Full list of texts

a review of

Me, Mikko, and Annikki: A Community Love Story in a Finnish City by Tiitu Takal. North Atlantic Books, 2019

The continuing interest at the Fifth Estate in anarchist/community struggles as seen in comic art, inadvertently passed over an extremely remarkable example in Tiitu Takal’s Me, Mikko, and Annikki: A Community Love Story in a Finnish City, to which I wrote the Afterword.

...

Acey-Acey is a game that used to be played at Lou Walker’s Bar on Woodward. It is easy to learn and became quite popular a few years ago.

These are the rules: a number of people, at least three to four, but preferably five to six or more, gather around a bar table with a pack of cards; one is chosen dealer, and he deals one card at a time face-up to each player. Now the fun begins.

...

a review of

The Me Nobody Knows: Children’s Voices from the Ghetto edited by Stephen M. Joseph. Avon Books, 1969, paperback, 95 cents.

“On a nice cold September morning, I got up and was afraid to go to school.”

—Linda O., age 13

Our public schools aren’t educating most people whether in the inner cities or the suburbs. There is little learning going on—if learning means growth, understanding and increasing awareness of self and others.

...

For every child born craving and abandoned

every child whose belly bulged with emptiness

every child who cried alone in a bare white room

every child wounded by a father, uncle, grandfather

every child told to pick up guns against other children

every child who worked below dank ground

every child shaken, burned, bruised:

...

Merchants continue to use guns on young people in the Fitzgerald community on Detroit’s Northwest side and are being supported by your local police.

The latest reported incident on August 9^th involved the Bollinger Party Store on Fenkell near Greenlawn. The proprietor, Mr. Fedah, on being asked about dispensing stale and shoddy merchandise, pulled a gun, fired a shot, and ordered a delegation of young black people, led by John Hunt, coordinator of a local community supported Teen Drop-In Center, to get out at gun point.

...

A recent decision by the Canadian Department of National Defense (DND) to close down its military training camp at Ipperwash in southwest Ontario, built on land confiscated from the Stoney Point Ojibwe in W.W.II, and return it to “the Kettle and Stony Point Band” looks good in the headlines: the government’s giving the land back to the Indians!

...

My hips are a desk.

From my ears hang

chains of paper clips.

Rubber bands form my hair

My breasts are wells of mimeograph ink.

My feet bear casters.

Buzz. Click.

My head

is a badly organized file.

My head is a switchboard

where crossed lines crackle

My head is a wastebasket

of worn ideas.

...

The Metro, Detroit’s city-wide college paper, will be showing the 1965 and 1966 winners of the National Student Association Film Festival. No CIA agents will be present.

The films will be shown at the Detroit Institute of Arts with the 1965 winners being shown at 7:15 and the 1966 ones at 9:30 p.m. Admission will be $1.50 for each showing.

...

A typed “communique” received by alternative publications in the southwest calling on underground groups and Vietnam vets to launch armed attacks and other actions against Mexican jails, according to Zodiac News Service.

The two-page letter—a copy of which was received in February by The Austin Sun accuses Mexican and American government officials of deliberately dragging their heels in adopting an exchange treaty that would send Americans imprisoned in Mexico back to U.S. jails.

...

A group of American prisoners serving time in Mexican jails attempted to call attention to their demands for an end to torture and for action by the U.S. government by staging a nation-wide hunger strike throughout the Mexican prison system on September 7. However, the Mexican head of prisons reported that the strike was not successful and only fifty Americans and two Canadians in Mexico City jails were said to have participated.

...

The gruesome tailspin of industrialism continues unabated in every sphere. Industrial society is at a malignant stage of decline with events like the Ixtoc 1 oil disaster providing all the more evidence of its impending collapse.

The oil spill, caused by the explosion of an exploratory well drilled by Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex), the national state-controlled oil company of Mexico, began spewing oil into the Gulf on June 3 at the rate of 4,500 tons a day, some 500 miles south of Texas off the coast of the state of Campeche.

...

As happens frequently in Mexico, police responded to a 2006 protest in the city of Oaxaca by
indiscriminately beating demonstrators and bystanders.

“Leave us your money and go home” isn’t published in Mexico’s tourist propaganda, but is the underlying theme behind promoting maquilado Mexico (“Mexico cosmeticized”).

...

MIAMI (LNS)—A variety of musicians and singers will get together for the 1969 Miami Pop Festival set for Dec. 29–30 at Gulfstream Park, Hallandale, Fla.

The following will perform:

Saturday, Dec. 28: Jose Feliciano, Country Joe & the Fish, Buffy Saint Marie, Chuck Berry, Infinite McCoys, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Booker T and the MGs, Dino Valente, Fleetwood Mac and the Blues Image.

...

Several full-time movement activists in the Michigan area have been arrested in recent weeks on trumped-up felony charges.

At East Lansing, Bill Ayers of the SDS Regional Staff and Mike Price of East Lansing SDS were both arrested for allegedly assaulting a TV-2 camera crew with a dangerous weapon—supposedly a two-by-four.

...

