Full list of texts

In late August, a sizable crowd gathered in a downtown Detroit park well past its glory days to eat chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry ice cream...and learn about Sacco and Vanzetti.

The event, known as the Sacco and Vanzetti Ice Cream Social, honored the memory of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian-born anarchists framed for allegedly robbing and killing a paymaster and security guard in South Braintree, Massachusetts in April 1920.

...

1976—A national identification card, as well as 53 other “proposed solutions” to the problems of false identification, drug smuggling, fugitives, welfare abuse and check fraud are currently under debate by the Federal Advisory Committee on False Identification (FACFI), according to a recent issue of Counterspy magazine (Spring ’76).

...

“When you’re taking on a bulldozer, you don’t worry about the flies buzzing around your head.”

—Dave Foreman, editor, Earth First!, Yule 1987 edition

Words have consequences and, knowing their power, Dave Foreman uses them skillfully and manipulatively.

The Fifth Estate is one of the flies, along with Murray Bookchin and the social ecologists, Ynestra King and the eco-feminists, Alien-Nation—anyone who has criticized the deep ecology philosophy and its most militant exponent, the Earth First! (EF!) group. They’re “warriors” on a sacred mission to defend the Wilderness, with barely time to “squabble” with “anarchists-leftists-marxists,” who are “academics,” “anthropocentric” and “wimps” given to “whining.”

...

“History,” Stephen said, “is a nightmare from which I’m trying to awake.”

To resist, that is to create, is this waking--in the sense of waking up from the nightmare of history: of the accumulation of capital, state power, the vast concentration of hierarchies and fields of power embodied through society--extended through colonization.

...

Clown school, summer 2007. I’m doing an improv exercise, still soaked from the spit takes and bucket sloshes we practiced in the last class. The teacher catches me struggling for a witty response and hollers “Stop!”

“You’re thinking too hard.” He looks straight into my eyes: this guy’s been a clown for so long that he needs just a facial twitch to remind me of the only imperative. Play. A noun and a verb--just like “clown.”

...

Hi! My name is CBU-871B, but let’s not be formal. A lot of my friends call me Cluster Bomb. I’ve been busy lately, doing what I’m supposed to. And, I sure appreciate the careful treatment that I receive from the American news media.

...

Special to the Fifth Estate

GREAT FALLS, Montana—A local boy has made good out in the wooly West.

Mickey Gordon, formerly of Detroit, was charged in Montana Federal District Court with threatening the life of President Nixon. Gordon is a student at Rocky Mountain College in that state.

The complaint is based on information furnished by Roger Lee Clement, a fellow student who claims Gordon said, “If I had a gun, I’d shoot the President.”

...

a review of

Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech by Brian Merchant. Little, Brown & Company, 2023

A February arson attack by a mob of Lunar New Year revelers in San Francisco on a Google driverless taxi, to the cheers of onlookers, brings to mind the early 19^th century assaults on factories and industrial machines by newly-marginalized workers who came to be known as Luddites. The attempt of these workers to hold on to social solidarity and community is the subject of Brian Merchant’s timely offering.

...

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To vote is to recognize the legitimacy of the state, its laws and its right to control your life.

To vote is to sanctify the government’s right to make war in your “defense” and in your name. To kill, maim, terrorize and torture people, yourself included, in both secret and conventional wars.

...

If you are stopped by the police, or arrested, whether you are guilty or not, you have the same rights. You can protect these rights best if you use this information.

1. You may remain silent; you do not have to answer any questions other than your name and address.

2. The police may search you for weapons by patting the outside of your clothing.

3. Whatever happens, you must not resist arrest even if you are innocent.

...

The following speech was delivered by David Hilliard, Chief of Staff of the Black Panther Party at the November 15^th anti-war rally at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.

He was charged with threatening the life of the President as a result of it.

There’s too many American flags out here, and our Minister of Information, Eldridge Cleaver, says that the American flag and the American eagle are the true symbols of fascism. ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE. Black power to Black people, Brown power to Brown people, Red power to Red people, and Yellow power to Ho Chi Minh, and Comrade Kim II Sung the courageous leader of the 40,000,000 Korean people.

...

Throughout history, atrocities other than sexual assault have been described as rape. One example of this is the World War II Japanese massacre known as the Rape of Nanking. This serves the rhetorical purpose of bringing home the horrible nature of a crime, since rape itself is so horrifying.

Recently, however, there has been a trend towards trivializing it in common slang, assisted by its use as a descriptive for incidences completely unrelated to sexual assault. This obscures the meaning and nature of rape.

...

The following article is a first person account of the author’s involvement in the FBI’s program of using students to spy on students. Although occurring at Purdue University, the author feels that such activities are far from rare, and that the implications contained in it are fairly universal.

In the fall of 1968, a friend (who will not be named and who is no longer a danger) and I called the FBI office in Lafayette, Indiana, in pursuit of money and excitement, to inform on what we thought, when we witnessed it, to be a criminal act. Speaking for myself, at this time I had no political convictions or prejudices.

...

Different cultures view the world in different ways, especially if we take into consideration the large number and diversity of the means to engage in conversation beyond speech.

