Full list of texts

What RFK’s election would prove is that America is further ahead in its cheerfully cynical acceptance of corruption and back-room deals than had been feared...

First winner of the Other Scenes Yellow Journalism Award (“the underground Pulitzer”) is the New York Free Press for its outrageously creative publication of the names, addresses and telephone numbers of local draft board members. Citation of the OSYJ award reads: “In a time when newspapers prefer to follow rather than lead, when the apparent aim is to mollify the advertisers rather than rock the boat, and when most newspapers put the maintenance of the status quo ahead of the best interests of the readers’, the New York Free Press reminds us that traditionally the best newspapers have always been troublemakers. May their example be widely copied”...

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Other Scenesman, John Wilcock, has begun one of his frequent around the world trips. This report is filed from Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia. We will publish his impressions of his visits to other European and Asian cities as they are received.

Beethoven concert in the Rector’s Palace, a centuries-old stone castle with inner patio open to the sky. Cheapest ticket 10 dinar (80 cents) with which I race up two impressive stone staircases to recline comfortably on a stone ledge overlooking the middle-aged German tourists sat stolidly in stiff-backed chairs 20 feet below.

...

On Saturday, June 22, a demonstration expressing support for French workers and students was held in front of the office of the French consulate in the First National Building in downtown Detroit.

The demonstration, which protested the Gaullist government’s recent ban on public assembly and the suppression of French student organizations and revolutionary political parties, was jointly sponsored by the Young Socialist Alliance (Y.S.A.), the Socialist Worker’s Party (S.W.P.), the Inner City Voice, the Arab Student Association, and Black Conscience magazine.

...

Millbrook, that renowned dropout shrine in upstate New York, is closed and padlocked, its tribe scattered, its guru Tim Leary now living in Berkeley. And the end of an era was marked last month with a “farewell” party for Uncle Tim at NY’s Village Gate: the Group Image played, Paul Krassner and Allen Ginsberg did their respective things, and the Gate’s management tossed out a tablefull of people for passing a joint around...

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Editors’ Note: We neglected last issue to welcome John Wilcock back to the pages of this newspaper. John was one of the founders of the Village Voice and the East Village Other. He publishes his own paper, Other Scenes which is a 20 times a year newspaper produced from wherever the editor happens to be. This could be Greece, Japan, England or anywhere else in the world. Subscriptions are $5 and should be sent to OS, Box 8, Village Post Office, N.Y., N.Y. 10014.

...

Welcome to our Spring 2015 issue, with the murderous U.S. war against Vietnam as its main theme. The essays and fiction describe the conflict itself, while next issue will feature accounts of the resistance from the anti-war movement, mutinous GIs, and the Vietnamese.

The Fall edition will mark our 50^th anniversary of radical publishing and will include essays commemorating the paper’s history. Plans for a celebration, a staff reunion, and museum exhibits in Detroit are on the next and back pages.

...

A review of

Jerry Rubin’s “Letter to the Movement,” New York Review of Books, Feb. 13, 1969, 40 cents.

The Young American Poets, edited by Paul Carroll, Follet Publishing Co., 1968, $3.95,

Evergreen Review Reader, edited by Barney Rosset, Grove Press, 1969, $20.00

“From the Bay Area to New York we are suffering the greatest depression in our history...it’s a common problem, not an individual one, and people don’t talk to one another too much anymore. America proved deaf, and our dreams proved innocent. Scores of our brothers have become inactive and cynical,” Jerry Rubin has spoken.

...

Catrillanca, Wounded Jewel,

your spirit rides through the ravaged

fields of Temucuicui.

Your head destroyed,

your spirit crushed

by the fickle language

of the powerful.

Tear gas whistles, flying

in your funeral procession.

Children, mothers, old people moan

no longer able to harvest

the Mapuzugun of their dreams.

...

A quick glance at the evening news should be enough to convince even the most disengaged citizen that we live in “grim times.” This recognition, although accurate, is a cliché, since the same could be said about almost every era for the last thousand years in the West.

That’s not to say there’s not joy to he had, moments in which the human spirit erupts with creativity or transcendence, or even years when things seem to work just right, for some people, that is, and usually only for a while. Simultaneously, though, even in the best of periods, often no less than a few miles away, some horror is being perpetrated, or the harmony of an entire era or locale is suddenly exploded by some monstrous event.

...

Born London, Jan. 7, 1920; died, Weston-Super-Mare, N. Somerset, May 7, 1996.

Albert Meltzer was one of the most enduring and respected torchbearers of the international anarchist movement in the second half of the twentieth century. His sixty-year commitment to the vision and practice of anarchism survived both the collapse of the revolution and civil war in Spain and World War II. He helped fuel the libertarian impetus of the 1960s and 1970s and steer it through the reactionary challenges of the Thatcherite 1980s and post-Cold War 1990s.

...

With the hope of leaving a fruitful seed, the bodies of the Spanish libertarians are sowing the earth in various continents of the planet. In Montreal, it is our dear Cisco Rebordosa. He was preceded by Enrique Castillos, who dedicated many years of his life to militancy, Alfred Munrós (see Fall 1996 FE), whose illustrations are well known to readers of our publications, and Alfred Ruiz, a veteran of the anti-Franco struggle in Spain, where he was imprisoned.

