Full list of texts

The cornerstone of traditional anarchism has always been a revolutionary critique of the concept of justice in all its variations, particularly as it relates to the state’s repressive apparatus and the oppressive nature of capitalism. Today, that has been extended even further to issues such as restorative and ecological justice. The insights of classical anarchist philosophers remain relevant, particularly when we add to them social-psychological observations of human behavior.

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“In areas where our people are the constant victims of brutality, and the government seems unable or unwilling to protect them, we should form rifle clubs that can be used to defend our lives and our property in times of emergency...When our people are bitten by dogs, they are within their rights to kill those dogs.”

—Malcolm X

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The League of Revolutionary Black Workers has been participating in elections of UAW locals and found itself confronted with vote fraud when it was clear the union bureaucrats could win in no other way.

At the Chrysler Eldon Avenue gear and axel plant four white company hacks won a recent election although the plant employees are 85% black, as is the local president, who won last year with League support. League leaders attribute the loss to the fact that the ballot box was locked in a police station overnight for “safekeeping” while waiting to be counted the next morning. The group plans to contest the election.

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Josh MacPhee of Chicago has been very busy this summer. Touring his stencil graffiti art show to infoshops, cafes, independent art galleries, and even the Allied Media Conference, selling prints from five to fifty dollars to raise funds for a book of collected stencils from around the country.

MacPhee facilitates “Just Seeds,” organizing artists from all walks, styles, and artistic backgrounds to create beautiful works of educational art entitled “Celebrate Peoples History.” Each poster is a highly unique tribute, honoring radical speakers, thinkers, organizers, agitators, and events. This is the history our textbooks seemed to have “left out.” The series pays homage to such prominent figures as Harriet Tubman, Augusto Sandino, and Fred Hampton. Shining light on events like Little Bighorn, the Stonewall riots, and the Battle of Homestead. This project continues to grow as new artists approach MacPhee with new ideas.

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“You are going to complain? You? And just who are you? You are no American. Prove it. Come, come, show us your passport. Or your sailor’s card...You have no passport. In any civilized country he who has no passport is nobody. He does not exist for us or for anybody else.”

— from Death Ship by B. Traven

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With the exception of one or two judges, the Recorder’s Court of the city of Detroit has never acted as anything more than an extension of the police department. The police can only hold a suspect for 72 hours. Recorder’s Court can do it for the rest of your natural born life.

Except for the volume of cases involved it will be impossible for the court to return to normal. It never departed from it. And while various sections of Detroit’s power structure were brought into sharp relief in recent weeks -Recorder’s Court surpassed itself.

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Special to the Fifth Estate

CHICAGO, Oct. 25—This week the Conspiracy is still learning about agents and informers.

Tobin, Chicago Police-undercover; Carcarano, Chicago Police-undercover; Rodriguez, Chicago Police-undercover; Salzberg, underground press photographer known personally and more or less trusted by many of the defendants, got paid $10,000 as an FBI informer for the last two years, code name Winston; Sweeny, FBI Informer; Killian, reporter for the far right Chicago Tribune, Chicago Police-undercover. The list goes on.

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What if the lights went out? What if you couldn’t get clean water to drink? What if there were no police, no schools, and no place to go if you were sick or hurt? If the shelves, in the grocery store were never re-stocked, and no one came to pick up the trash?

What if most everything we take for granted about the rhythms of life ceased to be? If the relentless motion--the motion that pushes us on to the next paycheck, the next month’s rent, the next deadline, social event, vacation, the next goal in our imagined future--came to a halt, and these landmarks in our lives were suddenly irrelevant?

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The Second Coming, a new underground newspaper at Eastern Michigan University, is locked in battle with the administration of that school over its right to distribute on campus.

University president Harold Sponberg (called the Phantom by students) is largely responsible for the hysteria, having freaked out after seeing issue number two of the Second Coming.

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Kelly Pflug-Back sentenced to 15 months for attacks in Toronto

by Fifth Estate

Fifth Estate writer and editor, Kelly Rose Pflug-Back, was sentenced by a Canadian court July 19 to 15 months in prison for militant actions carried out by a Black Bloc contingent during protests at the 2010 Toronto G20 meeting.

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Ken Kesey in 1997, with his bus “further,” a descendant of the vehicle that carried him and the Merry Pranksters on their 1964 trip across the U.S.

Fifty years ago, July 1964, a 1939 school bus furnished with bunk beds, basic kitchen facilities, and wired-up audio equipment, sets out from Palo Alto, California to journey across America. It is painted in bright psychedelic colors with the destination sign of, “Further,” on the front and, “Caution: Weird Load,” on the rear. It carries on board ten or so 60s drop-outs from various walks of life, as the bus makes its erratic way towards Route 60 and the road to New York.

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KENT, Ohio (LNS)—William Schroeder, Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandy Schcur.

Four brothers and sisters were murdered by the Ohio National Guard on the Kent State University campus May 4. At least 15 others were wounded. Three are on the critical list. Injuries to police officers were minimal.

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Collage by Freddie Baer

“It’s rubble now.”

—General Henry H. Shelton, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, surveying damage from U.S. missile attacks on Iraq, December 17, 1998.

You were once a place before maps were drawn

and what became of you was named, a single morning

inhabited by winds off blue water—and perhaps

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(Women’s News Co-op) As women step out of their passive housewife role and become more active outside of the home they are discovering the need for child care centers. Many women are interested in starting their own, collectively run centers, because the present day care centers are run as money making ventures and glorified baby sitting services.

