Full list of texts

“I know one or 2 who have this year, for the first time, read a president’s message, but they do not see that this implies a fall in themselves rather than a rise in the president. Blessed are the young for they do not read the president’s message.”

—Thoreau to Parker Pillsbury, April 1861

The Empire now has New Clothiers, and opportunely for the rulers. As the political management languished and the economy buckled, change became the only way to keep the Empire on its track. The apparatus of organized illusion called the slaves to the Lever: which figurehead could best keep the Empire slouching along? Which party would put them back to work mining the Mystery, with picks and shovels and a small particle of eternity for all, while soothing them with homilies of health and happiness and an economy that would grow and grow forever, amen? Who could provide bread and circuses, feed the unruly to the Coliseum, torch the rebel colonies?

...

During the past few months, Michigan activists fighting the global economy’s developing market for water extraction have fought a multi-national corporation, the legal system, and the state’s liberal governor.

Also, over a thousand people gathered at a local community college to protest water and utility shut-offs in 80,000 Detroit homes alone. But neither Gov. Jennifer Granholm nor any other public official will declare a health emergency or bill amnesty.

...

William Bunge, Geography Professor at Wayne State University, last week issued the following statement concerning his own steps in protesting the war in Vietnam. Mr. Bunge’s action was made known immediately after the recent Selective Service decision to draft those students who ranked in the lower quarter of their class:

...

A call for ending parking fees at Wayne State University was made last week by the Wayne Provos. The group, fashioned after the Amsterdam Provos in Holland, plans to protest by putting epoxy glue in parking meters and the coin slots in the automatic parking lots.

A Provo leader told the FIFTH ESTATE that parking fees and parking meters served as taxes on Wayne students. Something should be done now. These parking facilities should be free to all students.

...

Their Statement:

On Friday, March 4, 1966, Attorney General Nicholas D. Katzenbach presented the subversive Activities Control board with a petition asking them to list the W.E.B. Du Bois Clubs of America as a “Communist front group” as provided under the McCarran Act.” This act would require the Du Bois Clubs to register as a “Communist Front Group.” For every day that we fail to register, we are subject to a $10,000 fine and five years in jail. We will not register.

...

Energies of the West Central Organization, since its formal emergence on the Detroit scene in June,1965, have exploded the myth of “apathy” inherent in the behavior of “poor folks.” Human beings—Negro, white, Mexican, Maltes, and Puerto Rican—who have never fully recognized and used their latent power are doing so now. “poor folk’s” organizations which thrive in one area of Detroit’s poor folk ghetto are merging into a poor folk liberation front popularly known as WCO. Presently, WCO is confronting the common enemy—those persons who by design or inability operate the existing educational, welfare, housing, law enforcement, and urban renewal machines, etc., in a way which conspires against poor people.

...

[Web archive note: The original print edition of this article did not list an author. The article was reprinted in David Watson’s Against the Megamachine (Autonomedia, 1998).]

The cinders of the funeral pyres at Bhopal are still warm, and the mass graves still fresh, but the media prostitutes of the corporations have already begun their homilies in defense of industrialism and its uncounted horrors. Some 3,000 people were slaughtered in the wake of the deadly gas cloud, and 20,000 will remain permanently disabled. The poison gas left a 25 square mile swath of dead and dying, people and animals, as it drifted southeast away from the Union Carbide factory. “We thought it was a plague,” said one victim. Indeed it was: a chemical plague, an industrial plague,

...

Expensive new cars—Lincolns, Cadillacs, Mercedes, Jaguars—arrive at the entrance to the Detroit Athletic Club (DAC). Rich, white men dressed in $750 suits, $200 wing-tip shoes, custom tailored shirts, sporting $2,000 Rolex watches are greeted brightly but obsequiously by uniformed black attendants.

...

Expensive new cars--Lincolns, Cadillacs, Mercedes, Jaguars--arrive at the entrance to the Detroit Athletic Club (DAC). Rich, white men dressed in $750 suits, $200 wing-tip shoes, custom tailored shirts, sporting $2,000 Rolex watches are greeted brightly but obsequiously by uniformed black attendants.

...

This fragment is from Jacques Camatte’s pamphlet translated in 1975 in Detroit by Fredy Perlman. It was a key text in developing Fifth Estate concepts during the 1970s and 80s, ones which remain today. It speaks of capital and technology that has “run away” from its initiators and domesticated humans. It is available at blackandred.org

...

3-f-fe-366-4-40^th-anniv.png

The Fifth Estate is the longest publishing, anti-authoritarian, English language publication in US history. Next year, we will celebrate our 40^th birthday...maybe!

Due to rising printing and postage costs, our future is in jeopardy if we don’t come up with several thousand dollars within the next two months. We are planning a special 100 page bound edition and a national tour to celebrate our fortieth anniversary, but you may be holding our last issue if we don’t solve our financial difficulties immediately.

...