Just like language, each communication medium creates a unique way to converse, providing a new field of thought, expression and sensitivity In our culture, each image type, whether as a photograph or in its television version, is a historically specific paradigm of creating a certain instance of what we call a worldview. What is not so easy, though, is to decode what it is the image proposes, that is what kind of worldview it creates.

...

What I love about

the occupy movement

is that it makes

no demands.

Is

a space

in which possibility

expands.

An opening

for imaginations

to upset

the applecart

of acquiescent

relations.

Imagine

clearing the slate

opening the gate

rejecting

the horrors

of industrial civ

un-Occupying

...

The Image was there, the sacrifices and the paid assassin, the screaming mobs of idiot droolers, the expressionless expressions passing for cool, the magic gimmicks and trickery, the grey recorders and their cynicism who will later let everyone know what “really” happened via the tube; all there in a building that once flourished better when it was full of cows. The midwest may never learn.

...

FE Note: Because we are so late in coming out, this article may seem to be rather belated. In fact, the population-immigration debate continues.

Dave Foreman (former proprietor and editor of the Earth First! Journal) plays a key role in pushing an ugly, reactionary anti-immigration politics that does not remotely address the issues of empire and capitalism that are necessary to understand and to respond humanely and sanely to the population explosion.

...

a review of

Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950–1985 Edited by Andrew Nette and Ian McIntyre. PM Press, 2021

In the last several years, Science Fiction, or SF as it is known among fans of the literary genre, has been the subject of several excellent critiques.

In 2018, Alec Nevalla-Lee’s Astounding: John W Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction presented an in-depth analysis of the cultural impact of pulp magazines and the purveyors of the genre’s myth of “the competent man.”

...

Discussed in this article

The Poetry of Postwar Japan, edited by Kijima Hajime. University of Iowa Press, 1975.

Modern Japanese Poetry, translated by James Kirkup and edited by A.R. Davis. University of Queensland Press, 1978.

War poetry is significantly characteristic of this century. Because the poet’s voice is inherently a human voice, poets throughout the world have felt a weighted responsibility to react to that which threatens to destroy humankind and to protest against the inhuman force of modern warfare—from the ruthless use of asphyxiating gas during World War I to the massive unleashing of bombs during World War II.

...

Clinton’s US/UN imposed sanctions have already killed 10 percent of the Iraq population. 1.5 million people are dead which includes 6000 children who die monthly. The economic sanctions are weapons of mass destruction. They are a crime against humanity that have served to strengthen Hussein, weakened his opposition, and failed to force him to comply with UN resolutions.

...

“I believe that if we had and would keep our dirty, bloody, dollar-crooked fingers out of the business of these nations so full of depressed, exploited people, they will arrive at a solution of their own.”

—General David M. Shoupe, Commandant, U.S. Marine Corps. Retired

It’s hard to believe that the war in Vietnam is still dragging on. The generals have already lost the war in the Vietnamese countryside and are now fighting a losing battle to hold on to the few cities and enclaves left to them.

...

a review of

Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy by Yassin al-Haj Saleh. Haymarket Books 2017

This book is a necessary corrective to the dominant perception—left, right and center—that the opposition in Syria are all jihadists and dictator Bashar Assad the best bet for stability.

...

“Hey! What are you guys doing here? You hate unions!”

—A strike supporter

The labor militant who aimed this question at us was surprised, almost shocked, to see a group whom she considers anarchists critical of unions, shoulder-to-shoulder with striking Teamsters and newspaper reporters, squaring off against the cops at a suburban Detroit printing plant late one night last summer.

...

“Hey! What are you guys doing here? You hate unions!”

--A strike supporter

The labor militant who aimed this question at us was surprised, almost shocked, to see a group whom she considers anarchists critical of unions, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with striking Teamsters and newspaper reporters, squaring off against the cops at a suburban Detroit printing plant late one night last summer.

...

Discussed in this article:

The CNT in the Spanish Revolution, Vol. 1, by José Peirats, translated by Paul Sharkey, edited by Chris Ealham, 348 pp., (24 pp. photographs). The Meltzer Press, P.O. Box 35, Hastings, East Sussex TN34 2UX, England, 2001 WIB ph. Also available through AK Press and Left Bank Books in North America.

...

a review of

Never Work: Essays Against the Sale of Life. Detritus Books, 2022

“Workplaces are fascist. They’re cults designed to eat your life; bosses hoard your minutes jealously, like dragons hoard gold.”

—Nouri, solar punk

This collection of essays argues that we are sacrificing our lives in the service of the Machine. The concluding essay sums it up. Written in 2022, “Anti-work: from ‘I quit’ to ‘We revolt’ by Crimethlnc Ex-Workers Collective, starts by addressing the revolt against work that coincided with the two years of the pandemic. In 2021, a quarter of the workforce quit their jobs. The pandemic made it clear that the function of the market is to force people to sacrifice their lives for others’ benefit.

...

On Jan. 20, 620 bombing missions will rain death on South Vietnam.

On Jan. 20, Richard Nixon will be inaugurated amid cries of consensus, unity, and law and order.

