Full list of texts

In these lackluster months of 1976 in which “our revolutionary heritage” is paraded like a hairless, three-legged dog from the past down main street, the people of America are content to follow mere fads and hobbies in place of the nearly infinite possibilities of creative experiments, and revolutionary “outrages”. The most current and popular fad is the C.B. (Citizens Band) radio craze with its own particular jargon, catch phrases and all of the pseudo-sexual connotations that dominant fads command in this sociocarnival.

...

a review of

Under the Banner of King Death: Pirates of the Atlantic by David Lester and Marcus Rediker; Illustrated by David Lester; Edited by Paul Buhle. Beacon Press 2023

When you encounter the English-speaking world’s fascination with the golden age of Atlantic pirating, it’s better understood to think of it less about the act of pirating itself, and more about the relationship of pirates to the state. As Marcus Rediker’s 2004 book’s title indicated, they were the Villains of All Nations, separate from state sanctioned pirating like privateering, seemingly dead to the people of other nations.

...

It’s a paradox and an irony that in a nation so filled with timid, quiescent conformists, that pirates hold such romantic appeal for so many.

Perhaps, due to the dominant mass psychology of submission, it’s the repressed fantasy of transgression and rebellion that drives so many web sites, festivals, games, movies, histories, and re-enactments devoted to the buccaneers.

...

Liberation News Service—The American election itself is the candidate, and millions of Americans are going to vote against it. On election day, the streets, parks and voting booths will belong to the people.

Everyone who sees through the fraud will be doing his human thing—showing up the election for the fake it is.

...

Pistoleros! 2: 1919 is the second volume of the memoirs and notebooks of Farquhar McHarg, a seventy-six-year-old anarchist from Glasgow. Its writing was prompted by the murder of a lifelong friend.

McHarg’s Chronicles record his evolving beliefs and sense of mission, and the remarkable adventures he experienced from the day he sailed into the neutral port of Barcelona in the spring of 1918, a naive but idealistic eighteen-year-old, and 1976. Farquhar’s Chronicles are folk history, bringing the changes that shook the political and social landscape of Spain (and the world) between 1918 and 1976 into the framework of an adult lifetime. They make a vexatious but fascinating story that provides a deep insight into the spirit that moved the selfless, generous, occasionally naive and recklessly idealistic people who were involved in the bitter social struggles that marked the hectic insurrectionary and utopian aftermath of the great imperialist war of 1914 through 1918.

...

Sgt. Gerald Biscup is one of the police officers who was involved in the Veteran Memorial incident on November 2. The Detroit Police Officers’ Wives Association (DPOWA) was holding a dance in the Veterans Memorial that night and many police officers and their wives were in attendance.

Sgt. Biscup’s wife is the president of the DPOWA. He was in attendance.

...

It was a muggy, uncomfortable night at the 17^th District Democratic Headquarters in the all-white Redford section of northwest Detroit. Meeting was the “Democratic Forum,” a conservative faction of the District. The speaker was the noted liberal statesman, Councilman Mel Ravitz.

What was he there to talk about? What else but the recent Detroit insurrection (Part I). And it was amazing how one person, a learned Ph.D. in Sociology, could say so little in such a long speech.

...

a review of

The Monster Enters: COVID-19 and the Plagues of Capitalism by Mike Davis. O/R Books 2020

As he has done in the past for California wildfires and famine in India, Mike Davis contextualizes pandemic disease in a matrix of capitalism and deprivation that make a particular kind of disaster inevitable. In The Monster Enters, Davis chronicles the emergence of a new virus; confusion reigns about how it spreads, how deadly it might prove, and how best to stop it. Some governments downplay the danger for political or economic reasons; others are hamstrung in their response by neglected public health infrastructure. People suffer and die—poor people most of all.

...

“Planet of the Apes” may turn out to be the “Bonnie and Clyde” of 1968.

Many film critics, after giving the picture an unfavorable review, are beginning to have second thoughts about it.

Richard Schickel, of Life magazine, said in a recent retraction: “I should have trusted my instincts, stood up and proclaimed my affectionate regard for the thing right off.”

...

Open City is the service organization for the free community and has already opened a free medical service, a non profit general store, a food co-op, a free University, a counseling center and switchboard that operates twenty four hours a day.

In order to expand it’s operations Open City is scheduling a week of public meetings at the Unitarian Church (corner of Forest and Cass).

...

A Thanksgiving weekend planning conference in Chicago, which was attended by some 50 anti-authoritarians and anarchists from the US and Canada, announced a centennial celebration to take place during May Day week, to commemorate the 1886 Haymarket Affair.

Haymarket was an example of the state and capital’s brutal suppression of the workers’ movement in Chicago culminating in the state murder of five anarchists (four by hanging).

...