Saturday, 24 August 2002

(www.truthout.org)

The image is chilling. A middle-aged woman, plainly dressed, with a puff of auburn hair, is clutched in a hammerlock by a Portland police officer dressed in full riot gear. His riot baton is jammed high under her chin. Around her, three more armor-clad police officers swarm in, face-masks down. The woman’s face is contorted in terror. In her hand is a sign protesting George W. Bush.

...

On the left: a white-haired shoemaker in checkered shirt and brown khakis, casting uneasy glances at the circle of people surrounding him. A smirk settles on his lips as he prepares a witty rejoinder; perhaps he’s amused by the tourists, too.

To the right: a tan young man with a single dreadlocked braid hanging from the back of his scalp, tattered pajama pants, dirty fingernails. His hands move in front of him as though describing a box, and the words come slowly, ineloquently. His eyes evince a friendly conviction.

...

DEC. 26–31, WEATHERMAN SDS IS PROCLAIMING A GATHERING OF THE TRIBES—A NATIONAL WAR COUNCIL! WEATHERMAN, MAD DOGS, THE CONSPIRACY, YAWF, YIPPIES, MEDIA FREEKS, JUVENILE DELINQUENTS, AND DOPE CRAZED HIPPIES FROM THE GUTS OF AMERIKA WILL BE THERE! PARTIES, FILMS, BANDS, DANCING AND POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS ON BRINGING THIS MOTHERFUCKER DOWN! PLACE SECRET UNTIL DEC. 24TH, THEN CALL DETROIT: 833–4323, CHICAGO (312) 666–3874.

...

CHICAGO, Ill.—An underground “Declaration of War” purportedly issued by the Weathermen warns that the revolutionary group will “attack a symbol or institution of Amerikan injustice” within the next two weeks.

The announcement came in a three-page typed statement said to be a transcript of a tape recording by Bernadine Dohrn, a leader of the Weathermen faction of SDS.

...

James Peake, director of Du Bois Clubs (DBC) national publications, who lives in San Francisco, stated on March 11 that he knew of 2000 new memberships since the terrorist attacks. Of these, 700 are in the San Francisco Bay area. There is no way of estimating at this time how many more new members there are across the nation of which the national office had not then been notified. Except that a substantial number of people in other groups on the left have, like Staughton Lynd, joined as a protest against the recent attacks, it is not known just what these memberships signify. Only one thing can be said With certainty: this reaction is not what Attorney General Katzenbach wanted.

...

“President Reagan” was so moved by the presentation of five gallons of drug-free urine by the Citizens for Clean Urine that he dumped the sample over his head.

The lure of a spectacle and the fact that we love a parade made President Reagan’s Sept. 24 Detroit campaign stop-over irresistible to us. A protest had been called by a liberal/leftist/labor/religious coalition and one could only expect the ritual “peaceful, legal picket line” with its predictable slogans and all imagination corralled by official demonstration marshals.

...

The absolute removal of the blight of organized religion from the face of the planet. This will necessitate the immediate removal from every church, synagogue, mosque, temple, ashram, cathedral, etc. of any and every self-styled “representative of God on earth” including nuns, priests, ministers, rabbis, etc. and their (if necessary) forced dispossession of all the enormous wealth and power they have accumulated in centuries of domination and exploitation. Let the wealth, and the buildings, be used for the creation of playgrounds, abortion clinics, or whatever the people whose labor went to create them see fit.

...

January 20, 2017, the day Trump officially became President of the United States, was filled with many acts of defiance as well as foreboding.

This day had an additional sinister meaning for anarchists in Seattle. In the name of the liberal concept of free speech, and ignoring months of warnings and protests by students, workers, and faculty, the University of Washington’s administration permitted an appearance by the vicious arch troll and bigot, Milo Yiannopoulos. Previous appearances elsewhere clearly indicated that the worst was to be expected from him and his supporters.

...

“Things are in the saddle and ride Man.”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

One blind man

leads many blind men

Into the fire hole

hand in hand.

—Zen saying

After several years of discussing and debating the implications of a newspaper which criticizes technology obtaining computer equipment, we were finally forced into making the big leap, and now possess one. It may seem hypocritical to denounce computers while typesetting on one, but no less so than if I had arrived at our office by car with money in my pocket and began writing about the harm the automobile does and the need to abolish capitalism.

...

Until now, I’ve tried to avoid computers at all costs, but now having had this forced upon us, I’ve begun to consider what effect this will have on our publishing efforts and those of us who work on the paper. Upon beginning to learn their use, computers seem like fiendish apparatuses which order you about on their terms, not the reverse.

...

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an edited transcription of a press conference held in the Greenville office of the Delta Ministry Tuesday evening, February 1, 1966. The participants include three spokesmen of the over 70 poor Negroes who occupied the barracks of the Greenville Air Force Base. They were Mr. Isaac Foster of Tribbett, a leader of last spring’s strike of plantation workers; Mrs. Unita Blackwell of Mayersville, a member of the Freedom Democratic Party executive committee; Mrs. Ida Mae Lawrence of Rosedale, chairman of the Mississippi Freedom Labor Union local; and Rev. Arthur Thomas of Greenville, director of the National Council of Churches.

