Full list of texts

Forty years ago, like today, the country found itself in an unpopular war of imperial domination to vanquish, not “Islamo-Fascism,” but Communism. And, like then, the political system was thoroughly corrupt and in the hands of a cabal of stooges with nightmarish plans.

Like so many others, when an election year rolls around and party politics rules the “news” with its loathsome trivia and journalistic manipulations, I long for refuge in an idyllic retreat deep in a forest far away from all media. But that isn’t an option for me, nor, I suspect for most people.

...

The following is an excerpt from Anarchy in the Age of Dinosaurs by the Curious George Brigade (see facing page for a review). For more information, see www.ageofdinosaurs.net or contact yellowjack@ageofdinosaurs.net

Race is an issue that has long scared and perplexed radicals in the US. White anarchists today are especially dismayed by a lack of racial diversity, especially of blacks, among the folks who join them in the streets and collective work.

...

The voter is a man who comes where he is summoned one day like a flunkey, to one who whistles for him as for a dog trained to obey, who comes on the said day only and not on any other day. He is a man who comes when authority says: “The moment is here to sanction one more time a system established by others and for others than yourself.

...

This is the greatest honor of my life. It is with sincere humility that I accept this federal indictment. It is the fulfillment of childhood dreams, climaxing years of hard work and fun.

I wish to thank all those who made it possible: my mother, my father, brother, wife Nancy, Stew and Gumbo, Spartacus, Tom Paine, the Boston Tea Party, Ho, Che, Fidel, Huey, Eldridge, Lenny Bruce. Walter Cronkite, and last but not least—Richard J. Daley.

...

My experiences on a recent trip to The Gambia on Africa’s west-central coast, brought to mind the historic leftist dream that the state will wither away once workers have overturned capitalism.

Here’s an irony of history. In the last 15 years, in the industrially undeveloped world, the state has withered away, not because of its supersession, but due to the extension of global capitalism. Talk of state collapse on capital’s periphery doesn’t mean governments have completely vanished, but that many states have diminished from being the totalized agencies of control we experience in Northern tier countries.

...

Militarized police attack unarmed demonstrators at a protest against the G20 meeting in Toronto, June 2010

In a packed Toronto courtroom, November 23, the prosecution dropped all conspiracy charges against the so-called “Main G20 Conspiracy Group,” 17 organizers from Southern Ontario and Quebec.

The G20 Summit, a meeting of international finance ministers held in Toronto in June 2010, was met with huge protests, followed by unprecedented mass arrests: 1105 people detained, and over 300 charged. Countless others were targets of police brutality and violations of fundamental human rights. Of those charged, almost 200 had charges dropped.

...

for Diane di Prima

St. John’s Eve (Midsummer) 2006

It’s the idea

of code that’s cool not the actual

bother of decipherment: the utopia

of not having been in a state of

anticipation or regret. The Dowager Empress

took fresh honeysuckle petals in her green tea — yes even Civilization had its finer moments

...

NIGREDO

Our darkening world has dressed itself up in vestment of blue Void. Has lain on its self-discrowned head the lazy eyelid corpse. Vacuum abhorrent naturam. That’s what they say. What they say. Forests burn in a world that has become an alchemist’s fire. In this stage, our naked feet are frozen, are hard. And we watch with drooping gaze a silent shadow, drifting allway over Deep. Hope? The hidden bedbug, mere bit of lice. And the Spectacle has hired itself a team of talented, well-trained exterminators. We are vampirized by our own atmospheres here, sucked well and through by selfset traps.

...

“Junk yields a basic formula of ‘evil’ virus: The Algebra of Need. The face of ‘evil’ is always the face of total need. A dope fiend is a man in total need of dope. Beyond a certain frequency need knows absolutely no limit or control. In the words of total need: ‘Wouldn’t you?’ Yes you would. You would lie, cheat, inform on your friends, steal, do anything to satisfy total need. Because you would be in a state of total sickness, total possession, and not in a position to act in any other way. Dope fiends are sick people who cannot act other than they do. A rabid dog cannot choose but bite. Assuming a self-righteous position is nothing to the purpose unless your purpose be to keep the junk virus in operation. And junk is a big industry... I lived in one room in the Native Quarter of Tangier. I had not taken a bath in a year nor changed my clothes or removed them except to stick a needle every hour in the fibrous grey wooden flesh of terminal addiction. I never cleaned or dusted the room. Empty ampule boxes and garbage piled to the ceiling. Light and water long since turned off for non-payment. I did absolutely nothing. I could look at the end of my shoe for eight hours. I was only roused to action when the hourglass of junk ran out. If a friend came to visit—and they rarely did since who or what was left to visit—I sat there not caring that he had entered my field of vision—a grey screen always blanker and fainter—and not caring when he walked out of it. If he had died on the spot I would have sat there looking at my shoe waiting to go through his pockets. Wouldn’t you? Because I never had enough junk—no one does.”

...

a review of

The Algiers Motel Incident by John Hersey. 397 pages, Hardbound, $5.95 Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Paperback, $1.25, Bantam Books

Language is loaded with euphemisms, and the title of John Hersey’s The Algiers Motel Incident is a prime example. “Algiers” suggests an Afro-orientation, but “Incident” is the stinger. Albert Cleage writes of “the Algiers motel massacre”, and in mid-August of 1967 Doc Greene began a Detroit News column with a sentence which contained a likely title: “The thing that gets me about the Algiers Motel slayings of Aubrey Pollard, Fred Temple, and Carl Cooper is the superb manner in which the police set about solving these homicides.” The irony builds in that article.

...

“Plastic settled in river

“SARNIA, Ontario—A cloud of plastic powder that was released into the air and settled in the St. Clair River poses no health threat, says a Canadian spokesman for the Midland-based Dow Chemical Co.

“The estimated 4,000 pounds of the polyethylene powder used to make milk jugs accidentally was released by the company about 10 p.m. Thursday, Dow Chemical Canada Inc. spokesman John Musser said Friday.

...

In response to “Secular Antinomian Anabaptist Neo-Luddism,” FE #372, Spring, 2006]

Dear Fifth Estate,

When I saw the cover of FE which promised an article on the Amish and Anarchists, it piqued my interest. I live in Amish country, Pennsylvania. An Old Order Amish family are my next door neighbors.