The State convention of the Democratic party of Michigan was with few exceptions a total victory for L.B.J. and his local apologists the U.A.W.-C.I.A. The workings of organized labor at the convention was not at all like the moderate socialists of yesterday but rather the National Socialists of tomorrow. This becomes much clearer if you break the convention into two areas: Platform issues, and the back room dealings to determine who will fill the various educational posts at W.S.U., M.S.U., and U. of M. and who would be the party nominee for Lt. Governor.

...

Recent articles in the Michigan State News and in Penthouse Magazine have exposed the existence of a nation-wide “surveillance clearinghouse” which exchanges names and files collected by the intelligence units of over 200 member police agencies.

This clearinghouse is the Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit (LEIU). It was created in 1956 in California as a voluntary “club” of police intelligence agencies in seven Western states. Over the years it has grown to include over 200 agencies-in Michigan its affiliates include the Department of the Attorney General, the Detroit, Flint and Warren Police Departments and the State Police.

...

It looks like the uptight Michigan Senate is going to do a witch-hunt thing.

As we reported in our last issue certain honkie State Senators want to investigate the activities of Students for a Democratic Society on the state campuses, and to find out why “students write dirty words in campus newspapers, take off their clothes in class and commit other acts that vex their elders.”

...

It was “a secret service nightmare,” a disturbed aide of Maine Senator Edmund Muskie said referring to a walk-out demonstration that turned spontaneously into a sit-in which blocked the route of the Vice-Presidential motorcade.

The walkout and demonstration took place on Sept. 26 at Oakland University where Muskie was speaking to an estimated audience of 2000 students and faculty members. When Muskie entered the packed gymnasium he was greeted with shouts of “Dump the Hump,” and “Hell no, we won’t go.”

...

Our friend and comrade, Mick Vranich, died March 29 following a terrible construction accident in February. If you ever met Mick, you wouldn’t forget him. You may have seen him perform his poetry, punctuating lines with a stoic stare or watched him play guitar, amazed at his ability to perfect each note, each chord in sync with poetic ease. Perhaps you attended one of his benefits calling for freedom for Leonard Peltier. Maybe you just stopped by his Solstice campfire in the middle of Detroit and were offered a cup of coffee and some real, true talk, or poems like the ones of his on this page.

...

On August 7 and 8 about 100 persons from cities in Michigan and Ohio gathered at Midland, Michigan, national headquarters of Dow Chemical Corp., to protest Dow’s participation in the manufacture of napalm.

On Sunday, groups of protesters distributed leaflets to churchgoers, calling on the people of Midland to be aware of their involvement in the deaths of people in Vietnam. In the early afternoon a rally was held in Central Park. This soon became an open forum as people from Midland came forward to voice their opposition to the making of napalm or to voice their support of its manufacture. Lane Vanderslice and Peter Steinberger of Ann Arbor Students for a Democratic Society fielded questions from the audience. One resident of Midland challenged the assertion that Dow is profiting from napalm and suggested that it may be losing money instead, to which Barbara Burris, of Detroit SDS, replied that Chemical and Engineering News of March 14, 1966, reported that Dow raised the price of its polystyrene shortly after they began using it in their new napalm.

...

Editor’s note: Mike Quatro is a Detroit booking agent and promo man for some of Michigan’s leading rock groups. Quatro has been hit hard in the last few months by the underground media for being a parasite on the community. The Wayne County Prosecutor’s office even went so far as to investigate him for fraud for his ill-fated October 31 Black Arts Festival.

...

a review of

Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials. Little, Brown and Company 2017

In 2002, my girlfriend and I communicated entirely online over AOL Instant Messenger. We shared seventh grade classes and lived two blocks away, yet we hardly spoke in person, let alone hung out.

...

Faced with upwards of a million men who have refused to register for the draft, President Reagan announced on December 10, a halt to prosecutions scheduled in the cases of 161 resisters, This means that currently there are no legal sanctions for failing to comply with the Selective Service Act provisions and hopefully it will impel hundreds of thousands of additional young men to refuse to have any part of the U.S. war machine.

...

The San Francisco Mime Troupe, fresh from a successful ten months run in Northern California, and as a part of their nationwide tour, will bring its current production, “A MINSTREL SHOW/OR: ‘CIVIL RIGHTS IN A CRACKER BARREL’ “ to the Detroit Institute of Arts, Oct. 7, under the sponsorship of the American Civil Liberties Union. See ad for details and ticket information.

...

Maybe you dug the San Francisco Mime Troupe doing their blackface minstrel show jamming black-white reality back in your face, but the Denver cops certainly didn’t. Charges of indecent acts and indecent language were filed against three members of the Troupe when they played Denver’s Phipps Auditorium last week.

...

The San Francisco Mime Troupe is now in the process of planning to tour the United States and Great Britain during the Fall and Winter of 1967–68 with its anti-war commedia dell’arte, “l’Amant militaire.”

Sandra Archer as Corallina and Peter Cohon as Pantalone in the S.F. Mime Troupe’s L’Amant Militaire. Photo: Erik Weber

...

