Full list of texts

Editors’ Note: Roman Gribbs is Sheriff of Wayne County and candidate for mayor of Detroit. Part of his attempt to sell himself to the people of our city has been on the basis of his role in reforming the Wayne County Jail, which is his responsibility.

Long a chamber of horrors, the Sheriff has been able to enlist the cooperation of Detroit’s two daily papers to create an illusion that his dungeon has become a fit place for humans to inhabit due to his work.

...

Five new productions, including three classics and two contemporary plays, will be featured at the Hilberry Classic Theatre during its Wayne State University Centennial season of repertory.

A revival of last year’s record-breaking success, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” will be performed in the fall.

...

On June 16, 1962 a group of students stimulated by the burgeoning protest movement of black young people in the south, met at Port Huron, Michigan.

After much debate they approved a long statement analyzing “the state of the society which they were inheriting.” Known as the Port Huron Statement, the document served as the organizational base for Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The Port Huron meeting is generally considered to be the beginning of the “New-Left.”

...

“A lot of us have been smokin’ reefers and layin’ broads in the bushes at Belle Isle for the last twenty years...and nobody ever called that a Love-In.”

—anonymous

Greaser and Frat Rocker and Mod Lower-middle class versus upper-middle-class America.

The struggle for the supremacy of class values among the recent Young. Both begin more or less together, as Screamies. It is the Mod who characteristically veers off to become the Teeny-Bopper and eventually the Hippie.

...

WASHINGTON, October 3 (Liberation News Service ) — Something’s happening, and you won’t know what it is, General Jones, because you think that only Angry Mothers and bearded students march and that hippies stay in Haight — Ashbury and the East Village. Look out your window on October 21 and freak out at what will be marching towards the Pentagon:

...

Is there a blood test which can conclusively determine paternity? If not, is there another test or are there other tests being developed to determine exactly who the father is?

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

Dear Dr. Schoenfeld:

Your discussion of the sneeze-orgasm question in a recent column gave me the unaccustomed and satisfying experience of becoming aware of a mysterious part of my own behavior.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: I have an unusual “problem” concerning my penis when I have an erection. When not aroused, it is small and appears to be very normal. When I have an erection, it grows very large and has a pronounced curve downwards. In other words, it is bent toward the ground.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

Dear Dr. Schoenfeld:

About restaurants that prohibit nude feet. Am assuming hygienic rationale: Are shoes more hygienic per foot?”

ANSWER: Shoes are more likely to track in disease from the street than bare feet. Some restaurant owners cite health codes but the truth is they just don’t like barefooted customers.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: Can any harm come from making love in the bathtub? Hopefully not. Cleanie.

ANSWER: My research team plunged into action, after reflecting on the habits of whales and dolphins. Brace yourself for the answer: contusions and abrasions if the tub is empty, seasickness, drowning, or scalding if it’s not and your inhibitions go down the drain.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

Dear Dr. Schoenfeld: Usually I stack my dirty dishes at the bottom of the refrigerator for a day or two before I wash them. After washing them I do not rinse them (no hot running water).

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

The audience stared incredulously at Old Glory.

Their eyes moved down the little wooden staff and remained fixed on its base, a candle in the shape of an erect penis. The candle was red, white and blue and larger than life. Silver stars covered its blue testicles.

...

WARNING: Word is out that some tripsters are using the anesthetic cyclopropane (Trimethylene) for their highs. I hope this message reaches you in time.

Cyclopropane is far more dangerous than laughing, gas (nitrous oxide). Arrhythmias of the heart and respiratory failure are not uncommon effects of this gas. In other words, the heart may stop beating or beat so quickly and weakly that blood is not circulated through the body. Or the brain centers which control breathing may be so heavily anesthetized that breathing stops.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

Antoinette Dishman was a 17 year old Barnard College freshman who died January 31^st of a heroin overdose. She had sniffed heroin at a party and was found dead the next morning. Hers wasn’t an exceptional case. Heroin overdoses killed more than 200 teenagers in New York City alone last year. The drug is made even more dangerous when used in combination with alcohol or barbiturates.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

Dear Dr. Schoenfeld:

To be blunt, I’m scared. I was smoking some grass about 3 weeks ago and I started to feel dizzy. Next thing I remember is waking up on the floor and being told I’d been unconscious about 7 minutes.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

Dear Dr. Schoenfeld:

Recently my 14 month old daughter got ahold of some LSD tabs. The trip was apparently too much for her because she kept crying out in what seemed to be terror.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: An old lover of mine was fond of a certain trick taught to her by an old lover of hers—which involved the placement of an ice cube in her vagina and then copulation.

