list of texts

As several people who have seen this issue prior to publication have noted, the correct quote is “The love of money is the root of all evil,” but its truncated form seems more accurate than the original. Money itself, not just cherishing it, is the ultimate representation of all that is alienated in the modern world; the driving force of pathological greed; the whip that coerces wage labor; and the basis of wars. The current inequitable split of the planet’s wealth now allows ten million millionaires world-wide to control $37.2 trillion dollars in financial assets assuring a life of immiseration for billions of people.

...

“If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if a town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down! Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.”

—Henry David Thoreau

...

Welcome to another Fifth Estate! This marks our eighth issue since moving to Pumpkin Hollow. With an editorial office in the Barn and an editorial collective all over the continent, we are proud to approach our 40^th anniversary with a thriving publication as opposed to authority as ever.

When we announced the theme as “Conspirarchy and Elections,” little did we realize how much the edition would emerge as one focused on politics and rhetoric. In particular, we examine the growing tension between the horrific hallucination known as democracy and the utopian vision known as anarchy.

...

Powerlessness and the lack of control which black people are allowed over their own community was not a major cause of the Detroit rebellion, Mr. Lomax tells us.

Nor was the cause the culture of violence which the United States has perfected; a culture which would make it UnAmerican for black people not to use violence as a means to effect social change.

...

There are four estates, the fourth of which is journalism. We are the fifth because we are something different than Detroit’s other newspapers. We hope to fill a void in that fourth estate a void created by party-controlled newspapers and the cutting of those articles which might express the more liberal viewpoint. That’s what we really are--the voice (I hate that word) of the liberal element of Detroit. This does not mean that everything in the paper will be slanted or written with the so-called “far left” creeping through every space. We want to be a truly free press. If it’s good, if it has a name, and if it’s sincere, it will be in the Fifth Estate. If not, you can probably find it in the News.

...

This issue arrives late, but we think you’ll find it worth the wait. We published 1 last in March 2007, but our plans for timely Summer and Fall issues faltered due to a lack in finances and in our issue-editor’s free time. But unlike some publications that have recently ceased operations, we’re as motivated as ever, which should be self-evident from the articles and art in our “End of the Worldism” edition.

...

By the time you hold this issue in your hands, Fifth Estate will have entered into its 45^th year of continuous publication! This is no small feat for an all-volunteer run publication operating on a shoestring budget, and it would not be possible without the continued support of our subscribers, sustainers, and readers like you. For this, you have the heartfelt thanks of everyone in the FE collective. That said, if you are not yet a subscriber, please consider subscribing so we can continue to bring you compelling stories and well argued essays from FE’s unique perspectives (see our subscription call out on page 37). If you are already a subscriber, consider donating or sponsoring a subscription to a prisoner (FE provides free subscriptions to prisoners).

...

WAR!

The weapons are in place. The language of war is accepted everywhere. The rulers of the opposing empires confront each other menacingly.

Their fingers are poised on the button. The warheads ache to be launched. Will we wait passively for annihilation?

The words above are what should have shown through a light image of a mushroom cloud on our Nov. 19 [FE #307] cover, but were obscured due to a communication error with our printer. Our disappointment with the results was lightened somewhat when several people told us they thought it was a contest to see if the words could be discerned. Others said that the bomb obliterating our words was appropriate for the matter under discussion.

...

Trouble time again at Northland. The punk rent-a-pigs out there have been giving our salesmen such a hard time when they are trying to sell that we are going to begin a suit against the shopping center to enforce our legal right to sell in a public area.

Our staff and our attorney, James Lafferty, met with the jerks that run the place last year and came to an agreement whereby the harassment of sellers would stop, but apparently it meant nothing to the businessmen who are trying to drive elements of the free community out of the shopping center.

...

ATTENTION GIs: We are interested in any and all written material given you while you are in the service. This includes everything from training manuals to Stars and Stripes. Also, any of you who would like to submit articles or letters to the editor are urged to do so.

If you want to show your support for Judge George W. Crockett and risk getting a few traffic tickets at the same time, stop in our office and pick up a “Support Judge Crockett” bumper sticker. They are free or if you can, for a small donation. We will not send any out by mail.

...

The Revolutionary Newspaper Conference held at Wayne State’s Lower DeRoy on April 12 was fairly successful. Over 70 persons registered and over 125 were in attendance throughout the day.

The morning session consisted of a panel on the function of the media in a revolutionary movement. On the panel were Nick Medvecky and James Tripp of the South End, Peter Werbe from this paper, Marty Glaberman from Speak Out, and Mike Honey from the Oakland Observer.

...

The revolutionary newspaper conference sponsored by this newspaper and several other publications will be held on only one day: Saturday, April 12. The planners felt that the necessary work could be accomplished in that period.

The conference will cover a complete range of subjects from how to put together any printed newspaper (from mimeo to offset) as well as political perspectives, organizing, financing, legal questions and anything else people want to know.

...

This newspaper, WSU’s South End, and the Inner City Voice are going to sponsor a revolutionary newspaper conference on April 11, 12, and 13. It will be held on the Wayne University campus.

The need for such a conference rises out of a growing movement in the Detroit area; in high schools, plants, colleges, and communities.

...

The Man’s heavy hand of repression is attempting again to strike at this paper. We have been getting reports from both sellers, distributors, and buyers about police and school harrassment.

At Southfield High, which is run by anti-Fifth Estate fanatics, Principal Robert Hall and youth pig, Richard Overmeyer, persons have been suspended for selling the paper and students have had individual copies confiscated merely for having them in their possession.

...