The San Francisco Mime Troupe is readying their actors and props to zap the minds of motor city residents for the second year. The group, as part of its international tour, will bring its current production, “L’ AMANT MILITAIRE”, to the Detroit Institute of Arts, October 28, at 8:15 p.m., in a special benefit performance for this newspaper.

...

Unwind and uncomplicate. Let go, on Oct. 7 the Mime Troupe did. They touched on all the touchy issues. They gave us a quick look at ourselves, black and white.

The exaggerated makeup, the powder blue satin tails, the bentwood chairs were all an integral part of mime in the classic tradition, satirizing the minstrel show and putting us all down.

...

Editors’ Note: Art Wohl studied exercises in T’ai Chi Ch’uan with various Chinese practitioners in New York. He has taught body sensitivity and coordination to athletes, dancers, actors, singers, and the physically and mentally disabled.

He will lead a workshop in body awareness and control on December 3, from 2 to 4–30 p.m. at St. Joseph’s Church, Woodward at King. The cost will be $2 for the session which will be an intensive series of guided experiences bringing about a progressively deepening state of concentration and awareness of the body’s spontaneous tendencies to release tensions and rigidities, center and realign itself, establish a state of dynamic equilibrium and to enhance its use as a vehicle for self expression.

...

Beautiful, marvelous weeks.

America is on fire, america is shining, america is a flower of joyful rage. A dead tree, bearing unexpected fruit.

A fresh batch of lynchings by repulsive pigs and pig wannabes earlier in May. Yet this time it felt different. The wound had a stronger sting to it. Patience already worn thin. It was too much, too much.

...

During four days in September, the Republican Party held its national convention in the Excel Energy Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota. In the style of 21^st century capitalism, these party conventions are almost entirely virtual: media spectacles complete with bright lights, hokey sets, and lots of the red, white, and blue; an imaginary world occupied by creepy mannequins with stiff smiles.

...

Since 2013, the Fifth Estate Archive (fifthestate.org/archive) has been an online source for this magazine’s radical reporting, essays, and other texts published in our print edition for more than fifty-seven years. The archives contain 5,221 articles online to date, with more being added constantly.

...

white blades of light sift through the

stripes hugging the crumpled form

of an empire of

stars crowded together

for warmth

row upon row upon row

sow the earth with shades of

beaten red beaten blue

stars

the greedy glow of the pipe

stars

fireflies comb that brain straight

stars

taper out in twin coal kill pits

...

On February 19, thousands of heavily armed riot police were massed on the Elbe River just outside of Brokdorf, W. Germany to prevent 10,000 demonstrators from occupying the site of a new nuclear power station as had been done on a previous occasion (see last issue).

Protest at Brokdorf, W. Germany, 1977

...

A dreary, final issue of the federation’s newspaper dated Fall 1998 reached us after the article to the left was written. [“Love & Rage Implodes,” FE #352, Winter, 1999 ] The faction shedding anarchism presents its version of the breakup in disturbingly leftist terms. Issues are available from POB 853, Stuy. Sta., New York NY 10009.

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“The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” is not a great movie, but it’s an unusually good one, and maybe Maggie Smith’s performance should really be called great. Her characterization is in the grand manner as modulated and controlled, and yet as flamboyant, as anything you could ever see on stage.

Miss Smith plays Jean Brodie with a relish and force and tenderness that makes her Miss Brodie ours.

...

Author’s note: I tried to write a journalistic reportorial article about the “Miss Student Body” rape held on the WSU campus in honor of Fraternity Week, where mutilated people voted on the headless pictures of women in bikinis guided by criteria of the best “Bod.” This article was going to include an objective description of the protest demonstration of Friday, May 16, and other assorted responses of quasi-liberated men and women—but my anger got in the way. Sorry.

...

Weirdness continued as the State of Michigan suffered another set-back in its attempt to put John Sinclair behind bars.

The White Pahther Minister of Information, accused of possession of marijuana, was granted a mistrial by Recorder’s Court Judge Robert Colombo June 25 after he decided that the testimony of an undercover narc was prejudicial.

...

John Mayall is an incredible musician—insomuch that not only is he a formidably versatile and adept instrumentalist, but he possesses a respect for his music which is unswerving.

Famous as he is for changing his personnel for each album, the Bluesbreakers belong to Mayall. That is why there will always be a John Mayall band. Strange though it may seem I can compare him to Frank Zappa, in that both are people with an awful lot to say but they cannot say it alone. Both tried (“Lumpy Gravy” and “Blues Alone”) and both attempts were good but neither really served its purpose. Both Zappa and Mayall are band leaders. Please bear that in mind as you read this review and/or hear the album.

...

Frank Zappa

Mothers of the American Revolution

Zappa, in England. must wield much power. Granada TV, a semi-national TV station, has asked Frank to produce an hour for their station to show.

Frank, when asked of the proposed idea for the show, said, “Visualize a huge aircraft hanger with at one end a huge form, 15 feet high, completely concealed by canvas and screened off with velvet ropes, with armed sentries pacing up and down in front of it.”

