Full list of texts

Though we do not accept commercial advertising, this Unclassified ad space is free for our readers’ use. We do not accept ads over the telephone, so please send your ads in writing to our office at: 4403 Second Ave., Detroit 48201

PRISONERS: Due to limited space and the many letters we receive, we are unable to reprint the correspondence from prisoners, but we will print their names and addresses—they would like to hear from you.

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Though we do not accept commercial advertising, this Unclassified ad space is free for our readers’ use. We do not accept ads over the telephone, so please send your ads in writing to our office at: 4403 Second Ave., Detroit 48201.

MUSICIAN with an ARP Synthesizer wishes to explore musical possibilities with another musician. Call 831–5454—Richard.

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Though we do not accept commercial advertising, this Unclassified ad space is free for our readers’ use. We do not accept ads over the telephone, so please send your ads in writing to our office at: 4403 Second Ave., Detroit 48201

DEAR DAD—Happy Birthday. Hope you and Mom enjoyed the sunshine while it lasted. Miss you both very much. Have a lovely birthday. P & M

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THIS PAGE IS YOUR PAGE. All ads are FREE for the asking. We hope this page becomes a place where we can communicate and take care of our basic needs outside of the capitalist, consumption market. Send to THE FIFTH ESTATE, 4403 Second Detroit, MI. 48201. No ads accepted by phone.

WANTED--We are a young couple on General Assistance looking for a house or flat unfurnished with 2 bedrooms or more, east of Chalmers. We will pay $115 and all utilities or $125 with utilities included. Must move before March 1^st. We have no children. Call anytime at: 822–1860.

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Though we do not accept commercial advertising, this Unclassified ad space is free for our readers’ use. We do not accept ads over the telephone, so please send your ads in writing to our office at: 4403 Second Ave., Detroit 48201.

“BOSSES’ Boy”—a UAW factional flier (leaflet) printed in the ‘40s—will pay $5 for one of them. Phone 823–1485.

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Though we do not accept commercial advertising, this Unclassified ad space is free for our readers’ use. We do not accept ads over the telephone, so please send your ads in writing to our office at: 4403 Second Ave., Detroit 48201.

Cooperative living situation. Walk to campus. Room for one more. Rent in the $90’s. Call 872–4340.

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Though we do not accept commercial advertising, this Unclassified ad space is free for our readers’ use. We do not accept ads over the telephone, so please send your ads in writing to our office at: 4403 Second Ave., Detroit 48201.

2 FEMALES wanted. One week sailing 8/22 to 9/5. Send phone number to: Box 702, Troy, Mich. 48084.

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THIS PAGE IS YOUR PAGE. All ads are FREE for the asking. We hope this page becomes a place where we can communicate and take care of our basic needs outside of the capitalist, consumption market. send to THE FIFTH ESTATE, 4403 Second Detroit, MI. 48201 No ads accepted by phone.

PLUMBER--drain cleaning, plumbing repairs, sinks, toilets, tubs. Call 368–9754.

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Outrage is the only word that comes to mind to describe the reaction to the sentence handed down by a vindictive judge to an Eugene, Oregon anarchist following a militant action on June 18, 1999.

On October 13, 1999 Robert Thaxton, activist and writer, better known to his friends and readers as Rob Los Ricos, received 70 months (do the math; it’s frightening) for the charges of second degree assault and rioting following his conviction by a Lane County jury.

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Editors’ Note: The author is an attorney with the Detroit Law firm of Lafferty, Reosti, and Jabara, who spent two months in Columbia, S.C. working on the legal defense of members of GIs United Against the War in Vietnam.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — The story of the Ft. Jackson Eight is the story of how an attempt by the brass to break a rank and file GI movement failed.

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The Cleveland 4 need continued movement support as they deal with harsh sentences resulting from the interest that the government has in orchestrating terrorism convictions.

The Cleveland 4 are Brandon Baxter, Connor Stevens, Doug Wright, and Joshua Stafford, a group of young Occupy activists who were entrapped into a government-created terrorism plot to blow up a bridge in 2012.

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A wave of anti-anarchist hysteria, stage-managed by the government, is sweeping Canada as a result of the arrest of five Vancouver political activists accused of a “wide-spread campaign of sabotage.”

On January 20^th, the five—two women and three men—were ambushed on the Squamish highway north of Vancouver by the combined forces of every law enforcement agency in the province. SWAT squads in full camouflage with riot gear, gas masks, and bullet-proof vests, came storming out of the hills and ditches to smash and tear-gas their way into the vehicle the five were driving in. The police dragged them through the broken glass and then to the ground to be handcuffed.

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WHO ARE THEY: Yu Zhijian, age 27, formerly a teacher at the Tantou Wan Primary School in Dahu Township, Liuyang County, Hunan Province. Yu Dongyue, former fine-arts director of the Liuyang News. Lu Decheng, 28, previously an employee of the Liuyang branch of the Hunan Provincial Bus Company.

WHY ARE THEY IN PRISON: On May 23, 1989, they attacked the giant picture of Mao Zedong in Tienanmen Square, Beijing, with ink and paint-filled eggshells, summing-up in a single bold stroke China’s experience with Marxism-Leninism. The three were immediately seized and were tried by the Beijing Intermediate Court in September 1989 on charges of “counterrevolutionary sabotage” and “counterrevolutionary propaganda and incitement”. They were sentenced to life, twenty and sixteen years imprisonment respectively.