...

A former community center that hosted a youth rock scene is now being occupied by activists, seemingly ignored by the authorities. A few blocks away, urban farms are bright patches of green in the landscape, producing vegetables and fruits for the community.

Oakland? Detroit? Manhattan’s Lower East Side?

...

a review of

Now Let’s See What You’re Gonna Do: Poems 1978–2002 by Katerina Gogou; translation by A.S., forward by Jack Hirschman. fmsbw press 2021

A biographer of Katerina Gogou terms her “the anarchist poetess of Exarcheia,” the so-called “edgy alternative” Athenian neighborhood with its political murals and anarchist bookshops. I have been to Athens, once, but the tour guides never pointed us that way. So, I will take on faith a biographer’s description of Gogou, who died in 1993 by her own hand, as “Greece’s greatest anarchist poetess.”

...

Murray Bookchin is the editor of Anarchos magazine, a periodically appearing journal of anarchist thought published in New York City. Copies of his magazine and other writings are available from Anarchos, P.O. Box 466, Peter Stuyvesant Station, N.Y., N.Y. 10009 or may be picked up in person only at the Fifth Estate office.

...

Rarely is an entire region of the world so caught up in the collapse of hierarchical politics as Eastern Europe of a year ago. The infamous “spectre of anarchy” astonished and horrified Communist, dissident and Western politicians alike as millions suddenly demanded control of their own lives. [1]

Tragically, but predictably, politicians of all sides—Party members and bureaucrats of the old regime, oppositional leaders and Western “advisors”—moved rapidly to protect their interests. Thus, Polish General Czeslaw Kiszczak, Interior Minister of the Jaruzelski regime, began talks in February 1989 to restore Solidarity’s legality in order to prevent the “anarchy and destruction” of its original phase (1980–81). [2]

...

“There’s a kind of desire that, whenever it arises, is censored scientifically, morally, politically. The ruling reality tries to stamp it out. This desire is the dream of a second reality.”

-- P.M., bolo’bolo

In the introduction to his anarchist utopian book, bolo’bolo, author P.M. describes why we need visions of positive futures. Second realities, as he calls them, are necessary, else we find that “the only choice [is] that between the Machine’s own dream and the refusal of any activity.”

...

The animal hungers

for light and strength

He hungers

.

Killing himself while hunting

Groaning

fatally and the last

.

Hunger springs

Sleepless

.

There are beasts without burden

that dance / grow fiery

They warily drink water

.

Famine distorts

Tea or sugar or bread

or fuel

or a tender hand?

.

The animal hungers

for goodness

.

The famished grow fat

leaving scraps for neither him

nor her

who remained with her cubs

.

The animal hungers

Tramps through trenches

.

up slopes

Sets out

.

He rears up on both paws and ransacks a beehive

Spreads his wings and throws himself from a cliff

.

The animal hungers

when he moves with the flock

or sells his lungs, his eyes

his goodness, his fury

hangs from meat hooks

.

There is no slaughterer without slaughterhouses

there is a journal. a story. a bus

.

and the barrio where he who writes grew up

.

There are massacres

.

Slaughterers dressed as generals in plastic aprons

or doctors in white coats

the chemists the priests enrobed

.

Or gold buttons / stripes

or suits

Bare-chested

or sweaty

.

When the animal hungers

Everything trembles

Books crumble

The earth quakes

.

Autumn flowers bloom in the garden

In the gazebo unreal and necessary

the breeze rushes

people stroll by

.

Home is one

who smokes sitting in the patio of his house

or in a hotel

or silently waits in the corner of his

infancy

or lingers outside

until they open the door

.

Hunger squeezes through crevices

Cuts grooves

Breathes

Climbs fences

Feeds

.

But the animal doesn’t wait

grows weak or devours

He is hungry

and cold

.

He doesn’t know how to live

with pain and anguish

but tries

.

He prepares tea / bathes

or doesn’t

.

He has had enough

.

Slurps

Dips his bread

.

Sits still a moment

...

A 1990 Earth First! Redwood Summer blockade. Judi Bari’s key role led to the attempt on her life. The annual EF! Round River Rendezvous will be June 27-July 6 in Wisconsin’s Nicolet National Forest. Contact the RRR committee at 731 State St., Madison WI 53711; (608) 250–8378 or see the next EF! Journal for information.

...

Collage by Freddie Baer

All the city mourns, and the crumpled masses languish at the gates, and the cry of all the freeways has gone up.

The politicians have sent their runners to the waters, but they have come with all their vessels empty.

The limousines fester in long lines like links of meat waiting to be roasted in the devil’s barbecue.

...

Amidst ecstatic visions, Anarchy appears. She says:

Whenever you need anything, once a month at the full moon, assemble in the wilderness—in the forest, on the heath, by the seashore—for the state of nature is a community of freedoms. Recognize the imminence of total liberation and as a sign of your freedom, be naked in your rites.

...

Amidst ecstatic visions, Anarchy appears. She says:

Whenever you need anything, once a month at the full moon, assemble in the wilderness--in the forest, on the heath, by the seashore--for the state of nature is a community of freedoms. Recognize the imminence of total liberation, and as a sign of your freedom, be naked in your rites.

...

Newsreel-ARM — Hollywood began to appreciate some years ago that the vision of life it was projecting for the people was increasingly irrelevant to their lives and uninteresting. It was a basic marketing problem—how to catch up with a broad social process that has some of the aspects of pre-revolutionary alienation from the system, without giving into it and confirming its concrete revolutionary potential?

...

a review of

James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. Yale University Press, 2009, cloth, 442 pp., $35

How could any black-and-red-blooded anarchist resist a book with this title?

Admittedly, it’s an expensive treat, but I’m very glad at last to discover a writer I should already have known: James C. Scott, who (like David Graeber) is an anthropologist at Yale and a self-confessed anarchist.

...

The art of Ricardo Levins Morales is rooted in the soil of the struggles that shape our lives. Inspiring, empowering and validating, his images both document and embody collective visions of unity in the face of power.