In America, the last vestiges of the liberal social contract and public safety net have been virtually erased. Under George W. Bush, the gap between the rich and poor increases at an alarming rate while privatization pushes forward. While Social Security is being slowly eviscerated and replaced by Individual Retirement Accounts, wealthy people can survive growing old while leaving those who cannot to fend for themselves. At the same time, the “richest 1% of Americans,” who, according to Peter Singer, “hold more than 38 percent of the nation’s wealth,” are forming what David Harvey calls “ghettoes of affluence (their ‘bourgeois utopias’),” which undermine “concepts of citizenship, social belonging, and mutual support,” while the poor, who are being “pushed off welfare into a stagnant labor market,” are left to make their way in what, for so many, looks like a post-apocalyptic landscape.

...

Back in October 2002, driving from the hills to the anti-war rally in the city, we had plenty of time to talk. Conversation immediately turned to a possible conspiracy behind the plane crash the previous day. Did Bush’s people assassinate liberal senator Paul Wellstone just days before his possible re-election?

...

Plan Z: A Strategy Conference for Radical Wimmin and Trannies rolled into our radical queer community, IDA, this past June. (“Tranny,” by the way, is a common, chosen term for the transgendered.) The week-long gathering brought together activists from around the country and beyond to the secluded woods of Tennessee. We were happy to open up our home and gardens to enthusiastic agents of social change.

...

Yellow garbage bag ties

pieces of ziplock bags

whole ziplock bags and baggies

tips of tiparello cigars

orange bread bag ties, green ones

juice bottle top

milk bottle top

camera lens cover

pieces of pampers disposable diapers

toy soldier

toy truck wheel

chapstick

coffee stir

pieces of bic pens

...

from The Rag (UPS) — One of the brighter aspects of the sexual revolution is that it offers this generation whole new levels of personal manipulation. Instead of the older concept of “nice girls” being virgins upon marriage, the liberated standards offer people the chance to express their deepest feelings to one another in a natural way. Marriage counselors often say that successful marriages are built upon compatible interests, liking one another, and a satisfactory sex life.

...

Playboy magazine’s June Playmate of the Month, June Gibson, was convicted August 23 on a charge of prostitution in Hollywood, California.

The platinum-blond Miss Gibson was arrested in an apartment July 12 with another woman and a man. In the June Playboy story she said, “I am my own woman. I lead my life according to no social standards other than my own. A Playboy spokesman said he felt the bust (forgive pun) would not stain the girl-next-door image of the Playmates.

...

Related: Clown Army Recruiting Poster

At the July 2005 Carnival for Full Enjoyment in Edinburgh, Scotland, riot police mass on the streets with shields and truncheons, fireproof armor; all very imposing. They use their shields to shove protesters, who are dancing in the street without a permit.

But these are no run of the mill protesters. They are the trained cadres of the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA), which, since its 2003 founding, has been spreading across the world.

...

Since General Motors reported a net profit of $300 million for the first quarter of 1976, our executives have been probable targets for kidnapping by members of the criminal element and left crazies.

The Central Executive Office of GM is composed of fourteen men, most of whom live in the Bloomfield Hills, Birmingham area. Each is a valuable and integral part of the executive team and would command a high ransom if abducted.

...

I pledge obedience

to the flag

of a desecrated America,

and to the multinationals

who let us stand

one nation

of underdogs,

who are exploitable,

with liberty and justice

for sale

—Ron B.

I pledge allegiance

to the bargains of

the United Consumers

at Wal-Mart

and to the stockholders

...

In a surprise but not so surprising appearance at a regular City of Plymouth City Commission meeting on Monday, Oct. 21, twelve anointed Veterans of Foreign Wars of one of the local posts registered their objections to the liberation of our brothers and sisters in that city.

The VFW read a statement which said in part, “We strongly object to the fact that certain publications, namely underground newspapers, have been made available to the students of Plymouth schools. Our objections primarily are to the vulgar and sexually provocative language, the disrespect for law and order and the overthrow of government.” Right on!

...

PLYMOUTH—With the deft hand of a club wielding savage, Garden City District Judge Richard Hammer, sat in Plymouth District Court Sept. 9, and summarily dismissed a suit against the city without allowing the complainant a chance to present his case.

The city’s full-time judge, Dunbar Davis, had previously disqualified himself and had called upon Hammer’s help, in the suit of Rolf Dietrich.

...

On Oct. 2, Judge Dunbar Davis of the 35^th District Court in Plymouth once again reaffirmed his judicial agility by bailing out the primordial Judge Richard Hammer of the 21^st district court in Garden City and the ephemeral Charles Lowe, City Attorney for the City of Plymouth, when he granted Brother Rolf Dietrich’s motion for a new hearing on the suit for $2,999.99 Dietrich is pressing against 11 Plymouth officials for confiscating 15 copies of the Fifth Estate last February.

...

Plymouth, Michigan, is a small town. To say that it is conservative would be an understatement.

It is run by a small group of politicians and pigs, among them Carl “Pig” Berry, the chief narc; Chief of Pigs “Daley” Straley; Harold Gunther, the ex-mayor, who is running for the post of city commissioner; and a few others.

...

On Halloween eve the Chief of the Plymouth pigs, in what was the culmination of an “extended investigation of the circulation and distribution of the Fifth Estate and the Ann Arbor Argus newspapers,” finally arrested Rolf Dietrich as he “did then and there” show, offer for sale, and sell an indecent or obscene paper(s) to wit: The Fifth Estate and The Ann Arbor Argus; contrary to the provisions of the ordinances of the City of Plymouth...” according to the warrant of the arrest.