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The RNC 8 are eight activists from Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota charged with four felony counts of conspiracy, two with “Terrorism Enhancements,” in the first known use of the Minnesota Anti Terrorism Act of 2002 (dubbed the MN PATRIOT Act), for their organizing in response to the 2008 Republican National Convention (RNC).

...

While pondering over the November 14, 1977 issue of Newsweek magazine, we came across mention of the ole Fifth Estate in their article “Businessmen and Terrorism;” a fine representation of that mystical horseshit that makes us want to bring it all up—“objective journalism.”

How these seeping sacks of parrot droppings dare write such vacuous, pig-ignorant articles and pass them off as truth is beyond us. Why we wouldn’t even spit on the rotting carcasses of these slithering slugs, for fear of offending our saliva!

...

Today we live in a psychopathic civilization. It’s not a pleasant conclusion to arrive at, but perhaps it can spur us to build an alternative a thousand times better than the current planetary disaster. Why not? It’s within our reach. All we need is a concerted effort to revolutionize every aspect of life.

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And two months later, its first annual birth conference, “SQUAT Camp,” which took place in Washington state from August 10-13^th. Usually, midwifery/birthwork conferences are outrageously inaccessible, from their location (high-end hotels) to the cost (upwards of $100 per day). SQUAT organized a conference in the woods, camping style, for $30 for the four-day event (plus meals included). Workshops were a little different than what you’d usually find at a mainstream birth conference, too: “Prison as a Form of Violence Against Women,” “She’s, He’s, and They’s Giving Birth,” “Abortion Doulas and the History of Abortion in Midwifery,” and “Racism and Classism in the Midwifery Movement” were just a few of the fifteen different workshops organized.

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Editor’s note: The following message from White Panther Minister of Defense in exile, Pun Plamondon, was read by his wife Geni at the Eastown Theatre, Jan 25 as part of the Free John Sinclair Day benefit.

“The beginnings will not be easy; they will be extremely difficult. All the oligarchies’ powers of repression, all their capacity for brutality and demagogy will be placed at the service of their cause. Our mission, in the first will be to survive....”

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Romantic love so often doesn’t work because it isn’t rooted in human traditions.

In the long course of our culture’s evolution, romantic love has become the primary post-pubescent source of affection in our world. But it has not always occupied this special position. It may be a universal in human experience, but in our globalizing monoculture, romance has intensified over the millennia into a distorted caricature of versions common in tribal and Neolithic village societies.

...

Smokin’ more now and enjoyin’ it less?

The Feds would rather see heads come up to the cool taste of speed and smack than stay down in the valley of harsh reefer fumes (and they’ve been plenty rough lately).

Sound unreal? Hardly.

Courtesy of the R. Miltown Nixon thugs, Operation Intercept is underway, a marijuana eradication program tailored to keep the weed from the minds and lungs of our nation’s youth.

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The late Richard Mock’s linocut art has been featured in the Fifth Estate and other anarchist publications for many years including after his death in 2006 at age 61. His work also appeared on the Op-Ed pages of The New York Times and was the featured art cover for a United Nations magazine with world-wide circulation. Several museums hold his paintings and prints as well. Mock was named the official portrait painter of the 1980 Olympics. Richard left us with the originals of the art that has appeared in these pages since 2002. We’re pleased to offer the 17” by 14.5” original linocut on the previous page for the price of $250 unframed. Richard’s Prints have sold for as much as $2000, but although a signed edition, this is an unnumbered Test Print and marked T.P. as is the custom in such work.

...

The morning comes, the night decays, the watchmen leave their stations

The grave is burst, the spices shed, the linen wrapped up;

The bones of death, the covering clay, the sinews shrunk & dry’d

Reviving shake, inspiring move, breathing! awakening!

Spring like redeemed captives when their bonds & bars are burst;

...

ITHACA, NY, Sept. 25, (LNS)—Four women toting gallon cans of paint ran up to the Marine officers recruiting at Cornell University’s Barton Hall and doused them with paint.

One recruiter, Captain Donald Frank, was covered from head to foot, front and back, with purple, white and yellow paint. Two other officers, a blanket, and a projector were splattered with paint. Damage was estimated to be over $250.

...

from Le Brise-Glace, No. 1, translated by Lorraine Perlman

However repressive it may have been from its very origins, Zionism represented a movement of emancipation for many oppressed Jews. Once Israel was established, Zionism—whether left or right—has been nothing more than a project to defend a state which, to survive, is condemned to practice a policy of apartheid internally and imperialism externally, where the constant recollection of past adversity serves as a justification for present coercion.

...

Having consistently destroyed organized Palestinian political and military resistance to Zionist colonial conquest, Israel must now contend with what is fast becoming a massive and generalized civil revolt.

The number of Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank Strip over the past several months of sustained protest approaches 100. After years of obfuscation and U.S. media silence on the plight of the Palestinian people, we now read daily descriptions of Israeli response to the ongoing protests that rivals and even surpasses state violence in South Africa: gunfire attacks on demonstrating youths, systematic night raids on Palestinian camps and villages, indiscriminate beatings, tear gas and rubber bullet attacks, deportations, censorship, overcrowded and inhumane prisons, mass jailings.

...