Certainly an exciting experience, but I have two questions: 1) Could this harm her? 2) Could this be used as an effective means of contraception as well as groovy orgasms?

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: I am a serviceman in Vietnam and my wife thinks I am having sexual relations here. Not so. But after arriving I noticed some pimple-like protrusions in my pubic area. I went to my sick bay where the corpsmen laughed them off as venereal warts.

...

Dear Dr. Schoenfeld:

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

In a recent column you printed the letter of a girl whose “problem” was a boyfriend who had an almost continuous erection and made her sore with continuous and lengthy intercourse. I think you missed the obvious solution. Let her share her good fortune with a girl friend. God knows there are many sexually frustrated girls who would be happy to get half of such a good thing.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: I am writing to you in regard to my weight problem. I am 22, five feet six inches tall and I weigh 134 pounds. I would like to weigh 125 pounds. I have been as heavy as 145 pounds and really have had no trouble losing the first ten pounds but the second are a problem.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

Dear Dr. Schoenfeld,

Regarding your column warning about literal blow jobs.

A few years ago, one of the psychiatric journals carried a paper on an unusual accidental death of a woman following coital foreplay.

...

The following letter was received from Shreveport, Louisiana:

QUESTION: How can a male determine whether or not he is circumcised? I am not sure about myself.

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

ANSWER: Buy the John Lennon-Yoko Ono album. Neither John nor Yoko is circumcised.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: Some time ago a doctor injected silicone into my nose just above the left nostril. Then the silicone started to come out.

I went back to the doctor and he removed an inch of hard white substance hanging out of a pore in my right nostril. But he couldn’t remove the rest of it.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: Marijuana is often heavily weighted down with sugar, as I’m sure many smokers know. The obvious purpose seems to be to give as little grass as possible for the weight of the kilo or lid.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: While watching the action attendant the occupation of People’s Park, I received several mild doses of tear gas. The result seems to be a considerable lessening of congestion in my sinuses, though I suffer from chronic sinusitis. Do you recommend this treatment?

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: A surgeon has recently informed me that he has been able to cure his sexual impotency through kite-flying. This idea came to him after reading a brief article by Sandor Ferenczi entitled THE KITE AS SYMBOL OF ERECTION (found in the SELECTED PAPERS of S. Ferenczi Vol. 2).

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: Can anything be done to increase penis size at the age of about twenty? I feel I am underdeveloped and have always felt a little inadequate because of it.

ANSWER: When I was a high school student, a friend felt he had the same problem. Each day he would tie a weight to his penis, swinging it like a pendulum and gradually increasing the weight. He worked his way up to ten or fifteen pounds, setting some sort of record in masochism but his member remained unchanged except for some rope burns.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: Is it possible to get high on morning glory seeds? If so, is it dangerous?

ANSWER: Morning glory seeds contain ololiuqui which is basically lysergic acid monethlamide. Ingesting the seeds gives an LSD-like experience but there is also almost invariably a prolonged period of severe nausea and vomiting. A real bummer.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: Sometimes you hear that very tight clothing around the scrotum of the male can cause sterility. I just can’t believe that. Athletes, particularly professionals, wear jock straps several hours daily, ballet dancers live day in and day out with tight leotards, and male fashions today may often call for very tight slim underwear. What is the truth about tight clothing and male sexuality? What does medical research show?

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: I have used the pill for five years but have become concerned and frightened by what I’ve recently heard about the dangerous side effects. What are they? And if I should give them up, what is the comparative efficiency of (1) a diaphragm with contraceptive cream, (2) a ‘loop”, (3) vaginal foam?

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: I recently, at the advice of my friends, drank a bottle of Romilar C.F. cough syrup. This was supposed to get me stoned. It did just that. After about 20 minutes my arms and legs got limp. I could hardly think and slurred when I talked. I laid down and found myself hallucinating.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: Last weekend my boyfriend and I were picking mushrooms in the woods and found some funny yellow ones with long stems. Could these have been hallucinigenic mushrooms?