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According to the U.S. Army the 27 GIs pictured here staging a sit-in at the Presidio Stockade in San Francisco, Oct. 14, 1968 are guilty of mutiny; a military crime punishable by a prison term of up to life.

This peaceful demonstration was to protest conditions in the stockade and the murder of a fellow prisoner by a guard. The prisoners tried so far have been convicted and received sentences up to 14 years. For the story behind this Army atrocity see the full story on page five.

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Poetry Seminar Tuesdays 7–9 p.m.

John Sinclair & Robin Eichele

Contemporary American Prose & Drama Thursdays 9 p.m.

John Sinclair

The Surrealist Stance (Arranged)

Allen Van Newkirk

Seminar in Pre-Homeric Greek Civilization (Arranged)

Sinclair, Eichele, Van Newkirk

Theatre Techniques/Acting (Arranged)

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Poetry Seminar

John Sinclair & Robin Eichele

Tuesdays 7–9 p.m.

Contemporary American Prose & Drama

John Sinclair

Thursdays 9 p.m.

The Surrealist Stance

Allen Van Newkirk

Arranged

Seminar in Pre-Homeric Greek Civilization

Sinclair, Eichele, Van Newkirk

Arranged

Theatre Techniques/Acting

Hurst Rinehart

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Open City’s Free University is preparing for its Winter term and has published a beautiful catalog listing the available courses.

They range from blues harp instruction to massage, organic farming, urban folklore, encounter groups, yoga, dance, photography and many others that “involve the basic needs of all people—the need to touch, the need to share, the need for love, growth and self-discovery.”

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a review of

Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women, by Martha A. Ackelsberg (Indiana University Press, 1991)

I write this review on the day George Bush officially declares his intent to run again for president. Against the backdrop of this obscene, insulting non-event, the positive image of grassroots politics evoked by Free Women of Spain stands out all the more. Obviously, envisioning and struggling toward fulfillment of people’s fullest capacities is far removed from the media’s image of politics.

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a review of

Eyes to the South: French Anarchists and Algeria, by David Porter; foreword by Sylvain Boulouque. AK Press, 2011, 550 pp, $25

David Porter’s hefty new book is a remarkable resource for scholars and activists seeking to understand the relationship among French anarchists, French colonization of Algeria, and Algerian anti-colonial movements.

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[Translator’s note: Recently, a voluminous dossier began to circulate in France. The dossier, sent by Os Cangaceiros, included stolen prison plans and documents and a chronology outlining Os Cangaceiros’s campaign of sabotage against the “13,000 project” (new maximum security penitentiaries with room for 13,000 prisoners), as well as reproductions of communiques sent to those who were targeted. Interestingly, the police and companies which were attacked have been very discreet about this campaign, apparently wishing to give it as little publicity as possible. The following excerpts from the dossier have been translated from Mordicus, B.P. 11, 75622 Paris cedex 13, France, and Le Monde Libertaire, 145 rue Amelot, 75011 Paris, France].

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Twenty months after the coup d’etat of April 21, 1967 Greece is still under a military dictatorship which rules by decree and the gun. Fundamental democratic and human rights of the people are still denied. Many Greeks have been murdered. Thousands have been imprisoned and are being tortured by means comparable to the Gestapo tactics of Nazi Germany and the purges of Stalinist Russia.

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a review of

Frinck: A Life in the Day of and Summer With Monika by Roger McGough (Ballantine Paperback, 60 cents)

This is one writer’s answer to how the modern novella should be written.

“I read the news today, oh boy,

“About a lucky man who made the grade, And though the news was rather sad, Well, I just had to laugh.”

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The article below is part of a series of discussions that took place in Hong Kong in the early part of 1977, in which the participants (all ex-Red Guard members) attempt to make clear their reaction to Mao Tse-Tung and the Chinese Communist Party during the Cultural Revolution.

During the three years that mark the most active period of the Cultural Revolution (1966–69), Mao Tse-Tung executed perhaps one of the most alarming examples of George Orwell’s “doublethink.” In an attempt to regain control of the Party and purge the bureaucracy, Mao called upon the students to build a society along the lines of the Paris Commune (1871), but quickly labeled such actions “counterrevolutionary” when it became apparent that he and the Party were losing control over the situation. The Peoples Liberation Army was then used to crush the general uprisings in blood.

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Mother

It is time you knew

I am guilty of the following charges:

Attempting to lead an unarmed insurrection,

33 unpaid parking tickets (to date)

compulsive jaywalking,

second helpings with my fingers,

embezzlement of milk money for 45-rpm records,

forced humor,

passing on sensitive information,

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Liberation News Service — Paul Krassner once had an article in The Realist about the death of actress Louise Beavers, who used to play the part of Beulah on the television series of the same name. Beulah was a fat, dumb but lovable, black woman who shuffled around the suburban home of a benevolent white family, frequently saying, “Yes. Mister Harry,” to the head of the family she worked for.

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December the 19^th was the turning point, the day when the Argentinean people said “enough!” The stage was set the day before, when people began looting shops and supermarkets, so they could feed their families. The president, Fernando De La Rua, panicked. De La Rua declared a state of emergency, suspending all constitutional rights, and banning meetings of more than three people. That was the last straw. Not only did it bring back traumatic memories of the seven year military dictatorship which killed over 30,000 people, but also it meant that the state was taking away the last shred of dignity from a hungry and desperate population — their freedom.