Liberals admonish us to “give Nixon a chance,” but we should remember that this new “man” has the same sick obsession with war policies as Johnson and is quite likely to bomb us to death in the name of international law and order if our local police, which he supports, don’t club us to death first.

...

Last March 23 to 25, the Italian police made a nation-wide raid on the homes and offices of anarchists and arrested 19 people and charged them with armed rebellion, subversive association with the clandestine group Azione Rivoluzionaria (Revolutionary Action) and the robberies of six banks in Bologna. Since that time, seven of the people have been released, but the other twelve remain behind bars—they are: Alfredo Bonnano, Carmelina Di Marco, Salvo Marietta, Paolo Ruberto, Patrizia Casamenti, Masstmo Gaspari, France Lombardi, Roccard Fabbricat, Sandre Vandini and two Scots, Jean Weir and Kenneth Burgone (both associated with the publishing group Bratach Dubh).

...

American Civil Liberties Union: 961–4462

Ad Hoc Citizens Committee, Police Brutality Complaints: 872–2828

Creem Magazine: 831–0816

Draft Resistance, info on counseling 874–4334

Detroit Anti-war Coalition: 873–4322

Fifth Estate Office: 831–6800

Fire Department: 962–0400

Grape Boycott Office: 825–4811

...

American Civil Liberties Union, 961–4662

Ad Hoc Citizens Committee, 923–0610

Centerhouse Switchboard, 399–9090

Community Reporter, 833–5085

Detroit Anti-War Coalition, 874–4410

Fifth Estate Offices, 831–6800

(Distribution Centers, KOTC, 831–1574)

Fire Department, 962–0400

Gay Liberation, 923–7749

...

American Civil Liberties Union 961–4662

Ad Hoc Citizens Committee (Police Brutality Complaints) 872–2828

Creem Magazine 831–0816

Detroit Anti-war Coalition 873–4322

Fifth Estate Office 831–6800

Fire Department 962–0400

Grape Boycott Office 825–4811

Metro 832–5126

Newsreel 833–7885

Open City 831–2770

...

American Civil Liberties Union, 961–4662

Ad Hoc Citizens Committee (Police Brutality Complaints), 872–2828

Creem Magazine, 831–0816

Detroit Anti-war Coalition, 873–4322

Fifth Estate Office, 831–6800

Fire Department, 962–0400

Grape Boycott Office, 825–4811

Metro, 832–5126

National Lawyers Guild, 871–1251

...

American Civil Liberties Union: 961–4662

Ad Hoc Citizens Committee (Police Brutality Complaints): 872–2828

Creem Magazine: 831–0816

Draft Resistance (info on counseling): 874–4334

Detroit Anti-war Coalition: 873–4322

Fifth Estate Office: 831–6800

Fire Department: 962–0400

Grape Boycott Office: 825–4811

...

American Civil Liberties Union 961–4662

Ad Hoc Citizens Committee (Police Brutality Complaints) 872–2828

Creem Magazine 831–0816

Draft Resistance (info on counseling) 874–4334

Detroit Anti-war Coalition 873–4322

Fifth Estate Office 831–6800

Fire Department 962–0400

Grape Boycott Office 825–4811

...

Just the headline above alone probably condemns us to the gulag by uncritical leftist supporters of Hugo Chavez’s Bolivarian socialist revolution. But like most issues that vex the left, a look beneath the surface always provides more than what initially presents itself, and almost always, something worse.

...

On August 9–12 a fantasy now known as the “East Side Riot” was staged by the Detroit Police with the assistance of the prosecutor’s office, city government and the press. The major villain of the drama was Alvin Harrison, Director of the Afro-American Unity Movement and spokesman for Black Power. Below is The Fifth Estate’s interview with Mr. Harrison.

...

Kanellos, the ubiquitous Greek Riot Dog present at numerous actions (or is it PhotoShop?)

As a publication appearing only three times a year, it’s difficult to report on the outrages of capital and the empire in a timely fashion. Usually, we cover only issues not available elsewhere. However, the Greek events of this Spring seem worthy of reporting and analysis as Capital’s crisis becomes generalized and rulers’ call for austerity enforced on workers becomes more shrill.

...

THWACK! My fighting stick landed exactly where I aimed it—diagonally across the face of a fascist who was trying to rip down a banner a friend and I were holding, to which the stick was attached.

The blow struck him with such velocity that it snapped his head back while a rosette of blood gushed forth from his broken nose and split lips intermingled with a piece of a tooth and broken lenses from his glasses.

...

My attitude about voting has been like the old Jewish joke about chicken soup when you’ve got a cold—it may not help very much, but it can’t hurt. The more ideological argue that voting legitimizes the system, and they’ve got a point. The more pragmatic counter that such a purist position is an irresponsible luxury in the face of emergency—such as we in the United States are clearly now facing.

...

As most movie goers know, “skin is in.” Some of the current biggies in Detroit are: “Naughty Shutter”; “Naked and the Wicked”; “Nudes on Credit”; “The Erotic Mr. Rose”; “Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill”; and last, but not least, “Fanny Hill Meets Lady Chatterley.”