ANSWER: Before you go tripping off in the woods again, you should realize that only experts should try to distinguish between edible mushrooms and poisonous toadstools. Toadstools (Amanita muscaria, A. verna, A. Phalloides, A. Brunnescens) may give a kind of trip but collapse and even death may follow. Amanita muscaria has a sudden (1 to 2 hours) onset of action and causes confusion, excitement, thirst, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, wheezing, salivation, slow pulse, tremors, weakness, collapse and perhaps death. Amanita phalloides, brunnescens and verna have a delayed onset of action (12 to 24 hours) and cause confusion, depression, headache, convulsions, coma, nausea, vomiting, bloody vomitus and stools, jaundice, reduced flow of urine and fluid in the lungs.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: In a recent column you referred to a medical underground weekly called the A.M.A. News. I would like to place a subscription for my doctor to this paper. He is a real good doc and all but seems to have blinders on. Could you give me the address?

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: Our last kilo contained hundreds of chips of crushed moth balls. We have heard tell of grass cured in moth balls, but had never seen any before. The grass had a peculiar medicinal odor and a metallic taste, but it did stone us better than average. Could there be any possible harm in smoking or swallowing chips too small to see?

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

“My first year at Stephens College all the girls were getting weird diseases. They were just starting to make it with boys and went to the college dispensary with a whole lot of vaginal complaints—trichomonas, fungus infections and strange discharges that didn’t seem to have a name.”

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

A reader recently asked if I knew of any slang terms for “clitoris,” which she found too technical for bedroom talk. I didn’t know of any so I asked readers for their suggestions. Here are some of them:

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: Could you please tell me how and where I can get a convenient contraceptive?

Unfortunately, it is impossible for me to get any by prescription as I am 17, single and living with my parents.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: Where can I get myself CASTRATED? I’m tired of sex, I hate sex, I don’t want to be controlled by women any longer! I hate the two-facedness, double-think, hypocrisy. I can’t stand living in the Sexual Contradiction any longer: sex is condemned, sex is admired; sex is dirty, sex is fun; if I ask her or imply that I want sex, she hates me (“What? You think I’m a WHORE?”), but if I don’t ask her and in fact act like ‘I don’t want sex’ (and I have done this) she says, “What? I’m NOT GOOD ENOUGH for you?”

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: Is there such a thing as sexual allergy? I have been dating a recently divorced woman, but we have had intercourse only once. Here’s why: Shortly after we shared one of the most explosive, mutually exciting and uninhibited amorous encounters a man and woman could experience she developed an irritating vaginal infection.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

Dear Dr. Schoenfeld,

Here’s a reply to the reader of your column in OZ (the English underground monthly) who wanted information about circumcision.

I was circumcised as an adult, at the age of 24, some 14 years ago. I’ve never regretted it for a moment—nor, so she tells me, does my wife.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: Would you please explain what tachycardia is? I am undergoing treatment by an analyst for anxiety which is causing tachycardia in my heart. However, neither he nor my M.D. will explain tachycardia to me.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: I have six children and would like to find a way to present my soul-mate with a more shrunken area to play in. Dig?

My physician told me that I had an unusually good pelvic floor for having had so many children (whatever that means). I have exercised my vaginal muscles but I think I have accomplished all that can be done that way. My husband is sweet and says it doesn’t make that much difference, but...

...

QUESTION: My old lady is a light sleeper and she can’t sleep because my snoring keeps her awake. I’ve never heard myself snore, but those who have say I’m really loud.

What causes snoring? Is there anything I can do about this problem—other than separate bedrooms?

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: I have a problem which is embarrassing and troublesome to me. A few weeks ago, I balled for the first time (incidentally, I’m a girl) and bled an awful lot.

I would like to know: Is the bleeding just because it was the first time? Or is there something wrong with me?

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: What are the potential dangers of the new “3-way” tablets (mostly mescaline plus a little LSD and a wee bit of cocaine?) One of my friends got stoned wild for 9 hours on this but spent the last 3 hours on the john. What’s coming off?

...

Dear Dr. Hip Pocrates,

I seldom read your column, it usually actually makes me sick to my stomach to know there are such vulgar, uncivilized, people.