...

It is now 10:00 pm and here is the national news for today, August 15^th.

Mr. A. Brown and his own Crazy World caused a local riot here upon the imported release of his first evil production. Trying to set the night on fire with his triple-cut production of “Fire”, he apparently seems to think he succeeded, for he blasphemously announces, “I am the God of Hellfire and I bring you Fire.” And so he does!

...

The Pentangle’s new double album, although as yet unreleased in this country, proves my conviction that this (dare I say it?) “super group” is by far one of the best groups around. “Sweet Child” consists of two albums, one live and one studio, beautifully packaged.

The live album opens with “Market Song,” “No More My Lord” and “Turn Your Money Green,” three fine examples of the complex coagulation of musical facets which comprise the style of the Pentangle. Respectively, these first three cuts are pure folk, pure gospel and pure blues, but having been Pentangled they all emerge as beautifully delicate transpositions into the harmonies and guitar style of Renbourn and ‘the Mob.’

...

Well, here we are at the advent of yet another season of goodwill and love to all men, etc. I wish you a very happy something. Did you ever think how many people, at Christmas, celebrate the birth of someone they don’t believe in?

Congratulations, firstly, must go to Audio Arts of Detroit for the fine way in which they turned Hendrix’s thing into a superfluous shamble of chaotic hostility. Special thanks to Phil Ober of Audio Arts who, having denied me an interview with Hendrix (an interview arranged with Hendrix’s manager over a month before the concert) on the grounds that there wasn’t time—which there wasn’t—and told myself and a photographer with me “But you can stand right at the front to get some good shots!”

...

It would seem to me that the country, as a whole (you may eliminate the “w” from “whole” if you wish) is at last beginning to realize that you Cannot dictate from which area a certain style of music must come.

I realize that tradition dictates that blues should come from Chicago or the South, and that soul should come from Motown, but now at long last music is spreading. The MC-5 have spread into the bracket-of “national” groups, as did the SRC, but really that doesn’t mean much because all bands are local at some time.

...

In this fortnight past of sparse record releases we were given new albums by the Doors, Ten Years After, Buffalo Springfield, Pink Floyd and Jeff Beck, along with Phil Ochs’ tape from California and Paul Butterfield’s latest massacre.

Each of these albums I heard several times with the exception of Buffalo Springfield and Phil Ochs, as these two albums arrived too late for me to hear to -any great extent.

...

I think that it is about time that the people in this town stopped paying vast amounts of money to see out-of-town groups purely because they are an out-of-town group, and start to take some notice of local people, who are generally putting out music and shows as good, if not better than, many of the top imports. I have been of this opinion for some time but I have generally left the criticism and appraisal of local talent to my learned co-editors, who, having been in the area somewhat longer than myself, are more adept in the local scene. However one group in particular I have seen twice within the space of two weeks and I feel duty bound to give them some of the praise and publicity that they deserve.

...

This particular piece is written to serve two purposes:

(1) For those who know and like British Blues so that they may learn something of its history and composition.

(2) For those lemmings of this society who treat blues as a science text book; in that what counts is sticking to the rules laid down by the innovators of that form; so that they MAY (and pigs may fly) treat the next piece of blues they hear as a musical section of someone’s soul, being contained therein exactly the emotions that said person is/was feeling at that time.—

...

Related: See “Save the Great Lakes: A Call to Action” in this issue.

The Evergreen Alliance is calling for a weekend-long Mobilization to Save the Great Lakes that is both regional and international in its focus. As we go to press many of the events are still in the planning stages; much will be finalized in the coming few weeks. The group can be contacted at P.O. Box 02455, Detroit MI 48202, or by phone at (313) 832–1738 for more information. The events as planned so far are the following:

...

Let’s hope Cape Breton wasn’t kidding

when they said we could move there

from this side if things got crazy scary.

.

The ones who shout hardest hardly

ever have it right, since such small

gods surge from somewhere far

.

back in the night. Light fills space

as it can. Dark does the same,

and the space is a brain. Attackers

...

Women In Unity Against War blockaded the entrance to the Royal Oak, MI Armed Forces recruiting station for several hours, Jan. 29. Their flyer asked people to “disregard divisive boundaries imposed by empires that wage war.” The demo came in response to the Iraq bombing. Photo/Amy Morgan

War is inevitable. Since April, 1991 and the end of the Gulf War, we’ve witnessed George Bush and Saddam Hussein engaged in a quite deadly game of chicken, with Hussein often blinking but sometimes not fast enough. In addition, US Marines now occupy the strategic Horn of Africa, giving the Somalian’s bullets as well as bread as they try and “keep the peace” (a Pax Americana); yet another Bush “New World Order” legacy.

...

In attempts to find new markets in which to extract more profit, drug companies are trying to find new ways to keep workers feeling well and on the job.

Their latest interest in industrial health was prompted by the alarming number of workers who are becoming ill from exposure to solvents, excess heat, mercury poisoning, etc.

...

1. Not felt except by a very few under especially favorable circumstances.

Marginal and long-period effects.