...

Bay Area-based PM Press celebrated its tenth anniversary of publishing in May with a bang-up party in Oakland, Calif., where staff, authors, and well-wishers howled at political sketch comedy, smashed a captured Amazon delivery drone, and danced the night away to punk rock.

PM was founded at the end of 2007 by a small group of people with decades of publishing, media, and organizing experience. At the outset we strived to create and distribute radical audio, video, and text releases through every available channel in all possible formats. True to one expanded variation of our name, “Print Matters,” however, we’re biased in favor of hardcopy books as the best format in which to communicate ideas for social change.

...

Yesterday we were in your station.

it was not what we had in mind,

that morning—to be pulled over at gunpoint

& shoved upagainstthecar / motherfucker.

surrounded

by five or six cars

with pigs jumping

out of each pigcar

like clowns at the circus do &

their cars too were gaudy with

ads from their sponsors

...

Detective Lieutenant,

Detroit Narcotics Squad,

who has been single-handedly responsible

for busting me on two separate occasions

for possessing and selling marijuana

.

and who stumbled into my new apartment last night by accident

over a year since the last time he saw me

& two years to the day after he first busted me —

...

a review of

Divine Blue Light: for John Coltrane by Will Alexander. City Light Books, 2022

Will Alexander’s latest poems, collected in Divine Blue Light: for John Coltrane, “remain (in the author’s own prefatory words) parallels to nanograms as dazzling wattage.”

A nanogram, a billionth of a gram, is light on its feet, and the poet is asking the reader to be similarly nimble in responding to his lines, images, and appropriations of vocabulary from the sciences, mathematics, and non-Western dialects.

...

Poetry has been a part of the Fifth Estate since its origins, so it is with great pleasure that we print these sent to us by The Alternative Press on the occasion of our 20^th anniversary. The Alternative Press, Grindstone City, MI 48467, does hand-printed broadsides, postcards, bookmarks, etc. from the pressroom of Ann & Ken Mikolowski and comes in three packets a year for $15.

...

a review of

Poems for people who don’t read poems by Hans Magnus Enzenberger, Atheneum Press, NYC. 1968. $2.95. 177 pp.

Hans Magnus Enzenberger, in case you forgot, is Germany’s greatest living poet. This is the first collected translation of his work in English. The English versions, translated by pros like Michael Hamburger and Jerome Rothenberg (and sometimes by Enzenberger himself) are absolutely brilliant.

...

from Cultural Democracy, Spring 1989, P.O.B. 7591, Minneapolis, MN 55407

Anchored in the oily swamp

Near the crumbling dockyard

Lurks an old ship

.

Stumbling past

The foggy glass portholes

I glance at the stowaways:

The Black men and women

Are herded and counted

The aisles sway

...

[Web Archive note: This centerfold insert is a two-sided 15 x 22 inch poster, of which this page can be considered the back side. The other side of the poster is rendered at https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/69-december-26-1968-january-8-1969/poetry-2/ .]

...

from Guerrilla, free newspaper of the streets, Volume 2, Number 2 (Surrealists, 1925 — Artists & Writers Militia, 1968)

Guerrilla is edited by Allen Van Newkirk and Susan Hodges and published occasionally as a broadside of poetry and revolution. It is reprinted here as a special supplement. The newspaper is distributed free in the immediate community. Mail subscriptions by donation. All corporations, federal and state agencies by minimum $10.00 donation. Free to any human being held against his will in any army or prison. Guerrilla, 1107 W. Warren, Detroit, Michigan 48201.

...

by Mick Vranich

America’s totem is the hamburger

don’t look at me look at tv

chains across the trees

generations bread on cheap meat

glass cars with flashy decals

x this z that magnum force

for minute sight

name a town where the demons

don’t lurk lead heads zapped on crack

...

by Lisa Last

My cunt is a battleground

of life and death

pain and pleasure

it opens up to swallow

whole beings

then spits them out on command

My cunt is a battleground

of senators and stockbrokers

of you and me

who gets the last draw

My cunt is angry and mean

it is sad and sorry

...

walls smeared with

burnt campaign posters

cracks papered over

with yellowed collection

notices

.

we pass smokes

swap zip codes

wait for toxic

clouds to dissipate

.

eyes lay in darkness

and wait

.

wait to take it

all back and start

again.

—Jay Marvin

...

One day in the prison yard, the resident grey cat chased heedlessly

A bird, who’d landed on the roof, all enclosed with steely swirls

And slipping through the curling razor wire, stalked

Until it caught her leg and stopping

Shaking as it sliced her paw...open...raw

The sharp barbs cutting fur and muscle, white and wounded to the bone

...

mick vranich

detroit 1989

surrounded and left alone

more marks that don’t connect

movies with the faces as big

as worlds of flesh in bright

light on the thin screen

i don’t have anything to say

about it really you should

talk to someone else like

the wind working up into a

frenzy in the trees bending

...