Of all the issues raised by Israel’s fifty year anniversary, none holds more pain and longing, nor embodies the Palestinian experience more, than that of the refugees.

Numbering approximately 3.3 million, the Palestinians are the largest such group in the world and have suffered that status longer than any other. Besides being scattered in a diaspora in places as far-flung as Sweden and metropolitan Detroit, many continue to reside in refugee camps close to the land they were forced from a generation ago.

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Fifth Estate Note: Some terminology in this brief but potent essay differs somewhat from the language generally used in the FE.

For example, we normally do not invoke Marx and Engels in economic critiques, but much of their economic analyses remains valid into the modern era.

Also, we feel the commonly used term, employed here by the author, “developing,” is inaccurate to describe the nations of the South—that is the Southern tier, non-industrial countries. The phrase connotes a process that is not occurring, as the article ably points out

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VANCOUVER, British Columbia—Eldridge Cleaver, Black Panther “revolutionary” turned evangelical Christian, had a pie pushed into his face on May 1, while speaking to an audience attending a christian crusade in the Orpheum Theatre.

As the white, gooey cream streamed down his face, Cleaver met the onslaught and turned his newly-found Christian cheek, saying: “I seem to have changed color.”

...

Editor’s note: The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense is an Oakland, California based militant black organization which believes in armed self-defense of the black community from what they call the “pigs” (police).

The group’s Minister of Defense, Huey Newton, is presently in jail awaiting trial on charges of killing one Oakland cop and wounding two others in a shoot-out last year. The Panther’s claim this incident climaxed two years of police harassment and that Huey shot in self-defense.

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CHICAGO (LNS)—Bobby Seale was sentenced to jail for four years Nov. 5 for repeatedly asserting his right to defend himself before Judge Julius Hoffman. The judge took an hour and a half to intone sixteen counts of contempt of court, each of them containing Seale’s firm insistence on his constitutional rights.

...

On Saturday, February 21, three members of the Detroit chapter of the National Committees to Combat Fascism were beaten and arrested while selling the Black Panther Newspaper in front of Kresge’s downtown. The NCCF is a group which is affiliated with the Black Panther Party.

This attack took place at the same time as 200 people were demonstrating against the convictions in the Chicago Conspiracy trial. The protesters massed in Grand Circus Park and then marched to the Federal Building.

...

To many, it seems there will be no escape from the dominant reality, no alternative to an irredeemably darkened modernity as civilization’s final, lasting mode. We are indeed currently trapped, and the nature of our imprisonment is not subject to scrutiny. Its very existence is off-limits to discourse.

...

We want to save the world, and we want to save ourselves. It’s the same thing. The problems confronting us are enormous and at every level: personal, social, planetary. I will spare you a list. My aim is to suggest they are all symptoms of one problem, and to propose a solution.

The problem: to find a way to live on earth which promotes our health and happiness, is conducive to the full development of our innate potential and at the same time democratic; that is, available to all—which does not use more than our share, and is harmonious with the biosphere’s evident drive toward increasing diversity, complexity and stability.

...

“I’m an advocate of free love. What else can I say? I think people should do what they like, enjoy what they enjoy, and we should enjoy their enjoying what they enjoy.”

--Judith Malina

(interviewed by Jim Feast and Steve Dalachinsky)

“The work of liberation from sexual repression must be a parallel of all revolutionary work and must take place during all revolutionary stages. But there comes a point at which no further progress can be made without abolishing standards that cripple the natural man sexually, and this point comes precisely when we confront the fundamental problem of violence.

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Benefit performances for People Against Racism will be given by the Concept East Theater on July 7^th and 8^th. Two plays, Edward Albee’s “A Zoo Story” and Leroi Jones’ “The Dutchman,” will be performed on Friday, July 7^th. Laurence Blaine’s “Dark Nights, Angry Faces” will be performed on Saturday, July 8^th. “Dark Nights, Angry Faces” consists of two two-act plays: “Prize Fight” and “The Meaning of Time.” Performances begin at 8:00 p.m. at the Concept East Theater, 401 East Adams. Tickets may be obtained by calling the PAR office, 962–3855.

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a review of

Freedom in Solidarity: My Experiences in the May 1968 Uprising by Kadour Naimi; Translation and foreword by David Porter. AK Press, 2019 akpress.org

During times of social ferment like the present, there tends to be a reawakening of interest in past insurgencies, such as those of the May-June 1968 French uprising. So David Porter’s English translation of Kadour Naimi’s memoir of those transformative events is particularly timely.

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FT. JACKSON, S.C.—The Army has dropped charges against some GIs affiliated with the group GIs United Against the War in Vietnam at Ft. Jackson, S.C., and will discharge others without ever bringing them to trial.

Of the nine soldiers originally arrested following an anti-war meeting on the base March 20, only three now face charges.

...

Detroit’s first Participatory Zoo Dance, originally scheduled for September 16 and 17, was postponed, but an October opening is planned. Russ Gibbs, promoter of Detroit’s Grande Ballroom psychedelic dance, said that the original opening date had been cancelled due to technical problems.

