Full list of texts

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.

...

October 8^th, Jack Forrest was awakened by the noisy spectacle of nine Federal agents bouncing off the vestibule wall of his mother’s apartment on Pingree.

Streaming through the kicked-in door in wild disarray, they gathered their forces around Jack’s bed and, guns drawn, proceeded to shout some dialogue that they had heard on television.

...

MONTEREY, Calif. (LNS)—The Army is taking a Danang-sized shelling as the climactic phase of the Presidio “mutiny” case enters its third week here at Fort Ord.

In a sharp departure from earlier trials, with defendants taking the stand to apologize for the Oct. 14 sit-down, or not testifying at all, Terence Hallinan’s clients have begun testifying that their actions were justified.

...

TACOMA, Wash. (LNS)—Good news in the Presidio “Mutiny” case: Linden Blake, the third of the 27 stockade prisoners to escape while awaiting trial, has arrived safely in Canada. And the Department of the Army, feeling the unaccustomed weight of public pressure, has cut Nesrey Sood’s sentence down to two years.

...

SAN FRANCISCO (LNS)—Military justice, it says in the manuals. But to observers of the trial, the two words form a mutual contradiction, one that emerged more starkly than ever when Pvts. Lawrence Reidel and Louis Osczepinski were sentenced on Feb. 15, to 14 and 16 years of imprisonment for their part in the non-violent Presidio protest last October. (See Fifth Estate, last issue.)

...

FLASH—As we go to press we have learned that 12 of the Presidio GI’s have been found guilty of mutiny and two of disobedience. The verdict came after the five-member board deliberated six hours at the end of the 35 day trial. Sentences have not yet been passed.

FORT ORD, Calif. (LNS)—The defense has rested in the climactic phase of the Presidio Mutiny case.

...

Subtle and more unsubtle pressure has caused Detroit’s three up front papers to experience difficulties in the last few weeks in getting their papers printed.

The Inner-City Voice, a black revolutionary paper, the Warren-Forest Sun, a freek paper, and this newspaper all have been victims of attempted suppression.

...

The Midwest “Underground” Press Conference originally scheduled for Saturday, May 20, at WSU has been called off until further notice due to the machinations of Dean J. Don Marsh of Wayne State University, who refused the WSU Artists’ Society classroom space for the Conference.

Since neither the FIFTH ESTATE or the SUN has adequate facilities for holding such a Conference, it will have to wait until facilities can be arranged. In the meanwhile, people who wish to publish “underground” or independent newspapers, tabloid or mimeograph format, can consult with the staffs of Detroit’s two community newspapers—the FIFTH ESTATE, 923 Plum Street (3^rd floor) and THE SUN, 4863 John Lodge (at Warren).

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In response to Tech Examined a letter from Jeffrey Vega, FE #315, Winter 1984.

Jeffrey Vega would like to define primitive cultures “in the terms of class society” so he can assimilate them to the “historical materialist perspective.” In his mind this is a legitimate operation, since unlike “the self-definition of tribal society” (presumably to him a limited form of knowledge), a class analysis enables us to uncover “the dynamics which led to the development of class society.”

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This article is excerpted from “The Search for the Primitive,” an essay written by Stanley Diamond in 1963 and later revised and expanded for inclusion in his book In Search of the Primitive (Transaction Books, 1981). We are reprinting this excerpt because it is relevant to both our ongoing discussions of war and of primitive society, indigenism and modernity.

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“Dr. Alfred Nobel, a man who became rich discovering new ways to kill more people faster than anyone ever before, died yesterday,” declared one French newspaper obituary in 1888.

Nobel, a Swedish chemist, engineer, inventor, and munitions industrialist, had become obscenely wealthy producing and selling weapons all over the world. In addition to getting rich through his commercial activities as a shameless merchant of death, Nobel also owned hundreds of patents, the most lucrative of which was his 1867 process for weaponizing the dangerously unstable explosive compound nitroglycerine into an easier-to-handle form that he called “dynamite.”

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The Autonomadic Bookmobile is an independent press bookstore and Info-Shop on wheels. It has spent a good part of the last year touring the US, visiting over a hundred cities, covering over 50,000 miles. The Bookmobile supports small, independent and radical publishers of books, zines, newspapers and pamphlets, against the corporate hegemony on printed matter and ideas by chain bookstores and distributors.