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

Today my husband showed me your column about the man who liked to wake up his wife by making love to her in the morning. He’s an early riser and I’m not (he relaxes in the evenings while I take care of dinner, children, and chores). He remarked that he might try that sometime. I told him and I’ll tell you, if he ever does, in that manner, I’ll probably kill him and blame you for contributing to the cause.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

Dear Dr. Schoenfeld:

For several years we’ve been looking for physicians to help freeze people. With several exceptions, we haven’t had much luck. Most doctors are too frightened and conservative to even study our approach.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

I’m strung out on heroin. This doesn’t seem to have any long term advantages.

There are a good many places which offer help to addicts who wish to kick. But to the best of my knowledge, all of them ask the name of the patients and take photographs, etc. The confidential file always eventually becomes available to the law enforcers.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

Dear Dr. Schoenfeld:

The other day a girlfriend of mine asked me to see a movie called “Daughters of Lesbo.” Something about this girl disturbs me.

First of all, the boys call her “Big Daddy Linda” and have said some very bad things about her. Although she is a bit domineering and aggressive she always seemed quite friendly with us all. My boyfriend says she’s a “Butch and a Dyke.” Could you please give me a definition for these names?

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

Brother:

I have a rather peculiar problem. When my girlfriend was younger, she had a rather bad dream concerning her breasts. The gist of the dream was that her breasts were kissed, sucked, etc., by a man who she thought loved her, but who, in reality, wanted only her body.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: I am a very early riser, strictly a morning man and my mate is a late sleeper. Therein lies my dilemma.

There is nothing I like better than having intercourse with her as she awakes or, more precisely, waking her up with the actual coital act. When first awakened, she is sometimes a bit irritable but quickly gets over this.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: Dear Dr. Schoenfeld: “I am replying to a recent column of yours and to the girl that complained about her boyfriend’s balls. It seemed that during intercourse, his balls banged against her body and she didn’t care for this. That girl is absolutely NUTS!

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

Dear Dr. Schoenfeld.

This may be a bit out of your line but I have a dog who is gay.

Not that he will pass up a chance with a female dog, but he really goes out of his way to do it with a male dog.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

Dear Dr. Schoenfeld:

For the past six weeks or so I have been finding it extremely difficult to get an erection. I have also noticed that one of the testicles is becoming larger and the regular size one appears and feels like it has a growth coming on it. Do you think this would have anything to do with the erection problem?

...

QUESTION: I think my girlfriend and I have been screwing too much. The reason I believe this is lately I’ve been almost continuously tired.

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

Could it be that too much sex is wearing me out? We only screw once a day, six or so times a week. As far as I know, I’m getting a balanced diet and plenty of sleep.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: My wife had her first baby about a month ago and a couple of days after they returned from the hospital the baby began crying every night at about nine and usually continued until my wife finally fed him again around midnight.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: My lover and I heard a record on KMPX-FM one evening while in bed, about beating and biting one another as a way to come to sexual satisfaction.

We practiced along with the record and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I would beat on his back and he bit me all over. particularly around my armpits and breasts. It was very reciprocal and so pleasing we felt we should tell our friends. But since then we have been rejected as weirdoes.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: My husband drives me nuts every night. His right leg sort of jumps every 30 seconds on the dot (trying to put myself to sleep I timed it). He used to chew and grind his teeth but since he got a pin between his two front teeth and it hurt him, he stopped, but replaced that with scratching his head and rubbing his arms.

...

Dan Seigal, president-elect of Cal’s student body, never finished his talk to the thousands gathered to rally behind the Berkeley People’s Park. When he suggested they take the park, avoiding bloodshed and arrest, the crowd immediately left Sproul Plaza. Chanting “We want the park,” and whooping like Indians, they spilled out onto Telegraph Avenue and walked to the Haste Street intersection where a line of helmeted, brown-uniformed police waited behind barricades.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: I had enjoyed a close personal and sexual relationship with a girl to whom I was engaged. But then I began to vomit whenever I saw or thought of her. The frightening part of the story is that the same thing happened to me again during a casual sexual relationship with another girl.

...

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld, known and loved “Hippocrates,” will be at WSU’s Community Arts Auditorium on Wednesday May 28 at 8 pm in a benefit for Open City, Detroit’s service organization for the free community.

...

The following interview with Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld (HIPpocrates) is reprinted from the Summer 1969 edition of Sexual Freedom, the quarterly publication of the Sexual Freedom League. Subscriptions cost $4.00 a year and are available by writing to: Sexual Freedom Quarterly, Box 14034, San Francisco, California 94114.