There has been considerable question as to where the Fifth Estate stands regarding an attack on the white left in our last issue and on a number of articles appearing in these pages by White Panther spokesmen.

Political views that are explicitly those of this paper are printed only in this column and in editorials such as the one about the aftermath of the Democratic Convention. All news stories are edited by us and in that sense reflect our editorial views as in any newspaper.

...

Every newspaper has left over papers from returns from stores and sellers. Usually these are just discarded and considered as junk since they are out-of-date.

However, our staff can not bear to think of the leftovers of our treasured publication as winding up in an incinerator. We think there is too much important material of lasting value to just discard, so we thought of a solution.

...

Reading the Fifth Estate last issue was sort of a magical mystery tour with none of the teasers on the front page corresponding to the proper pages and a number of other horrors.

This was caused by last minute surgery when our printer decided he would be unable to print a two-page spread photo of John Lennon and Yoko Ono posing nude because he felt it would hurt his other business.

...

Big changes at the Fifth Estate. As you can see by the staff box above our paper’s decisions will be made by an Editorial Group rather than by the two former co-editors. This represents an attitude on the part of the people working full-time on the paper that decisions should be made collectively by those most closely involved in its production.

...

Nothing much to report or rap about; so just a few brief notes.

Our abortive record deal with ESP records is still fouled. We wrote the record company in New York and asked if they could mail the bonus records to our new subscribers, but they have not answered to date.

A few people have come into our office to pick up their albums, but the majority of them remain here in the office confronting us accusingly. If you live in the Detroit area please come and get your record or if you live a distance away write us a note and we will send it to you.

...

Apparently Detroit’s two daily papers didn’t believe our interview in the last issue with the person who bombed the CIA office in Ann Arbor.

The News ran a front page synopsis of the interview and the next day both papers carried stories of the “authorities,” denying that it was authentic and the Free Press even accused us of taking it from other papers.

...

America’s election farce is over and proved to be one of the dullest in years reminiscent of the Eisenhower years as Hank Malone points out in this issue. The only pleasant surprise was the small number of Americans willing to vote for George Wallace’s militant brand of racism. They obviously prefer the more subtle and effective variety advocated by the other two creeps. Wallace pulled only 7.8 per cent of the vote outside of the South and this isn’t a hell of a lot given the amount of money he spent on his campaign.

...

We would like to apologize to any of our readers who were fooled by Mike Quatro’s ad in our paper for his Halloween Eve’s shuck at Olympia Stadium. The ad included a number of acts that had not been contracted and intimated that the show would go on as long as there were acts to perform, which of course didn’t happen.

...

Last issue’s front cover was done by Detroit photographer Tom Burt. Fifth Estate readers may remember Tom’s work from a previous front cover and you can expect to see more in the months to come. Tom has a fantastic collection of photographs mounted for hanging and anyone who digs his work as much as we do can reach him at 864–2898. Leave a message if he is not there.

...

The Fifth Estate’s Labor Day benefit at the Grande Ballroom was an overwhelming success. The bands were beautiful and so were the people. Newsreel’s films turned everybody on and a good time was had by all. Special thanks to the MC5, the Stooges, the Gold Brothers, Newsreel, Uncle Russ and everyone who came. It was a real Detroit city evening. Everyone got down.

...

Everyone who wants to tune in to the music of our culture should be at the Fifth Estate Benefit to be held Sept. 1 at the Grande Ballroom from 6–11 pm. Featured will be the MC5, Stooges, and the Gold Brothers, along with Newsreel films of the San Francisco State strike and two short films from Cuba.

...

Recorder’s Court Judge Robert J. Colombo, the pig who sentenced John Sinclair to almost ten years in prison, recently renewed his subscription to this paper for two years. Because of the barbaric sentence he placed on John, we are cancelling his subscription, confiscating his money and donating it to the John Sinclair Defense Fund. Money is urgently needed for legal fees and we hope all brothers and sisters will contribute generously to his defense. Send donations to John Sinclair Defense Fund, 1510 Hill St., Ann Arbor, Mich. 48104.

...

As we go to press word has reached us that Recorder’s Court Judge Robert Colombo has dismissed charges of sales of marijuana against John Sinclair. His trial on the charge of possession began on June 24 and may be in progress at this writing. Call our office or White Panther headquarters for more information.

...

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

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

...

A reader spoke to us about a letter that appeared in the last issue from a homosexual named Paul who was being harassed by the police. We didn’t ignore this letter, but wrote him back and suggested that he contact the American Civil Liberties Union. We don’t know how he made out.

Those new subscribers who took advantage of the free offer of an ESP record with their subscription will have them sent as soon as possible. There may be a delay of a few weeks, but you will get them.

...

Quite a time these last few weeks. Most of our full-time staff went to Pig City and returned without injury or arrest. Still, just being there and seeing what happened to our brothers and sisters gave us a real shot in the arm in terms of our commitment to change this society. We want people in control of their own lives instead of pigs.

...

We think an important clarification is needed regarding the “editors’ note” that appeared on page seventeen of last issue that said, “All you need is dynamite.”

This, in fact, was not an editors’ note at all, but rather the whim of persons working on the layout of the paper. We can dig the way they felt at 4:00 in the morning reading Ralph Gleason’s bad review of the Beatles’ bad record, “Revolution,” but that statement does not reflect the thinking of this newspaper.

...

We are initiating this column as a means of communicating with the Fifth Estate readership. We hope to be able to give you periodic progress reports, answer your questions about the paper, and hopefully give you the feeling that there are real live people behind the newsprint and ink.