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Centerfold insert

Special Fifth Estate Convention Edition 2000

I recently traveled to Los Angeles for the North American Anarchist Conference (NAAC) and Democratic National Convention (DNC). The NAAC was held August 11^th through the 13^th, while the DNC was the 14^th through the 17^th. Both events had an extremely strong anarchist presence. In my eyes, the NAAC was a major success. I was one of the first people to arrive, and I was energized by the numbers of people constantly outside the front doors waiting to sign in. All in all, over 500 people attended, but they were not all there at once. Many people were only at the conference for a day or so, or spent a lot of time at the events at the Direct Action Network’s convergence center, so it seemed like it was smaller because there were only 100 to 200 people at the conference at any given time.

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From its Eat the Rich Gang incarnation in the 1970s, Fifth Estate has been an unparalleled source of new ideas. Thinkers like Fredy Perlman, Jacques Ellul, and Jacques Camatte were introduced and moved anti-authoritarian perspectives forward very significantly.

I was happy to be a part of an exciting opening, as many of us pondered the limitations and defeat of the 1960s. Foundational critiques of technology and civilization emerged.

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The Earth First! Journal is celebrating its 30^th anniversary of independent media with a 120+ page edition featuring contributions from a slew of radical environmentalists, surrealists, voices from indigenous resistance movements, the Greek insurrection, as well as artists and writers from CrimethInc., the IWW, the Beehive Collective, the Just Seeds cooperative and more. Included are articles on mountaintop removal in Appalachia, resistance to Shell in Nigeria, BP in the Gulf and free-states in Cascadia.

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There’s a specter haunting the northern Midwest. It is the specter of Seattle.

These days, no gathering of radicals in these parts can happen without some talk about our plans for the Republican National Convention in St. Paul in late summer. And no talk about anti-RNC action can happen without someone mentioning N30, the November 1999 protests against the WTO in Seattle.

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There now exists a segment of the movement which officially considers itself Marxist-Leninist. Unfortunately it regards Marxism-Leninism more as a temple in which one must worship than a tool to be used creatively.

In speaking of this attitude, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania has pointed out: “...The works of Marx and Lenin are regarded as the holy writ in the light of which all other thoughts and actions of socialists have to be judged...Such people are refusing to think for themselves. They are saying that the perfect answer to the problems of many in society is already known and all we have to do is copy others...In their insecurity they look for a ‘certificate of socialist approval’ from the country or party which they believe has these answers.”

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Reprinted with permission of The Guardian, independent radical weekly, NYC

Of necessity, much of the black and white radical movements have been involved in a cultural revolution. For blacks it has led to an affirmation of blackness, an affirmation of self, for I must know who I am before I can know that I cannot be destroyed. For young whites, the cultural revolution has been a process of creating psychic liberation zones which embody the seeds of new values and new attitudes. A man cannot begin to be involved in the revolutionary process until he looks at himself, and thereby others, with new feelings and new ideas. The cultural revolution has been a dominant factor in this.

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Reprinted with permission of the Guardian, independent radical weekly, NYC

One of the most difficult responsibilities of the revolutionary is to be self-critical. To be self-critical means being able to ask yourself if you are wrong, and if so, to admit the fact and correct it. Revolutionary self-criticism also involves the necessity to see the mistakes before they actually happen, and thus avoid them. However, to engage in self-criticism affords no guarantee that errors will be avoided or corrected. Self-criticism can lead to its own mistakes. The only thing the revolutionary knows for sure is that poverty, exploitation in all of its infinite varieties and racism must be destroyed. It is the question of “how” which involves the revolutionary and the concomitant responsibility to be self-critical.

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Reprinted with permission of The Guardian, independent radical weekly, NYC

The revolutionary process takes many decades to fulfill itself. The generation which finally assumes power gives the appearance of having started a revolution in a short period of time. That is not so. The generation which wins power is only completing work begun decades before.

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Reprinted with permission of the Guardian, independent radical weekly, NYC

1968 was the year in which the momentum of the past eight years reached a climax. From the first day of that year, everyone could feel that this year was the year for a series of confrontations which would expose the enemy more and more. Columbia, Chicago, the Black Panthers and much more happened—and the enemy was exposed to those who were predisposed to look and some who were not.

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Sometimes it seems that history does, indeed, repeal itself. The mistakes of a radical movement are sometimes repeated several generations later by another radical movement. At other limes, a radical movement will repeat its own mistakes within the same generation. Mistakes are, of course, inevitable. They ate not bad in and of themselves if the factors which caused the mistakes are recognized and corrected. Ignorance is our greatest enemy. To know what to do, when to do it and why it is being done is the preeminent task at all times. When mistakes are repeated, it 1 an indication that there is a serious, perhaps fatal, hick of revolutionary consciousness.

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White middle-class America now has a President it can call its own. This is the middle-class America of people who have “pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps.” It is the middle-class America of the Puritan virtues of all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, but so what? It is the middle-class America of housing subdivisions midway between the cities and the suburbs, the middle-class America of rectangular lawns that are mowed on Saturday morning and car washing in the driveway on Saturday afternoon and a drive out in the country on Saturday evening. It is a respectable world which believes in the system because the system worked for them.

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Reprinted with permission of The Guardian, independent radical weekly, NYC.