...

The most important tasks for those of us who would wear the anarcho-primitivist label, are to wait and watch the acceleration of the collapse of modernity and technology while we learn how to live without them.

Anarcho-primitivism should not be labeled as re-wilding, and considering all the baggage attached to the word primitive, we should probably think of a new label for cultural and ecological organization that has a possibility of survival at the depths of a rapid global, environmental collapse and mass extinction.

...

It is a good time in American history to go back to roots, to “get down,” to forget speeches and lectures and concentrate on The Word.

The smallest practical unit of language is the word. Music is beyond language.

Without the word you can’t make a political speech. Without the word you can’t have nauseating ideological wars. Without the word you have to touch each other. Without the word you can’t quite call yourself human. Without the word we would all probably be happier, but less “human.” So who wants to be human if you can be happier being something else?

...

This is an excerpt from a 2003 essay, “Surrealism & Wilderness” that is included in Rosemont’s anthology Revolution in the Service of the Marvelous: Surrealist Contributions to the Critique of Miserabilism (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, 2004).

Many oppositional movements that burst on the scene in the 1960s and ‘70s have long since faded away or made their peace with Business-as-Usual. The radical ecology movement, however, has not only persisted and gathered momentum, but also has never ceased to develop its revolutionary implications. Its effectiveness, in the world-historical sense, has been demonstrated repeatedly during the past thirty-five years. Consider, for example, its impact on the world’s attitudes toward wolves.

...

“Patrick Murphy is no great shakes as Public Safety Director. He is a poor administrator; he is weak, and he has no rapport with his men.”

—Richard Judd, former aide to Sen. Wayne Morse on D.C. Affairs Committee, U.S. Senate

We wanted to take this opportunity to introduce you to Patrick V. Murphy, Detroit’s new Police Commissioner, one of the first major appointments of Mayor Roman “Sheriff” Gribbs. Murphy was chosen by Gribbs because he says he agrees with Murphy’s philosophy on law enforcement.

...

Welcome to our Spring/Summer 2005 and 40^th anniversary commemorative edition of the Fifth Estate (FE). The effort needed to publish the largest and most colorful paper in our history required numerous resources, both creative and financial, from our collective members and our readers. While none of it would have occurred without the incredible vision and demanding effort /expended by the people at our Pumpkin Hollow headquarters, others participated as well, especially our staff in Detroit and those scattered across North America who make up the current FE editorial collective.

...

It has been proposed that the present era of life on earth should be called the Anthropocene to reflect the human domination of our planet.

However, an elegant, scientific-sounding term like anthropocene seems like a cop-out, a handy euphemism to hide exactly what kind of domination this is and what it’s doing to the planet.

...

After 691 issues, SchNEWS, “The free weekly direct action newssheet published in Brighton, England since 1994” is no more. A mix of serious reporting and irreverent humor, it was born in a squatted courthouse as part of “Justice?”--Brighton’s campaign against the repressive British Criminal Justice Act.

...

This conversation between writers Anu Bonobo & Daniel Pinchbeck--author of 2012: The Return of Quetzacoatl (2006) and Breaking Open the Head (2002) (and co-founder of RealitySandwich.com)--transpired over email in February 2007. Pinchbeck’s latest book 2012 is just out in paperback: a critical assessment of Pinchbeck’s work by Cookie Orlando follows this interview.

...

Back in the “uncivilized” days of American history, when a company or government wanted land they killed or drove off the people who lived there and claimed the land as their own.

The Indians were the first to feel the Man’s wrath. The Indian land was needed for “progress”—factories and railroads—and so foot by foot the Indians were driven West with guns, firewater and treachery.

...

FE Introduction

During the massive European anti-nuke demonstrations of the ‘70s, at squatter defenses and other actions across the Continent, shadowy groups of angry militants, often dressed in black, masked and armed with slingshots and stones became a common sight.

They were labeled “autonomes” and exhibited a discontent with tired leftist “protest” movements as well as a marked readiness to confront the police with violence in an attempt to go beyond the limits of bourgeois civility. They spoke of a desire not only to be autonomous of the dictates of capitalist society, but of all previous political movements including those in the anarchist tradition.

...

Staff Note: Several weeks ago LNS received a letter from some activist friends in West Germany, telling us about a huge anti-nuclear demonstration/ occupation that took place in mid-November (1976). Apparently demonstrations of 30,000 and severe police repression is not “news” to the commercial press here in the U.S., because the event passed almost entirely unnoticed, warranting only one paragraph in a New York Times article. With a little bit of digging into European papers, contacts close to the German scene, and some U.S. anti-nuclear activists, we’ve pieced together the story.

...

By the beginning of the second shift on Monday July 12, the huge East Pittsburgh Works of the Westinghouse Electric Company was shut tight by a wildcat strike of production workers.