For 22 years the doors of justice have been closed to Leonard Peltier. Now, the door may be opening a crack. A few months ago AIM activist Dennis Banks announced that Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs, had agreed to hold oversight hearings into the events leading to Peltier’s arrest and conviction. Wounded Knee, the COINTELPRO programs against AIM, Peltier’s illegal extradition from Canada, and the many irregularities in his trial will be among the issues brought to light.

...

As a survivor of more than a decade of psychiatric abuse, I oppose the pseudo-scientific concept of “Mental Illness” entirely. Unlike physical illnesses that are biologically based and sometimes have chemical cures, Mental Illness is a social construct used to justify abuse for the purpose of social control.

...

a review of

Poland: 1970–71; Capitalism and Class Struggle, Informations Correspondence Ourvrieres (ICO), 117 pages; illustrated, Black & Red, Detroit, 1977.

“Nothing draws a crowd like a burning cop car!”

—late 1960s political graffiti

Really just one other thing does—a burning government building—and the cover picture of this pamphlet showing the blazing Communist Party headquarters in the Polish city of Szczecin graphically illustrates what this pamphlet is really all about: the hatred of the people for their rulers and the accessibility of the oppressors. The violent class combat that shook Poland over six years ago is recounted here from both Polish and other European sources and details the massive worker counter-offensive to a price hike and wage freeze.

...

With the endorsement of the Polish Communist Party’s Politburo, on November 10, of a plan that would include the Solidarity union in a new coalition government, it appears that the seemingly endless period of crisis and confrontation in Poland will soon have a conclusion of classic dimensions: A militant working class, as it presses ahead with its demands, will face the combined opposition of both the state and union.

...

This article is being written just as the pressure of a Soviet invasion of Poland is being eased and under the assumption that such an attack is not about to occur. Amid an atmosphere of continuing political crisis, growing worker militancy, continuing economic problems, and constant reshuffling of the Polish government personnel, Solidarity, the recently formed “independent” labor organization, looks like it is about to become a permanent part of Polish society.

...

On September 1, Lech Walesa, the worker who negotiated the end of the recent Polish strike wave, climbed two flights of wooden stairs to the temporary offices of the new Independent Trade Union which he heads. Walesa carried a two-foot crucifix, a bunch of gladiolas and a pennant from a bicycle club, all to adorn the headquarters of what he and the Western press have hailed as a “triumph” for the strikers—the right to organize a labor organization independent of the government-controlled official union federations.

...

As we witness the imposition of military rule in Poland it seems clear it was not something to have been unexpected. However, that realization does nothing to limit our anger and sadness as we helplessly watch tanks and faceless armed men crush at least the public manifestations of a movement that threatened to turn the world upside down.

...

a review of

Poletown: Community Betrayed by Jeanie Wylie. 1989, University of Illinois Press

For centuries, capitalism has systematically destroyed or relocated minority and ethnic groups. A particularly repulsive local example occurred during the last decade in Detroit’s “Poletown” neighborhood, where a thriving community was destroyed to build a General Motors Cadillac plant nobody needed and few wanted.

...

As the 1,000 Philadelphia cops assembled outside the home of the anti-government, anti-technology group called MOVE on Aug. 8, they must have thought it was going to be like shooting fish in a barrel. The forces of state terror were in full battle gear and were assisted by a large contingent of city firemen preparing to evict the group for what really amounted to housekeeping standards that offended the city’s vicious mayor, Frank Rizzo.

...

If you are one of the thousands of persons hoping to get a look at the information collected on you by the Detroit and State police anti-subversive (Red) squads, your chances may be dimming.

Lawyers bringing suit against police intelligence unit spying have been trying to force both police agencies to open the 50,000 dossiers to those named in them, but legal counsel for the city and state have resisted this at every turn.

...

LONDON (Special to the Fifth Estate)—The last remaining group of 25 houses in the path of a contested road construction in London were cleared and bulldozed late last year.

The “No M11 Link Campaign” created Operation Roadblock to stop work on Claremont road in Leytonstone, an East London working class district situated on the southern end of a seven kilometer construction project linking the M 11 motorway from Wanstead to the Blackwall Tunnel.

...

A little bit of justice was done in Detroit the other day.

Gene (Reb) Bell, president of the Highwaymen Motorcycle club, and Ronnie Rose, president of the Branded, appeared in Recorder’s Court on charges of running an illegal drinking spot. The charges stemmed from a police raid on the biker’s clubhouse January 11 when Detroit police confiscated property, wrecked the entire premises, beat one person with a pool cue and arrested everyone present.

...

photo / The Real Doctor Squat

Detroit Police Commissioner Johannes (The Lover) Spreen has called for another “love in” to improve police relations with the community.

His last love in was pretty much of a flop with the New Bethel shooting coming right in the middle of it, so Jo is trying again.

Spreen is a wonderful public relations man and seems sincere in wanting to ease community tensions. The only problem is that he is not in effective control of his force (the reactionary Detroit Police Officers Association is the real boss) and most Detroit cops are going about their 24 hour a day, seven day a week hate in.