2. Felt only by a few persons at rest, or favorably placed.

Delicately suspended objects may swing.

3. Felt quite noticeably especially on upper levels.

Many people do not recognize it.

Hanging objects swing.

...

Mod came to the Midwest Nov. 20^th as two young Detroiters were united in the bonds of holy matrimony in the nation’s first mod wedding ceremony.

A capacity crowd of Teeny-boppers in miniskirts and bell-bottom trousers jammed the Michigan State Fairgrounds Coliseum to watch Randy Rossi, 19, a go-go girl and Gary Norris, 25, a free-lance artist, take their traditional vows. However, that was about the only link with tradition in this free — wheeling improvisional ceremony.

...

“The solution to the race problem is separation. White and black should be separate. Their natures are opposite. This is the source of all our problems today. White and black are trying to force something (integration) that even God himself didn’t intend.”

Speaking before well over 300 people on the mall of Wayne State University, Muhammed Ali, former Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the World, ran down his views on racism, the black struggle, and women on May 14.

...

I have long admired Brooklyn-based Richard Mock for his outspoken commitment to anarchism and clear-sighted attacks on contemporary injustices.

Consequently, I was delighted to learn he has been exhibiting his most recent sculptures in bank lobbies, no less. But then, Mock has a way of getting what he wants: this show has graced several banks in Canada, the United States and Germany (hesitating bank managers get a free lure, Mock tells me).

...

As some of us were walking to our car from the February 4^th rally to support draft resister Dan Rutt (see above), we spied another demonstration in front of the Federal Reserve Bank downtown. There were picket signs, an American flag, and some chants, although we couldn’t hear them from down the street. As we came up, we were approached by one of the all male, all white group, who explained to us that they were demanding a return to the gold standard and protesting the use of paper money. “Paper money is unconstitutional,” he said. “It isn’t even real money.”

...

D.A. Pennebaker’s endlessly fascinating film, “Monterey Pop,” gives us Gracie Slick & The Jefferson Airplane, The Who, Simon & Garfunkle, Janis Joplin, Hugh Masekela, Eric Burdon & The Animals, Otis Redding, The Mamas & the Papas, Canned Heat, Country Joe & the Fish, and many, many others all on one sensational single-bill; something that Uncle Russ would never do without charging around $50 a head.

...

Audiences at the 10^th Annual Montreal Anarchist Theatre Festival, May 19–20, saw excellent anarchist theatre performed by professional and amateur participants, troupes and monologues from Quebec and elsewhere including Belgium, France and the US.

The 2016 festival deadline is Oct. 31. Information is at festivaltheatreanarchiste — AT — yahoo — DOT — ca. Application form is at anarchistetheatrefestival.com.

The 13^th annual Montreal International Anarchist Theatre Festival (MIATF), May 22–24 will present an eclectic program of international acts. The only such event in the world, it will feature theatre written by anarchists, about anarchists, or plays that reflect anarchist values. They challenge authority, racism, the Patriarchy, capitalism, treat some form of social injustice, and they may offer anarchist alternatives. Some troupes are professional; others amateur. Some present in English; others in French.

...

The 14^th annual Montreal International Anarchist Theatre Festival, the world’s only event dedicated to anarchist theatre, seeks plays, monologues, dance-theatre, puppet shows, mime, in English and French, on the theme of anarchism or related themes such as opposition to all forms of oppression including the State, capitalism, war, and patriarchy. Also, pieces exploring ecological, social and economic justice, racism, feminism, poverty, class and gender oppression from an anarchist perspective. We welcome work from anarchist and non-anarchist writers.

...

MONTREAL—In the narrow street outside the building where the fourth annual Montreal Anarchist Bookfair had taken place, May 17–18, people milled around—chatting about the workshops and thanking us for a well organized weekend The members of the collective ‘were wired, tired, and relieved following the weeks of activity.

...

The Montreal International Anarchist Theatre Festival (MIATF), the only theatre festival in the world dedicated to showcasing anarchist theatre, is currently seeking submissions to be staged during May and June 2014. Application deadline for the Montreal International Anarchist Theatre Festival: January 31, 2014.

...

It’s the biggest and only anarchist theatre festival in the world, and it’s happening again during the month-long May 2009 Festival of Anarchy in North America’s favourite anarchist playground, Montreal, Quebec.

The fourth annual Montreal International Anarchist Theatre Festival (MIATF) takes place May 13 and 14, 2009, at Concordia University’s 400 seat D.B. Clarke Theatre, where last year, almost 800 people attended spectacular performances by The Bread & Puppet Theatre and other anarchist artists.

...

“SMV: Social Media Virus” by A. Esmie Wright was one of the many plays presented at the 11^th annual Montreal International Anarchist Theatre Festival (MIATF) May 17 and 18, 2016. It is the world’s only such event; a yearly, volunteer labor of love, presenting provocative, socially engaged, freedom-loving theatre from around the world at an affordable price. It adheres to the anarchist tradition of no government handouts or corporate sponsorship.

...