This was the first plant-wide walk-out in twenty years, the last being a six month strike in 1956 which ended in bitter defeat and demoralization. While this re-emergence of mass activity at this central plant (where some 9500 blue collar workers manufacture gigantic turbines) alone makes these events deserving of analysis, the actual unrolling of the strike presents some patterns more than worthy of consideration by those of us who seek the destruction of capitalist society in all of its forms.

...

Supporting our imprisoned comrades should be a top priority for all anarchists. We need to raise funds for material aid. Prisoners need money for books, stamps, food, phone calls, Internet use, and legal fees. We need to establish steady relationships with our imprisoned comrades. There are too many to list here. For this go around, we focus on the five anarchist prisoners the Bloomington ABC war fund supports. To learn more, visit bloomingtonabc.noblogs.org .

...

25 november 2019. 7:30 am. husson university, bangor, maine.

The memory begins here: we’re young, us skicins, and we’re somewhere on the reservation, the island. We could have been anywhere, but when we look back on it, we’re in the woods alongside the dirt road that runs against the Penobscot River down to the graveyard, a dead end (unless you count the path at the end wide enough for a car to shoulder through, in which case it is not a dead end, but just a continuation to another part of this place). Again, we could have been anywhere, but we remember the sound of water crashing in the distance, the tumultuous noise as the brown river rose, crescendoed, smashed against rock, water spilling onto the shore like a bowl filled too high and set not gently on a table. It must have been spring, when the ice on the river thawed, the bowl of our world filled too high.

...

—and wait—for the wild power of nature—Om nama Shivaya—anything—could happen—to turn around—scream our lungs out—protesters in Gaza—under the burning—midday sun—Om Nama Shivaya—gun shots into the crowd—turn it off—turn it on—social programs slashed—corporate greed—protections for the environment—eliminated—the EPA rolls back—and David Buckel—self-immolates—in the meadow—in the park—Om Nama Shivaya—this winter—the coldest—since 1961—everyday when I hit—the sidewalk—I think—it will never end—and yet—slowly and surely—the temperature will rise—and the might and mystery—of the cold wind—will surely spread—Shiva—Brahma—Narayana—their seeds everywhere—Shiva—Brahma—Om nama Narayanaya—

...

FE note: Comrades working to revive anarchism in Cuba need our immediate financial support. For U.S. dollar donations, visit the Cuban Anarchist Solidarity Fund. For Euro-zone contributions, click here.

Isbel, Mario & Jimmy (photo: Gabriel Uchida)

Changes in the Cuban state’s regulation of private enterprise and in the relationship between Cuba and the U.S. over the last decade are opening up new possibilities and dangers for Cuban society.

...

You pick up the newspaper and it tells you that the governor has just inaugurated a new school in a far-off rural town. You turn on the television and you see a “reality” show where six men compete for the attention of one woman amidst unfathomable luxury on the beaches of Ibiza.

And then you walk out into the street and watch the walls as you walk and the walls tell you that the police assassinate, that 22 murders of activists in your town remain in impunity, and that people keep organizing, people rise up, people fight hack.

...

Jerry Koch is resisting a New York grand jury investigating anarchists.

We packed the courtroom to overflowing, some of our number forced to wait nervously in the hall outside. Jerry Koch, a New York City anarchist and legal activist, stood calmly and silently as his lawyer went through the motions of arguing against his incarceration and the judge yelled at her.

...

Struggle, Chairman Mao teaches us, moves in stages.

The West Central Organization (WCO) after a long series of internal problems previously reported in the Fifth Estate has moved to a new stage.

It represents an advance for the group.

A new staff headed by, former WCO organizer, 33 year old Lorenzo Freeman, has been created to bring new talent, energy and direction to the organization.

...

By withholding our participation, we are saying ‘No’ to the continuing barbarism of the Vietnam War. We are responsible for our actions. We openly say ‘No’ to conscripted military service.

Our refusal to participate in the madness of the Vietnam War in no way implies a renunciation of our country.

...

If you think the story to the right concerning the death of Hans-Martin Schleyer sounds absurd, then you know exactly how we feel every time we read the equally ridiculous stories of the “suicide” deaths of the three Red Army Faction (RAF) members now filling television screens and the pages of the print media everywhere. In fact, all the statements contained in our Schleyer article are either lifted verbatim from newspaper and magazine accounts of the RAF “suicides” or paraphrased from similar statements in those same accounts. Everywhere the most ludicrous contentions of the state are being taken at face value by the “media” and reproduced as “objective” fact, even when they fly full in the face of any normal human being’s perceptions.

...

The point is that man is literally undoing the work of organic evolution. By creating vast urban agglomerations of concrete, metal and glass, by overriding and undermining the complex, often subtly organized ecosystems that constitute local differences in the natural world—in short, by replacing a highly complex, organic environment by a simplified, inorganic one—man is disassembling the biotic pyramid that supported humanity for countless millennia.

— Murray Bookchin, Ecology and Revolutionary Thought

...

What a Day!

Hostages Go Free; Reagan Sworn In

—Detroit Free Press Headline, January 21, 1981

“Kill the hostages; Turn them into sausages.”