The weekly dance, the first of its kind in Detroit, modeled in the San Francisco style, involves a great deal of electrical lighting equipment, and Russ said We ran into some unforeseen difficulties with the electrical wiring code in Detroit, but that has all been taken care of and we will open October 7 and 8 for sure.” Kicking off the grand opening will be the MC5 and the Woolies. Anyone interested in getting more information should call Russ Gibbs at 834–4904.

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a review of

Cyclonopedia: Complicity with anonymous materials, by Reza Negarestani. re.press, 2008

This book appears to be (but might not be) a treatise on Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the Nomadic War Machine, written by someone (said to be an Iranian philosopher) who’s bitten off a bit more French Theory than I can chew. It’s thinly disguised as a SciFi novel as written by or about a brilliant Iranian philosopher named Parsani (“the Persian”) who’s on the verge of paranoid schizophrenic breakdown, in which is embedded a commentary on H.P. Lovecraft and other pulp-horror mashers, in the light of Zoroastrian and Mesopotamian religion and myth (this part is so clever it transcends mere parody), using diagrams of bizarre topology and non-Euclidian geometry, creating fake sources and mixing them with real (but very obscure and erudite) sources--all aimed at an elaborate allegorization of Middle East oil politics and the War on Terror--and analysis that strikes me as partly the work of a genius and partly quite mad, although this is probably the author’s intention, if there is in fact an author.

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Common radical wisdom suggests that capitalism won’t crumble on its own, so imagine the ironically comforting confidence with which we have watched the system convulse over the last few months. But as Don LaCoss reminds us in “The Disasters of Disaster Capitalism,” it’s not a good idea to expect the system to just wither away. The cruel nature of corporations and the state suggests that the forces of domination will continue to profit from the people’s misery and punish anyone who gets in the way.

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Every day for a week I peruse the crumpled quarter-page announcement I’ve been carrying around in my wallet. “MUDPEOPLE: 10^th Anniversary...We supply mud. Wear as little as possible. Bring drinks, food, towels, friends, wildness. Finally, the day is here.

Mudpeople confront the rich, Detroit Athletic Club, 1991 (Photo: Mike)

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The sign read: “Men can wear one article of clothing, and women can wear two articles of clothing.” This was the second annual naked smoothie party that boasted not just fruity blender drinks and creative nudity, but also a steamy hot tub, a banana shaped pool, dancing, body painting, massage, and more.

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Imagine an alternate dimension where

dervishes are roaming around America

sects of Swedenborgian hobos, etc.

You’re there camping in the cemetery

long black hair in tangles ghostwhite face

Sion County is remote, rural, and poor, and always has been. Around 1870 a breakaway sect of German Amish-type farmers—the Sabbatarian Anabaptists of the “Seventh Day Dunkers,” moved there from Pennsylvania and settled down in the river valleys of the county’s northeast.

...

The eco-feminism of Maria Mies stands at the crossroads of feminist, ecological and colonial liberation movements. Mies attempts to bring Marxian theory face to face with the newly emerging political crises of the late 20^th century. This has involved further investigation of Marx’s texts in the light of modern anthropology and what she calls “object-relations.” But Mies is as much an activist as academic sociologist. Her concerns range from prescriptive essays on methodology in social science and empirical studies of exploitation among Indian women lacemakers, to organized campaigns against pornography and the reproductive-technology industry in West Germany.

...

‘I hear America singing’

“—so what.”

— D. Campion

I’ve been pissed ever since the President’s announcement—

so let’s get it on, let’s go to war!

I’m tired of the same old betrayals, I want betrayals I can believe in!

.

I’m sick of outsiders ruining my country, we need a Real Leader!

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Paul Avrich (left) with Federico Arcos at Emma Goldman’s grave site, Waldheim Cemetery, Chicago, 1998. Photo: Julie Herrada

A beloved comrade and renowned scholar of 19^th and 20^th century anarchism passed away on February 17 at his home in New York City. Paul Avrich was author and editor of dozens of influential books and articles on the history of anarchism, including The Haymarket Tragedy; The Modern School Movement: Anarchism and Education in the United States; An American Anarchist: The Life of Voltairine de Cleyre; Anarchist Portraits; Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background, and Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America.

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A review of New Reformation: Notes of a Neolithic Conservative by Paul Goodman, PM Press, 194 pages, trade paperback, $20.00

Although Paul Goodman established himself as one of the most influential thinkers of the 20^th century, by the end of his life the anarchist philosopher felt dissatisfied with the direction of the political movements his writings had inspired.

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Every Mother’s Day Paul Krassner, editor of the REALIST comes to Detroit and educates us on what’s REALLY happening in the underground.

For instance, if you ever see Tim Leary walking around crouched like a rabbi, it’s because he has a rip in his pants and he doesn’t wear underwear. Krassner also suggested that’s where Leary keeps his stash.

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Paul Schwartz with art

FE Note: The area in which the Fifth Estate office is located is known as the Cass Corridor. For years, due to its proximity to an urban university, it has been home to and nurtured endless generations of youthful rebels who cross-fertilized each other in the arts, politics and (Gaia forbid), alternative lifestyles. Each learned from the other, and sometimes there were no divisions as artists were political, and politicos lived alternative lifestyles and were artists, etc. Paul Schwarz was such an individual, who functioned mostly in the arts milieu, but who also was an astute political observer, and took part in many activities. As his friend and co-conspirator, poet Ken Mikolowski, averred in his eulogy to him printed below, Paul’s untimely departure left a hole in this community. In death, as well as life, Paul exemplified the entire community. He was buried wearing an IWW pin on his lapel.