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Media manufactured crises come and go so quickly these days that it is often hard to comment on one before it has disappeared from immediate concern. At the height of frenzy about a particular issue—whether it is terrorism, the space shuttle crash or most recently, drugs—the unitary message of power appears to command all thought. Nothing seems to exist outside of the official messages: we are all portrayed as angry or sad or worried.

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a review of

Man the Hunted: Primates, Predators, and Human Evolution, Donna Hart and Robert W. Sussman, New York, Westview Press, 2005

Stanley Kubrick’s 1969 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey opens with a primal scene: to the stirring music of Richard Strauss’s Thus Spake Zarathustra. With the rising sun in the background, one ape-man lifts a weapon and murders another.

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All of a sudden the media has discovered police brutality after years of denying its existence. The spotlight on this public secret came as a result of a particularly hideous incident of police torture recently by New York City cops who rival their L.A. counterparts for racism, brutal behavior and right wing politics.

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In Detroit, the skies are the color of lead most of the time, a sordid color that sweeps everything else along like a dynamo.

On these bleak days, all the houses are grey, the ground is grey, the buildings are grey, and for those who live in such a purgatory it is likely that the heart will also look very grey indeed. The physical environment, the very atmosphere, seems to invite leaden thoughts.

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The Michigan State News ran a front-page headline this summer, “Find No MSU Students Using LSD, Dope,” and an article this fall quoting the director of the University Health Center on “Dr. O’Leary,” the man who was deceiving the nation on the dangers of psychedelic drugs. Things may not be as bad at MSU as this makes them seem, but it was into an atmosphere not terribly knowledgeable about psychedelics that Timothy Leary descended November 17, to speak before an audience of more than 4,000 MSU students and faculty on “LSD: Man, God and Law.”

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“Shit, I beat my wife once a week--and she LOVES it!”

The above quote, issued from the lips of my supervisor one day at work last week, did not particularly surprise me. It seemed the “typical” American macho male’s rationale to any implication that women/wives may not enjoy playing subservient roles.

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ATLANTA, GA.—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has announced a nationwide campaign “to give Americans an opportunity to vote on the Vietnam war -through the time honored institutions of initiative and referendum.”

The campaign, supported by the organization Vietnam Summer, seeks to place anti-war referenda or initiative petitions on local and state ballots across the nation this fall and next Spring. Projects are already underway in over a dozen localities including Detroit and Ann Arbor.

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Fr. James Markunas of St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church has been convicted of illegally marching last April during the so-called “emergency” following Martin Luther King’s assassination. (See Fifth Estate, April 16–30, 1968.)

Markunas was arrested April 7, 1968 with 107 others while attempting to march to the Royal Oak City Hall in memory of Dr. King. A ban had been put on all gatherings of over three people by then Gov. Romney.

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At this point, the only safe speculation regarding the New Politics Conference to be held in Chicago over Labor Day is that you shouldn’t believe what the underground press is going to say about it.

The key debates at the Convention will center on 1968 electoral strategy.

Should energy and resources be expended on a national presidential campaign or a series of local insurgent campaigns or both? Should campaigns be conceived as one-shot protests against the war and racism or should they be viewed as mere organizing devices to create long range radical institutions? Should campaigns aim to bolster Reform and “Concerned” ‘ Democrats and “peace candidates” or is it necessary to abandon attempts to reform the two party system, creating a third party?

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A few of us got together to talk, as women, about masturbation, because we felt that it is an important and much-neglected topic. Here is the resulting conversation:

Carol: I can’t remember ever masturbating when I was a child. And I know I see little girls do it alt the time!

Joanne: I did it a lot when I was a little girl, with a stuffed elephant I had, and I always had this feeling that my mother was watching me. I knew it was the wrong thing to do. I used to look for her feet under the door. Then I just stopped. When I was five or six, I started believing the chastity thing—and thinking that sex and those parts of your body were nasty.

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Lorenzo “Komboa” Ervin is a thirty year old ex-GI now serving life in Marion maximum security jail for hijacking a plane as a protest against US involvement in Vietnam.

In the early ‘sixties, soon after joining up, he and other young black GIs serving in Mannheim, West Germany, secretly formed Black GIs United to fight racism in the army, and became involved in anti-Vietnam war activities, taking part in demonstrations with West German students. Later, as whole units of GIs in France and West Germany were sent to Vietnam, Black GIs United responded by calling on soldiers to desert. The consequent harassment suffered by Komboa and his friends came to a head when Komboa was himself drafted to Vietnam and decided to go AWOL instead.

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LIBERATION NEWS SERVICE—When two North Korean MIG fighters attacked a U.S. spy plane and shot it down on April 15, self-righteous protests immediately came puttering out of Washington.

The official response has been a “protest” and action by President Nixon ordering fighter plane protection for future reconnaissance flights over North Korea.

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The articles on Kosovo were written in early April. The death rates from Serbian ethnic cleansing increase daily.

The articles have been edited for length; full text of the Chomsky and Cockburn pieces are available at www.zmag.org, a web site which contains many useful observations about the war in the Balkans.

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Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare.

This 16 word Hindu chant was first heard in Detroit when poet Allen Ginsberg led the hippie community in a Lovefare last February. Jerry Younkins and Anarchy next brought the Hare Krishna to the Grande Ballroom for a SUN benefit and the recent Love-In at Belle Isle witnessed hundreds of young people chanting Hare Rama for hours.

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For three-quarters of a century, anarchists and other opponents of the 1917 Bolshevik putsch and subsequent counterrevolution have cited the uprising of the mutinous Baltic Fleet sailors and garrison soldiers at Kronstadt as one of the final social eruptions of the Russian Revolution.