As a result of working with the Northland Poster Collective in South Minneapolis for over thirty years, Levins Morales has developed core insights about how art can be a powerful part of strategy in movements.

...

October 21, 1992 marked 25 years ago that a huge anti-war demonstration swept past the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. and over the bridges into Virginia, wave after wave of young anti-warriors crashing against the walls of the Pentagon.

GIs blocking entrance to the Pentagon, Oct. 21, 1967. Some demonstrators tried to levitate the structure while others put flowers in the soldier’s gun barrels. FE photo/Frank H. Joyce

...

On September 2, 3 and 4 the Lafayette Park Players presented their production of “A Thurber Carnival” at the Chrysler School Auditorium. The cast has worked together only once before last fall in “Monique”; and, although the program notes show that many members have extensive background in other plays, the amateur character of this attempt was painfully obvious.

...

The events of the week of anti-war resistance which began October 16, and which have continued to this writing—including the assault on the war profiteers at the Rackham Building on Wayne State’s campus on October 24 and 25—are of profound significance for the nation and the Movement.

Thousands of whites have in fact moved from protest and dissent to resistance. As many black people were forced to do some years ago, increasing numbers of whites have been forced to conclude that the government is illegitimate. The “legal” structures for change which are presumed to exist in this country are in fact meaningless. White people, in short, do not have any power either—or at least they do not have the power to change anything, only the power to acquiesce. Congress has been petitioned. The Executive has been implored. And still babies die. “Napalm is Johnson’s Baby Powder,” said one sign.

...

a review of

Reeling by Lola Lafon, translated from French by Hildegarde Serle. Europa Editions 2022

When violent acts seem isolated, rash, inexplicably singular, this gives all those forced to witness or have knowledge of it a way out. To rest somewhat easy in the knowledge that the particular and specific circumstances under which the violent acts took place are unlikely to reoccur.

...

In fall 1997, in Sechelt, a small coastal town in southwest British Columbia, Canada, Jamie Elder, owner of the Unity Skateboard Shop and drop-in point for local youth, approached me about painting a mural on the side of the trailer that housed his store which faced the highway directly opposite from a McDonald’s.

...

In the hills of Tennessee, about an hour east of Nashville, on the outskirts of Dismal (population zero), there exists a barn. It’s an ordinary old barn from all outward appearances—except for a few anti war banners and the buzzing, whirring hum of electricity. Inside, the scene is anything but what Ma and Pa Kettle would have intended.

...

Bill Ayers

Fugitive Days (2001) $10

James Bell

The Last Wizards (2002) $5.00

Alexander Berkman

Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist $15.00

— What Is Anarchism? $14.00

Hakim Bey

Millennium (1996) $8.00

— Immediatism (1992) $10.00

— T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone (1991) $8.00

Bureau of Public Secrets

...

Send check, money order, or well concealed cash to:

Fifth Estate Books

PO Box 6

Liberty, TN 37095

Please add $2 shipping/handling for first item, $1 for the second and subsequent one, etc...

Thanks for your recent order!

Most book and CD purchases come with a surprise sampling of current zines and radical propaganda.

...

When you order books from the Barn, you support a collective and help keep the Fifth Estate physical space solvent. With your help, we’re trying to sustain an alternative to the commercialism of retail or web-based booksellers.

NEW Globalize Liberation: How to Uproot the System and Build a Better World. Edited by David Solnit. Almost 500 pages! City Lights. 2004. $18. See the review on page 50.

...

The barn is bursting with new titles & more to come. If you’d like us to review and/or distro your independent publication, bring it on

Midnight Notes, Auroras Of the Zapatistas (2001) $14.00

James Bell, The Last Wizard (2002) $12.00

Paul Garon, The Devil’s Son-in-Law: Petiie Wheatstraw (2003) $15.00 (w/CD)

...

Book distribution has been a mainstay of our collective for many years. We believe that reading can be a revolutionary activity, and in that spirit, we continue this service.

We feature books by Fifth Estate editors, contributors, collaborators, friends, and other books that have either been read or recommended by members of the collective. If you have a book you’d like to see offered here, send it along. Like the magazine, this project is volunteer-run and all proceeds go back into the collective.

...

<em>

Staff Note:</em> The following is a first-hand account of the demonstration and events leading up to it. See also in this issue: West German Protest.

BROCKDORF, Germany (LNS)—Up to now we have used only legal ways—filing lawsuits and so on—but have always made it clear that if legal means didn’t work, we would occupy the site, as was done in Whyl.

...

FE Note: What follows are thoughts on the revolutionary upsurge which shook France 20 years ago. Although ultimately unsuccessful, the message is that revolt is possible in modern society. In ours today, it is not the cops which prevent revolt, but the inertia of what is--the weight of the present.

The introductory section is from the fine new magazine, No Picnic, Spring 1988, Box 69393, Stn. K, Vancouver BC, Canada V5K 4W6; $1.50 per issue. The piece from Fredy Perlman, written from a participant’s viewpoint, appeared in Worker-Student Action Committees, co-authored by R. Gregoire, 1968, $2 from FE Books. The excerpt from Jacques Camatte appeared originally in FE #295, November 3, 1978 and is available at $1. Also recommended is Paris: May 1968, by Solidarity, available from FE Books for $3.

...

a review of

“The Battle of Algiers”

How surprised we were three years ago by the success of “To Die in Madrid,” Francisco Rosi’s remarkable compilation of old news films from the Spanish Civil War. The distinction of that film was the poetic way in which it shaped and explained the ironic progress and outcome of the struggle. And now we have a new film, though in much the same vein, which is historically more immediate.

...

Editors’ Note: The Fifth Estate contains virtually no news coverage of the Battle of Chicago. For once the overground media did its job and to repeat the horror stories here would only be redundant. Rather, we feel that it is important to put the Chicago events within a perspective and provide an analysis of the events that occurred.

...

During the months of May and June 1968, the mass strikes and uprisings that occurred in France shook the foundations of an unsuspecting world. This crisis for capital appeared at a time when newspapers like The New York Times and le Monde were describing the French people as bored and lethargic and they weren’t completely inaccurate—the French were bored with their lives under capitalism and their boredom exploded onto the streets of Paris on May 18^th creating a new reality for several weeks.