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Paul Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, was arrested in the Netherlands April 3 by Dutch police acting on a Norwegian warrant.

The president of Sea Shepherd is being held in Lelystad Penitentiary awaiting an extradition hearing. Norway wants Watson to serve a prison sentence handed down in absentia for the 1992 scuttling of an illegal whaling vessel. They also want to charge him with ramming a Norwegian coast guard vessel in July 1994.

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Over the last few months we received several responses to the centennial celebrations of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, including the following text, distributed by a group in NYC:

Hi! I’m the AMAZING RON, and have I got a show for you: fireworks, lasers, warships, helicopters, and tens of thousands of cops! Just sit back and watch this blinding show of liberty, but remember, to keep America free, we all have to pitch in and help, so I’m asking you to do a few simple tasks:

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FE Note: In the following article, Hakim Bey moves beyond his idea of the Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ)—those moments when normally domesticated space is liberated for a limited time for festive and subversive “moments of happiness.” He discusses what happens when those moments become fixed in time and space.

...

During the first week of April 1976, Gerald Woltjer, an Ottowa County, Michigan, dairy farmer, shot down his 235-head dairy herd in order to draw attention to the nightmare of PBB--poisoning of Michigan livestock, poultry, and dairy products.

Shortly afterward, the story hit the national news media and within weeks the spectre of a new Minamata-style plague loomed over the heads of Michigan residents. (1) Later in the month, the Michigan House of Representatives approved legislation that will eventually ban the sale of meat from PBB-contained herds for sixty days. A bill is also pending which will result in the liquidation of all tainted animals--virtually every farm animal in the state.

...

After being dropped by the media as no longer newsworthy, and being submerged in a myriad of bureaucratic committees on the State Legislature—a process so utterly boring that we have failed to follow its developments (you’ll forgive us, won’t you?)—the issue of PBB (polybrominated biphenyl, a component of a fire-retardant chemical which was introduced by mistake into Michigan livestock feed starting in 1973) has again hit the headlines, this time in a particularly gruesome development. (See “PBB: Case Study of an Industrial Plague,” FE May 1976).

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The Public Broadcasting System produces “programming” toward a more manageable society. In fact, it is the network rather expressly for managers, and what it airs can best be understood by keeping in mind this service to the managing class. The exact ration of corporate to government funding of PBS is inconsequential to its basic nature and function.

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The cement never sets on the WSU empire.

A sign is attached to the cement wall of the new Foreign Language Building at Wayne State University. It faces the John C. Lodge Freeway and the Matthaei Physical Education Complex beyond it. The sign, without reservation announces that Wayne is “Building For Our Second Century.”

...

In a near spontaneous action, People Concerned About Urban Renewal (PCAUR) led a demonstration against a local slumlord last Thursday.

The group, composed of more than twenty local residents, street kids and students converged on an apartment building complex on the near west side to confront the caretaker of the building concerning the heat and water conditions there which had become intolerable. The buildings are located on Hancock near Avery.

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Three Tennessee activists bicycled back roads through Tennessee and Georgia for more than a week to join the annual demonstration to shut the School of the Americas (SOA), held in Columbus, Georgia, each November. The SOA is a U.S. government school dedicated to teaching Latin American military forces combat skills; thousands of its graduates have been implicated in horrific forms of state terrorism throughout Latin America. We biked 360 miles to the SOA from the neighboring queer communities where we live, IDA (MaxZine and TomFoolery) and Short Mountain Sanctuary (Sandorkraut) in middle Tennessee.

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DETROIT: Six weeks ago the News Editor of the FIFTH ESTATE sent an inquiry to the Defense Department regarding the validity of an article in the VIETNAM COURIER, a paper published in Hanoi, reflecting the political positions of that country. The article in question appears in May 12, 1966 edition and claims that a battalion of the First Infantry Division mutinied and refused to fight on April 24, 1966 at Lai Khe. It further claims that several soldiers were shot by their own officers in an attempt to force them into battle. Also, several suicides by men of the First Battalion were reported. As of July 13 no answer has been received from the Defense Department. In a further attempt to ascertain the truth of the situation copies of all correspondence have been sent to Cong. Charles C. Diggs (D-13^th district) asking him to investigate the matter. Nothing has been heard from him to date.

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On May 15, at the Wayne Campus, the Detroit Committee to End the War in Vietnam and the Students for a Democratic Society marched to demand that Wayne State University stop their cooperation with the draft system. A brief sit-in of 60 students followed.

WASHINGTON, May 6. The defense Department yesterday boosted the draft back up to 26,000 men for July compared to 15,000 in June.

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Happy hippies and costumed peace freaks assembled behind DeRoy Auditorium on Wayne University’s campus for the 2^nd Annual Halloween March the night of Oct. 31. Led by John Schwartz, alias Jacob Odaryan, the march was to bring an absurdist dance of death to the festive evening.

Seventy-five freaks danced around DeRoy and stopped for a WWJ-TV newsman. “Help the poor, stop the war” chanted the marchers. They then danced down Cass Ave. Their chanting visibly disturbed Wayne’s Public Safety fuzz and stopped traffic on both sides of Cass. Black children running alongside the marchers dropped firecrackers in the street and some joined the zany throng.