The above pictures, and many more like them, have become so popular in Detroit that we now rank number three in the nation in skin houses.

...

Buried in a back section of an October issue of the Detroit Free Press:

“Manaus, Brazil (AP) Mayurunas Indians on the remote western edge of the Brazilian Amazon jungle have begun killing newborn females in an attempt to wipe out their tribe rather than confront civilization, according to a Brazilian anthropologist. Paulo Lucena said the Indians, whose numbers have been severely diminished in the last four years since coming into contact with white oil explorers, intend to exterminate themselves rather than continue suffering the impact of civilization.

...

On September 26; 1990 a 78-day siege of two Mohawk territories near Montreal, Quebec, ended when the last group of holdouts walked out of a rehabilitation centre where they had been surrounded by Canadian army troops since September 1^st. Rather than the unconditional surrender that the state wanted, the Mohawks were able to turn apparent defeat into symbolic victory.

...

In North Orissa, on the coast of India’s Bay of Bengal, a three-year conflict between the Central Government and local farmers and fisherfolk continues, virtually ignored by the international media.

In the village areas of Baliapal and Bhograi—a region known as the granary of Orissa because of its great fertility and high-yielding cash crops—approximately 100,000 people face eviction from their homes and lands. The cause of their imminent displacement is the government’s National Testing Range, a military base costing an estimated $840 million (U.S.), designed to test and launch satellites, rockets and missiles.

...

indigenous, adj. 1. Occurring or living naturally in an area; not introduced; native. 2. Intrinsic; innate. [From Latin indigena, native. See indigene.

Indigenism, which begins as a defense of the Indian within western political and literary discourse, ends as a form of conquest, the final assault of civilization on prehistory.

...

A review of

Resist Everything Except Temptation: The Anarchist Philosophy of Oscar Wilde by Kristian Williams. AK Press 2020

At first blush, Kristian Williams’ literary and political biography Resist Everything Except Temptation: The Anarchist Philosophy of Oscar Wilde, could have been an interesting blog post about the famed playwright. After all, the details of Wilde’s politics are well-known enough, articulated as they are in the essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism.” He was an enemy of the state as well, and was arrested and imprisoned for gross indecency and sodomy. All that needs doing is to rifle through the man’s creative works and surviving correspondence to find some political bons mot, and behold—clickbait!

...

“If science was put to the service of capital, the recalcitrant worker’s docility would be assured.”

—Andrew Ure, Philosophie des manufactures, 1835

“In the past, if anyone called a tradesman a worker, he risked a brawl. Today, when they are told that workers are what is best in the state, they all insist on being workers.”

...

In the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries, the rise of capitalism was met by bitter and intense resistance. Its establishment was only effectuated by the imposition of the factory system as a method of social control. The result was a tamed working class and a degradation of labor which lives today at the core of the marxist conception of socialism.

...

Download PDF [174 KB] fe-389-19-industrialism-and-its-discontents

Nearly two hundred years ago, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley gave us a classic warning about the hubris of technology’s combat against nature. Her late Gothic novel, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818), depicts the revenge nature takes upon the presumption of engineering life from the dead. Victor Frankenstein and his creation perish, of course; his “Adam” is as doomed as he is. If this monster cannot be saved by his father/creator, however, today’s cyborg/robot/Artificial Intelligence products do expect to be saved. For those at the forefront of technological innovation today, there will be no return to a previous, monster-free state.

...

Madness & the Surrealist Imagination

The common denominator of the sorcerer, the poet and the madman cannot be anything but magic...the flesh and blood of poetry.

--Benjamin Peret

Surrealists have celebrated madness as a means of exploring the possibilities of the human mind. Madness provides that window into how people put together reality; how thoughts are often assembled in an unusual and creative way.

...

“News is the dialogue of fragmented power with itself. Notice how scientists, politicians or businessmen now complain that even they only learn about the events they manage from the news.

—“Some Fragmented Views from a Fragmented World” (Against Sleep and Nightmares)

Information bombardment from multiple media sources makes contemplation difficult. Everything is broken down into fragmented data having no relation to anything else presenting. It is superficially processed constantly. No rest, but neither exertion nor effort. Just continuous banality and superficiality.

...

BOOKSTORE IN A BARN

(615) 536–5999

an hour east of Nashville; call, write, or email for directions

FifthEstate@pumpkinhollow.net

Read more

WORDS

Dr. Ben Reitman, Sister of the Road: the Autobiography of Boxcar Bertha (2002) $15.00

Dark Star

Beneath the Paving Stones (2001) $15.00

Hakim Bey

Immediatism (1992) $10.00

...

It seems improbable that a conference was held in Havana last May to examine the life and ideas of the Russian Bolshevik, Leon Trotsky. One would think the Cuban Stalinist bureaucracy would be averse to allowing a gathering sympathetic to the Soviet dictator’s arch rival within the Russian ruling clique power struggle that occurred almost 100 years ago.

...