A student movement has its own built-in limitations, both in terms of how much it can do and how much it can understand. In some ways, a student Movement tends to be artificial, because the student lives in an artificial environment—the university. Thus, it is natural that a student movement generally concerns itself with issues that the majority of society has hardly any time at all to-be concerned about. This is good to a point. Without the student demonstrations against the war, there would’ve been no antiwar movement. Without student consciousness of racism, blacks would be even more isolated and vulnerable to attack.

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Sometimes we are the victims of our own words. At best, words are poor conveyors of information. They are imprecise and must be used with the utmost care if they are to do what we want them to do. When they are used imprecisely, improperly and without regard for the many dangers inherent in them, they can turn upon the user, confounding and confusing him and eventually, be the cause of the user’s destruction.

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We look at them, their fat, sagging bellies, hard faces, tight lips, and we despair. It is logical in our eyes that they should support Wallace, for they are ugly and Wallace is ugly and we are beautiful and gentle and want to do nothing more than love everyone in the rising of each sun. We look at them and the conclusion is quickly reached that they will never change. They will always be filled with resentments, fears and hates. And having so concluded, we end our examination and analysis of them and prepare to wait for more propitious times.

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Reprinted with permission of The Guardian, independent radical weekly, NYC

The very different nature of the problems facing the white and black communities necessitated a white radical movement and a black radical movement. In no organic way could these two movements merge, although they were both fighting the same enemy. That situation still exists, except the black and white radical movements have a common problem for the first time, a problem which can be more effectively fought if the two movements formally align with each other.

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Reprinted with permission of The Guardian, independent radical weekly, NYC

Brother Fred Ahmed Evans was scheduled to die in the electric chair of the Ohio State Prison on Sept. 23, but was granted a temporary reprieve at the last moment. The date of his execution has not been set.

If he dies, he will become the first black man to be tried, convicted and executed by the state for his role in the black liberation struggle. The state has no right to execute him, but it has the power.

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Reprinted from the National Guardian [New York City]

It is ironic to find the Pope’s recent encyclical on birth control to be in line with the statements of many black militants. The Pope, of course, tries to place his opposition to birth control on moral grounds-that is, he argues that to prevent a life from coming into being is as much an act against moral law as willfully to take a life. Some black militants oppose birth control because they see it as a genocidal weapon against the black community, which, in those instances of forced sterilization of welfare mothers, it is. However, both the Pope and those militants who oppose birth control are giving allegiance in their own ways to an old principle: there is strength in numbers.

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July 23, 1968 will have to go down in the history of the black revolutionary struggle as a day of even more importance than July 25, 1967 (Detroit) and August 11, 1965 (Watts). It was on Tuesday night, July 23, that a small group of black men set up an ambush for the police in the streets of Cleveland, Ohio. They set it well and carefully: “... there were telephone complaints about an abandoned, stripped white Cadillac left on Beulah St.,” wrote the New York Post’s Jimmy Breslin. “The police tow truck came up to the Cadillac, shots came from three directions. The driver was a civilian employee. He was not hit. He was doing what they wanted him to do, radio for help. They would use their aim later.”

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In the fall of 2019, I taught a course at the University of Michigan: “Art and Anarchism: from Tolstoy to Pussy Riot.” The curriculum at the Ann Arbor, Michigan college concentrated on Russian anarchists, historic and contemporary, and was designed to be as accessible as possible even for those students with little knowledge of art, or Russia, or history, let alone anarchism.

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These excerpts come from the English section of the El Libertario website. El Libertario is a collective in Venezuela that has been active for eight years now.

Everything with the people, nothing with the power!

Against a broken State and an inefficient market economy, self-management!

Against the maneuvering of the few, the autonomy of the many!

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SECRET

THIS IS A COVER SHEET

BASIC SECURITY REQUIREMENTS ARE CONTAINED IN AR 380–5

THE UNAUTHORIZED DISCLOSURE OF THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THE ATTACHED DOCUMENT(S) COULD RESULT IN SERIOUS DAMAGE TO THE UNITED STATES

RESPONSIBILITY OF PERSONS HANDLING THE ATTACHED DOCUMENT(S)

1. Exercise the necessary safeguards to prevent unauthorized disclosure by never leaving the document(s) unattended except when properly secured in a locked safe.

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One afternoon a thousand years ago a Chinese administrator named Cao Bien was sitting by the River Lo in Vietnam. He had been sent by the Emperor of China to conquer Vietnam and make it part of China.

As he sat there on that afternoon, 500 years before the first white man ever set foot in America, scheming of ways to get the riches of Vietnam back to China, he saw something huge and terrifying.

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FORT DIX, N.J. Oct 12—Thousands of demonstrators, marching under the banners of many anti-war and militant groups, were turned back by tear gas as they marched onto the mammoth military reservation.

More than 1,000 military policemen, most of them with bayonets fixed on their rifles, were called on to repel the 4,000 demonstrators, but no injuries or arrests were reported.

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American heoroes, the Fort Hood Three: (l. to rt.) Mora, Samas, Johnson

PFC James Johnson, Pvt. David Samas, and Pvt. Dennis Mora, three antiwar GIs court-martialed two months ago refusing to go to Vietnam have been transferred from Ft. Meade, Md., to the federal military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

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Andrew Pulley, one of the leaders of the Ft. Jackson GIs United Against the War in Vietnam, wound up his speaking tour in the Detroit area Sept. 25, by addressing the first meeting of the Third World Vietnam Solidarity Committee.