...

An important notice for your safety and survival

Reprinted from Berkley Barb (UPS)

(Time is short. If you haven’t already seen the following prophetic notice by the communication company, issued this weekend, take heed. And take heart.)

Sorry to bring you down, but this is about the riots our black brothers have planned for the city. There isn’t much hope that they won’t occur.

...

The barbarity of the nation-state since its emergence 8,000 years ago has only been limited in its intensity by a lack of the technological means needed to perpetrate horrors upon humanity. By the advent of World War II, science and industry, joined together in wedlock by Capital, achieved the breakthrough in destructive methodology and allowed a carnage of a staggering 30,000,000 dead.

...

As E.B. Maple points out in the following article (which first appeared in FE #285, August 1977), the atomic bombings of civilians by the American Army Air Corps at the end of World War II was not the knockout punch that convinced an intransigent Japan to suddenly change its strategy and surrender.

...

Reprinted from FE #285, August 1977.

The barbarity of the nation-state since its emergence 8,000 years ago has only been limited in its intensity by a lack of the technological means needed to perpetrate horrors upon humanity. By the advent of World War II, science and industry, joined together in wedlock by Capital, achieved the breakthrough in destructive methodology and allowed a carnage of a staggering 30,000,000 dead.

...

Maurice Spira, “His-story Lesson,” 1983, acrylic on paper

I conceived of “His-story Lesson” as being like a little lecture, demonstrating the development that can be observed as a central tendency, throughout all of human history. Our lecturer is holding his spray can, which is a symbol of hostile technology: it could be destroying the ozone layer or it could be for graffiti, or it could be poison, some toxic substance, it could be mace, whatever comes in a can, it could be hairspray or some hideous perfume out of the drugstore. He’s wrapped in a map of the world to emphasize the essential underpinning of human development and progress on this planet which has always been conquest and domination...in effect colonialism, colonial expansion. Up on the wall to the right you have the factory system, you have the pyramids which represent the ancient bureaucratic state, you have some other little motifs which have to do with the pillars of society—the judiciary, the church and so on. To the left of the lecturer is Roman time, symbolized by a clock with no hands, and below it is our lethal contemporary obsession with cybernetic time and the so-called information revolution which is nothing but an insane and obnoxious plot to fill up all us empty vessels—apparently we’re all empty vessels to be filled up with all this worthless bullshit that technocratic civilization deems purposeful, which I reject out of hand.

...

a review of

Shadows in the Struggle for Equality: The History of the Anarchist Red Cross by Boris Yelensky, Edited with a new Foreword and Introduction by Matthew Hart. Illustrated by N.O. Bonzo. PM Press, 2025

From Cop City to the Dakota pipelines and Jane’s Revenge to numerous struggles worldwide, anarchist organizers are relentlessly targeted by the state today as they have been for over a century.

...

The black flag is a symbol of anarchism. Unfortunately, the exact origin of this association is very elusive. This may be frustrating to those fascinated by historical trivia but it is by no means surprising.

Anarchism has always deliberately stood for a broad, and at times, vague political platform. The reasoning is sound; blueprints create rigid dogma and stifle the creative spirit of revolt. Along the same lines and resulting in the same problems, anarchists have rejected the “disciplined” leadership found in many political groupings. The reasoning for this is also sound; leadership based on authority is inherently hierarchical. It seems to follow logically that since anarchists have shied away from anything static, they would also shy away from the importance of symbols and icons.

...

“The Fifth Estate supports the cause of revolution everywhere.”

—FBI Report

In my estimation, the above twelve-word summary by the nation’s secret police serves adequately as an abbreviated history of this paper on the occasion of its 30^th anniversary.

However, it will definitely not satisfy my friends and comrades on the FE staff who urged me on our 20^th and 25^th anniversaries to write a comprehensive account of the newspaper’s long existence as a radical publication.

...

This article was originally written for our 30^th anniversary edition which appeared in 1996. It has been updated and expanded for this issue.

“The Fifth Estate supports the cause of revolution everywhere.”

-- FBI Report

This nine-word summary by the nation’s secret police, I suspect, serves adequately as an abbreviated history of this paper on the occasion of its 40^th anniversary. It is not due to an inflated sense of self-importance or radical nostalgia that people in the current Fifth Estate collective feel the story of our four decades of print should be recounted. Rather, it is because the history of this paper mirrored a period of large-scale rebellion throughout those years and continues today to give expression to a body of ideas which often finds little expression elsewhere.