...

A review of

The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle, David Solnit and Rebecca Solnit, AK Press, 2009, $12, www.akpress.org

Having been in Seattle for the “insurrection” against the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1999, I looked forward to reading David Solnit’s account of the days leading up to November 26 and his interpretation of the aftermath of those events. I took part enthusiastically in many of the demonstrations and blockades of which he writes, and ran in the Black Bloc.

...

a review of

A Desert Pilgrim’s Bestiary by Anthony Walent, author; Maurice Spira, Illustrator. Eberhardt Press, 2019

A Desert Pilgrim’s Bestiary is both archaic and modern. Anthony Walent has been employing this very tension in his zine, Communicating Vessels, for many years, that is assembled and designed using functioning, but antique typesetting equipment.

...

LONDON (PWS) Beatle John Lennon is scheduled to head the list of guest stars set for the Rolling Stones’ first American television special, “The Rolling Stones’ Rock and Roll Circus.” Lennon, along with Eric Clapton, Keith Richard, and Mitch Mitchell of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, will form a supergroup especially for the show.

...

There I was, right in the exact middle of it... most of that which had gone before merely served to strain my patience... had to go out several times for a cigarette, drink of water...when they finally came on, it was several seconds before I realized that this was it...every single one of these hideous creatures standing on top of the seats, screaming... the light from the thousands of popping flashbulbs was like some strange acid-inspired lightning, accompanied by this strange high pitched squealing thunder...retreated to the balcony, shaken by the intensity of the pure energy unleashed there in that weird electriarena... Migod, it was Romans and Christians and Lions all over again...once safe up above, away from the insane mass orgasm, I could see just what was really happening...the music was probably the worst pap they could have done... the reason obvious...these savages just would not LISTEN to the good stuff, the real art...they don’t have the vaguest idea of what these Beatles can do With sounds and words...so they get just exactly what they deserve, the crap, the screamers, the noise and shouting...and according to the ritual, the girlies faint and charge the stage, actually throw dangerous weapons at them...an attempt at communication with the fantasy come to life. So the Beatles concert turns out to be a big slap in the face, a musical screw-you aimed at the pre-pubic non-minds who sleep with their John Lennon dolls, trying to work off the forbidden orgasms. Money or no money, I do not want to be a rock-and-roll star. These cats were lucky to escape with their lives. And this was a lot quieter than the last time around.

...

A few days before the commencement in Pittsburgh of the July 23^rd conference, “A Remembrance of Alexander Berkman, The Man Who Shot Frick,” Sunfrog and I headed for a little town on the Pennsylvania/West Virginia border called Confluence where several rivers come together. We figured if rafting was good enough for Earth First! founder, Dave Foreman, maybe we should give it a try as well.

...

it’s also the worst

when used in circumstances calling for a closeup

or in circumstances that call for detachment

it is only a gift when it employs the appropriate distance

that minimizes pain

between the observer and the observed

.

we have a school for teaching appropriate distance

it’s called a slum a favella

...

On Saturday, March 26, demonstrations protesting the war in Vietnam were held in Detroit as this city’s effort in the Second International Days of Protest. In preparation for this event, sponsored by the Detroit Committee to End the War in Vietnam, Women for Peace, Detroit Citizens for Peace and Trade Unionists for Peace, more than 20,000 leaflets were distributed and advertisements appeared In the Detroit News and various campus and community newspapers.

...

Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish’s original monkey dinner was held at 19 Gramercy Park in New York in 1908, wherein Mrs. Fish invited the “haute monde” of her day, according to writer Tom Wolfe, to a dinner in honor of the Prince del Drago.

Of course, nobody bothered to ask who the prince was, but they all came, and there was the Prince, a full-grown Chambezi baboon in evening clothes, fitted in a wing collar and tails. This grand gesture was Mrs. Fish’s way of showing how strange “society” had become in her day, willing to go anywhere for whatever purpose, if it seemed grand and gay enough.

...

...millions are plagued throughout their lives by a gnawing emptiness or meaninglessness expressed not as a fear of what may happen to them, but rather as a fear that nothing will happen to them...

Under the dull security and passive spectacle characterizing the total routine of everyday life in modern society lies the unmistakable framework of a withered and decayed social structure evading the grave in frantic pursuit of an eternal market of subservient: human beings. No such market exists anymore. Capital’s-own child, technology, has seen to that.

...

The theme of this issue is Sex. The very word can elicit emotions from delight to anxiety. However, those reactions aside, the central function of sex, from mega fauna to microbes, is the reproduction of the species. It is only human sexuality which is over laden with social scripts that translate into pleasure or pain, often on a large cultural scale.

...

August 2, 2007 was the 175^th anniversary of the Bad Axe massacre, when US soldiers, settler militias, and army gunboats slaughtered Sauk (Osakiwug), Fox, and Kickapoo Indians following the Battle of Wisconsin Heights. This mass killing effectively put an end to the Black Hawk Wars.

The wars, named for what the British had given the indomitable war chief Ma-Ka-Tai-Me-She-Kia-Kiak, began with conflict over long-simmering objections to the 1804 treaties. Black Hawk was captured, imprisoned, and put on public display all over the US. He later fell ill and died in Iowa.

...

1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our black community.

2. We want full employment for our people.

3. We want an and to the robbery by the white man of our black community.

4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.

5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present day Society.

...

There is a monster outside of our window.

The monster roars and shudders; threatens, blusters; blows off steam and rusts. It is a beast of the sea; it is a massive machine; it is dangerous; it is explosive; it has no jaws, but a smaller subtler and more secret weapon... It is crawling with maggots.

...

New York City. March 2020, the first days of the crisis that would define the year. The words “mutual aid” began to appear where they’d not been seen before, from lamp post flyers to Reddit neighborhood forums.

Everyone from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to Britney Spears was using the expression. Loosely organized groups ran errands and made deliveries. Friends sewed masks for friends, then for friends of friends. And well before the summer’s boiling-over of righteous rage at police brutality, sustained protests attempted to hold Cuomo and the prison system accountable for leaving incarcerated at-risk people in facilities like Rikers Island, which became a hotspot for COVID.

...