The March 1921 events at the naval base on Kotlin Island, situated in the Gulf of Finland twenty miles west of St. Petersburg, are one of the landmark occurrences in the history of revolutionary resistance to the authoritarian state. In the wake of Kronstadt’s suppression, Lenin and his cabal were left in uncontested command of the solidified “dictatorship of the proletariat.”

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a review of

Graham Purchase, Evolution & Revolution: An Introduction to the Life and Thought of Peter Kropotkin (Petersham, Australia: Jura Books, 1996)

Graham Purchase’s recent book, Evolution & Revolution, is a concise and generally useful assessment of Kropotkin’s-life and work from a social anarchist perspective. In addition to presenting a brief biography of the famous anarchist, Purchase analyses Kropotkin’s ideas on such topics as mutual aid, evolution and revolution, conflict resolution, social individuality, and the “metaphysics of nature.”

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An Introduction to Graham Purchase’s Kropotkin

Graham Purchase’s essay reveals what a subtle and revolutionary thinker Kropotkin was. While underestimating the importance of the mutual aid theory (certainly it was more than the one per cent of Kropotkin’s theoretical perspective and his written work that Purchase claims, but this is a secondary point to the subject at hand), Purchase has demonstrated other aspects of the anarchist Prince’s thinking that were vastly important and prescient in recognizing where ideas about nature (ecological nature but also the very structure of the cosmos) were going in this century. Readers familiar with the Gaia hypothesis and chaos theory will find much here of interest. Finally, the convergence of Kropotkin’s perspective on anarchy and the modern synthesis of holism and organicism is a vindication of anarchy as both a theoretical perspective and a model or paradigm for nature.

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Mystique of Capital

Before people began to understand their natural environment, the forces of nature presented real, awesome and bewildering problems in the struggle for survival. Today the problems remain awesome and bewildering, not because of our failure to understand the forces of nature, but because of Our ineptitude to cope with and transcend the perversity of a socioeconomic system which has usurped control over both people and nature.

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In the last issue of the Fifth Estate [#283, June 1977], a letter appeared signed by a Joe Doaks criticizing Black Rose Books of Montreal. Doaks charged that a recent BRB publication, Durruti: The People Armed, by Abel Paz and translated by Nancy MacDonald, omitted a key section without informing the reader, failed to give the book’s printing history (thus making it appear as though it were a BRB original), that it was overpriced, poorly produced (typesetting and proofreading) and that BRB had a history of appropriating titles from other publishers and putting BRB covers on them. Doaks further said that he and others planned to put out another edition at a third the BRB cost and ended by stating that “Durruti would have shot those (BRB) fuckers.”

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The game is definitely played in someone else’s ballpark! The rules are really quite simple: attend an endless stream of meetings attended only by other candidates; seek publicity, but avoid notoriety; have a platform, but don’t say anything really controversial (substitute “honest”?) belong to as many organizations as possible, but list only the respectable ones on your literature; make the proper deals and alignments with a variety of political hacks; etc., etc.

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Una Revisión de

Lago de sangre: un libro de misterio sobre Filomena Buscarsela por Kenneth Wishnia. PM Press edición en español 2018; edición en inglés 2014; Publicado originalmente en 2002

Los anarquistas amantes de las novelas de detectives y de misteriosos asesinatos, a quienes no les gustan los polis, tendrán que suspender momentáneamente su crítica social porque son precisamente la policía, los ex polis y los detectives privados quienes resuelven los crímenes. Los anarquistas, segun la regla, no se encargan de actividades detectivescas de esa índole.

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Perhaps it’s for the best that you don’t have a memory of yourself centuries ago as you looked proudly around your community—a community deeply embedded in a habitat. This is where you first made love, learned to swim, caught your first fish, perhaps even fought a first battle against belligerent neighbors. Practically everybody in your community knows the names of the flora and fauna of your habitat, where the berries are, when the birds leave and return. There is a common history that is told and re-told. Most of you have felt a kinship with the totality of your habitat—its weather patterns, rocks, streams, mountains and its unique smells and sounds—the singular music of your home. In short, you have a sense of place, you belong. These are all my relations, you will exclaim, as you look around.

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When Winston Smith, in Orwell’s 1984, sits down to begin the diary which he has secretly acquired and which in and of itself is a criminal possession, he is mortified to discover that he has nothing—and everything—to say, that to begin means to start from scratch, to recreate language and meaning, to challenge everything, to make a statement large enough to identify the horror which pervades life and yet which can transcend that horror.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. (LNS)—Laos hit the front pages of the nation’s dailies recently with a story about how “U.S.-backed” troops took over liberated areas in new counter-offensives.

The very phrase “U.S.-backed” could not help but remind readers of the early years of the conflict in Vietnam.

“In a very real sense,” a diplomatic source told The New York Times, “the war in Vietnam is now being fought in Laos.”

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Both TIME and NEWSWEEK have picked up the word that the “largest demonstration in the history of Los Angeles” will greet Lyndon Johnson when he arrives to kick off the 1968 Presidential campaign with a gala $1000 a plate dinner in the Century Plaza Hotel on June 23^rd.

The Peace Action Council is coordinating the efforts of over 60 peace groups, all of which plan to participate in a massive protest march, which, since permits have so far been witheld, may be in violation of the law.