GIs United was initiated at Ft. Jackson by Pulley and other black and Puerto Rican GIs who held meetings to discuss the war and the racism rampant inside the armed forces. The GI anti-war movement grew rapidly.

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Related: see “GIs Demand Rights” in this issue.

Fellow GIs:

For the past half decade our country has been involved in a long, drawn out, costly and tragic war in Vietnam. Most Americans do not support this war—increasing numbers are demonstrating their opposition, including active duty GIs. It is the most unpopular war in our history. Yet the government’s policy threatens to continue this tragedy for many years to come.

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The past week has seen an effort by the Army to give undesirable discharges to three anti-war GIs. All three are known for their anti-war views and their active struggle for the constitutional rights of American servicemen, and have been defended by the GI Civil Liberties Defense Committee.

At Fort Jackson, S. Carolina, where GIs United Against the War in Vietnam was founded, Pvts. Joseph Cole and Tommie Woodfin, two members of the famous Ft. Jackson Eight have been given official notice that they will receive undesirable discharges from the Army.

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a review of

Resisting Illegitimate Authority: A Thinking Person’s Guide to Being an Anti-Authoritarian—Strategies, Tools, and Models by Bruce E. Levine. AK Press, 2018

What makes someone anti-authoritarian? Bruce Levine, in his sometimes engaging book, Resisting Illegitimate Authority, starts by talking about his own childhood experiences testing adult authority, in this case, his teacher, and how he decided whether her authority was legitimate:

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When someone on the Fifth Estate staff over 40 years ago came up with the slogan, Fuck Authority, it was printed as a 29” X 22” poster and tucked inside a 1975 issue of the publication, then a monthly tabloid.

On the reverse side was a catalog of titles offered through the paper’s bookstore which was housed in the same space as its public office.

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About two months ago Schoolcraft College student, Larry Halbert, produced a 1-1/2 by 2 foot combination poster-petition similar to the one above copied from Avant-Garde magazine.

[Web archive note: above this text in the print edition are “Fuck War” and 16 blank lines for signatures.]

Several students and five faculty members signed the petition at the Livonia college and wound up with a full-blown controversy on their hands.

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Ed Sanders, 1960s

In a unanimous decision, a three-judge panel dismissed obscenity charges against Ed Sanders, editor and publisher of “Fuck You/a magazine of the Arts” and owner of the Peace Eye Bookstore in Manhattan. New York City judges Ringel, Sherwin and Hoffman ruled that “Fuck You” is not obscene and does not violate the New York State Obscenity code (section 1141) and is protected by constitutional guarantees of freedom.

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1980 is an election year and we here in the Detroit area have the honor of housing the Republican convention.

This meeting of thieves and con-men will be held at the Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit and promises to be one of the more creepy sideshows of this new decade. To ensure this, these political traveling salesmen are bringing with them an army of FBI, CIA, Secret Service, State and County police; Detroit is already considered the “largest armed camp in the world.”

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On a damp dreary Friday the 13^th September morning a battered funeral hearse was driven to the gates of Fort Wayne Induction Center.

The hearse was stopped at the M.P. Station just inside the gates and the driver was told to leave the base. The driver turned the car around and stopped in the driveway. Six pallbearers got out of the hearse, opened the tailgate and took out a casket, designed with the Resistance Omega and other peace symbols.

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On December 11, 1993 The New York Times heralded that scientists at Princeton University had “plunged across a new physics frontier...with a series of experiments that may eventually lead to an inexhaustible source of energy.” After decades of effort, Princeton’s Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPL) had produced a short, controlled burst of fusion energy.

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The prisons? Open. The army? Disbanded. And much more, besides.

Capitalism’s debraining machines have ceased all their debraining. Capitalism’s debraining machines lay rusty kudzu covered dead gone utterly forgotten.

It’s a love sex & shamanism world now, baby, yeah it’s everywhere ya look. Here, now, in this strange and marvelous and most lackadaisical of places—we all wear masks. Cuz we’re tricksters, kiddo, cuz we’re Monkey cuz we’re Crow. The ol’ Br’er Rabbit, reincarnated. But these masks of futurekind, they aren’t like any old mask that you knew from the waybackwhen, no siree.

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What happened to the future? The twenty-first century was supposed to be a new era; an age of liberty, love, and lucid life. The old world of misery was scheduled to be destroyed.

Instead, all we got is more slavery, hatred, and hyper-alienation.

Where are the dreamers? Why do we continue living on a prison planet? Why does it seem that it is each one of us alone against the universe?

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Under the Canadian Criminal code, violence is not defined as a gendered issue. When a girl or woman is physically or sexually attacked, the act is subsumed under sections 244–246, which define assault, assault with a weapon, aggravated assault, sexual assault and aggravated sexual assault.

Removed from their social and historical context, acts of violence against women appear to be a spontaneous phenomenon whose perpetrators lack any definite motivation besides anger or lack of self control. This lack of context also removes political accountability from the social norms and legislature that enable gender-motivated violence.

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Jim Garrison is looking for the man whose photo appears on this page. Garrison thinks he may be one of the conspirators in the assassination of President Kennedy. [Web archive note: the photo does not appear in the original FE print edition.]

The photo, first published almost four years after the event in the September 15 Berkeley Barb, is a blow-up of part of a frame from a film which shows him seized by police and released.

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The passing of graphic artist, Gary Grimshaw, is mourned by his family and all those who knew him, as well as the rock and art community.