—from “Kill the Hostages,” punk song by Benedict Arnold & the Traitors

“He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark mustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast!... everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the struggle over himself. He loved Big Brother.”

—George Orwell, 1984

...

The “glorious” days of the Ford family empire seem to be numbered as its headcheese, Henry Ford II, finds himself in a swirl of legal, corporate, labor, marital and physical troubles.

Reports have floated into the Fifth Estate office that during his “emergency” press conference of May 1, 1978, the “chairman” not only seemed to be suffering from a bad case of the shakes, but also seemed to be losing his hearing. Oh, the woes of the super rich.

...

Werner Von Braun, 1912-soon

Although Wernher Von Braun is still alive, though bed-ridden with a terminal case of cancer, we feel that this is the appropriate time to wish him a speedy death.

The inventor of the V-2 rocket for Hitler during World War II and author of the book I Shoot for the Stars (and hit London?), Von Braun is directly responsible for the death of thousands of Britons during the final days of the War.

...

A review of <em>

The Clash: All the Albums, All the Songs</em> by Martin Popoff. PM Press, 2022

Prolific Canadian music journalist Martin Popoff has written a remarkably exhaustive, song-by-song exhumation of the Clash, the astonishing rock and roll group (1976–1986) once popularly dubbed, “The only band that matters.”

...

We put great emphasis on the phrase “the many books available” in our headline since the extent of titles that reflect the anarchist world view are so numerous that even if we were to publish a regularly appearing Anarchist Review of Books, it is doubtful if we could come close to noting them all.

There are many publishers of specifically anarchist literature, but as is mentioned in our article on anarchist fiction in this issue, the desire for freedom without the constraints of the bureaucratic administration of life, and the repression, exploitation, and discrimination inherent in capitalist society, expresses itself in literature internationally.

...

By the time most of you see this, you will have already read dozens of disturbing and horrifying accounts from international peace activists, solidarity workers, and others who have recently traveled to Palestine to participate in, observe, and learn about the situation that has grabbed the world’s attention for the past few months. That fact troubled me while sitting down to write. What more could I say about my journey that would interest anyone? My hope is that I can convey my experience in such a way that does not simply echo what others have already said or written, and that you don’t glance at this article with indifference (“not another article about the Middle East crisis.”)

...

People always ask about the meaning of our publication’s odd name. It is odd, and for our purposes over the last thirty years or so, a particularly problematic one. The word Estate in the title refers to the three powerful French Estates of the Realm at the time of the 1789 revolution—the aristocracy, clergy, and common people. A wag in the 1920s quipped that the popular press exercised such power over public opinion, it was literally a fourth estate.

...

a review of

The Transhuman Future: Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow. Tor Books, 2003

Cory Doctorow has a clear vision of the future. In a way, I hate him for that, because it is not a future in which I want to live. But he is probably right.

He extrapolates current situations and trends to create a realistic vision of the future. Often these include business trends, making them even more fleshed out visions. However, he is not a world builder. He writes humanistic stories, but about transhumanism, the idea that people can evolve beyond our current physical and mental limitations, especially by means of science and technology.

...

Why do we send our kids to school? We’ve been told that it is in elementary school that the bases of learning to read, write, and do math are acquired, although anyone who spends any time with children can clearly see that children want to learn what we do. They want to learn to read if they see us reading, to write if they see us writing, and to count if they see us counting.

...

SAN FRANCISCO—“Naked Angels” is the best movie I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen “2001” four times, and I thought that was better than “Wild Angels” which I saw only 3 times.

A new genre of films is being born from the low-count B-movie trade: Motorcycle flicks. They are destined to become as classic as Westerns—only Westerns were legends and dealt with the projected past. Motorcycle flicks define our future, and our future is one of gangland violence, measured in horsepower cubic centimeters and steel tonnage. Get ready.

...

Nineteenth century capitalism generated the “true believer” in laissez-faire, and gave rise to a large body of oppressed workers; the condition of which was a contradiction of the justifying principles of capitalism—the “natural rights” of Man.

In Western industrial societies (as is well known) workers and capitalists coalesced and perpetrated a conspiratorial revolution, giving rise to synthesis unexpected by social critics—the modern corporational society of profit sharing, fringe benefits, and governmental protectionism.

...

A book published several years ago purported to define for its readers what anarchism is and what it isn’t. Probably only the writer was satisfied with his definitions since adherents to anarchy come in many varieties.

However, delete the hyphenated suffix (anarchist-communist or anarcho-syndicalist, etc.) and all perspectives agree that the political state and the capitalist economy have since their inception been destructive of human freedom.

...

To avoid any confusion over the usage of terms, let us give a brief definition of the way in which Capital or capitalism is used in articles in the Fifth Estate: Capital is based on wage-labor, the production and exchange of commodities, with an agency above the working class extracting surplus value (profits) from the value of goods and services produced, and then re-investing a portion back into the enterprise.

...