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NEW YORK—Rev. James Bevel, national director of the Spring Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam, assailed President Johnson for turning a deaf ear to the growing anti-war sentiment in the United States.

Rev. Bevel rebuked the President in connection with the latest U.S. bombing raids close to the center of Hanoi. He said that Johnson was “power mad” and “in a futile attempt to cover up his own mistakes, the President is driving this country closer and closer to a nightmarish confrontation with Red China and nuclear catastrophe.”

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George Vissard, peace activist in Austin, Texas, was killed last week in an Austin grocery store. Vissard was found at about 11:00 a.m. with a shot through the back and shot through the arm; his body had been placed in the meat freezer of the drive-in market.

Early reports from Texas indicated that his death was probably due to political reasons and that no money was missing from the cash register of the store. Later reports claimed that a “sizable amount” of money had been taken—but not from the cash register. Austin police authorities say that they are moving under the assumption that the motive is robbery and that Vissard tried to resist, which brought about his death.

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discussed in this article:

Encyclopaedia of Nuisances: Dictionary of the irrational in the sciences, trades and industrial arts, April 1989, “Abyss.” Author anonymous, no price listed. Available from Boite postale 188, 75665 Paris Cedex 14 France

“It seems somewhat ridiculous to talk of revolution...But everything else is even more ridiculous, since it implies accepting the existing order in one way or another.”

...

It starts with a story: My grandma, worried that her 3-year-old son had not spoken a word yet, had him chase down a grasshopper. Diligently, without complaint, the boy did and returned with a smile. Open she said; confused and scared, he did. She shoved it in and closed his mouth. Hablas, mijo, hablas. He spit it out crying. Crying and yelling. He has not stopped either since she says and smiles thinking of her now 50 year old son talking his time away in a New Mexican state penitentiary.

...

Friends for fifteen years

and never met.

She sends letters across the Atlantic,

then the span of land from east to west

and into the front gates

to be rifled through,

security checked and sometimes rejected,

wheeled along corridors

and doors made of bars,

until reaching

his cell.

It’s always the same time

...

During his visit to Chile in January 2018, Pope Francis officiated a mass in the Araucania region—the ancestral territory of the Mapuche people.

The night before, unknown individuals burned three forest company helicopters, three churches, and a school. Fliers demanding the liberation of Mapuche political prisoners were found nearby.

...

The following article from the December 1, 1976 Wall Street Journal gives a graphic picture of the integration of China into world capitalism and its money system.

HONG KONG—For an arm of one of the largest Communist powers on earth, the Bank of China is surprisingly adept at making a capitalist feel right at home.

...

The search for a community park in the Warren Forest area continues.

On a balmy Sunday, June 27, about 60 people met in a vacant lot at the corner of Leota and Fourth. The topic of discussion was the proposed site of a park that the community could use without getting in the way of children at play and that was built by the people themselves.

...

Confrontations over a contested Berkeley lot “legally” owned by the University of California (U.C.), known as People’s Park, continues. But increasingly, University and City attempts to reassert the rules of private property are succeeding.

Private seizure of common land, a process known as enclosure, was the essential basis for the imposition of the capitalist system. Starting in the 14^th century, peasants found land which had previously belonged to the community as a whole fenced off and claimed as private property. They had to move. Many small farmers also saw their meager holdings seized by larger landlords.

...

The battle for People’s Park began 22 years ago. The following is an excerpt from our lead article in FE #80, May 29, 1969, which was entitled, “Police Riot: Murder In Berkeley.” The cover price was 15 cents.

BERKELEY (LNS)—One man was murdered and over 200 people injured by police May 15 in the heaviest street battle in Berkeley yet over who controlled a city park.

...

The spirit of liberation has swept across this freedom stoned land from Berkeley to our sister city, Ann Arbor, and now into Detroit.

Inner city people in the Warren-Forest area are demanding their right to the people’s land to use for the benefit of the people. The nation’s second People’s Park will be made this summer; a call is out for support from the community to everyone who believes in freedom.

...

The movement in Detroit has a functioning print shop again.

Located two doors from the Fifth Estate office the shop can do leaflets, pamphlets, booklets, brochures, letterheads and small underground papers.

Originally begun by Joel Landy, who has split the city for Ann Arbor, the Revolutionary Printing Cooperative is a joint project of this newspaper, Black & Red magazine, the Printing Coop of Ann Arbor, and the Radical Education Project. Printers at this time include Mike Davis, Mike Gove, Fred Perlman and Dan Wilder.

...

The worst thing one could say about the Algiers Motel Tribunal is that it was Recorder’s Court upside down.

If the tribunal was biased and weighted against the four white defendants, Detroit Patrolman Robert Paille and Ronald August, National Guardsman Theodore Thomas and private guard Melvin Dysmukes, then it was weighted in exactly the same way that Recorder’s Court proceedings are against Negro defendants.

...

Send your publication for review.

Anchorage Anarchy # 11 December 2007, $1 from BAD Press, PO Box 230332, Anchorage AK 99523 bbrigade (at) world (dot) std (dot) com

Individualist anarchist periodical from Alaska. (12 pp)

Black Flag #226, BM Hurricane London, WC1N 3XX UK black_flag (at) lycos (dot) co (dot) uk

...