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There are some records around that are worth taking a look at...The Sunshine Superman album by Donovan is one of the best records of its kind ever done. On this record, we hear great writing, good tunes, excellent musicianship, and the main ingredient, imagination. Goodies are borrowed from almost every musical idiom imaginable and put together in totally new ways. The sitar is put to particularly good use. Donovan has overcome any labels that might have been attached in the beginning, and has become a singer-songwriter as good as or better than any we’ve heard.

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This week, a record review concerning not fact, but opinion about Bob Dylan’s “BLONDE ON BLONDE”, (Columbia C2S 841). The current interview in these pages [FE #12, August 15, 1966] is covering the personal side of Dylan far better than anything I could write, so we shall instead talk about music. The main thing wrong with the record is the quality, or lack thereof, of the vocals. From the earlier Dylan records, particularly the last two rockers, we know that he is capable of sounding damn good when he wants to. The impression one gets is that he is sort of putting the listener down, trying to see how much he can get away with. Dylan is probably THE supreme individualist, and makes a point of not being what his audience expects him to be. However, when this protection of personal identity goes too far, it can and does detract from the art itself. What would have been a truly great recording is spoiled by the Rex Harrison manner of talking thought words, and the record is then merely good. The second point of criticism is based on Dylan’s apparent inability to grow musically. In spite of Dylan’s obvious genius as a lyricist, the inability to keep the musical idiom growing and changing detracts from the possible real greatness of this record. Apparently, in order to venture in to the rock field, Dylan felt it necessary to establish a certain sort of sound as a base, a musical framework. The truly exciting thing about this music (to me) is the search for new sounds, along with the expression of new ideas. In making BLONDE ON BLONDE he resorted to rather drastic measures to perhaps try to do something better with the music; he recorded in Nashville, used practically all new sidemen, but, with several exceptions, for the most part it sounds the same.

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First, I would like to thank the editors of The Fifth Estate for asking me to contribute. Folk music and the new music, called Folk-rock are my own areas of endeavor, and I hope I will be able to add something of value to these already diversified pages. In coming issues, I will try to pass along news of interest in these areas, including record reviews, articles on the artists appearing in Detroit, and news in general.

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Well, attentive readers, I must say there is nothing like an occasional attack to sharpen up one’s reflexes... Having had several lately, I shall at this point contribute several counter-attacks...

To our friendly neighbor “Virile American”...(see letters, last issue) I would not ordinarily dignify such arch-type fascist ravings with a response, however I feel that this letter is representative of the thinking of a good many people, so therefore: Dear V.A.: Thank OM that there is no F.C.C. type of agency monitoring the papers... In the popular Press, the effect is much the same when you consider the fact that the AP and UPI must pass along to the public the obvious propaganda as delivered to them by the government news agencies, or risk losing their sources...There is, however, still room for some free journalism...The “pasty-faced faggoty followers” in my comparison were actually the “Virile Romans,” as they called themselves... As a humane person, genuinely concerned with the welfare of my fellow Americans, I hope, Mr. V.A., sir, that you will be able to overcome your rather psychotic hang-ups about “org**m”, “Pasty-faced faggots,” and “commie perverts”...Moreover, I am quite sure that your stated intention of being in Hell will be easily fulfilled...Just continue to be a “Virile American” and before long you’ll be living right in the middle of hell, right here in the good old virile U.S. of A...

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Larry Portis (1943–2011)

Larry:Portis grew up in a working-class family in Seattle, Washington and Billings, Montana. His father was a sheet metal worker and city fireman. His mother was an occasional secretary. At the age of 18 he married and quickly had two children. In 1968 he graduated from Montana State University Billings where he was active in university and local politics, wrote (1965 through 1968) weekly articles on politics for the university- newspaper (The Retort) and created an underground newspaper (The Free Student Press) in addition to working for a living. Before leaving the area he participated in organizing the municipal water workers in Billings.

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Your growing conviction that people are unable (or have lost the ability) to learn from and develop conclusions about their experience, and to act to change the conditions of their lives finds its latest confirmation in Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism (See review, FE #299, Oct 22, 1979). Lasch’s central idea is that a given state of capitalist development contains a corresponding individual personality structure (the “narcissistic” personality type corresponding to the bureaucratic “consumer society” of “late capitalism”) and that the analysis of this personality structure is the key to understanding human behavior and activity. Despite lip service to revolutionary possibilities, Lasch’s thesis is a determinist one which vitiates the likelihood of the emergence of an autonomous politics in the present period.

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“In view of the solutions that are asked of us, routine completely re-upholstered in velvet is dangerous. Routine hatches more distress and death than an imaginary utopia.”

—Andre Breton

Green Anarchy #17 (Summer 2004) featured a rather amorphous seven-page article by one A Morefus as to why utopianism and anarchy are fundamentally incompatible. The author criticizes the totalizing impulses of utopian thought with a totalizing critique that glibly and thinly covers a few thousand years, from Plato’s Republic and the Shakers to the Bauhaus, the Third Reich, anarcho-primitivism, and post-human cybertopias.

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Every Christmas season, the movie market is positively flooded with the year-end glut of new releases, and 1968 proved no exception.

Trying to keep up with these new films is a major task for a pure-bred film buff like myself, but the fact is that I’ve seen only four holiday releases that I would risk recommending to you: “Faces,” John Cassavetes’ unmerciful study of middle-class mores in America; “Bullit,” a fast, lean, and exciting detective yarn, and the only successful genre film of the year; “Romeo and Juliet,” Franco Zeffirelli’s irreproachable popularization of the play; and “The Stalking Moon,” a Western that transcends itself and becomes instead a thrilling horror movie.