Here are four records you might want to have:

1. Otis Spann: Sweet Giant of the Blues, Bluestime BTS-9006.

2. Harmonica Slim: The Return of Harmonica Slim, Bluestime BTS9005.

3. T-Bone Walker/Joe Turner/Otis Spann: Super Black Blues, Bluestime BTS-9003.

4. Earl Hooker: Don’t Have to Worry, Bluesway BLS 6032.

...

a film review of

“The Bride Wore Black”

Francois Truffaut’s “The Bride Wore Black” is terrific. Infused with his patented brand of gentle humor, the film is a modern horror story in which lovely Jeanne Moreau goes about methodically murdering five gentlemen with an iron calm and comic sunniness. Essentially an entertainment movie, a minor effort for Truffaut, other films of similar genre pale beside it.

...

Most of us don’t like dealing with conflict in movement politics. There are times when our projects are rolling along smoothly and then we hit a point of contention and suddenly the room is full of tension and discord.

For many people, the reaction is to try and restore order by quelling the discontent and moving onto other matters.

...

The burden of war always falls heaviest on the toilers. They are taught that their masters can do no wrong and go out in vast numbers to be killed on the battlefield. And what is their reward? If they escape death they come back to face heavy taxation and have their burden of poverty doubled. Through all the ages they have been robbed of the just rewards of their patriotism as they have been of the just rewards of their labors.

...

Sharks dive deeper before hurricanes. Wolves howl when a storm is approaching. Snakes slither away from earthquakes. Something’s happening here, and definitely, what it is ain’t exactly clear. Unfortunately, our intellects don’t provide us the instinctual early warning system our animal cousins possess.

...

reviewed in this article

Buda’s Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb, by Mike Davis, 2007, Verso, 228 pp., $22.95

Mike Davis argues forcibly that the “vehicle-borne improvised explosive device” (in Pentagon parlance) is a weapon of mass destruction. Keying in on the terrible effectiveness of this weapon (“an inconspicuous vehicle, anonymous in almost any urban setting, to transport large quantities of high explosive into precise range of a high-value target”), Davis underscores the inevitability of its proliferation as globalized capitalism industrially overdevelops every corner of the world, “like a kudzu vine of destruction taking root in the thousand fissures of ethnic and religious enmity that globalization has paradoxically revealed.”

...

Art is always about “something hidden.” But does it help us connect with that hidden something? I think it moves us away from it.

During the first million or so years as reflective beings, humans seem to have created no art. As Jameson put it, art had no place in that “unfallen social reality” because there was no need for it. Though tools were fashioned with an astonishing economy of effort and perfection of form, the old cliché about the aesthetic impulse as one of the irreducible components of the human mind is invalid.

...

As we travel north on Oregon’s Highway Five, from Portland towards Seattle, places and names go by: Castle Rock, Cougar, Mt. St. Helens, Onalaska. A November rain is falling, light rain, blessed rain. We cross the Chehalis river and then approach Centralia, Washington.

There are places whose names remain connected with the past, with a specific event that will forever remind strangers of their existence. Bhopal, Selma, Auschwitz, Soweto and Chernobyl are such places. People begin lives anew on those sites, building houses, giving birth, loving, but the associations persist. Centralia also has its beast of memory.

...

(Taurus/Detroit)

“dearly beloved, we are gathered here today in...

...detroit, michigan/home of the “motown sound”/g.m./ford motor/chrysler/rats in the kitchen and roaches in the bathroom/ no heat in winter & nothing cool when the summer comes/pistons pounding out a DRUM beat...do you take...to love & cherish... woodward ave./junkies/whores/& little kids on the way up to take their places/a dime bag to get the day over with...and do you take to have and to hold...the day shift, afternoon shift, midnights—at least 8 hrs w/the devil in hell/rouge, chevy, fisherbody (makes dead bodies), budd, eldon gear & axle, dodge main, jefferson, iron foundries & specialty forge foundries/monsters that eat alive & spit out bloody hands/feet & pieces of skin & bone/ & w/ regularity—a DEAD BODY...friday nite...get that check/carry it on home to the crib (w/wife & kids)/then get out on the street/get fucked up/(reefer, jones, coke, ups & downs, johnnie walker black & red)/try to freeze yr head/can’t think about the shit starting all over again on mon./”...and now a message from our sponsor” ...watch t.v./listen to the radio/read papers/they all say: “buy this, do that & u can be a success.”/damn brothers/sisters/a success in this motorized/concrete/iron & steel jungle is just staying alive!!!

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In response to “A Challenge to the Prison Movement,” FE #307, November 19, 1981.

Sylvie Kashdan, Seattle

In its mirror image negation of some positions of the prisoner support movement, the anonymous article highlights weaknesses of such single-issue politics. In focusing so completely on this one institution (the prisons), it becomes impossible for people to imagine its elimination.

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CHICAGO—The repression that many have forecast may have come.

On September 9, 1968, Judge William J. Campbell charged a 23-man grand jury with the job of investigating the violence in the streets of Chicago that occurred during the week of the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

Last week the grand jury, in a remarkable political balancing act, returned indictments against 17 persons: eight Chicago police; eight persons allied with the movement; and, one member of the fourth estate, a suspended NBC News executive.

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Joseph Strick’s film adaptation of Ulysses is rather like a high-minded comic-strip version of Stephen Hero or Dubliners.

On the few occasions when a bit of genuine Joycean complexity is allowed to survive in the midst of all that jolly, naturalistic Irishry, it strikes one as self-conscious and out of place. To make the film less expensive to produce, it has been updated, so that all the Celtic Twilight and Irish revolutionism had to be dropped, and much that is left (like the references to England being taken over by a Jew) is out of keeping.

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A Man For All Seasons may not be a play for all seasons, but it certainly is a godsend in this particularly impoverished one. A good deal has been written elsewhere about this commendable but somewhat less than considerable play.

In adapting his work for the screen, Robert Bolt once again both idealized and oversimplified Thomas More, who was, at times, both more religiously fanatical and broadly facetious than Bolt’s protagonist. By giving us such a flawless man, Bolt gives us a flawed play and film. From the film, moreover, some of the play’s strongest and wittiest lines have been excised.