Although our Detroit circulation is increasing, distribution still remains our major problem. We feel our circulation could double if a method could be devised to get our paper close to the potential buyers. Any suggestions?

...

Today’s Lesson

Schools are the training ground which provides compliant, disciplined, work-orientated, patriotic model citizens who are necessary to staff the compulsive relationships of everyday life. Just as the Catholic Church sanctified the social relationships and obligations of feudalism during the Middle Ages and made them appear “objective,” so now does “modern” education do the same for capitalism.

...

Note: A shorter version of this article appears in the print edition.

We are taught since early childhood that everything in the world exists in a food chain as a “resource” to be consumed by those higher up the chain and concurrently as the consumer of “resources” that are lower in this predatory hierarchy. We are also told that life in the wild is hungry, fraught with mortal danger and that civilization has spared us a short and brutish existence. As children, we thus come to believe that life in civilization is good for us, in fact even indispensable for our very survival.

...

Edward Abbey, author of the fictional eco-sabotage novel, The Monkeywrench Gang, and numerous other volumes on the Southwestern deserts and wilderness is both the eminence grise and bête noire of Earth First! Abbey is highly revered by the EF! leadership and many of its supporters for his eloquence in expressing a sense of things wild, but also for his misanthropic irreverence towards “humanistic” values.

...

The U.S. government got the pound of flesh it wanted from the radical environmental movement, but not from Earth First! co-founder Dave Foreman, the prime target of a three-year FBI entrapment scheme.

Foreman and four others, Mark Davis, Peg Millet, Ilse Asplund and Marc Baker, were charged with a long string of conspiracy violations including planning sabotage of a nuclear facility. (See Summer 1991 FE).

...

This special section of the Fifth Estate Newspaper was produced shortly after the April 1979 disastrous events took place at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant at Middletown, Pennsylvania.

The first two articles were composed in response to the accident. “Eight Theses on Nuclearism” discusses what confronts us as a species, while “Progress and Nuclear Power” traces the history of the destruction of this continent by industrial technology. The remaining material was compiled from past issues of this newspaper and aptly describes the threat which nuclear power represents in any form.

...

FE Note: The following is a reprint of a leaflet distributed in France following the pre-election May 5, 1988 massacre on New Caledonia which resulted in the release of 23 hostages, but left 19 native people, Kanaks, and two French gendarmes dead.

The French army has once again accomplished one of its familiar exploits: its shock troops spent eight hours massacring nineteen rebels. The electoral schemes of scoundrels have caused the deaths of yet more Kanaks.

...

Government rule was reaffirmed Nov. 6 by a slim majority as only a scant 52.3% of voting-age Americans overcame apathy and disgust enough to enter the polling booth.

Flushed with victory, President Ivan P. Pavlov read his acceptance speech via a talking computer, announcing that the hitherto secret war against the Life Force would be declared official; that more laws would be passed and more police deployed “for the protection of all Americans”; and that more citizens would be mobilized into Service Brigades to fight the Enemy in Eurasia and to increase Production. He welcomed the statement of congratulations sent by Mr. B.F. “Fritz”, Skinner, leader of the Loyal Opposition, which called for National Unity, the continuance of law and order and respect for Authority, the quarantine of Enemy Nations in the Southern Hemisphere, and the rationalization of economic policies. “Sweeping changes will be made,” promised the computer in a startlingly human-sounding voice, “so that our operations can continue unimpeded.” The President urged Americans to return to their homes and workplaces to await further orders; adding, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

...

“If voting could change anything, it would be illegal.”

—Anarchist anti-electoral slogan

It’s difficult to imagine that there isn’t at least some joy, even among the most ardent electoral abstentionists, about the losses Donald Trump and the Republicans suffered in the November mid-term elections.The party and the president’s final call to continue their hard right agenda based on a relentless campaign of fear and hatred of immigrants was so fascistic that one could easily substitute Jew for those attempting to enter the country at the southern border.

...

Those of us who include abstention from voting as part of our libertarian or anarchist principles can look back at the November elections and smugly state the obvious, “Nobody won.” As usual, less than half of the eligible electorate bothered to participate in the fraud of “democracy,” i.e., which crook will represent our lives to the political expression of capital.

...

Detroit’s Greektown seen from Monroe and St. Antoine streets.