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There’s not much news on the fate of Marie and Noel Murray at this point. Although the two Irish anarchists have attempted to withdraw the appeals of their death sentences (see FE, October and November, 1976), they are still being considered by the Irish supreme court because of a point of law which allows capital punishment for killing a police officer, but not for killing citizens in general. Reynolds, the Dublin cop allegedly murdered by the Murrays, was not in uniform or on duty at the time of the killing.

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When the founder of organized zionism, Theodore Herzl, proposed to create a European Jewish state in the Middle East as “an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism,” he was acting within a western tradition. It is possible that this tradition has its roots in the rise of the ancient middle eastern civilizations, but it certainly becomes predominant with the rise of capitalism and its expansion first into the heaths of Europe (where “heathens” lived who had to be conquered, christianized and civilized by the developing state powers across the continent) and later to all the continents of the world where these civilized men—explorers, missionaries, marauders, and colonizers—spread their empire.

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a review of

Lives of the Saints by Alan Franklin. Black and Red, Detroit, 2022

Alan Franklin dropped his book, Lives of the Saints, into a world where the final years of the last century seem like a distant dream. Where our then dramatically dire descriptions of accumulated misery were actually more understated prophecies than the mere screeching wheels of an overblown cerebral car-crash on the freeway of our shared consciousness. That is to say, Chicken Little was right, and so were the angry writers at publications like Fifth Estate. As bad as we told you it was then, it is worse now

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Last year, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to permit the display of the biblical Ten Commandments in schools as part of larger legislative efforts to combat youth violence.

Rather than “a first step toward reinstilling the value of human life in children influenced by violent culture,” as the politicians claim, this is yet another shallow gesture by hypocritical lawmakers to legislate ethical control in a culture that is ethically out-of-control.

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LOS ANGELES, Dec. 8—25 Black Panthers were arrested, three wounded, during police raids on two apartments and a four-and-a-half hour gun battle at the main Panther office in Watts.

The office was surrounded at 5:30 a.m. by a force of between 300 and 400 police. They were refused entrance to the office. They began to break down the front door, but were driven away by shotgun fire; two cops were wounded.

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A number of Detroit lawyers have indicated to Detroit LEMAR (Legalize Marijuana) that they would be interested in setting up a legal aid service for busted marijuana users if a general fund could be set up which would insure a nominal fee for those attorneys involved.

Their suggestion was that interested heads and sympathetic persons pledge a dollar or two per month to such a fund so that a backlog of available money would be made available in cases of arrests on marijuana charges.

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Enthusiasm about the work of friends is often taken skeptically, since the assumption is that one’s critical faculties are lessened by affection. Hence, a gushing review of the Layabouts’ new album, No Masters, from those of us on the Fifth Estate staff who are friends and even relatives of the band members will probably be suspect. Fortunately our appreciation of the group’s music is shared by enough other people to make us believe that, beyond our subjective feel for the people who produced this unique blend of music and lyrics, is a solid effort worth substantial listening.

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The movement to re-legalize marijuana was dealt a severe blow several weeks ago according to an article in the Village Voice of June 22, 1967.

On May 25 President Johnson, a reputed speed freak, signed a treaty known as the Single Convention after it was ratified by the Senate. There was virtually no opposition to the treaty during hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and no publicity was given to the treaty’ s progress.

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from L.A. Free Press (UPS)

Last week President Johnson signed into law the 1967 draft law extension thereby allowing the government to impress young men into involuntary servitude ‘til at least 1971.

In every respect the revision intensifies the coercive and regimentive features of the old law. Here are the gruesome details of the extension, which will be in effect.

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“Confront the Warmakers” is no idle phrase. Coming together from throughout the nation on October 21 and 22, war opponents will march, demonstrate, petition and culminate the activities by mass acts of civil disobedience inside the Pentagon.

The confrontation will be real and physical. Of the 200,000 plus participants, 10,000 are expected to sit-in to block the doorways of the Pentagon, says the National Mobilizing Committee, “preventing people from entering to work but permitting them to leave. If they are able to enter the building the direct actionists will also block the hallways and staircases.”

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This interview was conducted and transcribed by Dena Clamage.

[Part 1 of the interview appeared in FE #78, May 1–14, 1969.]

Editors’ Note: John Watson, editor of the Wayne State University South End, has been involved in Detroit revolutionary politics for a number of years. Former editor of the black community newspaper, The Inner City Voice, Watson was one of the original founders of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. He is currently serving as a member of the Central Committee of the League.

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[Part 2 of the interview appeared in FE #79, May 15–28, 1969.]

Editors’ Note: John Watson, editor of the Wayne State University South End, has been involved in Detroit revolutionary politics for a number of years. Former editor of the black community newspaper, The Inner City Voice, Watson was one of the original founders of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. He is currently serving as a member of the Central Committee of the League.

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“We are bringing our legitimate grievances to the legal establishment of the white man’s government to give the racist monopoly capitalist system the opportunity to begin to redeem itself for the crimes which have been perpetuated against Black workers and Black people for centuries.”

With this statement on Friday, May 16, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against the United Auto Workers International Union (UAW), Locals No. 3 and No. 961, and against the Chrysler Corporation.

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a review of

Unruly Equality: U.S. Anarchism in the Twentieth Century by Andrew Cornell. University of California Press, 2016

Nonviolence Ain’t What It Used To Be: Unarmed Insurrection and the Rhetoric of Resistance by Shon Meckfessel. AK Press, 2016

Reading about history with anarchist ideas in mind can often be inspiring and sometimes even lead to insights useful in present-day situations. Andrew Cornell and Shon Meckfessel have written books that are treasure-troves of information about the multifaceted 20^th century North American radical movements for societal change. They are helpful companions to the various memoirs and retrospectives on anarchist groups of the period published during the past decade by Anatole Dolgoff, Penelope Rosemont, Franklin Rosemont, Larry Gambone, Ben Morea, and others.