Anarchist Studies vol. 16 #1 (2008)

c/o Lawrence & Wishart,

99a Wallis Rd,

London E9 5LN, UK

www.lwbooks.co.uk/journals/anarchiststudies/contents.html

£20.00 subscription

Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed #66 (Winter/Fall 2008)

PO Box 3488,

Berkeley, CA 94703

anarchymag.org

$20 / 5 issue subscription

...

(via Good Times/UPS)

Q: How do you feel about your movie?

A: How do I feel about my movie? Very strong, and a bit funny in the knees. No, I’m putting you on. I feel very good about the movie. I hope I do better next time.

Q: Have you got the next film started?

A: No, I have no...I’m writing a flick now. About the American Revolution.

...

The Paris Commune, which lasted from March 18 to May 28, 1871, was an experiment in self-governance that is still inspiring today.

The Franco-Prussian war of 1870 saw the defeat of the French military by the more disciplined and technically better equipped Prussian military.

While the French government worked on negotiating the end to the war, many people living in Paris refused to surrender. Following a brutal four-month siege, they bravely took their fate into their own hands and declared Paris an independent Commune.

...

a review of

Champavert: Immoral Tales by Petrus Borel, trans. Brian Stableford. Borga Press, 2013 WildsidePess.com

The long-forgotten radical novel, Champavert, is the only full-length book available in English by Petrus Borel. The anti-authoritarian poet was known in 19^th century French underground circles as “The Lycanthrope” (Wolfman), and was central to the creation of the cultural avant-garde as both an idea and a functioning community in that era.

...

Richard Lester’s new film, “Petulia,” is a contradiction in terms—it is at one and the same time old-fashioned, avant-garde, sophisticated, heavy-handed, and pointless.

Lester, who directed the Beatles films and “How I Won the ‘War,’” is no stranger to cinematic mixed bags, but this time something went wrong.

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Down the street, there’s a park about half the size of a city block. Tucked away in the corner is a four-foot granite monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments, the core credo of a 3,000-year-old eastern Mediterranean cult started by sun-stroked nomads.

For the last year, that monument has been at the center of controversy because of a lawsuit to get it removed from the park. According to plaintiffs, its presence violates the supposed guarantee of governmental neutrality in matters of mythology. But the loud God-fearing folk of this town have mobilized to “save” the Ten Commandments on the grounds that only good can come from having these writings on permanent display in the public arena, presumably for the same reasons given by those who thought that posting the Ten Commandments in public schools would magically prevent another Columbine High School-style outburst of murderous alienation and rage.

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Detroit-born and raised, and self-described anarchist, Philip Levine was named the U.S. Poet Laureate by the Library of Congress in August. The post, whose task entails raising “the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry,” may take on a different than usual dimension during Levine’s tenure given his politics.

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Members of Feral Crust, a small DIY ecologically-minded anarchist collective in the mountains of Marilog Davao (Southern Mindanao), Philippines are developing a rural community based on balance with the surrounding environment and social solidarity. Their community is located in a forest home to wildlife and indigenous people.

...

Lyndon Baines Johnson, 36^th President of the U-nited States of America; the man who sends troops to Vietnam, Santo Domingo, the Congo, and now our own home town is scheduled to speak in Detroit on August 2^nd.

Peace activists across the country have promised that Johnson will be met with demonstrations wherever he goes as long as he continues the war in Vietnam. And if Johnson is not frightened away by a little rioting the major peace and civil rights groups plan a large reception for him in the form of a giant picket line.

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On Thursday, October 6, two people could have gone to Cobo Hall and for one hundred dollars had a dinner and heard Vice-president Humphrey give a speech. If the political viewpoint of the two people was slightly skewed to the right they could have gone down the hall to the “Romney-Griffin Bandwagon Ball” for only one hundred and twenty-five dollars. The difference in price was because the Romney people had to pay the band.

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George Wallace stood up and said all the magic words, “Dope Fiend, Outlaw, Pervert, Cuba, Masses, Red, Mao, Free, Fidel, Workers, Black, White!” These are magic words in America. These arc the words that make white America go to its knees in fear George Wallace got 9 million votes, 9 million honkies are behind George.

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The following article was taken from “A Handbook for Radicals; Revolutionaries and Easy Riders” published by the International Liberation School. It is available for fifty cents and is an invaluable guide to small arms weaponry. Send to: People’s Office, 1925 Grove St., Berkeley CA.

America has a long tradition of vigilante paramilitary violence. Usually it has been directed against blacks and Third World people, poor whites and dissident political groups.

...

The Unified Megalopolitan Piece Pow Wow, a choreographed multi-media presentation will debut Thursday, June 8, at 8:00 p.m. in the WSU Community Arts Auditorium, Cass at Putnam.

The magic circus will feature performances by folksingers Phil Marcus Esser, Jan and Lorraine, and Tony Wright; bands including the MC-5, The Passing Clouds, and the Spike-Drivers; lights by The Magic Veil; poetry by John Sinclair and an astrological reading by Billy Reid. Unexpected sympathetic apparitions are also anticipated.