...

“Mother, what is a feminist?”
“A feminist, my daughter,
Is any woman now who cares
To think about her own affairs
As men don’t think she oughter.”
—Alice Duer Miller, 1915

On March 8 in 1857 hundreds of women textile workers marched from a poor, working-class district on the Lower East Side of New York City to a wealthy area nearby. They were demonstrating against poor working conditions, low wages, and a 60-hour work week, and demanding equality for all women. They were dispersed by the police who “were just protecting property.” Many women were trampled and arrested.

...

Name:

Please choose the best answer for the following questions.

a. was a stool pigeon for the FBI and the anti-communist witch-hunters of the House Un-American Activities Committee investigating the film industry.

b. told a major California newspaper: “It’s silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas.”

...

Santiniketan, India

Special to the Fifth Estate

It’s weird.

Future historians, in analyzing the causes of the Laotian War (or World War II as the case may be) will be stumped by a curious footnote which will cause them to take off (or put on) their spectacles, shake their heads slowly, and say, “it’s weird.” They will be amazed, of course, at the presence of “hippies” in Laps and the part they play politically in the games of intrigue that are so characteristic of Laotian government.

...

a review of

Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law by James Q. Whitman. Princeton University Press 2017 press.princeton.eduititles/10925.html

The United States and Germany shared an important characteristic in the 1930s. Both were determined to cement white supremacy into Law. Racist statutes in the US were then state of the art. The Nazis sought to catch up after taking power in 1933.

...

The rhetoric is anti-State. “They picture me as a threat to the nation,” Robert Miles told Metropolitan Detroit magazine (June 1987), referring to the FBI. “But let me tell you the kind of threat I am: I publish a newsletter. I don’t harm or threaten anyone. Granted, I don’t like the government—I’m an anarchist, in fact. But these Ollie Norths see sedition in the five cows I have out in my pasture.”

...

There is a staple of the Yiddish theater written in 1921 entitled, The Golem (sort of a Jewish Frankenstein).

It still remains quite popular in translation including a 2002 Off-Broadway run. I saw it performed in 1984 at a free outdoor staging starring Randy Quaid as the monster.

However, the play has two striking peculiarities. First, no one seems to remember the author’s name. Second, it was written as a “dramatic poem in eight scenes,” and originally thought to be unstageable because of technical demands. Although adapted into its current form, many theatergoers still find parts of the play dreadfully obscure.

...

The series of brief poems which make up the Prison Diary—his one and only, his precious book of poetry—were written by Ho Chi Minh between August 29, 1942, and September 10, 1943, during a journey which he describes in one of his poems in these words: “I have travelled the thirteen districts of Kwangsi Province, and tasted the pleasures of eighteen different prisons.”

...

LIBERATION NEWS SERVICE — Ho Chi Minh died, after fifty years of struggle, still undefeated fighter for Vietnamese independence. Why is it that his death now seems so disturbing?

There has been no lack of pre-packaged homage for the man whose stature as a revolutionary leader is matched only by a handful of men in this century. Moreover, as one whose personal history embraced the broad sweep of international communism from the October Revolution to the present, as well as the entire twentieth century struggle in Vietnam, Ho has appeared to many of us more as an institution than an individual; and his own death, like his personal life, has not received much attention from the Movement.

...

It was with interest that I read an article on Dr. Abram Hoffer in the last issue of The Fifth Estate [FE #13, August 30, 1966]. As a medical researcher on LSD I have had the occasion to refer to Dr. Hoffer’s work many times and hold the greatest respect for him as a competent scientific investigator.

...

“Stop the madness and expand Tweed. Two neighborhoods can’t hold up economic progress,” pronounced a local newspaper columnist, directing his ire at residents on the edge of New Haven and East Haven, Connecticut.There, the grassroots Stop Tweed campaign has so far halted the expansion of Tweed Airport.

...

B.K. Brings You the All New SELF-BURGER!!!

A new feature at our inner-city Burger King allows you, the customer, to come through our doors in search of a hamburger and take a chance on becoming hamburger yourself! Continuing our policy of giving random surprises to our customers, Burger King regional supervisor Dan Dilldy hired an armed guard equipped with a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun.

...