Gary was internationally known for his rock posters that began with those he created for Detroit’s Grande Ballroom in the late 1960s and early 70s. A friend of Detroit’s influential MC5 band and the Fifth Estate, he designed logos for both including the one for our then tabloid newspaper on the opposite page.

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Although there have been no recent developments in the nation-wide campaign to free Gary Tyler, the 17-year-old Black Louisiana man framed and sentenced to death for the shooting of a 13-year-old white racist youth, there have been new disclosures concerning Tyler and his family, friends and supporters.

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Committee for Homosexual Freedom co-founder Leo Laurence predicted a violent uprising if the oppression of Gays is not ended.

In an interview for Tangents Magazine, Laurence warned, “If the oppression of the homosexual is not stopped, if discrimination in employment, in government is not stopped, if the hypocrisy taught by the churches, the lies taught by the schools is not stopped—then this country is in danger, and there’s a likelihood of having a violent revolution, where there will be fighting in the streets of every city across this country, where there will be sniping by hostile people. I’m opposed to violence. But if the government doesn’t change, that’s probably what will happen.”

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This is part of a communique from France, “La lettre versatile de Jimmy Gladiator,” translated by FE collective members.

Being especially partial to the sort of collective punishment that was declared illegal by the Geneva Conventions governing the conduct of occupying powers during war, the Israeli state periodically cuts the supply of electricity to the Gaza Strip (Israel bombed Gaza’s only electrical plant in 2006). Israeli human rights groups and the anti-colonial movement launched their usual protests, but it was some members of the extra-parliamentary far left that took an original initiative with the goal of getting people to think.

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Fuck Hamas. Fuck Israel. Fuck Fatah. Fuck UN. Fuck UNWRA. Fuck USA! We, the youth in Gaza, are so fed up with Israel, Hamas, the occupation, the violations of human rights and the indifference of the international community! We want to scream and break this wall of silence, injustice and indifference like the Israeli F16’s breaking the wall of sound; scream with all the power in our souls in order to release this immense frustration that consumes us because of this fucking situation we live in; we are like lice between two nails living a nightmare inside a nightmare, no room for hope, no space for freedom. We are sick of being caught in this political struggle; sick of coal dark nights with airplanes circling above our homes; sick of innocent farmers getting shot in the buffer zone because they are taking care of their lands; sick of bearded guys walking around with their guns abusing their power, beating up or incarcerating young people demonstrating for what they believe in; sick of the wall of shame that separates us from the rest of our country and keeps us imprisoned in a stamp-sized piece of land; sick of being portrayed as terrorists, homemade fanatics with explosives in our pockets and evil in our eyes; sick of the indifference we meet from the international community, the so-called experts in expressing concerns and drafting resolutions but cowards in enforcing anything they agree on; we are sick and tired of living a shitty life, being kept in jail by Israel, beaten up by Hamas and completely ignored by the rest of the world.

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NEW YORK (LNS) — The three month old strike of 147,000 General Electric workers has been settled.

J. Curtis Counts, the federal mediator in the strike, called it “a triumph for voluntary collective bargaining.” Albert J. Fitzgerald, president of the United Electrical Workers Union (UE) called it “the first negotiated settlement with GE in 20 years.” And the Wall Street Journal said, “The agreement contains enough concessions for both sides to claim victory.”

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On November 9 to 11, Milwaukee hosted the Midwest Anti-RNC Planning consulta. During the Sunday break-out strategizing session, a group met to discuss the possibilities of militant trans and queer action against the Republican National Convention in 2008.

Those involved in the discussion expressed their desire for a trans and queer bloc to play an integral and aggressive role in the strategy to shut down the RNC. It was proposed that such a bloc could hold one of the key intersections surrounding the convention center or could crash the parties of especially grievous religious fundamentalists.

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Quick call the police;

The Negroes are barbecuing at the lake.

Quick call the police;

The Negroes are drumming too loud

Quick call the cops

The colored choir is singing too loud.

Quick call the cops

That pregnant Negro’s belly is swollen;

Search that shoplifter’s belly!

Quick call the cops;

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a review of
Beyond Geography: The Western Spirit against the Wilderness by Frederick Turner. Viking, 1980

Beyond Geography first came to my attention in the early 1980s when Fredy Perlman began his arguments in Against His-story, Against Leviathan! with an appraisal of Turner’s book. Both of these texts attracted attention from the anarchist milieu around the Fifth Estate at the time, especially for those of us trying to build an historical picture of where human society went wrong.

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There are at least three reasons to suggest why Gulf War 1-1/2 came at the transition point between the end of the Reagan/Bush regime and the Clinton imperial inauguration.

One: The Last Desperate Act Theory. The bombing of Iraq by the murderous Bush in the last hours of his presidency was primarily a final act of vanity by the out-going President who realized he was going to be remembered by history solely for his failures and corruption—a crumbling economy, Iraqgate, the last minute pardons to stop the exposure of his role in Iran/Contra, etc. So, he played his one successful trump—the Sadaam card. Hopefully, thought the craven Bush, this would leave indelibly his only triumph. Gulf War 1. Problem: TV reruns never play as well as the original hit series.

...

George Garnett Jr. was found dead on the inner lane northbound of the John Lodge expressway, under the Warren Avenue bridge, at 1:45 a.m. Tuesday, December 28, 1965. He apparently fell from the bridge, struck the pavement and was hit by several cars which didn’t stop after running over the body. A passing motorist saw the body in mid-air and pulled over to the curb; other motorists who did stop called the police. George was pronounced dead on arrival at Detroit Receiving Hospital at 1:55 a.m.