When I saw the olive oil had been diluted in what was once the most simpatico of Greektown restaurants, I heard the death rattle of Greektown. The first major casualty was the old Kozani Cafe (today’s Pink Panther) where there used to be wooden pegs for coats and old men would sit on an ouzo all night watching the young guys dance and fight. There were no belly dancers in those days, just good hill and country Greek music like you have a hard time finding even in Athens. One old “theo” played an instrument similar to Zorba’s except on Thursdays when he went with a young whore who worked the area regularly. That was during the days before urban renewal knocked out most of the houses where the pensioners lived and destroyed the interesting Greek-Negro community of the area. That was before the funeral home had to relocate. That was when the musicians could find work in their own city. That was when Big Mike ran the Laikon and the cops spent a frustrating afternoon tracking down a tip linking a Mr. Papagalous with a murder (Mr. Papagalous was a parrot). That was when the Greeks played most of the bar but in the backrooms and there was no junior executive trade jamming into the Lafayette Bar causing a nervous Sam to turn away tieless ethnic trade. The barber shop remains. The newspaper still publishes. Grocery stores carry on. A few tough coffeehouses of the old dozen. But the entrepreneurs are modernizing. The salads shrink, the price of feta cheese (imported from Italy these days) goes up. There are signs in the windows to guarantee in print that you are a friend as well as a customer. The city fathers have become aware of their tourist gem and the basest aspect of the Greek merchant personality has responded to civic duty. Coney island joints (symbol of bastardized Greek-American palate) have appeared. One thanks the Olympic gods for the Stemma Bakery which still produces the raw materials needed for homemade pastries. But nothing has been the same since Greekness was officially discovered during the time of Never on Sunday. I won’t bother to tell you that Pireaus whores aren’t really like that, nor Greek villagers like the animals you saw in Zorba. A certain stereotype of Greekness has been fashioned and now the community is coming to believe in it even as the stereotype is exploited. A few merchants grow wealthier but there is no place for the young guys to hang out at anymore. The old-timers are dying off at a rapid rate and many prefer to remain home rather than gather in the now barren kaffenions. The houses they might have moved into in other years are now parking lots and deserted fields. Part of the process is that of the inevitable and perhaps justified accommodation of a minority culture into the American malaise. Even under the best conditions, Greektown could not be the more Eastern than American quarter it was during the initial wave of immigration, yet the recent decay of Greektown is not a process of the melting pot but of the garbage pail. The physical attack has been thorough, destroying buildings on all sides of the one remaining Greek street, sparing the Greek church (at least temporarily) only because of vigorous protest. The spiritual decay is part of that general process by which Americans tend to become more and more the distorted image they think others have of them. Any of your hyphenated friends might reveal a parallel cultural experience, So let’s plant the goddam little flower boxes next to the parking meters. Let’s change our name from Leonides to Lincoln. Let’s have the city condemn the unprofitable old joints for health violations. Let’s fill the street with well-meaning enthusiasts for the Greek madness. America, you are a tough tough bitch and it will take a lot more than a smack in the mouth to set you right.

...

In a lightning move, Elektra Records signed the MC5 and the Stooges to long-term recording contracts in New York September 26.

The move was engineered by Elektra’s publicity director, Danny Fields, who flew out to hear the bands last weekend at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit and the Union Ballroom in Ann Arbor, where the 5 and the Stooges were playing a benefit for the Children’s Community School.

...

The State is the organized authority, domination and power of the possessing classes over the masses... the most flagrant, the most cynical, and the most complete negation of humanity. It shatters the universal solidarity of all men on the earth, and brings some of them into association only for the purpose of destroying, conquering, and enslaving all the rest.... This flagrant negation of humanity which constitutes the very essence of the State is, from the standpoint of the State, its supreme duty and its greatest virtue... Thus, to offend, to oppress, to despoil, to plunder, to assassinate or enslave one’s fellow man is ordinarily regarded as a crime. In public life, on the other hand from the standpoint of patriotism, when these things are done for the greater glory of the State, for the preservation or the extension of its power, it is all transformed into duty and virtue... This explains why the entire history of ancient and modern states is merely a series of revolting crimes; why kings and ministers, past and present, of all times and all countries—statesmen, diplomats, bureaucrats, and warriors—if judged from the standpoint of simple morality and human justice, have a hundred, a thousand times over earned their sentence to hard labor or to the gallows. There is no horror, no cruelty, sacrilege, or perjury, no imposture, no infamous transaction, no cynical robbery, no bold plunder or shabby betrayal that has not been or is not daily being perpetrated by the representatives of the states, under no other pretext than those elastic words, so convenient and yet so terrible: “for reasons of state.”

...

My image of the few women mentioned in history texts in school is completely one-dimensional. There’s Betsy Ross, smiling at George Washington as she sews stars onto the flag...and Dolly Madison, the super-hostess, who saved the President’s portraits from the burning White House.

I get furious now when I think about it. I never even noticed that women (not to mention non-white or working people) were practically non-existent in the history books. That is why I really became excited while reading the life of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a heroine of the American Labor Movement.

...

The best advice I can give anyone about the ARMY and the U.S. GOV’T in general is not to get involved with these maniacs in the first place. This however is becoming increasingly difficult to do unless you leave the country altogether.

Chances are that you’ll get a letter as I did saying “Y’all come on down for a physical.” This was particularly traumatic for me as I had successfully avoided these people for 27 years.

...

As El Salvador’s leftist rebel movement scores repeated victories on the battlefield and brings an increasing geographic area under its administration, the Vietnam analogy is heard everywhere. However, what the U.S. faces is not so much the prospect of another “quagmire,” but the possibility of a direct defeat of its client state.

...

“Elvira Madigan,” as advertised, may well be the most beautiful movie ever made. In any event, it is one of the most popular foreign films to come to Detroit in quite a while. However, I have a feeling that the capacity crowds that fill the Studio-North each night are not completely satisfied with what they see.

...

a review of

1984: The Graphic Novel: George Orwell, Adapted & illustrated by Fido Nesti. HMH 2021

It might be that everyone has something to say about George Orwell’s 1984. It’s not only a perennial favorite among curriculum builders in American high schools, but also a ubiquitous shortcut for political meaning.

...

poems like distilled scenes from the grey of a city whose lettuce days are just stories of a drunk at a vet’s bar

poems whose hope defies common sense

poems like old friends loves memories that haunt with each page turned

poems that pull threads out of the collective conscience of a place

this is Abandon Automobile Detroit City Poetry 2001

...

a review of

Anarchy in the Age of Dinosaurs by the Curious George Brigade, Mosinee, WI, 2003, 154 pp, $6. See pages 63–64 to order.

For a few years, the CrimethInc. collective has been willfully monkeying around with our assumptions about anarchism. Most recently, the CrimethInc. mantle has been taken up by a collective calling itself the Curious George Brigade. With Anarchy in the Age of Dinosaurs (AAD), the Brigade romps on the jungle gym of anarchism with an innocence both inspiring and exasperating.