Let us give a brief definition of the way in which Capital or capitalism is used in articles in the Fifth Estate: Capital is based on wage-labor, the production and exchange of commodities, with an agency above the working class extracting surplus value (profits) from the value of goods and services produced, and then re-investing a portion back into the enterprise.

...

Today’s gang quiz question is one that the gangs themselves have often fought over: which of them is the toughest? We’ll give you a few hints. It’s not the Black Killers, the Coney Oneys or any of the other teenage groups you’ve heard so much about in the last few weeks. Mayor Coleman Young has called them the “toughest gang in this city” and has warned the populace of them.

...

Sex is Sweet

Sex is Defeat

Sex is Stars

Sex is Bars

Sex is Money

Sex is Honey

Sex is Euphoric

Sex is Demonic

Sex is Safe

Sex is Pace

Sex is Scintillating

Sex is Liberating

Sex is Singular

Sex is Plural

Sex is Derision

Sex is Religion

Sex is Heaven

Sex is Hell

Sex is War

Sex is Peace

...

a review of

Portraits of Struggle: Photos from 1972–2023 by Orin Langelle. Global Justice Ecology Project 2024

The old newspaper adage that “a picture is worth a thousand words” has mostly been vitiated by Photoshop and AI. Photos have joined words in the realm of suspicion as now any image can be manipulated or even fabricated out of thin air with a few keystrokes.

...

I started this work a few years ago when I became fascinated by what prisons were like in other countries and what prisoners in Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, and China had to endure. Then I became more involved in the local anarchist scene and was turned on to Independent Media and the Anarchist Black Cross (ABC). The original purpose of the ABC was to support the anarchists who were put in prison during the Russian Revolution.

...

VIENTIANE, Laos (LNS)—Nixon’s desperate plunge into Cambodia, like his earlier escalation here in Laos, has made public an old secret: that the U.S. campaign to stall the Southeast Asian revolution is an international conspiracy. This campaign, involving half a dozen Asian client states, respects no boundaries and no laws.

...

Earth Day supplement page 8

GM WORLD HEADQUARTERS

W. GRAND BLVD. AT SECOND AVE.

THURSDAY, APRIL 19, NOON

Assemble at WSU Gullen Mall

Call 831–6800 for more info.

1 CHANCE IN 10 MILLION

DIE FROM THE INCINERATOR

38 CHANCES IN 1 MILLION

Demonstrate Against the Detroit Trash Incinerator!

...

a review of

So Much Pretty by Cara Hoffman. Simon & Schuster, 2011, 304 pages

I wrote So Much Pretty because I wanted to talk about family and community and the ways in which things that have become familiar to us are often not what they seem, are rife with meanings that elude our selective senses, that turn us into unwitting accomplices, secret sharers of observable but unspeakable things. Our desires for security, or belonging or freedom suddenly becoming the weight that sinks us...I wanted to discuss how well meaning people are often complicit in destroying the things they most want to preserve.

--Cara Hoffman

from www.carahoffman.com

...

It is hard to reach you guys. Once you go through the doors of that induction center it is almost impossible to get to you. Well, you are inside now. Maybe you are at some base in the U.S. getting your basic training. Maybe you are stationed in Germany. Maybe you’ve gotten your orders for Vietnam. Maybe you are already there.

...

As is the woeful and morose custom, late February salutes George Washington, who reputedly fathered a nation of sheep, and the motion picture industry boosts itself despite its fathering a low grade of mutton in the disguise of art.

1966 proved the physics maxim that nature abhors a vacuum as the field raised some rather substantial fare to credit with this year’s Academy Awards. No lily white fields for shuffling Negroes to help make nuns in or out of, but rather what approaches an honest effort at resolving the elephantine puzzle of the year’s best performances by actresses, writers, cameramen and directors.

...

SATURDAY

HANOI, Eyewitness Report by Dr. Herbert Apthekar. Central Methodist Church 8:00 p.m. 2/12

FILM: “Beauty and the Beast” (1946), directed by Jean Cocteau. Sponsored by UCAE at WSU Community Arts Aud, Cass and Kirby. 8 p.m. Adm. charge. 2/12

CONFERENCE on China. United Nations Assn. of USA at WSU Community Arts Aud. Cass and Kirby 2–5 p.m. 2/12

...

SUNDAY

FILMS: The Bank, The Tramp, A Woman and Police, with Charlie Chaplin (1915). Henry Ford Museum Theater. 2 and 4 p.m Adm. chg. 3/20

MUSIC AND READING: The Detroit Contemporary 4 and reading by David Sinclair. Artists’ Workshop. 7 p.m. 3/20

THURSDAY

CONCERT: Det. Symphony Orchestra. Van Cliburn soloist, Ford Aud. 8 p.m. Adm, chg. 3/24, 26

...