...

NEW YORK (LNS)—New York cops are guilty of a regular pattern of arbitrary arrest, physical abuse and courtroom perjury, according to a two-year study recently completed under the auspices of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

The study was conducted by lawyer Paul Chevigny and its findings are published in a new book, Police Power.

...

The honor of launching the 1968 Presidential election campaign fell to the Los Angeles Police Department as Lyndon B. Johnson, fresh from meetings with his Communist counterpart, dropped in on June 23 at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles to grab a quick meal.

L.A. Police Chief Reddin summed up the day’s events succinctly as he debriefed his heroes in the evening: “A perfect police exercise; I am very satisfied. You can’t imagine how good you looked,” he told them, obviously deeply moved. “We’ve got many movies of this, because it’s some thing that’s never happened in this country before... We proved to them that WE own this city, not the rabble.”

...

Detroit’s racist cops apparently unsatisfied at being forced to live in the city they occupy militarily blew their cool at a Detroit Common Council meeting May 17.

Robert Tindal, executive secretary of the Detroit NAACP was speaking strongly against relaxation of the rule requiring officers to live within the city. Several hundred white cops began yelling “racist” and “bigot” at Tindal and then stormed out of the hearing.

...

a review of Police State America: U.S. Military ‘Civil Disturbance’ Planning, edited by Tom Burghardt. April 2002 Arm the Spirit/Solidarity: Toronto, Montreal, San Francisco. Contributions by Frank Morales, Michael Novick, Ron Ridenhour, Arthur Lubow, Mitzi Waltz, Douglas Valentine, and Tom Burghardt.

...

Is Detroit Police Commissioner Johannes Spreen serious about trying to alter the brutal, racist and corrupt nature of the force he commands?

Some think he is.

He ordered the suspension on Nov. 13 of nine policemen in the unprovoked beating of several black teen-agers after a dance given by the Detroit Pig Officers Association (DPOA) at the Veterans Memorial Building. The youth were attending a church dance.

...

Just before midnight one night in early February Cincinnati Earth First! organizer (and longtime Fifth Estate friend) Marie Mason was terrorized by cops after her 16 year-old daughter discovered a cop fumbling with equipment underneath her automobile. Shortly thereafter, the same plainclothes cop and a uniformed henchman broke into Mason’s home; when confronted, they claimed to be searching for “prowlers” who were stealing “catalytic converters” from cars in the neighborhood and then they hastily left the scene.

...

The following are excerpts from the testimony of Sgt. Allen Crouter of the Detroit Police Intelligence (Red) Squad taken from him in connection with the lawsuit asking for disclosure of the contents of some 50,000 police files maintained on Detroit individuals and groups.

Crouter, a longtime foe of the Fifth Estate, was being quizzed in regard to the document appearing on this page by one of the attorneys cooperating in the suit The black lines covering names were required by order of the Court which has forbidden the disclosure of identities until final disposition of the suit. See related article, More on Red Squad in this issue.

...

Nearly a dozen members of the Blue Flu smashed their way into a private party during a cowardly attack on the Highwaymen Motorcycle Club of Detroit.

The blitzkrieg-like attack was carried out in the early hours of Sunday morning Jan. 11, by police assigned to the Western District Morality Squad. This catchy title is a Spreen-style cover for the old-fashioned Vice Squad. The herd operates out of the 16^th (Northwest) Precinct pig pen.

...

Police are always complaining about what dangerous jobs they have.

Some of this is justified; some of it is of their own making. When you are part of an occupying army, the people do tend to get a little uptight and unfriendly towards you.

Still, it’s not as dangerous a job as all that. In New York City (noted crime in the streets center) policemen rank third in hazardous city jobs behind sanitation workers and firemen.

...

“The whole of Poland is on strike today.”

— A worker from the city of Ursus, Poland, June, 1976

On July 20, six Polish workers from Ursus (a suburb of Warsaw) and seven from the city of Random were sentenced to prison terms ranging from three to ten years for their alleged participation in a series of food riots that swept Poland in June.

...

The following was received by the Fifth Estate as a “Declaration to the Libertarian Movement in the West.”

We are a group of anarchists and anti-authoritarian left-wingers in Warsaw who came together in a discussion circle (Sigma) at the beginning of 1980. We all agreed on a general opposition to the existing political system in our country. Most of us came to anarchism via literature. For example, at the beginning of the 1950s some works of the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin were published in Poland in small editions. All of them were accessible to everyone in the public libraries. Another important source for us was a series called Library of Socialist Thought in which, during the 1960s, along with texts of Owen, Saint Simon, and Fourier, some works of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Mikhail Bakunin were published. In addition, a very badly edited collection of works of the most important Polish anarchist, Edward Abromowski, was published.

...

a review of

Lives of the Orange Men by Major Waldemar Fydrych, edited by Gavin Grindon, translated by David French, with an introduction by the Yes Men Minor Compositions/Autonomedia, 2014, 330 pp.