...

Related: see “Anti-Fascism 101,” FE #400, Spring, 2018.

About 100 people filled a small auditorium at Detroit’s Wayne State University, October 17, to hear a talk by Mark Bray, a Dartmouth College lecturer on human rights and author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.

Bray’s lecture followed the lines of his book, that fascism was and is an authentic threat which should be confronted by means appropriate to the dangers it poses. Tactically, he advocates alliances between anarchists, a tradition with which Bray identifies, and sectors of the left, without consideration of their authoritarian nature.

...

FLASH! As we go to press, word has reached us that brother Ken Kelley, editor of the Ann Arbor Argus, has been busted for “distributing obscene and lascivious material.”

The offending material is in the August 13 issue of our sister underground paper that showed a picture of Ann Arbor councilman James Stephenson holding what appears to be a superimposed drawing of a male cock in his hands. He has a broad grin on his face.

...

“It’s what you call having your words and eating it too,” said the accused in reference to the penis in the councilman’s hand.

The accused, Ken Kelley, wild-maned editor of the Ann Arbor Argus was charged last August with “distributing an obscene newspaper” when he published a picture of Ann Arbor councilman James Stephenson holding a superimposed object that appeared to be an extremely large male cock. The councilman was grinning broadly.

...

The text which begins on the following page is excerpted from Beyond Bookchin: Preface for a Future Social Ecology, a new title co-published in fall 1996 by Black & Red, Detroit, and Autonomedia, Brooklyn. Its author is Fifth Estate staff member David Watson.

In Murray Bookchin’s extensive writings on ecology and anarchism spanning four decades, he has tried to take us beyond Marx toward a more fundamental critique, a holistic rationality, a deeper freedom. He is recognized in many anti-authoritarian circles as an anarchist luminary and elder of significant importance to the extent that some identify themselves as “Bookchinites.” Under the watchword of “coherence,” Bookchin has sought nothing less than the full explanation. But David Watson’s latest book shows that Bookchin’s work ultimately falls far short of its pretensions, and thus fails to guide us toward the promised “pathways to a green future.”

...

a review of

Black and Green Review #4, Winter 2016 BlackAndGreenPress.org, 214 pp., $10

Kevin Tucker started the Black and Green Network in 2000 to create a centralized place where green anarchist and anarcho-primitivist projects, both nationally and internationally, could connect. After years of successful gatherings, Tucker launched Black and Green Review (BGAR) which he co-edits with five others.

...

The Detroit News has once again exposed the latest Communist conspiracy nesting in the Motor City. This time the villains are the Radical Education Project and the Revolutionary Printing Co-op, which print and distribute movement literature.

The story was revealed in the Sunday News edition of May 24 by vanguard crime and subversion fighter John Peterson with a little help from W. Howard Erickson. Peterson, who was named best writer in Michigan on crime and corrections in 1969, really outdid himself this time. He and his pal managed to write a half page article about REP and the Printing Co-op that was fabrication and distortion from beginning to end, except for the addresses of the groups.

...

Feral Forager is a wild 30-page zine coming out of the outskirts of the not-so-wild, hippie mecca of Asheville in the heart of the Southern Appalachian mountains in North Carolina.

It contains all sorts of very practical and easy to follow methods of gathering and eating wild foods. After a nice intro to scavenging and foraging ethics and a nod to anarchy, the zine dives into what will probably remain the most controversial section —Scavenging Roadkill! This section explores the authors’ philosophies and entry into the world of roadkill feasting and then gets into the nitty gritty details of skinning, cleaning, cooking and then using the leftovers. Included are great original and lifted illustrations.

...

Some readers have wondered why a print publication with such a strong, longtime criticism of modern technology would bother with a website.

We are certainly not counting on it for building the social cooperation and solidarity we so desperately need to go beyond the current doomsday destination of modern societies. For this it will be necessary to create and nurture the direct bonds between living beings so vital for re-enchanting the world.

...

September 19, <strong>MOCAD

3-5pm, The Fifth Estate’s 50 Years of Radical Journalism, Commentary & Critique: A Panel & Conversation

5-7pm, FE staff reunion

8:30–10:00pm at HopCat (Canfield at Woodward), dance/party/concert celebration featuring Detroit’s Layabouts. Full menu for dinner before is available.

</strong>

...

Incarcerated subscribers to this magazine are being subjected to increasing censorship from prison authorities.

The worst has been Pennsylvania’s Department of Corrections which refused to allow delivery of the Summer 2019 issue of the Fifth Estate to subscribers in their prison system.

Pennsylvania initiated a policy last year that requires letters and periodicals to be sent to a central address rather than being delivered directly to individual prisoners in state lockups.

...

This issue was edited and produced in Detroit with extensive assistance from our friends and comrades of the FE collective around the country. Also, thanks is due to our contributing artists and photographers.

Jim Feast has contributed essays for the last three issues. He is one of the Unbearables who co-edited The Worst Book I Ever Read (Autonomedia 2009).

...

Reprinted from The Daily Collegian, Thursday, October 27, 1966, Vartan Knpelian, Editor-in-Chief. Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan

Against New Tabloid

It is always interesting to observe the machinations of the New Left. Therefore, it would seem to be even more interesting to observe their latest innovation designed to spread their particular form of radicalism.

...

Despite years of dictatorship and no-holds-barred neoliberal economics, Chile has proved to be fertile ground for anarchism in recent years. What has emerged is a socially-engaged class-conscious movement, active in both student and worker struggles that is determined to remake society from below.