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The forces of political and cultural oppression have opened up a new front. Along with attempts to silence, arrest, and confine the leadership of the black community, the forces of repression inherent in capitalistic societies have begun to strip the young white community of their spokesmen.

The most current manifestation of these repressive forces is the harassment of John Sinclair, MC5 mentor-manager and Minister of Information of the White Panthers.

...

Except for the contemptuous throwing of animal entrails, blood, and a decomposed lamb’s head all over Wayne State University President George Gullen’s office, February 19 was a typical day at the school.

Secretaries were processing records while tender-bellied professors busily tried to seem important. The faceless administrators like Gullen would occasionally leave their 12^th floor cocktail lounge to flirt with their secretaries or sign some orders that a petty aide had drawn up.

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NEW YORK (LNS)—The media of the revolution is mushrooming through America.

The growth of the underground and movement press is phenomenal. Equally notable is the outrage and fear which it creates in those whose interests it opposes. As the radical media grows, so do the attempts to repress it.

In recent weeks, the minions of law and order have been beating on the doors of the underground press. The Great Speckled Bird in Atlanta has been threatened with grand jury indictments for obscenity. Dallas Notes has seen its office torn apart by the cops and its equipment confiscated. Bloomington, Indiana’s Spectator and Ithaca, New York’s First Issue, have had their editors busted for resisting the draft.

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NEW YORK (LNS) — On January 26, two men identifying themselves as “being from the government” dropped a subpoena off at CBS.

The FBI and the Secret Service wanted to get their hands on all the tapes, memos, notes, letters and telephone calls that CBS has concerning the Black Panther Party from mid-1968 to the present, as well as the unedited tapes—outtakes—of interviews with Panther leaders David Hilliard and Eldridge Cleaver.

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(via The Ann Arbor Argus) When the insurrection of July, 1967 began, Detroit police were ready with Schutzstaffel rules.

The Argus secured an official copy of the police riot manual issued in 1966 and signed by Ray Girardin, police commissioner, 1961–68. Among the manual policies still in force are the following.

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Approximately 150 white off-duty patrolmen and detectives, and civilians attacked and beat a small group of Black Panthers and white sympathizers in the Brooklyn Criminal Court Wednesday, Sept. 4^th. The attackers, many shouting “White Power” and wearing George Wallace for President buttons, were responding to a pamphlet distributed by the Law Enforcement Group of New York which urged “all patrolmen and loyal Americans” to “stand up and be counted in court.”

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Poet John Sinclair and MC5 guitarist Fred Smith were brutally assaulted, beaten, MACEd, and arrested by members of the National Security Police and the Oakland County (Michigan) Sheriffs Dept. while performing at a Michigan teen-club on July 23^rd.

The scene took place at the Loft, located on Army Road in Leonard, Michigan (between Pontiac and Lapeer), where the MC5 had been contracted to play a dance job.

...

The Detroit Police are out of control. From the Algiers Motel to Cobo Hall they have left a trail of broken heads, illegal arrests and even murders.

The most recent example of this state of affairs followed right on the heels of the Wallace demonstration [see “Cobo Hall Creep Scene” in this issue] and found drunken off-duty pigs beating and terrorizing black high school students at a church dance.

...

This time it’s Bobby Seale.

With Eldridge in exile, and Huey in jail, the punk-ass power-structure has turned its racist wrath on the Black Panther Party Chairman. Seale’s troubles are simply the latest government attempt to crush the Panthers by ripping off their leaders and vamping on their headquarters.

...

Pun Plamondon, White Panther Minister of Defense, has been busted....again!

This time in Chicago on Sept. 21, where he was attending the Conspiracy 8 trials with Ken Kelley, Editor of the Ann Arbor Argus and Al Rosenfeld of the Chicago Seed.

All three were arrested after being stopped by the pigs and ordered to produce some I.D. while walking on Lincoln Ave. The Pigs exercised their right of stop and frisk and found Pun to be in possession of “a dangerous weapon.”

...

Inhaling deeply on his political hookah, Detroit mayor Jerry Cavanagh, leading contender for the August “Uptight Honkie of the Month” award, attempted to justify his approval of the controversial “stop and frisk” ordinance which moments earlier he had signed into law.

Cavanagh stated that he didn’t think that his action would hurt him politically. “The situation is far different than it was in 1960...” Jerry honked, “ ‘police brutality’ is a thing of the past: The climate has changed completely.”

...

On Sunday, August 24, a group of men attending the Ever-Seven (Evergreen-Seven Mile Road) neighborhood association picnic in Stoepel Park harassed and beat up a group of young people who were also in the park.

There were a number of off-duty police officers at the picnic, as well as several kegs of beer and “law and order” Common Council candidate Jack Kelly.

...

John Sinclair has had his hair cut twice in the last three years. Both times by pigs.

The first time when he left the Detroit House of Correction in July of 1966 after serving a six month sentence for possession of grass.

This time the White Panther Minister of Information had his shoulder-length black hair cut by a guard in the Oakland County jail.

...

It has recently come to light that the Detroit Police Department has armed and trained a volunteer force of 1,500 civilians as Emergency Police Reserves.

This force was created after the 1967 Detroit rebellion to aid police in case of another major bid for freedom by the black community or during a natural disaster.

...