Last month the Fort Hood Three were convicted and sentenced to prison terms of three years for Mora; and five years for Samas and Johnson. The Fort Hood Three, to perhaps refresh a few memories, are Pvt. Dennis Mora, Pvt. David Samas and PFC James Johnson—the three U. S. soldiers who refused to serve in Viet4 nam believing that the war is “immoral, unjust and illegal.”

...

February 21^st marked the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Black America’s hero, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (known to many as Malcolm X).

Born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska on May 19, 1925, Malcolm quickly learned the bitter taste of white racism. His mother was born as the result of her mother’s rape by a white planter (thus giving Malcolm his light complexion and red hair).

...

Canada is illegally renting out the territory of the Innu people to the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) countries so that their bombers can practice bombing and surprise attacks. The establishment of a permanent NATO base could be announced soon. [see FE note at end of article]

The Innu people (sometimes called the Montagnais or the Naskapi) refer to their ancestral territories as the Nitassinan, literally our land, in their native language. The area was never ceded by treaty or otherwise by the original inhabitants. The presence of the Innu in this remote part of the world goes back at least 9,000 years. This area extends from Sept-Iles, to Lac St. Jean, Quebec, to the west; to Fort Cains, Quebec, to the north; and down to St. Augustine, Quebec, and Goose Bay, Labradore, to the east.

...

As of early November, three people were detained in the SeaTac Federal Detention Facility near Seattle because of their refusal to provide a federal grand jury with information about anarchist beliefs and associations.

Federal government prosecutors claim they are investigating violent actions at demonstrations, but the Portland-based Committee Against Political Repression says the extensive surveillance, SWAT raids, and grand jury subpoenas are not simply a response to a few broken windows, but an effort to criminalize the political philosophy of anarchism.

...

a review of

Anarchism and Workers’ Self-Management in Revolutionary Spain by Frank Mintz. AK Press, 2013, 326pp., $19, akpress.org

Following his brief synopsis about the Spanish anarchist movement before 1936, the central concern of French anarchist Frank Mintz is the very core of the 1930s Spanish revolution--the grassroots movement of urban and rural collectivization throughout republican Spain.

...

To those of you tenderly under 20: imagine, if you dare, that tomorrow you could no longer obtain records anywhere. Imagine that all the record stores were suddenly boarded up. Imagine that all of your records and tapes have mysteriously disappeared, your stereo is missing, and that it is now impossible to gain access to music anywhere in the world. Pretend, for a moment, that all the musicians everywhere have suddenly left without notice!

...

The new album by COUNTRY JOE and the FISH on Vanguard is the greatest piece of music that was ever vaguely labeled under the title of rock ‘n roll.

They do every kind of musical change in the album better than I’ve ever heard it before. They do heavy blues things, soft regular singing, guitar and organ solos that just fly, the free sounds of tinking wind chimes and hands rubbing a balloon.

...

The Spikedrivers were the first psychedelic rock group that existed in Detroit.

Their sound wasn’t super hard, yet it was able to take you off into the freedom of your sub-consciousness. That was a year ago and they weren’t hip to the new obvious fact that music doesn’t happen on 45 records. All they knew was, if you wanted to make music you needed the big money of a record company to pay for the studio time to put something out in order to reach a large enough audience.

...

FIFTH ESTATE #366, Fall, 2004, Vol. 39, No. 3

News, etc. pages 2 — 11

Features on “unschooling the world” pages 12 — 45

Letters to the FE pages 46 — 49

Reviews, etc. pages 50 — 53

Bookstore & Calendar pages 54 — 55

What is anarchism? This question continues to crop up as anarchists debate amongst themselves as how to accurately express their perspectives to non-anarchist activists in the antiwar and global justice movements.

Subsequently, a new wave of anarchist primers has appeared in the Summer editions of North American anti-authoritarian periodicals such as Green Anarchy and Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed. Also, anarchist web sites often include glossaries, FAQs, mission statements, constitutions, manifestos, and talking points to explain anarchist principles to the uninitiated. Thus, we are challenged to recognize and celebrate anarchist diversity while seeking the meaningful collaborations needed to influence lasting change on the other.

...

REVOLUTION

REVOLUTION

ELDRIDGE

CLEAVER

Get your shit together be

ready

Tell your friends be

the first on

your block

My God Man be

serious

What would Che say

?

Kill a pig a day fuck in the streets wear

berets

Quote Mao

If you like this poem

it isnt for you

friend

five sticks/electric cap

...

“The political status quo in Mexico died on January 1. Every Mexican institution is now in a state of crisis.”

—El Financiero (Mexican business newspaper)

“If 53 people died in the riots in the Dominican Republic, 53,000 people could die if the Mexicans remember that they are a people with a history of rebellion. If that happens, capitalism in Latin America will go to the devil!”

...

a review of

The Collected Writings of Renzo Novatore. Translated by Wolfi Landstreicher. Ardent Press, 2012, $13, 300 pp., ardentpress.org

The Italian insurrectionary and individualist anarchist, Renzo Novatore (the pen name of Abele Rizieri Ferrar, 1890–1922), died at the brink of a great confrontation with Fascism. His comrade Enzo Martucci claimed that at his death, Novatore “was preparing to strike at society and tear from it that which it denies the individual.” Unfortunately, he died in a gun battle with carabinieri in 1922 who had ambushed him.