Two members of this movement recently visited Detroit to talk about the current situation in their home country. Gabriel Ascuai is a biology student involved with the Libertarian Student Front (FEL in Spanish). Pablo Abufom is a translator and philosophy researcher who works with the bookstore Librería Proyección and the newspaper, Solidaridad in Santiago.

...

Longtime contributor Penelope Rosemont has given the Fifth Estate a great many articles and graphics, all of them insightful and inciting to revolt (See her Fall 2013, “The Poisonous Cobra of Surrealism” essay). Her achievements go beyond writing and graphic arts. In 1966, along with her late comrade and partner, Franklin Rosemont, she was instrumental in founding the Chicago Surrealist Group.

...

The 13^th Anniversary of this newspaper passed last month with only the Detroit liberal daily, the Free Press, taking any notice (they called us “an anarchist National Lampoon”). We had initially planned a big hoopla celebration, not so much to congratulate ourselves, as to give vent to our desire to have festive get-togethers, but for a number of reasons (mostly related to sloth) we let the auspicious occasion slip by. Actually, to a very large degree, the Fifth Estate is an anomaly, a left-over from the ‘sixties that should have gone out of operation with the 450 other Underground Syndicate members that have disappeared since the heyday of the counter-culture. To be sure, a number of “underground” papers still exist in the U.S. but all of them (about 20) have mostly made their peace with the society they once contested and are now content to report on local entertainment and politics no more dangerous than squabbles within the Democratic Party.

...

The Barn, located on the 120-acres of the Pumpkin Hollow Community near Liberty, Tennessee, housed the Fifth Estate office and archive, radical book and zine library, bookstore and distro. It opened with a huge party and radical variety show on Friday the 13^th in September 2002.

As of late June, after days of sorting and discarding, hauling and recycling, packing and stacking, sifting and gifting, The Barn has permanently closed as a physical hub of radical activity in rural DeKalb County, 50 miles east of Nashville. Although the apartment, built into an aging structure by George, our neighbor and former resident, is closed, the barn building itself remains.

...

It had to happen eventually, and it did. That repository of pre-masticated mediocrity, that script for dullards, Time magazine declared its “Man-of-the-Year” a machine-of-the-year--the computer.

All the powers of the technological order have entered into a holy alliance to call this spectre into being.

...

On Sunday, September 3, the Detroit Free Press ran a five page feature entitled, “The 43 Who Died.” It was an in depth investigation into each riot connected death carried out by three competent Free Press staff reporters.

The three, Barbara Stanton, William Serrin and Gene Glotz, compiled evidence on the John Leroy case among the others. Their finding substantially corroborate the Fifth Estate version of his death (see Fifth Estate, August 15–31, 1967 and September 1–15, 1967). They added some new information as to the horror Leroy and his companions suffered at the hands of the National Guard.

...

a review of

Fugitive Days: A Memoir by Bill Ayers. 2001, Beacon Press. 289 pages.

For activists born after the Vietnam War, the common folklore of the 1960s and ‘70s usually centers around Woodstock, Jimi and Janis, flower children, going back to the land, and burning draft cards. We certainly don’t learn about the militant resistance movements from popular media or in American high schools.

...

a review of

Gone to Croatan: Origins of North American Dropout Culture, ed. Ron Sakolsky and James Koehnline, 382 pp. Autonomedia, New York, 1993, $12.

“(T)here is no single locus of great Refusal, no soul of revolt, source of all rebellions, or pure law of the revolutionary. Instead there is a plurality of resistances, each of them a special case: resistances that are possible, necessary, improbable; others that are spontaneous, savage, solitary, concerted, rampant, or violent; still others that are quick to compromise, interested, or sacrificial.”

...

Richard Mock: The American Voter

The Plains Art Museum (in Fargo, ND) has produced a book called Hardlines. The book is the result of classes taught by Richard Mock of New York. Hardlines features social commentary linocut prints from each of the participants ages ten; through adult who worked with Richard Mock. The themes presented in each artwork represent social commentary about present day issues, personal points of view, experiences, or memories.

...

“Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom...of the press.”

—First Amendment, United States Constitution

“It’s a free country, but it’s their thing.”

—John Sinclair, Detroit House of Correction, July, 1966

Once again censorship has reared its ugly head in the Detroit area. The latest chapter in the campaign of the city’s self-appointed moral guardians to destroy what vestiges of a free press that still exist here was at the Inner City Voice, Detroit’s black revolutionary newspaper.

...

FE NOTE: When we first published a critique of the deep ecology movement last fall (“How Deep Is Deep Ecology? A Challenge to Radical Environmentalism,” [FE #327, Fall, 1987] available through our book service for $.75 plus postage), we did so not simply to criticize, but also to connect with people in that movement (outside the handful of “leaders” and stars) who might share or at least be open to a vision that recognizes the interrelated character of the industrial-capitalist (work-commodity) system, mass technics, statism and empire, and the destruction of nature and human societies. The articles printed here are a result of such connections (which is not to imply that the writers agree entirely with us, either). We hope to continue our dialogue and collaboration with EF! people where possible while furthering our discussion of environmental politics.

...

a review of

Lovebite: Mythography and the Semiotics of Culture by John Moore, Aporia Press, distributed by Counter Productions, P.O. Box 556, London SE5 0RL UK, 44 pages.

Myths are sacred stories that help to guide people through different stages of life, and which reveal the powers that form and influence people’s lives. They also foster a deeper contact with reality, and address the fundamental mysteries of human existence. Both celebratory and constructive, myths are a source of pleasure as well as a form of adaptation.

...