On May 4, 1886, several hundred workers assembled in Chicago’s Haymarket Square to protest the shooting of their comrades on a picket line at the McCormick Reaper Works the day before. The violence happened in the context of a largely successful general strike in support of the eight-hour workday. Anarchist labor organizers and journalists played a key role in the strikes.

...

Some ways to think about the meaning and significance of three white, Christian males, two of whom are members of the armed forces, going to the moon.

“This is it,” said Cal Rogers, an elderly Oklahoman, who stood beside a tent and sipped a container of coffee. “This is what we’ve been working and paying for so long? That’s why I’m here to see what its all about.” (N.Y. Times Wednesday July 16, 1969).

...

Augusta

On May 9^th Charles Oatman, a mentally retarded black youth was tortured to death in the Richmond County jail in Augusta. The county sheriff alleged that other cellmates had done the killing, but black community residents felt that the torture could only have been done by the jailers or with their knowledge.

...

A review of

We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics edited by Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel. Nightboat Books 2020

We Want It All is a big, unwieldy, overflowing book—in this particular moment, there is a need for excess to respond to excess; to the smug American Horror Story of overblown, overglossed oppression and hatred. As We Want It All’s editors, Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel, state, “Our aim in the present collection is therefore both to register and to amplify this tendency” to write against these excesses of power. They identify eight separate “overlapping strategies and concerns” in this anthology, acknowledging they are far from comprehensive, among them explorations of the ecological and the historical, collaborative exchanges and serial poems, satire and lyricism.

...

Special to the Fifth Estate

ANN ARBOR—A National Guard garage and a business administration building in Kalamazoo, and the state capitol in Lansing were the targets of the latest bombings in Michigan.

The Kalamazoo bombings occurred within 20 minutes of each other in the early morning hours, but police say they have established no connection between them. A gallon jug of gasoline with a wick did $12,000 worth of damage to the National Guard building, destroying a jeep and damaging another, and causing extensive smoke damage.

...

ANN ARBOR—Bombs are exploding in Michigan again.

On June 1 unknown persons destroyed an Army officer’s car, blew a hole in the University of Michigan ROTC building and shattered 40 windows in the structure. No one was injured.

This was the third bombing in Ann Arbor since last fall. The local CIA headquarters was bombed in September and a research institute that helped develop the tracking device that pinpointed Che Guevara in Bolivia was hit in October.

...

Modern Slavery: The Libertarian Critique of Civilization, is a new magazine from CAL Press, publishers of Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, that is printing material they identify as critical and creative material that has too often fallen in between the cracks of other periodicals from a left libertarian perspective.

...

a review of

Lucy Parsons: Freedom, Equality & Solidarity, Writings & Speeches, 1878–1937, Charles H. Kerr, Chicago, 2003

As a cop once said during her lifetime, Lucy Parsons is “more dangerous than a thousand rioters.” So strong was her anti-authoritarian presence that 62 years after her death, the revolutionary spirit of Lucy Parsons (1853–1942) continues to arouse the ire of the Chicago police.

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The following series of letters have joined the debate regarding the connection between pornography and violence against women that began in our January 24, 1978 issue [#289] with an article by Michael Betzold and was answered the following issue [#290, March 2, 1978] by Sonny Tufts. The two authors respond again to one another and several readers also offer their opinions. We invite further comment from readers.

...

The cover graphic of the mushroom cloud with the word WAR! in seven centimeter lettering across the front struck me as highly appropriate for the Fifth Estate (See FE #307, Nov. 19, 1981). It would seem to me that a worldwide nuclear war would surely be a progressive step towards “Paleolithic Liberation.” In all your polemics against technology and in your point by point rebuttals to pro-tech arguments you never seem to deal with the sort of question I am inclined to raise. Namely, how do you expect 4 billion people to sustain themselves on this planet in a hunter gatherer mode of production?

...

Dear Citizens:

David Watson’s piece criticizing the Alternative Press Review’s (APR) coverage of the show trial of Slobodan Milosevic in FE #358, Fall 2002 [“The Sad Truth: Milosevic ‘Crucified’: Counter-Spin as Useful Idiocy”] should be rewarded with a job at Human Rights Watch.

It’s as if he’s trying to respond to the increasing ranks of its readers who say the Fifth Estate has become a liberal publication by saying, “Look—I’m not a liberal—I don’t even support the concept of innocent until proven guilty!” His only criticism of the NATO Tribunal in the Hague is that it appears to require the prosecution to prove its case.

...

(UPS) FE note: If you read last issue’s column, (“Better Living—Thru Chemistry,” FE #38, September 15–30, 1967) please read this one also. Our advice would be that anything that can explode should be forgotten unless you are really into [sentence not finished in the print edition]

Further information on Superpot. If you heat lighter fluid near an open flame you’ll blow yourself up. In a pot of boiling water put the solution.

...

FT. JACKSON, S. C. — In spite of the victory of the Ft. Jackson Eight last spring, when the Army was forced to drop all charges against eight leaders of GIs United Against the War in Vietnam, officials at Ft. Jackson are still trying to silence the voice of dissent on base.