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Modernity is an age of gadgets, where things are created and destroyed, not in years but in seconds, where stances change, but where social change itself is an unthinkable phenomenon. The world is divided into developed and underdeveloped, and people are valued not for what they produce but as commodities, where learning is merely schooling and where dissent is sophistically controlled. The weapons of subjugation are clever, and information overload is persistent. The destinies of people are determined behind closed doors. The global development is need of the market and the market drives the lives of the people.

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Editor’s note: Cultural critic Ivan Illich died in December 2002 at the age of 76. In tribute after tribute, his personal friends and admirers of his work marvel at Illich’s enduring generosity, humility, and radical spirit. While many at Fifth Estate have appreciated his influence, we never paid proper tribute. Now with this unschooling issue, we share a poem from one of our regular contributors and a very brief excerpt from the essential and prophetic 1970 book Deschooling Society.

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LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. (LNS)—Dr. Timothy Leary, his wife and teen-age son, John, have been arrested here for possession of marijuana.

The long time and old time guru said that the arrests were part of a continuing campaign of police harassment.

Leary and his wife were released on $2,500 bail each. John was held “because of his condition.” Authorities refused to elaborate.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. (LNS)—Timothy Leary is free! The Supreme Court has overturned his grass possession conviction.

Rumors are spreading fast and furious. What does it all mean for the rest of us?

Let’s start with what the court ruling doesn’t do.

It doesn’t effect prosecution on the basis of state anti-grass laws (all 50 states have them). It doesn’t imply that congress can’t pass federal laws against pot possession; and it doesn’t effect existing federal laws against the sale of grass.

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SANTA ANA, Cal., Feb. 20—Dr. Tim Leary, his wife and son were found guilty here on charges of possession of marijuana and LSD.

Superior Court Judge Byron Mcmillian set sentencing for March 13. Leary and his wife remained free on bail but the bail of their son was revoked and he was taken into custody.

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Someday, it’s possible that surveillance technology may become sophisticated enough to read your mind as you’re walking down the street. If that dystopian future comes to pass, you’ll probably want one of these stylish thought-blocking accessories: When they detect scanning technology in action, they’ll distract you with a zap or a flashing light.

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The news of the fighting in Lebanon fills the headlines of the newspapers across the US. “Fall of Tripoli Looms,” “Guerrillas Gain in Lebanon,” and on and on. Why is there fighting? What are they fighting for?

Reading the mass media, watching one’s TV, and listening to the news on the radio, quickly confirms the media’s “confusion” on the dynamics raging all around them. There is not any understanding manifested beyond the “cowboys and Indians” mentality.

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Read and considered, perused and recommended, liked and disliked, discussed and commented on in the following section:

Green Anarchy (current issue available from FE books for $4 or free with any book order, while supplies last) Issues #16 and 17, Spring and Summer 2004 PO Box 11331, Eugene, OR 97440 collective@greenanarchy.org

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LONDON, England—Liberation News Service—Europe’s left, new and old, has been brutally unanimous in its criticism of the Soviet military intervention in Czechoslovakia.

The Communist Parties of England, France, Italy and other nations issued long statements describing the Soviet action as an unjustified interference in the internal affairs of a Communist Party and socialist state.

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In astronomy, “revolution” refers to a return to the same place. For the left it seems to mean about the same. Leftism is literally reactionary. Just as generals prepare to fight the last war, leftists incite the last revolution. They welcome it because they know it failed. They’re vanguardists because they’re always behind the times. Like all leaders, leftists are least obnoxious when following their following, but in certain crises they step to the fore to make the system work. If the left/right metaphor has any meaning, it can only be that the left is to the left of the same thing the right is to the right of. But what if revolution means stepping out of line?

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Marijuana will become legal in the U.S. within one year, predicts the first issue of the Chicago Mirror, an underground satire magazine slated for publication this month.

According to the author of the article, whose source is an art director of an unidentified Chicago advertising agency, the legalization of pot “will be the result of one of the most fantastic public relations campaigns in the history of this country.”

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Between now and October 9^th the J.L. Hudson Gallery is offering the public a legal trip via the work of Michelangelo Pistoletto.

Pistoletto, a 34 year old Italian artist, has succeeded in opening up an entirely new dimension in art through the relatively simple device of mounting life-size photographs on highly polished stainless steel plates.

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The idea of an “anarchist saint” might seem kind of silly at first, but that did not stop Autonomedia publishers from starting its annual jubilee calendars of radical saints, now in its 26^th year. If anyone who has recently died qualifies for the status of anti-authoritarian saint, I would nominate the author, Ursula K. Le Guin, who is featured on the calendar with prominent and lesser known anarchists.

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When Lenin and 32 other Russian refugees (30 adult revolutionaries and 2 children) were returning to Russia via a sealed train through Germany they encountered a number of problems living together. One of the earliest conflicts in the railroad carriage arose between smokers and non-smokers. Lenin was a nonsmoker and detested smoking. It had been agreed at the beginning of the journey that those people who wanted to smoke had to do so in the toilet. A line formed in the corridor outside the toilet and eventually arguments broke out between the smokers and the “comrades” who wanted to use the toilet for its intended purpose. Since the vast majority of the people were Bolsheviks, Lenin, as the leader of the Party, was called upon to settle the question. He wrote out passes, which had to be presented in order for the toilet to be used. There were two kinds of passes—those for organic use had the first priority, and those for inorganic, smoking purposes had second priority.