While many historically-minded radicals are familiar with the imaginative counter-cultural actions undertaken by the Dutch Provos in the 1960s, the Orange Alternative’s subversive cultural resistance tactics emanating from Poland in the 1980s are less well known.

...

In the last August 1976 Fifth Estate [#275, Polish Food Riots] we gave a sketchy report (all that was then available) of repression against striking workers centering in the Polish cities of Ursus and Radom. This major strike wave which swept Poland in June was the second in six years that resulted from arbitrary government raises in food prices.

...

I played the guitar once when I was seventeen in front of a crowd of college students. The building had a sign outside that read, Built During World War II. There was a spiked fence that ran a mile around Orange St. and the workers sold cheap beer in the back. I sang a song that was written by yours truly; it was about war and conformity in America.

...

It’s a cold Friday night in November in Portland, Maine. Comrades from around the state have gathered at the Aphodian Theater to support our imprisoned friend, Herman Bell. The benefit features bands and speakers, including former political prisoner Ray Luc Lavasseur.

It is organized by our group of friends and family, Maine Anti-Racist Action, in order to raise funds to help pay for Herman’s family visits. We give out organic squash, anarchist papers including the Fifth Estate, and prisoner information.

...

Last March in Canton, China, an unnamed Peking official replied to questions by the New York-Times, on the subject of political prisoners in China, by stating, “A few intellectuals deprived of free speech is only a minor question. In the Soviet Union, the workers, the peasants and the intellectuals are all being oppressed.”

...

“They’re in there for us; we’re out here for them.”

—IWW slogan

On May 15^th the California State Supreme Court returned Geronimo’s request for a new trial to a lower court. This is good news because at this level his lawyers will be able to present new evidence showing Geronimo’s innocence and the FBI cover-up. A former Black Panther Party member, Geronimo has spent 24 years in prison, making him one of the longest held political prisoners in the world. For more information, contact the Geronimo support committee: PO Box 781328, Los Angeles CA 90016; (213) 294–8320.

...

1969 will undoubtedly be a year which brings increased attacks upon the Movement: the HUAC hearings, the Chicago Grand Jury, and Oakland 7 trial, and repressive actions against GI coffeehouses, are only some of the better publicized incidents of repression and attack on the movement.

The Michigan State Legislature has set up its own little committee (as have several other states) to investigate “breaches of the peace and disorders on university campuses.” Indications are that this committee’s intentions are a broad and general attack upon Movement activity in the state; it is likely that the committee will follow the familiar pattern of using closed hearings, manipulation of the press, subpoenaing of Movement people, threats of legal action, etc., to intimidate and harass Movement activities in the state.

...

“One man of 74 said he opposed the war but declined to write or send a telegram for fear that ‘if they find out, they’ll take my social security away.’ A housewife said, ‘My son’s in college now and I want him to finish. If I send your telegram (opposing the war) to the President, I know he’ll he drafted.’

...

FE Note: The leaflet reproduced on this page was issued following the death late last year of Quebecois nationalist politician and ex-premier of the province, Rene Levesque. It was posted in several locations in Montreal, including Cafe Commune/Comun, a libertarian, worker-run restaurant and gathering place for leftists, as well as anti-authoritarians. Apparently nationalism runs high even in places where one would least expect it, and the leaflet was torn down by persons unknown. Two meetings were held at the Cafe during which the author was asked to explain his motives for publishing rather than to ask who had taken it upon themselves to become the official political censor of the Cafe. As of this writing, the question remains unresolved.

...

The following was sent to us by a friend of the Fifth Estate living in West Germany and lays out the political implications of the “Nuclear State,” and gives a report on several mass anti-nuclear actions. See also “Turn on the Light and Say Goodnight” in this issue.

It is important to point out an aspect of the nuclear energy program which lies—independent from the deathly danger of nuclear energy—in the danger of the loss of personal freedom of each individual. Nuclear power plants do not only imply poisonous radiation, but also inevitably lead to the establishment of a totalitarian “nuclear state” and in the end to a complete control over the individual. Only in this way, argues the state, can the danger of sabotage be prevented. A recent example is the Traube case.

...

It’s not news that much of modernity is all messed up about sex. Contemporary culture fluctuates between moralistic repression and hypersexual expression. Prudes use religion to promote abstinence for unmarried heterosexuals and celibacy for LGBT folks, and the more extreme libertines turn everything erotic and beautiful into a casual commodity.

...

Out of the blue sky, out of

the waters, out of the woods, of the deer,

the beaver, the bush, the bird flies, out

of my people, the blood, out of

so many moons in this place a man

cannot count them, out of

grace with the Great Spirit who

gave us this land, you seek

to push us.

At night, in my dreams,

...

To get some idea of what “Poor Cow” is like, one need only imagine what “Elvira Madigan” would have been like if it had been filmed in the slums of London.

The two pictures are remarkably similar: both deal with impractical young lovers; both use the same impressionistic film techniques; both employ many short, carefully composed scenes; and both follow a visual, rather than a narrative, plot line.

...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — It is almost like any other American city.