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Michelangelo Antonioni’s BLOWUP, to paraphrase Archibald MacLeish, is a film that means more than it is. Even if people are lost souls, as those in the film certainly are, their relationships to one another, to their surroundings, to the work of art in which they figure should be firmly apprehended and made convincing. Instead, the film’s meaning is wide-open, so much so that I wonder if the Detroit release did not have sections necessary to the development extracted.

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Having surveyed the recent New American Cinema products, one might easily be tempted to remain silent until an achievement of greater substance presents itself for evaluation. Yet, since an authentically New American Cinema is the concern of any conscious film artist, he must accept what is available as a concrete basis and subject it to a definite scrutiny, before he can discard or transcend it. For, assuming the existence of talent, it has precisely been a view of life without ideas, and a conception of art without theory that has prevented most of the New American Cinema film-makers from becoming true artists and thus the true spokesmen for their generation.

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“We’ll save it in the editing.”

Though true of James Cruze, Griffith, Stroheim, this maxim was hardly any longer true of Murnau, Chaplin, and becomes irretrievable untrue with sound film. Why? Because in a film such as Eisenstein’s “October” (and still more so with “Que Viva Mexico”) editing is above all the supreme touch of direction. Elena, just as Mr. Arkadin, is a model of editing because each in its class is a model of directing.

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In adapting a bulky, densely detailed novel of seven volumes, Mai Zetterling has extricated the following schema in her movie, “Loving Couples:” her three women have in common a place and a time of arrival, the hospital, set immediately at the beginning of the film; a starting time, childhood; a central time and place, the chateau and the longest night, Midsummer. This schema orders and disorders brilliantly the destiny of the three lives in which childhoods, love affairs, childbearings correspond to one another.

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Note: The following article was translated from the readers’ soapbox page of the June 1, 1978 issue of Solidaridad Obrera (C/. Princesa, 56, entlo, 1a, Barcelona, Spain), organ of the C.N.T. of Catalonia.

Since last May, Solidaridad Obrera seems to have gone through quite a change in its content and has found itself in conflict with the C.N.T. nationally. In a recent issue of the bulletin Echanges (no. 16, July 1978), they state: “...this is an official paper of the C.N.T. it appears that the editorial staff of this paper has undergone changes incorporating elements who do not support any union including the C.N.T. It remains to be seen how long they will keep the editorship of the paper, for it is clear now that the C.N.T. nationally (headquarters Madrid) is pursuing a more and more strictly syndicalist line, expelling or criticising sections or groups considered to be ‘assemblyist” i.e. for the power of the mass meeting.”

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People seem not to believe me when I say the Artists’ Workshop needs money to operate, or Trans-Love needs money, or the Sun needs money—but it’s true. I know it shouldn’t be that way, people, but this is America and you don’t even get a place to stay without paying some property-owner for it. Month after month we scuffle and hassle to get enough money to pay the rent ($200), the gas and electric (although not the gas any more, since it’s been shut off), the telephone bill ($75 or so), and hundreds of little bills which mount up every time we move to expand the operation in another direction.

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The Detroit Love-In, to be held on Belle Isle April 30^th, will be the first large-scale manifestation of the New Spirit of Detroit, and everyone who feels that spirit and believes in it, and everyone who doubts it or would deny it, should be there to make it public once and for all.

Other events scheduled for the Trans-Love weekend include a tree dance/concert Friday night in the Mart Room at WSU (on the second floor of Mackenzie Hall, Cass and Putnam), with the great Seventh Seal donating their music and energy for their people. Everyone is welcome. On Saturday night, the 29^th, Trans-Love will sponsor a huge music explosion in the Community Arts Auditorium, Cass and Kirby, on the Wayne campus.

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Detroit has been a stubborn place and does not want to be changed, but as I write now and the sun is shining through my window and the spring is with us, the snow is melting, people are getting together, and there are positive forces at work here that will not be denied. Yes. We can not be stopped, no we can’t, and the sooner the people in power realize our strength the better off they’ll be. Change is in the air, the beautiful people are swarming the streets, travelers are coming home at last, flowers will be blooming everywhere, and all who have eyes to see will tell you it will be beautiful. Yes. And you will believe it when you see it.

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On Valentine’s Day at WSU a strange coalition was effected and the Student-Faculty Council ended up sponsoring a “Bitch-In” on campus, which was an honorable attempt to move from the usual “left-hippy” practice of simply haranguing everyone, to pointing out the similarities of concern and interest among all students and young people generally and making those similarities known by attempting to gather the different people together to “bitch” at the University for all its weird practices. The general purpose of the Bitch-In failed to make itself known or felt, but one or two beautiful things happened which made the attempt really worthwhile.

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The Marijuana Scare is getting weirder and weirder, with the grass police moving backwards faster every day, trying to bust everybody they can before the laws won’t let them do it any more. As far as I’m concerned the busts first in Detroit, and now at Grosse Pointe and Livonia high schools, are the best thing that could have happened at this time—short of legalizing grass altogether, of course. Because the only way the police have been able to keep up their screen of lies and fear is by keeping it all “under ground,” where no straight people could see what was happening. Now, with the silly narcotics police breaking in on their sons and daughters almost every day, the middle-class citizens of our time are beginning to wonder about marijuana prohibition—and it’s just about time.

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THE POEM FOR WARNER STRINGFELLOW

OCTOBER, 1966

Detective Lieutenant, Detroit Narcotics Squad, who has been single-handedly responsible for busting me on two separate occasions for possessing & selling marijuana

and who stumbled into my new apartment last night by accident

over a year since the last time he saw me

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The “great narcotics hoax” was pretty weird any way you look at it, and I’m happy too that this issue carries a “fact sheet” on the big “raids.” The daily “newspapers” and the idiot TV and radio interests do a good job as police propagandists, as well they should (like, when you consider the Commissioner Ray Girardin was a “newsman” for 30 years on the Times, you get the idea), and as usual the only source for anything even resembling the “facts” is this paper. But they know they haven’t got long now, and they’re doing everything in their power to hold off the revolution—which revolution, however, will not be stopped. Like the cop said to me, “I just hope those kids aren’t listening to you,” and all I could tell him was, well, they’re YOUR kids, baby, and they don’t HAVE to listen to me at all—you’re doing a pretty good job of alienating them all by yourself. They don’t NEED me to tell them anything. Yes.