Hong Kong, a steamy, enchanting, green pearl of an island with an amazingly efficient public transit system is also the ultimate temple to last gasp, fast buck, crass consumerism.

Mega-towering, teetering, multi-national corporate headquarters ablaze with over-sized neon logos that are sometimes lost in the clouds, dominate the skyline, but can’t quite obliterate the dreamy and defiant mountains behind them.

...

Our banner in the marches, which is usually found at the front of our drum squad. It reads “There are no ‘good citizens’, only potential criminals.” This banner was made in response to propaganda circulated by pro-Beijing establishmentarian political groups in Hong Kong, assuring “good citizens” everywhere that extradition measures do not threaten those with a sound conscience who are quietly minding their own business. Photo by WWS from Tak Cheong Lane Collective.
Source: Hong Kong: Anarchists in the Resistance to the Extradition Bill (CrimethInc, June 22, 2019)
https://crimethinc.com/2019/06/22/hong-kong-anarchists-in-the-resistance-to-the-extradition-bill-an-interview

...

Hong Kong’s Black Book Fair took place November 17–19, 2017 in the lecture theatre of the Visual Arts Centre, close to the Admiralty area where the Umbrella Movement was ignited by a police attack on demonstrators three years earlier.

Collective members from a vegan restaurant in a working class community with a “pay what you feel is ight” free/autonomoous pricing operation presenting at the Hong Kong book fair.

...

FE note: The following is excerpted from an interview with Mike Bloomfield, lead guitarist of the Electric Flag. In deleted portions of the interview, which will appear in its entirety in the next issue of Scene magazine, Bloomfield traces his musical development and his split with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band to form the Flag. He discusses some of his favorite musicians, tells why he canceled his recent Bowl appearance with the Mamas and Papas, and some of the joys and hangups of his art.

...

a review of

Why Hope? The Stand Against Civilization by John Zerzan; introduction by Lang Gore. Feral House, 2015, 136 pp.

John Zerzan’s latest book, Why Hope? The Stand Against Civilization, continues his ongoing critique of civilization and its consequences. The collection of essays--many of which originally appeared in Fifth Estate and other anarchist publications during the past few years--explore familiar topics: the origins of civilization, the techno-culture, industrialism, the Left, and collapse.

...

The Camp Fire was also a health and environmental disaster. Smoke from the deadly fire resulted in widespread air pollution throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and Central Valley.

On November 8, 2018, a deadly wildfire—called the Camp Fire because it began on Camp Creek Road—swept the western Sierra Nevada foothills in northern California. The fire’s spark originated with Pacific Gas & Electric power transmission lines that ignited dry vegetation on a particularly windy day.

...

The first night after leaving their hide-out in the Vancouver Island woods, Jerry and Max climbed the drawbridge off the last ferry of the day onto what they hoped would be the safety of Inner Island and headed down the beach to avoid meeting anyone.

Inner Island bobbed comfortably in the calm waters between the mountainous spine of Vancouver Island and the mainland Coast. After the indigenous Pentlatch had been decimated by lethal doses of smallpox and colonialism, it had- been settled for the past half century by an assortment of old-time pioneer families, hippie dropouts, draft dodgers, and a scattering of retired criminals.

...

It’s over. Nobody really came out ahead. Washtenaw Sheriff Douglas Harvey became Pig of the Year and liberal Ann Arbor Mayor Robert Harris and U-M President Robben Fleming both lost many points with their respective constituencies. Sixty-nine people were busted in three days of street fighting and more than 100 were hurt.

...

Summer is coming on strong in Detroit. We’ve had good weather, lots of free concerts, and young people hanging out together all over the Motor City. But already it’s become real obvious that the mood is tense. Things are not completely together and there are a lot of contradictions.

Too many of our brothers and sisters are being busted on bullshit charges and, in general, the harassment seems to have greatly increased.

...

WASHINGTON, D.C. (LNS)—Hearings on SDS will be held this month by the House Internal Securities Committee, the College Press Service reported.

Committee Chairman Richard Ichord said that the investigation has been going on for nearly three months. The Committee is looking over its large library of SDS literature and other leftist material.

...