FRIDAY

LECTURE: An Evening With Clifford West. Bloomfield Art Association. 6 p.m. Admission charge. 11/19

“A SECOND NIGHT WITH THE WOBBLIES, with Ellen Stekert, folk singer. Sponsored by WSU Labor History Archives at WSU McGregor Mem. Conf. Center. 7:30 p.m. 11/19

COURT THEATER: “archy and mehitabel”--modern musical classic from an original story by Don Marquis; “Children on their Birthdays by Truman Capote, and a cutting from “Death of Bessie Smith” by Edward Albee. Detroit Institute of Arts, Kresge Court,8:30 p.m. Admission charge. 11/19

...

Nuclear power is a primary threat in the ongoing global environmental struggles at the end of the twentieth century. However, nuclear power is an issue many shy away from because of its complex and technical nature and the opaque power structures of gigantic corporations and government bureaucracy that perpetuates this dangerous, decaying technology.

...

Reprinted from the East Village Other (UPS)

What are the pot people doing? They are doing the next best thing to changing the world: they are changing the chemistry of the brain that perceives the world, as people have done in one way or another in every culture we know of since we know not when. People will chew herbs, roots, leaves, sticks and stones, anything, to get high. There’s no escaping it: getting high is apparently part of the human condition. It’s the question of what people use to get high, and how they get when they are on high, that is so vitally intriguing, because if you know how someone likes to be high, you also know how and why he doesn’t like not being high.

...

No, this is not an astronaut—just a well-prepared demonstrator on his way to a march. photo: Dave Lindquist

The anti-war movement has recently become actively involved in the type of resistance protests that has brought a violent reaction from the forces of law and order. One has only to witness the police terror perpetrated on demonstrators at Oakland, Washington, D.C., and Madison, Wis., to realize that those involved in demonstrations should take some precautions before venturing out’ in the streets for confrontations with the police.

...

WASHINGTON (CPS)—College students voted for Sen. Eugene McCarthy (D-Minn.) and an end to the war in Vietnam in Choice 1968, the national campus presidential primary held April 24.

McCarthy polled 26.7 per cent of the almost 1.2 million votes cast, followed by Sen. Robert Kennedy (D-N.Y.) with 19.9 per cent and Republican Richard Nixon with 18.4 per cent.

...

In response to “Beginning of Time, End of Time,” FE #313, Summer, 1983.

The question of time and its relationship to domination is central to understanding our captivity. John’s article attempts to come to grips with this very difficult subject; while what follows is often critical of his attempt, I do not want to slight its radical intent or the hard work he put into it. Nor should these criticisms obscure the fact that it is an important introduction- to the question of time: it helps us to see our perception of time as unnatural, as something imposed upon us, as a force to be overthrown if we are to liberate ourselves.

...

Bakunin is often credited with being the “father of anarchism.” While he rejected the title, he was the first to write extensively, systematically, and explicitly on anarchist principles. These ranged from organization from the bottom up, the rejection of the state and the vanguard party, the nature of the social, as opposed to the political, revolution, the nature of authority, and communism.

...

Pull the window shade. Walk calmly to the nearest telephone and call the Fifth Estate.

We will immediately dispatch a reporter, perhaps even an editor, to the scene.

He will arrive in time to see Detective Walter Scott of the Detroit Narcotics bureau emerge empty—handed from the house which is the living quarters of several hippies and cyclists.

...

Liberation News Service — That a hard rain (of some kind) is agonna fall on America soon is a fact apparent to mystics and rationalists, to leftwing political scientists and to rightwing economists, to European money speculators and to your local police, who’ve probably already ordered their tanks. The Hopi Indians can tell you all about it and so can the Black Power cats and the Brown Berets, not to mention Yippies, Provos, Zenarchists, and the rock group of your choice.

...

MILITARIZED POLICE AROUND THE WORLD routinely use what they designate as “riot control agents” against their rebellious civilian populations. Because the substances travel with the whims of the wind and are often used in large quantities, a person does not even have to attend a demonstration to become exposed.

...

BOULDER, COLO. Walking by the student center of the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU) one late winter day early this year, I saw campus Republicans swarming around several seven-foot tall poster boards. Usually, they fill these poster boards with meaningless—and largely ignored—right-wing slogans. But this day was different because the press also crowded the area, and a throng of onlookers had gathered. At the cost of being late to my next class, I cut through the mob to read the garish, neon-colored posters.

...

Who the hell needs bad news? Well, we all do. At least if it’s bad news for the state, capital, and patriarchy.

B(A)D News is a monthly English language info show founded at the 2013 Anarchist Balkan Bookfair in Slovenia as the International Network of Anarchist and Anti-authoritarian Radio Projects, known as A-Radio Network (A-RN). Participants were Anarchist Radio Berlin, Radio Libertaire from Paris and Crna Luknja (“Black Hole”) from Slovenia’s capital, Ljubljana, as well as by individual radio activists from Eastern Europe.

...

Last October 3 marked twenty-five years since eighteen US soldiers died in Mogadishu, Somalia during a famous firefight that most Americans know as Black Hawk Down, for the crashed US helicopters. The loss is embedded in the American consciousness through a self-pitying book and film, and was widely commemorated on the 25^th anniversary.