...

a review of

This Is Not a Photo Opportunity: The Street Art of Banksy

Artist: Banksy, Photographs by Martin Bull. PM Press, 2014 pmpress.org

Anonymous England-based vandal Banksy, most known for graffiti-like works across the planet recently made news with his latest prank, by destroying it, or rather by it destroying itself. Upon selling at Sotheby’s, an art auction in London, Girl with Red Balloon, autonomously shredded itself before bidders. This was a departure from previous works, which are displayed in Martin Bull’s 2014 book, This Is Not a Photo Opportunity. There is a problem with Bull’s book. You discover the issue when you approach the text more critically than you would a coffee table book, which might be all that this is.

...

she had quickly cleaned the house

now she waited

perched nervously on the kitchen stool

as if she were a bird ready to take flight

Finally, he arrives

dressed fashionably in grey and white

he cuts an elegant figure

and the interview begins—

he asks:

which do you prefer

the black enamel finish

or these soft, muted rose-tones

shall we discuss the various

textures of carpets

or do you prefer the sensual earthiness

of a fine wood floor

the stark simplicity of the modern

or the eclectic clutter

of the victorian?

...

In August 2011, thousands of people rioted in several London boroughs and cities and towns across England after a protest in Tottenham following the death of an area youth who was shot to death by police. The resulting looting, arson, and mass deployment of police were called “BlackBerry riots” because people used mobile devices and social media to organize.

...

Activists in Brattleboro, Vt. are calling for an International Day of Chalking Against State Violence, on Saturday, June 3. Autonomous actions with no central coordination; just get your chalks, go out by yourself or with others, and chalk about war, racism, police killings, prisons, sexual assaults or other issues.

...

On Friday, March 25, the first of three INTERNATIONAL DAYS OF PROTEST, there will be activities on the Wayne Campus highlighted by a rally against the war in Vietnam. This will take place on the mall.

Such Universities as Oakland and University of Michigan will also be the site of anti-war demonstrations. The Citizens for Peace in Vietnam will carry on neighborhood activities.

...

Schedule

Friday, March 25: At 6:30 P.M. the Wayne State University

Young Democrats are sponsoring a forum on the war in Vietnam in the community Arts Auditorium, Cass and Kirby.

Saturday, March 26: At 4:00 P.M. a mass march will start down Woodward from Central -Methodist Church at Adams and Woodward. We will march to Campus Martius carrying signs, banners, and giant grotesque puppets to the beat of death drums.

...

Bruce Whitten, age 26, held the rank of Staff Sergeant in the Air Force until he received a general discharge on May 23, 1965. Whitten was assigned to the First Air Commando group and spent two years in Vietnam.

Q. How do the people feel about the governments that have been set up?

A. They don’t even discuss them. It just seems to be a taboo subject. You don’t speak to an Englishmen about the Queen in a sexual manner and it’s like that here. You’ll get your throat cut. I never got anywhere discussing that subject.

...

Fifth Estate: First of all, let me congratulate you on your victory.

Roman Gribbs: Thank you.

Fifth Estate: I understand that Mr. Austin issued a statement calling for brotherhood and unity between his supporters and yours.

Roman Gribbs: Yes, Mr. Austin did that. He ran a fine dignified campaign. He has earned the respect, admiration, and adulation of many people in this city. We plan to work together. We must work together to make Detroit the city where we can live together and prosper together.

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Abbie Hoffman, fugitive Yippie, has been on the lam for over three years following a New York City cocaine deal set-up by the police. Abbie has had plastic surgery to alter his appearance and has managed to elude the authorities even while popping up at protest demonstrations, rallies held in his behalf and he once even appeared as the guest chef on a Toronto TV cooking program.

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[two_third padding=“0 30px 0 0”]The following interview with Mu Xidi, a former sailor, Chinese rebel, and since 1990, a refugee in Barcelona was taken from the French book Bureaucratie, Bagnes et Business (Bureaucracy, Prisons and Profits), published in Paris by L’insomniaque last year.

The editors, Hsi Hsuan-wou and Charles Reeve conducted 22 such interviews in China, Hong Kong, and Macao with Chinese individuals from different occupations and political perspectives. The views expressed below by Mu come closest to those enunciated by our publication on the subject of reform and revolution.

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Following is an excerpt from an interview with Angela Davis done by the Guardian.

How do you see the women’s movement? Also, do you consider it to have a special role for black women?

Let me begin by saying this: no revolutionary should fail to understand the underlying significance of the dictum that the success or failure of a revolution can almost always be gauged by the degree to which the status of women is altered in a radical, progressive direction. After all, Marx and Engels contended that there are two basic facts around which the history of mankind revolves: production and reproduction. The way in which people obtain their means of subsistence on one hand, and in which the family is organized on the other hand.

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Reprinted from the LA Free Press

Dame Sybil Leek is in this area to apply finishing touches to a soon-to-be-published book, and for one speaking engagement Tuesday night, Dec. 14, at the Ionic Building, 1122 S. La Cienega.