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I don’t know if people still buy comedy monologue records. We all know that after a couple of listenings we don’t play them until we have company and there is nothing else to do. But a Reprise-Bizarre (Frank Sinatra and Zappa together!) double album Lenny Bruce The Berkeley Concert is a service for the many of us who never heard him live.

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1992 marks the five hundred year anniversary of the Columbus expedition, which many governments and corporations are celebrating as “An Encounter of Cultures.” To counter this, a loosely organized movement under the banner of “500 Years of Resistance,” seeks to overturn the prevailing mythology about the Columbus voyages. Many people in Europe and the Americas are organizing cultural and educational events toward that end.

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I came home one night many years ago to find my then girlfriend crying on the couch. “What happened?” I asked. “Nothing. Just some guy in the street.” “What did he do to you?”

“He wouldn’t let me cross the street unless I told him my name and agreed to go out with him. He kept blocking my way.”

She told me that this total stranger kept harassing her for blocks and wouldn’t give up. No one intervened.

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“...[A] small number of big WTO Members are leading an undesirable globalization that is inhumane, environmentally degrading, farmer-killing, and undemocratic. It should be stopped immediately. Otherwise the false logic of neo-liberalism will wipe out the diversity of global agriculture and be disastrous to all human beings.”

—Lee Kyung Hae, Korean farmer & activist who took his own life on the barricades

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In 1936, groups of women in Madrid and Barcelona founded Mujeres Libres, an organization dedicated to liberation from their “triple enslavement to ignorance, as women, and as producers.” While it lasted for less than three years (its activities in Spain were brought to an abrupt halt by the victory of Franco’s forces in February 1939), Mujeres Libres mobilized over 20,000 women, and developed an extensive network of activities designed to empower individual women while building a sense of community.

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Better Late Than Never In the spirit of the weather and the season, a few obituaries. Harry Bennet, a chief gangster for Henry Ford, scabherder, thug, assassin, head of the Ford Motor Company’s notorious “Service Department,” drowned in his drool in a California nursing home. Suffice it to say that he won’t be missed around these parts.

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Inside sources have reported that Betty Ford, formerly of state furniture capital Grand Rapids, Michigan, has fallen into a deep depression since her celebrated plastic surgery at a laetrile clinic in Tijuana, Mexico. Unknown to most people, her surgery was a complete failure! She had intended to resemble the late Elvis Presley, and had planned a career as an Elvis impersonator! “I’m tired of Jerry being the only breadwinner in this family,” she said shortly before entering Dr. Ramon Cabron’s Clinica Veterinaria. “I too have talents and ambitions. I want to make something of myself.”

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from Detroit Free Press, April 5, 1966

Gentlemen:

Regarding the issue of negotiation vs. withdrawal, it would be most unfortunate to allow the question to take up the working time of the peace movement. We are not Johnson’s special advisors, and our precise policy statements need not be unified, or even entirely compatible. What would appear to count most is visibility and persistence. There are, however, many who disagree with that statement. Some contend that the more extreme positions are too easily accommodated by the administration. The key question then is the difference in the operating code of ethics between these factions. I suggest the following. Once a group decides and plans an activity, all those who can in good conscience assist with its execution should do so in accord with the ground rules set by the originally responsible group. I see no contradiction in restraining my sign to “urge negotiations” even if I were personally to favor immediate withdrawal...

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Tonight I am alone, which is rare, and the air is cold and clear, so I blow out the oil lamp and make my way down to the clearing to take in the new moon, the milky way, and the unsilent forest. It’s autumn, the season when we harvest the last of it from our gardens and the rest becomes compost to build on next year. It’s a natural time to look around, evaluate what we’ve been doing, and think about where we might go from here.

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

Although I am being held in solitary confinement, the prisoners and guards find occasion to speak with me. I was ordered to remove the name tags from my uniforms and from above my cage door. I now exist as the man without a country or a name; this plus instructions for no one to speak with me entices the prisoners and guards to find out my story.

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Teaching at Durfee Middle School in Detroit’s inner-city, I found that most students had not been exposed to books of any kind before entering school in first grade or Kindergarten. No one read at home, not to themselves, and parents did not read to their children.

At staff meetings and informal discussions with teachers at both schools, I tried getting a teacher book discussion club going. One reason was to model enjoyment of reading to our students. I was appalled to find out that most of the teachers didn’t read anything outside of school either. One year, I discovered that only one teacher out of 33 read out-side of school and that for a weekly bible study class at her church.

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FE note: See also the letter exchange “L’affaire Black Rose Books” in this issue.

Dear Editor,

With reference to the slanderous letter from a Mr. Joe Doaks in your June 1977 issue, we would like you to publish the following reply in full.

(1) Why did the English-language edition of Durruti by Abel Paz not include Part 4? The history of this question is as follows. A member of our book-publishing cooperative read the French-language version some two and a half years ago. We thought about publishing an English-language version, but naturally we were overwhelmed by the complexity of the project. The one French-language edition we had was returned to the person from whom it was borrowed. Some time later we received the translation by Nancy Macdonald. We then negotiated a contractual agreement with both the author and translator. Part of the agreement included that the contents and approval of translation was a matter between the author and translator. We frankly proceeded to the publication of the book without anyone of us being aware that there was a Part 4. Last month to our embarrassment a member of our cooperative while visiting Paris was told by Paz that we had not included Part 4. This was news to us as we had insisted that the translation be cleared by the author. We have written to Nancy about this and received the following reply which we quote in part: “About the 4^th part of the Durruti it was (Paz) who suggested to me that it be cut out of the English edition as the book would be too long. And I agreed. There was never any question again of my translating it. I sent my translation to (Paz) a long time ago for him to OK it and he never mentioned the 4^th section. I have already written him to this effect a few days ago since he raised the question with me by letter...” As far as BRB was concerned it was certainly not an act of censorship in any way. If there is another edition of the book we intend to include Part 4, unless Paz thinks to the contrary.