Resurrection City has its problems too. Mayor Ralph Abernathy and City Manager Jesse Jackson face: inadequate city funds; housing shortages; water pollution; and, a generation gap that has led to troubles with the city “police.”

But then it isn’t any other city. Resurrection City exists because the King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference decided that the survival of one-fifth of American citizens was so In peril, it had to be dramatized by bringing thousands of poor to camp on the doorstep of Congress.

...

LONDON (LNS)—Millions of Catholics all over the world already staggering under the blow of the Pope’s controversial encyclical on the pill, are in for a new shock.

In a new edict published today by the Vatican press entitled “De Constipatone” the Pope slams down on the use of artificial laxatives to relieve constipation.

...

Like a full moon, like the blazing collapse of a bank in an earthquake, like the comedic sinking of an imperial barge, the death of a pope, and the giddy and liberatory revelation that we are now—if only momentarily—living during a time when there is no pope, is a cause for celebration. Firecrackers, stink-bombs, and rockets should be fired in every aisle and nave, on the steps of every church from Rome to St. Clair Shores! Celebrate! The pope is dead!

...

“Like nineteenth century capitalism, Mass Culture is a dynamic, revolutionary force, breaking down the old barriers of class, tradition, taste, and dissolving all cultural distinctions.”

—Dwight Macdonald

The tribal psychedelic rock culture is today the ripest fruit on the tree of the popular arts, and its roots grope deeply into the much-plowed soil of mass culture. In the Beginning (almost), there was folk art, oral, inconographic, mythic. Industrialism and its inevitably mechanistic culture trampled down the past, creating an urban atmosphere in which the folk arts could not survive.

...

After years of reading essays in the seemingly endless debate over pornography in the feminist and anarchist milieu, one of many questions reverberates with the most resonance for me: will pornography exist in utopia?

Ellen Willis, in her essay “Feminism, Morality and Pornography,” states: “I imagine that in utopia, porn would wither away along with the state, heroin, and Coca-Cola.” But even in utopia, won’t some of us still write and make pictures that express our deepest erotic secrets and desires?

...

a review of

Informant: A documentary directed and written by Jamie Meltzer. Information at informantdoc.com; also Netflix.

In Jamie Meltzer’s 2012 documentary, “Informant,” we’re taken into the home and mind of the FBI informant of the title, Brandon Darby, infamous within U.S. anarchist circles for responsibility for the arrests and conviction of activists during the 2008 Republican National Convention.

...

When Lutxo Rodríguez recalls the local punks and social outcasts of the downtown Lima, Peru district he habituates “dressing in black in the ‘80s,” I smile wryly, remembering the Lower East Side of my own youth. But the urban decay that allowed for the florescence of bohemia and an anarcho-punk scene in this small enclave of a South American capital came “in the context of political violence,” he says.

...

NEW YORK (LNS)—Thirty thousand joints in the mail? Could be...It’s like you never know what you’re going to find in the mailbox—but free dope?

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” the letter said, “you are one of 30,000 lucky persons being sent free this freshly-rolled marijuana cigarette. We are doing this in order to clear the garbage from the air.”

...

It’s finally over. Now we can get back to work. Over the last seven months a surprising number of our comrades were increasingly distracted by the seductive spectacle of humiliating Bush and Cheney on a grand scale. Anarchists I know, respect, and love voted, ferchrissakes, in their overwhelming desire to publicly rub Bush’s nose in it. But in the back of their minds they all knew that a Kerry victory wouldn’t change anything other than infinitesimally retard the atrocities, plunder, and human rights abuses carried out in the name of the USA.

...

Philadelphia, Penna., April 11—Today, U.S. Postal authorities arrested Steven Kuromiya, a former University of Pennsylvania student, for attempting to mail 1,000 posters to peace organizations throughout the country.

The posters depict a young man burning what might be a draft card, with the words “FUCK THE DRAFT” printed below. The man in the photo is a Detroiter, Bill Greenshields.

...

After the disaster that struck the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, during the total failure of the government response, the first health services available in New Orleans were set up by anarchists and local residents.

The hub of this mutual aid effort was the Common Ground clinic, operated from a mosque in the Algiers neighborhood by former Black Panther, Malik Rahim, local residents, out-of-town anarchists and other radical activists. While local, state and federal governments were in a state of chaos and incompetence, neighbors organized their own spontaneous mutual aid, helping to rescue people from flooded homes and procuring food and supplies. Even some bars in the French Quarter established themselves as DIY relief centers.

...

All “modern” technology on the planet today is massive and centralized and demands, by its very nature, centralized political control—authoritarianism is built into those very instruments supposedly designed to free us from the drudgeries of life.

In a revolution that brought about a decentralized, voluntaristic community as the basic mode of human association, technology would become a central question since the operation of it would suddenly depend upon those involved instead of corporations and the state. Unless you want to try to survive in a sub-zero outhouse, technology will have to be re-organized along more human, rational and ecologically sound lines.

...

Argentina may well prove to be the crisis which irrevocably splits the ever-widening crack in the neoliberal armor, especially if things continue to unravel in other parts of Latin America. Recent events in Venezuela, and the possibility of left wing gains in this year’s Brazilian presidential elections, point to a shift away from the “Washington Consensus” across much of the region.