As I drove out to North Hollywood (where ELSE would a witch stay?), I recalled my dictionary’s definition:

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Reprinted from The Free Student

FS: What is your reaction to the New York Times quote that “SNCC officials insist that they would prefer segregationist officials because their presence would keep Negroes aroused and militant?”

Courtland Cox: I think the facade—that if you vote for Wilson Baker as opposed to Jim Clark you have improved something—is really something people have to look at as not being true. I would feel much better if Negroes would stop thinking in terms of which is the lesser of two evils and start thinking of how I can get somebody that benefits me. The Democratic Party in the South is still racist

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Editor’s Note: Ed Sanders, founder and lead singer of the fuck-rock group The Fugs, is a legendary figure on the avant-garde poetry-peace-dope-fucking in the streets scene in the Lower East Side of New York City. A native of Kansas, Sanders made his first splash on the national scene as one of the peacefreaks who boarded the atomic submarine Polaris in 1962. He served 90 days in jail when he was apprehended and later had his account of the scene, “Poem from Jail,” published as a pamphlet by City Lights Books (1963). In New York City in 1962 Sanders founded the mind-shattering magazine Fuck You / a magazine of the arts, which published such American poetry giants as Charles Olson, Michael McClure, LeRoi Jones, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley, et al.

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Color image of album cover for Phil Ochs’ 1966 LP “I ain’t Marchin’ Any More.”

It has been a good season recently at Ed Pearl’s Ash Grove: last week it was Doc Watson and now it is Phil Ochs, songwriter, poet, revolutionary, and all-around good egg. Phil Ochs, who has been held over this weekend to co-star with Guy Carawan, writes his own songs, thinks up his own comedy lines on the spot, and plays his old-style Gibson Jumbo guitar in a most entertaining fashion. I talked with Phil Ochs between sets and he told me:

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a review of

Poetic Reason in the Age of Digital Control by Jesús Sepúlveda. Bad Idea Publishing, 2023

Jesús Sepúlveda’s Poetic Reason in the Age of Digital Control addresses some of today’s most pressing threats and sketches out some promising ideas of a strategy in response, which will hopefully be elaborated in future works.

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Free Speech Fight in Plymouth—Students around Detroit may have been misled by the so-called “news reports” on what recently went down in Plymouth. I cleared up the story after talking to Jim Kalliel, editor of Free Verse, an underground paper which the Plymouth officials tried to silence.

The fascists in Plymouth were beaten out of a victory when Jim faced the Court, the pigs, and the “powers that be” in the tradition of all those who have dared to print what they believe in the face of much opposition and a repressive ruling group.

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Progressive High School students throughout the Detroit area were shocked April 22 to read in the Detroit “News”: “Ferndale H.S. Drops 138 Negro Protesters.”

This blatantly racist act by the administration at Ferndale came down when black students walked out in protest of the treatment of their demands to the Ferndale Board of Racist Education. The students, according to spokesman Anthony Collins, had demanded a meeting on April 21, but the Board stalled, and finally postponed the meeting. So black students walked out.

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Cass students march to Wayne State University mall for student strike rally. Dave Watson is in the center. Photo by A. Gotkin.

On April 3, Detroit area high school students walked out of school in protest against the war in Vietnam, in commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and around issues of student rights, racism, and other issues pertaining to each school.

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To high school students who are going to be free and happy this Summer, remember the future; the Man will come in the Fall and lead you back to the zoo where he can watch you and work on you for another year.

With this in mind, high school students should leave school this year with a Fall perspective, so we can get our shit together and let it all hit the fan at the same time.

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Two High School Student Unions, in the northeast suburbs and at Cooley have been agitating for change inside their schools.

The Cooley High School Student Union recently printed and distributed its Five point program with the following demands:

1) The elimination of ROTC;

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In this terrifying explication of biotechnology, Tomas Mac Sheoin notes that to reduce the natural world to a single monolithic “logic”—in this case, it is capital’s logic of accumulation and control to which he refers—is to imperil life itself. This totalitarian logic is perceived by Jean Baudrillard as well, in his book Simulations, as “that delirious illusion of uniting the world under the aegis of a single principle;” Baudrillard points out the connection between this totalitarian social program and the “fascination of the biological “: “From a capitalist-productivist society to a neo-capitalist cybernetic order that aims now at total control. This is: the mutation for which the biological theorization of the Code prepares the ground.” (110–111)

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The authoritarian, proto-fascist religious cults such as the Moonies, Krishna Consciousness and the People’s Temple have always thrived at the fringes of what was once called the “counter-culture” and which is today euphemistically referred to as “New Age” consciousness—a catch-all of Asian mysticism, macrobiotics, herbalist faddism, palmistry, “holistic” products-mongering, meditation, pop psychology and other obscurantist effluvia.

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a review of

Urgent Publishing after the Artist’s Book: Making Public Movements Toward Liberation by Paul Soulellis (Book Design: Be Oakley). GenderFail 2021

Urgent Publishing After the Artist’s Book operates as a document, a record, an archival object and a piece of art, while the book’s commentary on the arts, publishing, and social justice is expressed both through text and graphic design. It challenges the reader’s role as viewer and consumer, potential ally and an unwitting antagonist.