Oona and Emma and their Trumbullplex housemates, very special soul mates, were returning from an incredible journey to Hawaii, when a terrible automobile crash occurred only 10 minutes from Emma’s uncle’s house in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on February 12.

...

a review of

Emma Goldman: Political Thinking in the Streets by Kathy E. Ferguson. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham, Maryland, 2011, 362 pp, $35.

In her fascinating book on Emma Goldman, Kathy Ferguson focuses on Goldman as a dynamic anarchist thinker whose differing social activist contexts and personal challenges produced constantly evolving theoretical perspectives.

...

Emma Goldman (June 27, 1869-May 14, 1940) was known as “the most dangerous woman in America” by the press in such articles as those to the right which chronicled a visit by her to Windsor, Ontario, across the border from Detroit, in 1939. She certainly was this country’s most famous anarchist in the early years of this century.

...

More successfully than any other figure in US history, Emma Goldman communicated an anarchist vision to a broad audience of immigrants, native-born middle-class, and workers.

Goldman’s fundamentally anarchist self-identity and vision of political change are elements neglected or misinterpreted by some of her biographers.

...

While I appreciate David Porter’s long and serious review of my book, Emma Goldman in Exile (see FE #333, Winter 1990), I’d like to take issue with some of his points. Porter criticizes my “intrusiveness” for allegedly imposing my own political agenda on Goldman’s life, without making my politics explicit. Possibly he is right that I should have laid out my criteria for judgment more clearly.

...

The Emma Goldman Papers Project, housed at the University of California at Berkeley, collects facsimile copies of the writings, letters and personal papers of Emma Goldman (1869–1940) and distributes them on microfilm.

The project is headed by Candace Falk, who discovered numerous lost love letters of Goldman’s in a Chicago guitar shop and turned them into a book, Love, Anarchy and Emma Goldman. They also became the first documents of the project’s collection.

...

a review of

Emma Goldman in Exile: From the Russian Revolution to the Spanish Civil War, Alice Wexler, Beacon Press, Boston, 1989, 301 pp.

The nature and purpose of “doing history” are at stake in Alice Wexler’s new book, Emma Goldman in Exile. America’s best-known anarchist endured numerous personal and political crises from her 1919 deportation to Civil War Russia to her subsequent odyssey throughout Europe and Canada, her immersion in the 1930s Spanish revolution, and her-death in 1940. Based on extensive research, Wexler’s book usefully describes this journey. But the book is more than this. Unfortunately so, since the interpretive voice of the author is usually louder than her subject.

...

a review of

Vision on Fire: Emma Goldman on the Spanish Revolution. David Porter, editor, New Paltz NY, Commonground Press, 1983, 346 pp., $7.50.

Georg Groddeck once wrote that his aim in life was not to cure others but to become a human being. Throughout Emma Goldman’s life, this human struggle was identified with freedom: freedom to love and grow, learn and create, work and seek fulfillment, think, experience and act in every domain of interest.

...

a review of

Anarchy! An Anthology of Emma Goldman’s Mother Earth, Edited with Commentary by Peter Glassgold, Counterpoint, 2001, 428 pages, $25.

“A spectacle, the terrible events of today strengthen this conviction, that war is permanently fostered by the present social system. Armed conflict is the natural consequence and the inevitable and fatal outcome of a society that is founded on the exploitation of the workers...To all the soldiers of all countries who believe they are fighting for justice and liberty, we have to declare that their heroism and their valor will but serve to perpetuate hatred, tyranny, and misery.”

...

The history of the Vietnamese people is clearly a history of struggle, of choosing what to tolerate and what and how to change. No Vietnamese man, woman, or child has been spared the struggle because it is one of survival and the protection of the freedom to define how to live, once in the face of Chinese occupation, then, French colonialism and Catholicism, and now American imperialism.

...

“I’m tired. I’m tired of being tired. White man, devil, don’t bother me. No, bastard, I’m going to keep my cool. I won’t give you an easy way. I’m going to kick your ass at your own rigged-up game. When I do it you’ll probably be too cold to feel it. Honky, I’ll never get as cold and as inhuman as you. I wouldn’t want to be as cold and inhuman as you. I wouldn’t want to be your Goddamned imitation. I’ve got better things to do.”

—“Painted Black”

...

Thirteen months into Operation Iraqi Humiliation (actually 14 years into the Bush Family’s well-financed takeover Of the Middle East), all of the predictions made by activists and other assorted radicals a year ago about the utter stupidity of the Empire’s expansion into the Fertile Crescent appear to have been fierce understatements.

...

Slingshot, 3124 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705; 510-540-0751 slingshot@tao.ca

Slingshot’s 15^th birthday makes me feel kind of old, because I was in on it from just about its beginning. I was an English grad student at Berkeley when I became “Experienced,” to use Jimi Hendrix’s term. I was working on my dissertation, serving as Coordinator of the ASUC Recycling Project, where I met members of the Slingshot Collective. Most of us were Berkeley students. At the time, U.C. Berkeley was hardly radical. Despite the university’s reputation as a hotbed of dissent, a legacy of the ‘60s, there was a need for a leftist voice, and Slingshot filled that need. Those first issues were printed on white paper, sometimes subversively copied on university copiers, and funded by the A.S.U.C.

...

<em>

The Society of the Spectacle</em> (La Société du Spectacle), by Guy Debord, is the best-known and most influential text issued by the Situationist international (SI), and it informed--theoretically and practically--the most revolutionary sectors that emerged a year after its publication in Paris during the massive French uprising of May-June 1968.

...

Eldridge Cleaver is Minister of Information for the Black Panthers.