...

Although death and environmental destruction are continuing in Iraq and Kuwait, the Persian Gulf war is over in America. The remains can be seen in the dirt-streaked, plastic yellow ribbons sagging from trees and lampposts and at half-off sales for Desert Storm commemorative t-shirts and bumperstickers which brag “USA Kicks Ass.”

...

The first meeting of the Detroit Chapter of Lemar (Legalize Marijuana) met at the Artist’s Workshop Dec. 19^th, and had a good turn out in spite of a heavy snow.

The purpose of the group is to: 1. Disseminate information concerning marijuana (factual studies as opposed to the bullshit printed in the major daily papers), 2. Gather together people in the Detroit area who are interested in seeing marijuana legalized, 3. Help end or reduce feelings of isolation and paranoia by functioning as an organized group.

...

Before becoming Situationists and involving themselves in the business of social war and cultural revolution in 1960s Europe, Guy Debord and his friends were active in the Lettrist International. They read too much Baudelaire and Marx, drank too much cheap Beaujolais, and aimlessly prowled the streets of Cold War Paris seeking liberty, love, the supersession of art, and an escape from post-Marshall Plan consumer culture while staying one step ahead of the cops. From 1954 to 1957, the Lettrists published a free periodical called Potlatch, which later became the Situationist International’s internal newsletter. Debord explained the choice of title for the publication in an essay in 1959: The goods that a free bulletin such as this distributes are non-salable. Only the further elaboration of these new desires and problems by others can constitute the corresponding return gift.” As would be seen later in Debord’s thinking on the spectacle, Potlatch was meant as a way to critically assess the vicious cultural logic of capitalism, the dead world of commodities, and the ways in which the accepted dynamics of the modern exchange economy had neutralized classical working-class Marxism. Instead, the Lettrists were hearkening to an alternative to the capitalist exchange of equivalence. This alternative was practiced by the aboriginal peoples of the Pacific Northwest famously described by late nineteenth century ethnographer Franz Boas and pre-World War II anthropologist Marcel Mauss.

...

Just driving by, there is little difference between “The Castle” on the Lodge service down the street from the Detroit Committee to End the War in Vietnam offices, and the same kind of run-down building a few blocks away. Both might be photographed by a person just driving by for an exhibit on poverty in Detroit.

...

When Chou En-lai, the first and only Prime Minister of the Peoples Republic of China, died in the beginning of this year, a struggle between the so-called “moderate,” pro-managerial and “radical left,” pro-Maoist factions within the Party burst into the open.

The rift has taken the form of an apparent battle between two personalities within the standing committee of the powerful Politburo of the Communist Party’s Central Committee (China’s ruling body).

...

Minnesota has by far the largest acreage of wild grass of any state in the nation, U.S. Bureau of Narcotics figures show.

Last year county weed inspectors reported that they had discovered 1,723 acres of Cannabis in the state. To the inspectors it’s “just another weed”.

This spring an inspector attended a town meeting in a small Minnesota community. “Did you know you have marijuana growing in the town?” he asked.

...

Just as obtaining job-related income is being made more precarious every day by automation, our sleeping hours are now increasingly under siege by the forces of techno-capitalism. In order to more fully understand the growing vulnerability of our dreams to corporate manipulation, the recent phenomenon of “dream incubation”, which involves the implantation of marketable dreams in our heads, is worthy of further investigation.

...

Kitty Genovese died in Queens while fifty people watched.

Thomas Poindexter lost his seat on the Detroit Common Council when it was reported that he saw a crime being committed and did not even bother to call the police.

Two nameless hippies were arrested on Prentis on Tuesday night August 8, while all the flower folks and their bike-less motorcycle type colleagues just stood around and gaped. Two cops had just walked on their beat down Prentis, gotten lost in the shadows then reappeared from the alley at the end of the block where they had started out. They had two handcuffed prisoners. The prisoners, somewhere between teenyboppers and hippies looked to be about 19 years old. They stooped as they walked down the street hands bound behind their backs.

...

The cops and the Feds are sure Dave Valler is behind the Detroit bombings. They’ve told that to The Detroit News and they have constantly tailed Dave (see last issue).

Their only problem is that they have no evidence to directly connect him with the dynamitings. But leave it to the ever ingenious pigs to get their man.

...

David Valler, convicted dope user, accused bomber, ex-candidate for President, and of late, Detroit News feature writer, seems to have pretty well squared things away with his former adversaries—the pigs.

Valler is doing 7 to 10 years in Jackson for two counts of violating the Michigan Narcotics Act and is the Principle defendant in a conspiracy case involving the bombings that took place in Detroit and Ann Arbor last year.

...

Men seek the truth, Fascists deal in words.

This becomes evident early in our lives if we care to see it for what it is.

Remember the teacher that would ask for apologies in front of the class (and hovering principal)? Remember the parents who would politely beseech our repentant words in front of important guests at the dinner table? They didn’t give a damn whether we meant what we said, they just wanted to hear it.

...