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TORONTO—Although the Vancouver 5 trials are over except for that of Brent Taylor on charges of bombing Litton Industries (see accompanying article), the support group here is still dealing with the aftermath of extensive police harassment.

Ken Deyarmond, one of the more active supporters, was to go on trial Nov. 13 for “attempted assault against an internationally protected person” who, in this case, was British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Deyarmond was participating in a demonstration against Thatcher’s visit to Toronto organized by IRA supporters and anti-Cruise groups when he was pushed from behind towards the prime minister and then grabbed and punched by three cops. (See FE #317, Summer 1984.)

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On January 22 the usually quiet and staid University of Detroit joined the ‘70s as police arrested 17 students who were protesting the presence of a Navy recruiter on campus.

photo / A. Gotkin

The students, who began a non-violent, non-disruptive sit-in at the University’s Placement Center, refused to leave when ordered to by Dean for Student Affairs, Fred Shadrick. Then, as the headline of the U-D Varsity News put it, “Fred Calls Cops” and the Tactical Mobile Unit, a police riot bus and a paddy wagon took the students away.

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Welcome to the first FE of 2003!

One year ago, when the Tennessee Collective stepped up to take over primary editorial responsibilities for the Fifth Estate, many of us were discouraged and disillusioned by the dreadful lack of public opposition to empire in the weeks and months following 9/11. One year ago, when we wrote about “the emergence of a mass-based movement...contesting the state and capital,” it was speculation. Today, the mass-based anti-war movement that boldly connects the dots between corporate tyranny and its bloodbaths is here.

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With the defeat of the White Christian Nationalist Party in the U.S. presidential election, liberals and progressives are understandably relieved that the politics of racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and the rest of the right-wing panoply were rejected by American voters, even if only by a fairly small percentage. We share that sense, but hold no illusions about the second term of Barack Obama containing any possibility for authentic hope or change, or even mild reform.

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“When I pronounce the word civilization, I spit.”

—Gauguin

We are all trapped within the technological labyrinth, and at its center awaits our annihilation. We have already lost more than we can imagine to civilization’s insatiable hunger for power and uniformity. We live in the shadow of an enormous edifice, a monstrosity which teeters and threatens to collapse upon us in a moment. We sing, make love, struggle and despair amid its decomposing limbs. But the smell of decomposition is general. We are in eclipse; the human spirit is moribund.

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It is said that the automobile created and brought life to the cities, but once again official history dangerously misrepresents and distorts the facts. In reality, it is responsible for the destruction of viable human communities and emblematic of death culture all over the world. The auto industry’s monopolistic power kept Detroit and the rest of the world from creating alternative urban environments and consciously built car cities and a car world--chopped up and destroyed by incredible expressway systems. Cities and a world for cars, not for people.

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Ursula Le Guin’s works typically recount the story of a voyage. Whether or not this voyage traverses vast distances of space, it is always an epic journey of the spirit. It is a kind of vision quest in which we who allow ourselves to be taken along confront the strange, the alien, the other, only to return with a deeper understanding of ourselves. We gain a better sense of who we are, but as is perhaps more crucial, we gain insight into where we are. In the end, the voyage is a journey home.

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Inside the walled compound of a Buddhist monastery on the outskirts of Kyoto, Japan, the monks who reside there have created a meditation garden consisting of raked sand and about a dozen large stones. The stones are adroitly arranged so that no matter where one stands on the perimeter of the garden, at least one of the rocks is blocked from sight of the viewer. The Zen wisdom behind this arrangement suggests that the world in all of its aspects is never completely knowable; that something always remains hidden.

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Welcome to the New York City issue of Fifth Estate. The editorship of the magazine now rotates, and two of us in NYC have stepped in to give the peops in Detroit and Tennessee a rest (making this the first issue in 41 years that has been produced in the northeast!). The people that put out this publication have a variety of views and backgrounds (we range in age from our 20s to 70s, and live across North America); this issue reflects our reality and issues here in NYC.

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• Gettin Schooled

• Teaching Anarchy

• Adamant refusal will not go unnoticed

• Anarchist Accidentally Asked to Lecture at Army Base

• “Studying History, Making History”

• On (anarchist) Education

• Stumbling Upon Public School Utopias

• Schools of the Americas

• Francisco Ferrer & the Free Education Movement

• Learning Webs

• Radical books for kids

• Segregation Rising

• Forget about theories

• Reclaiming our Freedom to Learn

• Learning, Unlearning, Defining, Redefining

• Adventures with the Audubon Expedition Institute

• Short reviews

• Letter from a Teacher

• Select Radical Pedagogy Bibliography

• S is for Shame

• De-schooling the de-schoolers

• Whose kids? OUR Kids!

• History Quiz

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The article appearing on the following two pages, “The Myth of the Party,” by Murray Bookchin (from his essay “Listen Marxist”) was first excerpted in FE #272, May 1976. We reprint it hoping it will be of interest to a new generation of anti-war and social activists who find themselves beset by the return of the living dead—marxist-leninist parties.

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