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Since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in April 1986, much information has come out about its terrible effects. The irradiation of (particularly European) people, animals and vegetation has been devastating. Dr. John Gofman, a Widely respected expert on radiation effects, estimated that more than a million people will develop cancers, half of them fatal, as a result of the accident.

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I’ve been in jail for so long now that I’ve lost count of the days, But such is the fate of the man who doesn’t have the money for bail ($10,000 or $1,000 for a bondsman).

I’ve found that there’s two types of justice in our illustrious nation: one for the rich, and one for the poor.

But if life in a “democracy” hands you a lemon, you don’t bitch. You find that there’s only steel bars to listen to you. So you do what any man who wants to make the world a better place to live would do. You squeeze the lemon and start a lemonade stand.

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The following letter was sent to an International Conference on Elisee Reclus, the 19^th century anarchist geographer and political theorist. The conference, which was held in Milan on October 12–13, was one of several planned for 2005 to celebrate the 175^th anniversary of Reclus’ birth and the 100^th anniversary of his death. I was invited to do a presentation but couldn’t leave New Orleans to attend. Fortunately, our electricity, which had been out for almost six weeks, resumed shortly before the conference, and I was able to write the letter hastily and find a place to email it. It arrived in Milan the day before the conference and was read during the proceedings, and it will be translated and published in the Italian anarchist magazine Libertaria.

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John Sinclair

Southern Michigan State

Prison Jackson, Michigan

Dear Leni & Everybody:

My letter yesterday from the Wayne County jail should be disregarded in large part since I was transferred up here this morning. It’s really good to get here at last—just like when you’ve been threatened with something for years and find out it ain’t so bad after all.

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Being a revolutionary, the threat of spending time in prison comes down on me from time to time. Not knowing much about the day-to-day life of women inside the prison walls, I have always been uneasy at the thought of that unknown world and put it out of my mind. The letter that follows was written by Jane Kennedy, an angry voice from inside the prison walls, running down the systematic pain and humiliation suffered by the women prisoners she lives with.

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Pumpkin Hollow, Tenn.—I’m trying to pick this narrative up off the gravel road, gyrating back into the woods. This odyssey of drift must stop somewhere; that somewhere is here. Perhaps my nomadic motion can continue in psychic space as my body plants itself firmly on the ground, my ground, our ground. I previously chose to be homeless, a vagabond, a hobo, roaming, raving and misbehaving.

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The late David Graeber perhaps said it best. “Bureaucracy has become the water in which we swim.”

For over 20 years, I was embedded within the New York City Board of Education as a licensed agent authorized to deploy weapons of mass instruction. These weapons were placed in our arsenal to control, and perhaps teach, but above all avoid scenes like the following, which happened just days after I started:

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first

Volunteer to serve the Negation

Never too late for Mrs Ludd

If Bugs Bunny’s a Surrealist

what’s that make Elmer Fudd?

Wherever you are tonight Mrs L

Tiamat Tara river nymph undine

Captain Moonlight & Saint Monday

flaneurs on ancient boulevards of spleen

never complain never explain

our secret society goes back to the Neolithic

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Send letters to fe — at — fifthestate — dot — org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220.

In order to engage in electoral politics by claiming it as harm reduction, you have to ignore the fact that each new law creates new criminals, and that the state has always sought to isolate and punish criminals. Aside from whatever fantasy of minimizing damage Kathy Ferguson proffers in her article, “Anarchism & the Vote,” in FE #413, Spring, 2023, that’s an objective harm to individuals and even entire classes of people.

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This letter is in reply to the article by Tom Haroldson entitled, “Vote No On Survival” which appeared in FE #99, February 19 — March 4.

Mr. Haroldson makes some very good points in regards to Nixon’s bullshit maneuvers regarding the ecology issue, and also by pointing out that the “...ecology movement is endorsed by the very people who make the movement necessary.”

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Dear F.E.,

Just got the new issue. It’s too good to be true! Two issues in a row with relevant, well-written, hip articles specifically for women [FE #105, May 14–27, 1970].

Women being equal with men in all things except glandular and physical makeup, such articles as the Women’s News Co-op’s are welcome [FE #105, May 14–27, 1970]. And the tone of these articles is so positive and pleasant-natured. They give the Fifth Estate a freshness it has been needing.

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I’d like to reply to SP Marc Nadeau whose trash was published in the Feb. 4, F.E. [Letters, FE #98, February 4–18, 1970]

Baby, I’m not under 25, and am old enough to be your mother. Guys like you make me want to vomit. You made a big issue out of an article on the Northland “happening”. I don’t condone what the “kids” have done, but they were exercising a constitutional right—free assembly.

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You will note with paradoxical titters that the “Silent Majority” of which Nixon speaks (that is, referring to “a nation of sheep”), is in fact a misnomer caused of social lingual conditioning. The silent majority in this country—I would like to believe—are those millions of young and old people both, who inside themselves, know the radical youth of today are right and correct.

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