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Through the uproar of the sustained near-uprisings of Covid summer 2020 against police violence and systemic racism, one could sometimes hear more radical voices. The assertion from them that everybody behind bars should be recognized as a political prisoner is no longer completely beyond consideration. If so, then it’s worth looking at how radical prisoners have conceptualized their experiences within the state’s institutionalization of punishment.

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During the last score of years there have been numerous prison outbreaks and attempted prison escapes throughout the United States. The media has invariably labeled these as “riots” and acts of “dangerous criminals.” What the media deliberately fails to reveal are the conditions within prisons that lead prisoners to risk their lives in attempting to escape or daring even to protest (as took place at Attica when more than forty prisoners and guards were massacred).

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The State of California has recently stepped up its attacks on Russell (Little and Joseph Remiro (imprisoned for the 1973 SLA assassination of Oakland, Calif. school official Marcus Foster) who are currently serving life terms.

In recognition of his two years of non-violent behavior in the maximum security Adjustment Center at San Quentin prison, promises were made to Russ Little that he would be transferred to a less restricted unit in another prison. These promises were made by counselors at San Quentin as well as various administrators in the California Department of Corrections over a period of five months.

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Prisoners wanting to read anarchist literature: Black Market will send you a general packet of anarchist literature. If you have requests for specific literature, we will try to get it for you (and probably succeed). All free. To all persons who can help, Black Market has been sending anarchist literature free to prisoners for over 6 months. The costs are getting too much for us alone. We need help in the form of used books & pamphlets & leaflets having to do with anarchism (-ists), or a little cash to buy literature specifically requested. Write or send help to: Black Market, box 306, Cambridge, Mass 02139.

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FE staff note: Last issue we sent out 115 sample copies of the Fifth Estate to prisoners, the result of a listing as a free publication in a prison resource handbook. Rather than automatically granting free subscriptions to those who requested them, we asked that prisoners read and evaluate our publication and let us know if they wanted to be put on our list. Gratifyingly, more than a third responded with positive and strong replies, some of which are printed below.

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Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt has been incarcerated in California’s maximum security prisons for almost 20 years. He was recently transferred to Tehachapi, in southern California, far from his growing base of support in the Bay Area.

On July 28, 1972 Pratt—a much-decorated Vietnam veteran and then head of the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP)—was sentenced to a seven-year-to-life term for the “Tennis Court Murder” of a white school teacher in Santa Monica in 1968. FBI infiltrator Melvin “Cotten” Smith, who was then head of Panther security in Los Angeles, has since come forward with details of the FBI/LA red squad plan to frame Geronimo. Now doing a life stretch of his own in Kentucky, Smith described a meeting in which agents and cops sat around trying to figure out which unsolved murder would be the best to pin on Pratt.

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Sept. 30, 1969

Dear People,

Sorry I haven’t written in so long but I wanted to get settled up here before writing you again. There seems to be a lot more going on out there in the streets than happens here in prison, but then that seems to be the idea of locking people up, so they won’t be able to participate in the activities they enjoy.

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A review of

Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, Alexander Berkman, Pittsburgh: Frontier Press, 1970 [available from FE Books, see page 44 for information).

For political organizers, the great worth of Berkman’s Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist is the evolution of his political thought during incarceration. He is plunged into the bowels of the beast, stripped of his ultimate sense of worth, yet continuously analyzes his own positions and beliefs.

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A couple of quick prison notes: Revolutionary prisoners at Washington State Prison in Walla Walla have published Vol. I, No. 4 of the Anarchist Black Dragon, a newsletter. Written by the locked-down brothers from the collective of the same name, the publication features articles of both prison news and general anarchist interest. The Dragon is printed on the outside by supporters and is available from Countdown, PO Box 1163, Madison, Wisconsin, 53701; a small donation would be appropriate. However, the Anarchist Black Dragon Collective may be written directly at Box 520, Walla Walla, Washington, 99362.