...

Editor’s Note: Since the Beatles released their newest album (“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonelyhearts Club Band”), the American and British press have unleashed a variety of articles on the group. Below is an interview given to Miles of the International Times (London) by George Harrison M.B.E. (Courtesy UPS)

George: If you could just say a word and it would tell people something straight to the point, then, you take all the words that are going to say everything, and you’d get it in about two lines. Just use those. Just keep saying those words.

...

a review of

The Duty to Stand Aside: Nineteen Eighty-Four and the Wartime Quarrel of George Orwell and Alex Comfort by Eric Laursen. AK Press 2018

George Orwell’s fiction and non-fiction writings are among the most relevant works for understanding our current societal plight, although he died in 1950. All we need to do is turn on the TV or radio or check the internet to be confronted with denial of truth and misinformation. And all we have to do is walk down a street or enter a store, bank or public building to be reminded of the increasing surveillance all around us.

...

It was all so easy back in the ‘50s—Eisenhower and Dulles had learned a lesson from Korea and kept us busy smelling the reds out from under our own beds while they concentrated on sewing up the Iron Curtain with brinksmanship. And when McCarthy’s purges palled, juvenile dee-linquency was off and running with your hub caps (remember, the Teenage Werewolf was just a mixed up kid who couldn’t keep out of fights or the clutches of know-it-all shrinks).

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MULHOUSE, FRANCE — UPI-AP Leading German industrialist Hans-Martin Schleyer committed suicide Oct. 18 in the trunk of the car in which he had been held since his seizure Sep. 5^th by members of the German Red Army Faction.

The one-time Nazi reportedly shot himself after learning that negotiations between his captors and the Bonn government had completely broken down.

...

NEW YORK (LNS)—In the more than six weeks following the kidnapping and execution of Hans-Martin Schleyer by guerrillas of the Red Army Faction (RAF), the West German Government took few visible steps to win the release of one of the country’s leading industrialists and ex-Nazi. But the government wasted little time in enacting laws that will take the country back a long ways toward the golden years of Schleyer’s youth, when he was in charge of stamping out anti-Nazi sentiment on university campuses, first in Heidelberg, then Innsbruck, Austria, and finally in Prague, Czechoslovakia.

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Liberation News Service — The thousands of left-wing German students clashing with police on the streets of Berlin, Frankfort, Hanover, Munich and other German cities rallied for reasons beyond the original motivation of the shooting of Rudi Dutsche.

“Red Rudi,” a leader of the Socialist German Students League (SDS), was shot in Berlin by Joseph Bachmann, April 11. An admirer of Adolph Hitler, Bachmann claimed that his assassination attempt was inspired by the murder of Martin Luther King. Dutsche, however, is recovering from his wounds.

...

Germinal Gracia (Victor Garcia) August 24, 1919-May 10, 1991

Among Germinal Gracia’s many pseudonyms (Germen, Julio Fuentes, Quipo Amauta), Victor Garcia was the most common. Born in Barcelona, Spain on August 24, 1919, he spent his infancy and boyhood in Mequinenza, a village in Aragon, a fact that he always mentioned with pride. But it was in Barcelona, at the age of 14, that he started working in a textile plant and became a member of the anarcho-syndicalist union, the C.N.T.

...

Part of American Revolutionary Media / Detroit insert

Ken Cockrell is a Black revolutionary, “so-called attorney,” and a member of the central staff of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in Detroit. His rap was taped, transcribed and edited by Newsreel for this ARM issue on the day of the Los Angeles police attack on the Panther office, before that news was made public.

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OUTRAGED! That’s what we are. Consider it. Think of what it means.

London Bridge. The Eifel Tower. The Arch d’ Triumph, the Vatican; even that monument to hypocracy, the Statue of Liberty. What does Detroit have?

A fifty-five foot spark plug at the intersection of Woodward and Eight Mile Rd.; gateway to the suburbs. The World’s largest and ugliest stove gracing the State Fair grounds. A giant grinning cow’s head on the Edsel Ford Freeway. A forty-foot bow tie, badge of a losing politician. The symbol of the city; THE SPIRIT OF DETROIT, in front of the City-County Building; a joke off a can of peas contorted in pain perhaps by something he ate—or something he saw.

...

“The chickens are coming home to roost”

—Malcolm X, Nov. 22, 1963

Malcolm was right, of course, and the chickens have come home so many ways since that grim day four years ago. Vietnam, Malcolm’s own death, riots across the country and now the biggest chicken of them all—the Detroit riot.

Detroit always does things up in a big way.

...

Two cases of “getting away with murder” of blacks by whites are currently occupying the attention of Detroiters.

First is the Algiers Motel murders where Detroit police officers are charged with executing three black youths during the Detroit Rebellion in July of 1967.

The Algiers murder trial, as newsmen term it, was shipped up to Mason, Michigan away from Detroit because the Detroit Police Officers’ Association attorney, Norman Lippitt, claimed he couldn’t get a fair trial for his clients in Detroit, Mason has one Negro living in it and is the town where Malcolm X grew up.