“... the pressing social problems which are feeding the conflagration raging in America’s soul... can no longer be compromised or swept cleverly under the national rug of self-delusion. The possibility of concealment no longer exists, and the only ones deceived are the deceivers themselves. Those who are victimized by these “social problems”—the Negroes, the aged, unemployed and unemployable, the poor, the miseducated and dissatisfied students, the haters of war and lovers of men—have flung back the rug in outraged rebellion, refusing to be silenced until their grievances are uncompromisingly redressed. America has come alive deep down in its raw guts, and vast contending forces of revolutionary momentum are squaring off in this land for decisive showdowns from which no one can purchase sanctuary.

...

John Watson, editor of the WSU student newspaper, was acquitted March 7 of charges that he assaulted Joe Weaver, of WJBK-TV.

Watson had been charged with striking the TV-2 “commentator” on Feb. 10 when Weaver attempted to interview Watson at the South End office. (See “TV-2 Interview—POW!,” FE #73, February 20-March 5, 1969.)

...

a review of

Summer on Fire: A Detroit Novel by Peter Werbe. Black & Red 2021

Summer on Fire, a debut novel from long time Fifth Estate staff member, Peter Werbe, takes place during seven weeks in 1967, the year I was born, during the months I lived in my radical mama’s belly. So, I definitely need the narrator’s front seat to those tumultuous times.

...

The Detroit Repertory Theater’s current offering, Tango, is the most enjoyable play to appear in town since “MacBird.”

The director, Bruce Milian, like a good alchemist, has managed to transform broad farce, heavy social thought, and straight professional theatre into a first-rate production.

Tango is such a funny play that it is easy to overlook the fact that its humor is based on a very serious, and perhaps even a very frightening theme.

...

a review of

The Beatles, The Authorized Biography, by Hunter Davies, McGraw Hill, 1968, NYC, $6.95, 357 pp.

Here, for the first time in book form, is all the hoo-hah publicity bullshit about the Beatles. Now you can throw away all your old lipstick-covered newspaper clippings and sea-smelling scrapbooks. Mild mannered journalist and novelist Hunter Davies (creator of Georgy Girl) has assembled most of the “authorized” Beatlememorabilia in a neat slick historical package.

...

Detroit’s only operating daily newspaper, The Detroit American, today was named “Uptight Honkie of the Month” for June by Detroit Area People Against Racism (PAR). The Detroit American was cited for its flagrant use of the “crime in the streets” issue to produce anti-Negro hysteria.

In announcing the award, Detroit PAR’s Executive Director, David P. Kramer, said, “The media are always in a position to reinforce racist fears. During the month of June, The Detroit American has shown an outstanding ability in this normally subtle role.”

...

While the main contribution of Marxism-Leninism remains its establishment of state capitalism in areas of the world where private capital could not develop, its project has also debased language to a point suggested in George Orwell’s 1984—where words are distorted so as to take on their opposite meaning. A case in point is the Aug. 11, 1976 front-page of The Guardian, a New York City based Mao-oid weekly newspaper, which announced proudly “The Liberation of Africa.” No matter that what is pictured is a civilian politician (President Samora Machel of Mozambique, who rules without even the pretense of an election) reviewing the troops—faceless cannon fodder, dressed identically, responding automatically to commands, ready to die for the State and the Leader.

...

reviewed here:

The State, Harold Barclay, Freedom Press, London, 2003, 109 pp.

Longing for Arcadia: Memoirs of an AnarchoCynicalist Anthropologist, Harold B. Barclay, Trafford, 2005, Victoria, BC, 362 pp.

Harold Barclay’s thin volume on the political state packs into its pages everything we need to know to realize that there is nothing eternal about this inherently oppressive institution. A relatively recent phenomenon in human affairs, Barclay traces its origins to a few thousand years ago based on the desire of a few men to control others by establishing hierarchical societies in place of the egalitarian ones that preceded them.

...

a review of

The Utopian: A journal of Anarchism and Libertarian Socialism, August 2000, 58 pp. Published by The Utopian Publishing Co., P.O. Box 387, College Station, New York, NY 10030. $5.00 for one issue or $8.00 for two.

The Utopian is a promising new anarchist journal that will probably strike various readers quite differently, depending on their expectations. Those who, guided by the subtitle, are looking for a new “journal of anarchism and libertarian socialism” will probably find it to be much to their liking, since it focuses heavily on theory and is more sophisticated in this area than most anarchist publications. On the other hand, those drawn to the title expecting daring flights of the utopian imagination, or investigations of the status of various Temporary Autonomous Zones may be a bit let down.

...

a review of

World War 3 Illustrated

Assorted Authors & Artists

AK Press akpress.org ww3.nyc

This graphic zine started by art-activists and squatters on New York’s Lower East Side back in the Reagan 1980s (hence, the apocalyptic name), has just published its 51^st issue.

There’s the sense of an historical cycle completing, as this edition grapples with the actually near-apocalyptic realities of Trump’s America—and windows of possibility they open. “Pandemic as Portal,” announces a full-page image by artist Kill Joy; “The time is now—imagine another world and fight for it.”

...

“Once upon a time, or maybe twice, there was an earthly paradise called Pepperland, which existed 80,000 leagues beneath the sea...”

And so it was, a land of brilliant color and elegant people and Ming music, with words such as “love” and “know” and “yes” dotted about the landscape.

But Pepperland had enemies, the Blue Meanies, who hated music and bombarded Pepperland with rockets and Apple Bonkers and Hidden Persuaders and Snapping Turtle Turks—and an evil flying Blue Glove.

...