Recently Pvt. E-1 Charles Carson was placed under arrest for “distributing petitions without proper authority.” The petition referred to was one circulated by the GI Press Service of the Student Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam.

...

Our coverage of the 1987 Anarchist Gathering held in Minneapolis, June 18–22 [FE #326, Summer, 1987] engendered rather scant response given its criticism of “dyed-in-the-wool” anarchism, paganism as a “problematic current,” and the low level of “education(al) and historical discussion” present there. We were hoping for an exchange on these subjects both for their relevance to the anti-authoritarian movement in general and as a critique of the conference which could provide lessons for the 1988 Gathering in Toronto.

...

Editors’ note: While the Beatles are copping out, the Rolling Stones are running a hard line. The following is part of the lyrics from their latest record:

CHORUS:

But what can a poor boy do

Except to sing for a rock n roll band.

Guess in a sleepy London town,

There’s just no place for a street fighting man.

...

Recent revelations in the class-action lawsuit against the Detroit Police Political Intelligence Squad have shown political surveillance and harassment to be even more widespread than originally suspected.

Besides maintaining thousands of secret files on people, to which the Plaintiffs’ lawyers have just gained access, the Detroit Police kept a record of “Letters to the Editor” which expressed unpopular views; stole subscription lists to local newspapers; and interfered with peoples’ employment.

...

“The bombing won’t stop us. We’re still going full speed ahead with our plans.”

Jack Weinberg, a member of the Vietnam Day Committee, said this quietly only hours after he and 10 other VDC members had narrowly escaped death in a midnight bomb blast that ripped through the VDC headquarters on Fulton Street here [in Berkeley, Calif., not indicated in print original] April 9. Four VDC members were treated for minor injuries at the University Hospital, and released.

...

Seventeen-year-old Gary Tyler, the young black student convicted and sentenced to death by an all white jury on a trumped-up murder charge, still sits waiting for release from Death Row in the Louisiana State Penitentiary. (see Fifth Estate #273 and #274 for more details.)

Rescued from the electric chair by the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling on capital punishment—a ruling which approved the reconstitution of the death penalty under strict new guidelines—Tyler nonetheless is far from out of the woods.

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Leftovers from the Right-wing Film Phantasmagoria [see FE #14, September 15, 1966] came in the form of letters to and from Fulton Lewis, III. Peter Werbe, News Editor of the Fifth Estate and Executive Board Member of the DCEWV, wrote to Mr. Lewis thanking him for his cooperation in helping to raise funds for this paper and the Vietnam Committee. Being the producer of the right-wing films and a key figure in exposing ‘communists’ and tennis-shoe wearers, Lewis sent a quick reply to Werbe. Both documents are reprinted below.

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The most interesting connection between queerness and anarchy is the breakdown of categories and hierarchies. The whole notion of breaking people into two distinctly defined groups, whether on the basis of gender, race, sexual orientation, etc., seems to lead inexorably to hierarchy and all the problems of authoritarianism that come with it. When I think of queer anarchism, I think of breaking down the strict boundaries constructed between the categories of sexuality. So, I guess I think of bisexuality, omnisexuality, pansexuality as being more “anarchist” than strict homosexuality or heterosexuality.

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This issue of FE was finished on the first anniversary of Katrina. A year later, our friends in New Orleans still need our help. At the beginning of June, our comrade, regular contributor, friend, and Louisiana native John Clark wrote:

“It’s now exactly nine months since Hurricane Katrina. The past months have only reinforced the lessons that were learned in the first weeks after Katrina. The abject failure and utter irrationality of the dominant system of state and corporate power have only become more obvious with the passage of time. On the other hand, we have seen growing evidence of the extraordinary and inspiring achievements possible through mutual aid and solidarity.”

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Lawyers involved in the State Police Red Squad case are urging people who believe they may be the victims of spying activity to request a court hearing in Lansing to view the dossiers compiled on them. And recent revelations about Detroit Police spying show that local cops were working with plant protection agents in Chrysler Corp. plants to blackball leftist organizers.

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Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust by Alon Raab is a thoughtful personal account of the struggle to save an old Portland community from demolition and “development.”

“These words are written with rage, sorrow, and amazement. They are brought forth with a fervent desire for a world without ‘developers,’ priests, landlords. They are written with a yearning for a world where a culture of death is replaced with one of life and love.”

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WASHINGTON, D.C. (LNS)—In spite of government repression, draft resistance continues to increase. There are nearly twice as many draft cases in Federal courts as there were a year ago.

If the same rate of prosecuting holds true for the next few months, Selective Service cases will probably be the third greatest producer of criminal court business.

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The following is reprinted from a section of “Mass Strikes in Capitalist Poland,” which appeared in the August/September, 1980 issue of World Revolution magazine available from BM Box 869, London WC1V 6XX, Great Britain. It is authored by C D Ward.