By August 2020, nearly one third of all Americans had outstanding rent or mortgage payments. As eviction moratoriums expire, communities should look to successful actions against the American housing system for inspiration. Moms 4 Housing of Oakland, California is a notable example. The organization formed when Carroll Fife, the director of Oakland Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) was approached by several mothers who had recently become homeless. The moms formed a collective, and together, they occupied a spectator property that had remained vacant for years. The occupation continued for two months while a legal battle to evict them ensued. As the case dragged on, Moms 4 Housing became a media sensation, gaining support from liberal journalists and politicians. Moms 4 Housing lost their court case on January 10^th 2020, and the mothers were evicted during a nighttime raid four days later. But the community stood by them, attempting to block the eviction and demanding justice. In response to the outcry, the landlord agreed to sell the property to a community land trust. Moms 4 Housing has drawn substantial attention to the severe failures of market housing.

...

a review of

Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest by Suzanne Simard. Alfred A. Knopf, 2021

I was hanging out in the dayroom of the Federal Correctional Institution at Danbury, Conn. late last year. It was noisy with the sound of the guys playing cards and Scrabble, when a friend brought a book with an intriguing cover to the table. It was Suzanne Simard’s Finding the Mother Tree, and it jolted me back to another place and time in my life, when so much of my world was about saving the trees from destruction. Her book is full of the wisdom gleaned from decades of careful and loving observation.

...

a review of

Underground Passages: Anarchist Resistance Culture 1848–2011 by Jesse Cohn. AK Press, 2014, 421 pp., akpress.org, $22.95

In Underground Passages, Jesse Cohn begins with the apt metaphor of anarchist resistance culture as a tunnel: it is “a way of living in transit through” this world. Resistance culture is “not mainly defined by its end; it is a middle, a means.” Anarchist cultural production is a way of making sense of the world, a figurative place inhabited temporarily in the time between the present and the future of anarchy.

...

As an anarchist writer, I’m no different from other scribes who try to be socially engaged in their work and lives. I drink beer, write, and do my best to live according to my anarchist principles. And I try to incorporate anarchist thought, experiences and visions in all my creative work.

It’s a daily, lifelong challenge.

...

a review of

How Art and Music Can Change the World: Mecca Normal

Mecca Normal is Jean Smith and David Lester--making music and art together since 1984.

Over the last 25 years, Mecca Normal has consistently turned up the heat on the theoretical relationship between music and social change by furiously stirring them together in the fiery cauldron of artistic practice. In the process, they have boldly created a unique body of work that has challenged the downpressing gravity of the authoritarian life with a yeasty combination of outrage and subversive laughter. In essence, they have defied gravity, and, in doing so, have urged us all to refuse to be held down when we could be soaring to the outer reaches of possibility, or, better yet, demanding the impossible. Their music is not designed to present us with a dry polemic on the “one-best-way” to be politically active or offer a pat answer on how to live our lives according to anybody’s party line. Instead, it is a direct call to see through the bullshit and make our own choices.

...

a review of

Red Squared Montreal: A Fictional Chronicle by Norman Nawrocki. Black Rose Books, 2023

One thing we know about capitalism: it can’t have a past (or at least acknowledge one), for the past is filled with resistance.

That’s why it’s so important to keep this history alive, as Norman Nawrocki does so well in his novel Red Squared Montreal. It tells the story of the Quebec 2012 seven month long massive student strike involving 300,000 participants throughout the province. The revolt, ignited by a proposed hike in tuition, didn’t consist of just a few protests, but first, daily marches and then daily and nightly demonstrations with actions involving tens of thousands.

...

a review of

Hurt, Baby, Hurt by William Walter Scott III. University of Michigan Press, 2025

First self-published in 1970, Hurt, Baby, Hurt is a fast-paced and brief yet intimate look into the life of William Walter Scott III, the man credited with inciting the so-called Detroit riots of July 1967. Known to city residents as The Rebellion, the five days of fires and police and National Guard repression resulted in 43 deaths, 1,200 injuries, over 7,000 arrests, and hundreds of buildings and homes destroyed.

...

For a number of years, the Fifth Estate has been writing about the crisis of Western civilization and its industrial/technological plague. At the same time we have been profoundly interested in primitivism and the cultures of earth-based peoples, realizing that their demise came with the subjugation of nature by the advances of the civilized world. The view that our planet faces a grave, man-made ecological threat is certainly not unique to us, and the last few years have seen the emergence of an international green or ecology phenomenon which demands an end to environmental abuse and seeks a reconciliation between humanity and nature.

...