...

a review of

Food for our Grandmothers: Writings by Arab-American and Arab-Canadian Feminists, Edited by Joanna Kadi, South End Press, Boston, 1994, $16.00

There’s sand in the pages of my edition of Food for our Grandmothers: Writings by Arab-American and Arab-Canadian Feminists. This is not a derogatory reference to those named in the title, but rather because I am reviewing the anthology of poetry and essays at Makena Beach, on Maui in Hawaii.

...

by Michael William

An anarchist running for mayor; anarchist candidates for city council—what did Montreal do to deserve this? Indeed, with seven anti- authoritarian identified people running for office and more cast in supporting roles, our town would seem to be experiencing a phenomenon: the coalescing of an organized anarcho-electoral pole in the anti-statist milieu.

...

a review of

Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity, Robert Jensen, South End Press, 2007, 197 pages

It is hard to read Robert Jensen’s Getting Off without getting drawn into an internal debate about power and desire and without feeling that there is a greater economic issue that the author, a journalism prof at the University of Texas at Austin, has left essentially untouched.

...

a review of

On the Road, Jack Kerouac. Penguin Modern Classics, London, 1976

Naked Angels, The Lives and Literature of the Beat Generation, John Tytell. McGraw Hill, New York, 1977

Don’t let no one bullshit you—the ‘50s were a terrible time to live through. On TV it’s just the Fonz and all of his friends having “Happy Days,” but the reality frame was the American empire at its zenith. It was a world dominated by Eisenhower, Nixon, John Foster Dulles and other spokesmen for the American Century—the dominance of American military might abroad, and white, middle class culture at home—a time without rioting blacks, demonstrating students or Vietnamese in revolt to threaten the image.

...

“Throw back your books and outa your seat—Throw open the door—out into the street!”

—Chuck Berry.

High School has begun. Help us reverse the process it hopes to put you through.

The Fifth Estate will coordinate the news and publicize the actions of high school revolutionaries throughout the Detroit area. If you would like assistance from dedicated “outside agitators” or would like to get in touch with fellow inmates interested in building a movement in your high school, contact me c/o The Fifth Estate.

...

You’re on. You’re moving. So now you read (if you can in a moving car), watch the countryside, wave at children, talk to any companions you may have, drink wine, write books, and groove train riding activities.

Now—even if you’re on a fast freight—if it’s going very far, the train is going to stop a couple little times to drop off and pick up cars. What you do, again—before you get off and very far away from your car—is ask one of the brakemen how long it’s going to be before the train pulls out again, so that you won’t get off and lose your train like I’ve done a couple of times.

...

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Following is part one in a series of articles subtitled “a guide to bumming in the U.S.A.” The author is unknown, and we wouldn’t have found out about it if it weren’t for the keen eye of one of our readers in Berkeley, California.

“Nobody’s ever taught you how to live out on the streets and now you’re gonna have to get used to it.”

...

I’m sitting with my developmental writing class towards the beginning of the semester. There are two white students, eighteen students of color, six international students. It’s the exact opposite in my critical thinking class. But we aren’t talking race yet; we’re talking about language, about writing, about swearing in your papers, about slang. They point out that it’s because I’m the teacher that I can encourage them to write in any way they want to. Because they know when they are done with me, they gonna have problems in the next class. It don’t matter what we say, but how we say it, they point out. And since you a teacher and Mexican, you can use some spanglish like it’s cool and all. When you a professional it’s ok, not for us though.

...

This is the stockade. It’s to protect freedom. My freedom to give orders. And your freedom to make money.

Does this sound like your place?

Broken windows, rotted floors, leaking pipes, leaking toilets, garbage all over, or rats and roaches.

If your landlord has consistently refused to fix any of these housing code violations you no longer have to suffer in silence. The State of Michigan has passed new tenants’ rights legislation, which removes the hapless renter from the mercy of the avaricious landlord.

...

According to a recent article in the Detroit Free Press only 17% of “deprived” families eligible for State aid under the Federal Food Stamp plan have taken advantage of it.

Food stamps are purchased from the Michigan Department of Social Services for, say $56 a month, and are redeemable at most supermarkets for $86 worth of groceries. That is a bonus of $30.

...

GHETTO...the white suburban mind conjures up visions of....

GHETTO is now a game, a “simu-life” game made by Western Publishing Company. For the outrageous price of $23.00, those affluent liberals that wish to “understand” ghetto life can do so in the comfort, privacy, and safety of their own home or school.

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NEW ORLEANS, La., Sept. 12, The Word/LNS—A Fort Polk soldier was busted here, during his participation in a peaceful protest demonstration against Governor Wallace.

The soldier, Private Michael Borne, of Chalmette, La., approached the marchers and asked the nature of the demonstration. He was told, and invited to join which he did. He marched approximately five minutes, amidst cat-calls, and jeers from Legionaire hecklers.

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A caucus of anti-war GIs meeting at the Feb. 15 Student Mobilization Committee conference in Cleveland decided to call for a national anti-war GI meeting. GIs at the conference represented bases from Alaska to Texas, and from Ft. Dix, N.J. to Ft. Lewis, Wash.

Some of the thinking behind the call for the GI conference was indicated by Tim Karney of Ft. Bliss GIs for Peace:

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April 5^th Action Committee

Nine thousand GIs have died since the Paris peace talks began. Last week casualties reached a new high with over 450 deaths in just seven days.

North Vietnam is no longer being bombed but more bombs than ever before are being dropped on the South. President Nixon dismisses the idea of a cease fire as “meaningless.”

...