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NATCHEZ, MISS.--Within the last month, more than 500 people have been arrested in the city of Natchez, Mississippi. Although news of the arrests received wide circulation, the brutality and the indignities which the prisoners were forced to endure during their stay in Parchman State Penitentiary has until now been kept secret. However, with the release of some of the arrested, the story is finally getting out. What follows is the report by two of those recently released:

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Peter Kropotkin, called the “anarchist prince” because of his origins in the Russian nobility, stands out among the many classic anarchist writers for his breadth of subject matter and his concern with the problems of daily life. The following essay was included in a 1924 collection of his writings entitled Kropotkin’s Revolutionary Pamphlets, with an introduction by Roger Baldwin.

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Prison is

Hushed and heavy

Like water near the Ocean’s floor,

Then loud and bitter,

Like fractious storms lashing the sky

Everything cement and nerves

And too many years gone by...

The heart requires a place to rest

From all its maddened wanderings

The raft of the Medusa tossed

And trembling in the sea.

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We received word in mid-October that Minneapolis’ Profane Existence magazine was printing its last issue. The collective also announced cessation of their wholesale and mail order distribution, and record production operations.

Besides noting some financial difficulties, this prolific group, cited being “overwhelmed,” “we have no personal lives,” and “the pay sucks.” In other words, terminal burn-out after a decade of what they define as “a very all-consuming undertaking.”

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The following text first appeared in a special anti-nuclear issue of the Fifth Estate (FE #297, April 18, 1979). It was written earlier in that year just after an accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in eastern Pennsylvania. As news of the accident spread, official messages insisted, “There is no need to overreact, the situation is stable, the leaders have everything under control,” but eventually people living near the plant had to be evacuated.

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This special section of the Fifth Estate Newspaper was produced shortly after the April 1979 disastrous events took place at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant at Middletown, Pennsylvania.

The first two articles were composed in response to the accident. “Eight Theses on Nuclearism” discusses what confronts us as a species, while “Progress and Nuclear Power” traces the history of the destruction of this continent by industrial technology. The remaining material was compiled from past issues of this newspaper and aptly describes the threat which nuclear power represents in any form.

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

—IWW slogan

The fight for our imprisoned comrades can take many forms of solidarity. The protest at Carswell prison in Fort Worth on June 5 was a rowdy and exciting example of what support can look like.

Demonstration at Carswell Federal Prison, June 5, part of the Fight Toxic Prisons conference.—photo: Jordan E. Mazurek

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A review of

Promise Me You’ll Shoot Yourself by Florian Huber. Little Brown/Hachette 2019

“Follow Your Leader!” reads the joyous anti-Nazi sticker portraying Adolph Hitler blowing his brains out with a pistol. And in 1945, as the Soviet Army rolled in from the East and Allied forces held the West, thousands upon thousands of “ordinary Germans” did just that in wave of mass suicide. They turned their guns upon themselves, prepared nooses for their entire families, and gobbled up the widely available cyanide ampules distributed by Nazi Party functionaries. Historian Florian Huber finds the suicide wave fascinating, and the widespread allegiance to Hitler and the Reich inexplicable, but the resultant book, Promise Me You’ll Shoot Yourself, falls flat—it’s the German historian equivalent of the 93^rd New York Times feature article about white Midwesterners who like Donald Trump.

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The Dadaists were writers and artists who made it their raison d’etre to destroy culture, or at least literature and art. They carried to its ultimate and absurd conclusion the distinction between form and content in art, rejecting literary conventions, the frame round a canvas, and even the ‘laws’ of normal speech--all these restricted and deformed the authentic complexity of mental reality.

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Reprinted from Up Against The Wall Street Journal

“Watch out, he’s a bad one,” said one of the women in the picket line at Gate 2. The man to whom she referred was trying to drive his white Mustang through the moving pickets. Two pigs assisted him by clearing a path through the line. Three days before the man had run his car into the woman who shouted the warning.

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“Madness cometh sometime of the passions of the soul.”

-- Bartholomew of England

“Zounds! Bethumped by words!”

-- Richard II

The critics are raving about it. Sold out shows and long lines testify to a growing public obsession with it; indeed, everything having to do with the film version of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” is having mind-boggling repercussions.

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