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Yes it IS a New year. This year Detroit will be born into flesh and spirit and we will have what we want finally. It’s been a long time acomin’, but it IS here. Yes. Last Friday night I was able to go out to a place of business (the Wisdom Tooth on Plum Street) and hear the Lyman Woodard Trio, playing its own music, and a joyful occasion THAT was. I mean it’s the first time anyone has HIRED a forward jazz unit for the public to hear, in Detroit, and that’s just ONE sign of what will come. Woodard’s trio includes the master himself on organ, alto saxophonist Charles Miles, and drummer Norman Roberts, who is really amazing. Norman plays regularly with the Temptations, and can handle ANY kind of music like he was born to it. He was. The Trio will be at the Wisdom Tooth every Friday and Saturday night after hours, that is from 2:30 to 6:00 a.m. The cover charge is $2.00, which is fine, as the money goes to the musicians. And they need it, just as you need them.

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A new year coming up, the end of one era and the move into a new one. 1967. The year that will make history begin again, with some relevance to our lives. What we are. I mean I can feel it in the air, the vibrations are so strong now and when they are united it will be truly beautiful. Believe me. Believe yourselves. Believe in what you feel.

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I keep stressing the LOCAL in this column because it is precisely what we all have to work with—what is in front of us. Our lives are here, at this instant, and we should make the most of our local possibilities. People spend too much time waiting to go somewhere else, getting there, and then more time feeling out the new terrain, so that half their time is spent dreaming and scheming instead of DOING.

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The Gran-de Ballroom gets better and better every week, and it’s my own opinion that anyone who doesn’t go out there at least one night a week is just crazy. Frank Fox says so too. Likewise the MC5 keeps taking off for further spaces—this is the best thing that could have happened to them. Any band that is based on human principles rather than strictly musical ones, i.e. any group of musicians who are concerned with exploiting their own possibilities for expression as human beings with instruments and not just as guys playing “tunes,” have to have the opportunity to work together over an extended period of time, and in front of a sympathetic audience too.

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Progress Report: The first reorganizational meeting of the Artists’ Workshop Society took place as scheduled on November 22, with encouraging results. That is to say, enough people expressed working interest in continuing the work of the Society that the Artists’ Workshop will endure—and, hopefully, keep growing.

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Detroit is full of openings! Last weekend: Uncle Russ’s Gran-de Ballroom broke into the open with the MC5 and the High Society’s light show, both of which were just as they have to be—TOO MUCH. (William Blake: “Enough! or Too Much.” Charles Olson: “We must have / what we want.”) We are getting it. The Gran-de will be the place again this weekend, and hopefully for a lot more weekends, with the pounding MC5 and the great new band from Lansing, the Woolies, who just recorded their first sides on the West Coast last month with one of the heaviest guitar players anywhere, Ron English, featured. The High Society will be there too.

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The WSU Artists’ Society’s fall concert/reading series is now set and will continue with a concert by the Contemporary 4 at the Community Arts Auditorium Thursday, November 3, at 8:30 p.m. Charles Moore will introduce his new band, featuring Kirk Lightsey, piano, and Ron Johnson & John Dana, the regulars. Former pianist Stanley Cowell left Michigan for New York City in August and has been working with Marion Brown (including a recent recording session for Pixie) among others. The concert will be introduced by yours truly. There is no admission charge per se, but a donation of $1.00 will be appreciated.

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News of a new independent artists’ group in Detroit: The Instage, a gathering of musicians, dancers, painters, and others to present their own work in their own context, has been drawn together by pianist Kirk Lightsey, bassists Ernie Farrow and Dedrick Gover, trombonist George Bohanon and others. Now in search of their own performing facilities, Instage will present a program of its members’ work at the Community Arts Auditorium, Wayne State University, on Sunday, October 2, at 8:00 p.m. Featured will be paintings by Gloria Bohanon and seven others; a dance event featuring Barbara Willis, Don Hellimus, and Jackie Hillman, backed by Lightsey’s band; and a concert of music by the groups of Ernie Farrow, George Bohanon, and Harold McKinney. Tickets are on sale for $1.50 per person, $2.50 for couples, from Instage members and at the WSU box office.

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THE MFS MESS: Emil Bacilla’s article on the Midwest Film Society last issue touched off a lot of under-the-table shit, which was, even weirder since Emil was in SF when the paper came out and couldn’t see what was happening. Briefly: Noel Cooper of the MFS contacted me through Peter Werbe about screening the MFS films at the Artists’ Workshop, which was for me a happy occurrence and was immediately implemented. JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS was shown at the Workshop Saturday, September 17, to a good-sized crowd, and flyers were passed out advertising the MFS fall lineup at the Workshop. Everything was groovy.

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I want to take this space this week to tell you of some of the work the Detroit Artists’ Workshop is doing, because I think you should know about it in as much detail as I can give you here. I have been home two weeks now, and there has been such a beautiful mass of forward action going on here that I have been kept alive by it and kept happy to be a part of it again.

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It’s good to be back with you again. The Festival Sunday was one of the most beautiful things I have ever experienced, and I think a lot of the people there had the same experience as myself. There were SO many people there, all day long, And everyone was really grooving. Joseph Jarman started the Festival off just after one o’clock with a spoken introduction and music trumpeter Peter Bishop (also of Chicago) and bassist Doug Riggs. The readings began with Dave Sinclair, J.D. Whitney, and Mike Litle, all of whom opened the people up for the biggest human sound ever to come out of Detroit—the Lyman Woodard Ensemble of the day, a totally integrated musical blast made up of Lymie at the organ, Jim Semark, piano and trombone; Ron English (Lansing), guitar; Doug Riggs and John Dana, basses; Byron Lyles (Lansing), drums; Charles Moore, cornet; Pete Bishop (Chicago), trumpet; Joseph Jarman (Chicago), alto saxophone and clarinet; David Squires, tenor saxophone; Jerry Younkins, tambourine; Bud Spangler (Lansing), tambourine; and, after the music started getting GOOD to me, I had to run home and get my own alto saxophone so I could get in there too.