As the whole eastern bloc, under Russian hegemony, gears up its war economy in response to increasing inter-imperialist tensions, workers will be asked to make even greater sacrifices. More capital will be invested in heavy industry and arms production, less in the consumer sector. Production norms will be increased, wage levels held down. Thus for the workers of the eastern bloc, the rallying cry of Stalinism and Trotskyism—“defend the USSR against imperialism”—has a very concrete meaning: work harder, eat less, prepare to die for the fatherland.

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MIAMI (LNS)—Jim Morrison, erotic magician and lead singer for the Doors, is in big trouble in Florida.

On March 2, as John Burks of Rolling Stone puts it, Morrison “finally let it all hang out” during a rock concert before 10,000 people here. And now, local authorities want to zip him up in the pen.

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Senator Morse addressed over 1,000 people at a recent Anniversary dinner for the Michigan Civil Liberties Union. Sharing the platform with him were Detroit Congressman John Conyers, WSU President William R. Keast and Lt. Governor William G. Milliken.

Senator Morse’s speech countered Governor Milliken’s remarks about “the tiny minority” of bearded students who oppose the war. Milliken told the audience that he knew the ACLU shared his gratitude that the “draft card burners and vietniks” were not larger in numbers.

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There are three basic ways to play the blues and the show at the Grande Ballroom the other night was a good lesson in all three. Mother Earth, Fleetwood Mac, and the Savoy Brown Blues Band have each copped a distinct and different aspect of the blues, or life, for that matter, because that’s what blues is all about.

...

It’s mother’s little helper that boosts the harried housewife over that mid afternoon hump; an added push to help the busy student deal with last minute cramming to ace that last exam; the wonder drug that makes dieting fast, easy, and effortless—and the liquid fire that eats away bodies and minds from the veins on out.

...

Frank Zappa and The Mothers Of Invention, New York City, November, 1970

With his Groucho eyes, Punch nose and Howdy Doody body, Frank Zappa is a replete image for his particular brand of satire. The medium for his message is the presentation of The Mothers of Invention, who recently appeared at the Grande Ballroom.

...

In the past month Detroit area music-lovers have had the opportunity to attend performances of the Jefferson Airplane, the Cream, Donovan, the Who, and Ravi Shankar. The biggest threat is to come December 1, when the MOTHERS OF INVENTION invade our hallowed Civic Center’s Ford Auditorium. Detroit will never be the same.

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Resa Jannett in cooperation with Detroit Adventure

1913: TROOPS called into Washington, D.C. to protect women’s suffrage.

1918: D.C. Court of Appeals drops all sentences and arrests against women from 1913.

THE EPIC THAT Never Was, and The Passenger at Detroit Inst. of Arts. 8 pm.

...

Motor City Labor News is a regular feature of the Fifth Estate. In this column we want to provide a space for people from different parts of the Detroit labor scene to exchange their experiences—experiences of the struggle to gain control over the rate and conditions of work, as well as experiences of the fight to regain control over their unions, where these have gotten bogged down in bureaucracy.

...

Editors’ Note: Linda Evans, from Motor City SDS, was one of seven Movement people who went to North Vietnam to retrieve three captured American military men. Their original goal of merely receiving the prisoners and escorting them back to the U.S. was changed as the Vietnamese realized that most of them represented segments of the Movement that were not pacifist, but had actively joined in the struggle of the Vietnamese and were fighting in the U.S. to end the war.

...

Editors’ Note: Linda Evans, from Motor City SDS, was one of 7 Movement people who went to North Vietnam last month to bring back three captured American military men. Along with her were Rennie Davis of the National Mobilization Committee; Grace Paley, writer and pacifist; James Johnson, of the Fort Hood Three, who spent 28 months in the stockade for refusing to go to Vietnam; and three Newsreel photographers, Robert Kramer, Norm Fruchter, and John Douglas.

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It’s difficult for a newspaper to admit ignorance, but in the MOVE situation in Philadelphia—we admit it. After MOVE’s shoot-out with the police in that city on Aug. 8 to protect their home (see “Police Attack MOVE,” FE #293–294, August 21, 1978), stories about the group, which dotted the major newsweeklies ever since Mayor Frank Rizzo began a blockade of the MOVE dwelling earlier in the year, have disappeared. We spoke to a friend in Philadelphia who sent us a great deal of background material, but confessed that he, like most of the rest of us, didn’t know what had developed with the legal charges facing the arrested MOVE members or whether there are any defense preparations being made. MOVE seems to be a very bizarre group which traces its origins to the anti-technology, pro-revolutionary writings of a man known to his followers as John Africa. The integrated group began living in an area adjacent to a University district, but soon developed a reputation for hostility to their neighbors with many claiming they had been threatened with violence by members of the group. When Rizzo moved into the picture with his blockade, the issue exploded into a citywide radical vs. pig issues MOVE suddenly experiencing support from many civil rights groups. Internally, the MOVE group seems to make a good critique of modern capitalism, but its almost religious adulation of the word of John Africa and other authoritarian trappings has made most of the left as well as local libertarians back away from any active defense of MOVE. At this point, it would seem foolish for us (given our lack of information on the subject) to make any pronouncement on the matter. We would appreciate hearing from anyone with greater access to the situation to inform us and our readers about developments.