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“any image around which any people concentrate & omit themselves is a usable one just because it is theirs.”

—Charles Olson, Apollonius of Tyrana

I am talking to you people who read this paper. Are you there? What then do you want? You have it in your power now to create a vital living situation here in Detroit and make it in your own image—-if you have the will & commitment to such a situation. If you don’t care if Detroit ever gets to be such a place, it won’t. It will stay just as it is now—a burgeoning police state, with isolated groups of people fighting each other and ignoring each other but never working together to make a decent place of this place. And this newspaper, which could be so great and such an important community newspaper, will continue to flounder because its editor gets so little help, and there is so little response to calls for help, aid, participation, etc., that are issued in it. I am thinking particularly of the Artists’ Workshop Society, which is part of my own life, and which is about to die out because my wife and her few helpers have received so little support from you while I’ve been gone these last four and a half months—just when they’ve needed help most. If you want to have Detroit as a real, alive, worthwhile place to live and work in, you’ll have to make it that way yourselves, since the city rulers aren’t going to help, they’ve proved that, and the commercial interests never want to make a place for something new and vital but will capitalize on it when it appears and grows. You dig? What I mean is that we are all going to have to start working with each other on all fronts, help each other out, and take advantage of what are our local possibilities—like this newspaper, like the Artists’ Workshop and the West Central Organization, the Concept East Theatre, the Detroit Committee to End the War in Vietnam, the SDS Free University, Kenneth V. Cockrel for state representative, etc., etc. —all of these are manifestations of the same essential concerns, that Detroit be a vital human place for all of us.

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The most important event of the last few weeks was a concert by the Joseph Jarman quartet from Chicago. This was Joseph’s second concert in Detroit. The first one, on March 18 in the Lower DeRoy Auditorium at WSU, was such a success (not financially, certainly, but meaning that the music was so beautiful that the people who came to hear it wanted to hear more of it) that the WSU Artist’s Society decided to sponsor these Chicago musicians again. With Joseph Jarman, who plays alto saxophone, bells, whistles, & other musical instruments, will be Christopher Gaddy on piano; Charles Clark, bass; & Thurman Barker, drums. A ‘delegation” from the Artists’ Workshop fortunate enough to be in Chicago on May 13 to hear Joseph Jarman’s concert entitled “TRIBUTE to the HARD CORE” at the University of Chicago & will not soon forget that historic performance.

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On the 24^th of February, John Sinclair was sentenced by Judge Groat of the Recorders Court to six months in the Detroit House of Correction and three years probation for possession of marijuana. He’ll have to go before Judge Krause on Thursday, March 3, to be sentenced for violation of probation. This is why he is not writing the column today. Hopefully he will be able to continue writing for the Fifth Estate when (if) he goes to the “House” as they call it. I will help him out as well as I can with the local news items that he should tell you about.

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There’s a lot of very interesting “cultural activity” coming up in the next couple months in Detroit, but nothing definite is set as far as dates and times, so I’ll try to give a few teasers and come back with more specific information next time.

The success of Andrew Hill’s and Marion Brown’s concerts for the WSU Artists’ Society has spread around New York and, as a consequence, a number of forward New York musicians are writing about arranging concerts for themselves here in the immediate future. Pianist Paul Bley, one of the original members of the Jazz Composers Guild and the possessor of a number of fine recordings (among them FOOT LOOSE, on Savoy; BARRAGE, on ESP-Disk 1009; and appearances with Jimmy Guiffrie on Columbia and Verve labels) may be coming toward the end of this month. Then another exciting pianist, Burton Greene, another of the Jazz Composers Guild, whose ESP album will be out next month, will be here in early March, featured with the Detroit Contemporary 4. So those are things to look forward to, music lovers.

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The Jefferson Airplane concert will be in Ford Auditorium Friday, June 30, at 8:30 p.m. Tickets run from $3.00 to $4.50 and can be got at Grinnells, Discount Records, the Ford Auditorium box office, and other places, including probably the Grande Ballroom. Featured with the Airplane will be the MC-5, the Rationals, the Apostles, and Ourselves though I’m not sure why all of those bands are Necessary.

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Lots of good music coming up for the summer, June 8^th, the new Spike Drivers will present a huge three-ring circus type show at Community Arts Auditorium, WSU, featuring the MC-5, the Passing Clouds, the Magic Veil Light Company, classical guitar, poetry by this correspondent, a karate exhibition, psychedelic ping-pong by Billy Reid, mantra chanting with musical accompaniment, and a story line by Larry Cruse and Sid Brown to tie it all together. Tickets at $1.50. Sponsored by Trans-Love and the WSU Artists’ Society.

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A lot has happened since the last time I wrote this column, and I still don’t know what’ll come of it, but all we can do is ride it out and see what we can do with it. My own situation has changed a great deal even though I certainly don’t feel any different as a human being, but it sure is weird to walk or drive down the street and have strangers smile and wave because they saw me on TV and were given to believe that “John Sinclair is the high priest of the hippies in Detroit” or whatever.

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An Open Letter to George Romney

Dear Sir:

As a free man and a revolutionary, and as a citizen of the state of Michigan with strong roots in my own Michigan community of Detroit, I’ve been interested to follow your recent career as a “national” politician. I haven’t really been too interested in your work as governor of the state of Michigan since that office has little or no relevance to my life nor have I ever been very interested in the office of president of the United States, since that office has even less relevance to my life. But the combination of events that has marked your entry into the national presidential race scene has captured my attention and my imagination, and I wanted after yesterday to say something about the whole thing.

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The news this time seems to be that many people are getting busted for grass in a lot of funny ways and don’t know what to do about it when it happens. I have gone through three marijuana arrests and two “trial” scenes so far (including probation since December 1964 and 6 months in the Detroit House of Correction in 1966) and have come to learn some things about (1) police methods, aims and goals; (2) court procedures, including attitudes of judge, prosecutor and jury); (3) lawyers and how they operate; (4) the bail bond system; and (5) what you can do to get through all these dangerous traps relatively unharmed. It is to the last point that I want to speak here, in hopes that it might help some young people who are “in trouble with the law” over their marijuana smoking.

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