...

a review of

We’re Not Here to Entertain: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan, and The Real Culture War of 1980s America by Kevin Mattson. Oxford University Press 2020

This book reminds us that the 1980s—in addition to being a period of reactionary politics (Reagan’s efforts to “make America great again”) and reactionary music (synthesizer-dominated pop and MTV videos)—was also the decade of hardcore punk.

...

They’re hee-ere! Yes, folks, it’s the quadrennial electoral charade where power-seeking charlatans attempt to craft tricky speeches and programs designed to convince people to abandon common sense and reason and elect them to political office.

Although one of the fast-talking money boys glad-handing the populace will eventually attain the position of chief executive officer of the Empire, he will attain this status only through the participation of a minority, one growing smaller with each election.

...

A review of

SDS: Students For A Democratic Society: 50^th Anniversary Edition by Kirkpatrick Sale. Autonomedia, 2023

The 50^th anniversary edition of Kirkpatrick Sale’s history of SDS, the 1960s radical student organization, is more than a time-capsule. It is a breathing, encyclopedic compendium of hope and outrage, a chronicle of chaos and courage. The book connects contemporary readers with a radical lineage filled with inspiring stories of the contagious movement among rebellious youth during that tumultuous decade.

...

You are like a boulder

and I was trapped under you

I am like that kid

who went climbing,

like that kid who was smashed

between you

and a hard place

who had to cut off his own arm

just to get away

from you.

There is a sea anemone

that can reverse the flow of its own heart.

Can you imagine?

...

a review of

Be Safe I Love You by Cara Hoffman. Simon & Schuster, paper edition 2015, 289 pp. $26

What sacred thing could pass through her lips now? What choir could shield her from the sound of her own voice?

“I did terrible things,” she said.

“Of course you did, Troy said calmly. “Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

...

Birds of a Feather: Flights of the Anarcho-Surrealist Imagination by Ron Sakolsky. Eberhardt Press, 2017 eberhardtpress.org

Anarchists of many tendencies have long fought for freedom of the individual and the realization of solidarity within communities. Surrealists, in and out of formal groupings, have had their own take on modern un-freedom and the potential for subverting it. In parallel, and sometimes together, anarchists and surrealists have fruitfully explored new avenues of revolt.

...

Though he never recorded, his spirit hovers over the American musical imagination, whispering his hidden secret worldwide to all those with ears to listen to the interraciality of what is typically portrayed as racially separate.

Receiving his slave name from Revolutionary War veteran and slavemaster Mathias Shultz of the Green River region of western Kentucky, Arnold was the child of the last of his ancestors to have once lived in slavery. He began as a songster playing guitar around the turn of the twentieth century. At this time in isolated mountain communities, those of African-American and European-American descent made music together at square dances, picnics, and other occasions calling for string bands.

...

Acknowledging the existence only of individuals and families, Margaret Thatcher declared, “There’s no such thing as society.”

Mustafa Khayati went a little deeper, in one of my favorite quotes: “The university teaches everything about society. Except what it is.” Similarly, Peter Sloterdijk wondered what kind of “proverbial stuff” societies are made of.

...

Reprinted from San Francisco Express Times

Surely it isn’t brazen self-confidence that drives Nelson Rockefeller, scion of the most powerful network of vested interests in the Free World, to appear as the Galahad of the forces of Change in the pre-convention scramble. After all, empires are not administered by headstrong individuals but by hereditary networks, families, tribes—Nelson does not go off on his own to contest control of the Republican Party. Then what could he have in mind?

...

Fueled by the massive international antiwar demonstrations of February 2003, people have increasingly turned to the Internet, lured by the hype of a global virtual community, to organize resistance against the murderous plans of the corporate state. Yet in most cases, the results have been demoralizing. Like the empty promise of television’s “global village,” the seductive power of computers is having a destructive effect on human community.

...

The White Panther Bike Run and the people’s party at the U-M Arboretum July 6^th turned out to be a quiet get together of freaks and young people without the usual interference by the pigs.

Things started at 1:00 that Sunday afternoon as 50 bikes split from the Fifth Estate office off to Ann Arbor.

...

In a session on September 9 the Michigan Supreme Court denied John Sinclair’s request for appeal bond saying he had not “persuaded the Court that he has a meritorious basis for appeal.” This upheld the ruling of Court of Appeals.

John was sentenced to 9-1/2 to 10 years in July for possession of two marijuana cigarettes and is currently in Jackson prison.

...

ANN ARBOR, Dec. 5—White Panther Minister of Information John Sinclair announced today that the newly-formed revolutionary organization has named its first Central Committee.

In their first formal meeting the Committee discussed matters of immediate importance to the White Panthers and to the world, including the threatened imprisonment of Brother Eldridge Cleaver, Minister of Information, Black Panther Party, and the arrest and imprisonment of 13 brothers and sisters in Detroit for alleged “conspiracy to place explosives with intent to do damage.”

...

First I must say that this statement, like all statements is bullshit without an active program to back it up. We have a program which is on-going and total and which must not be confused with anything that is said or written about it.

Our program is cultural revolution through a total assault on the culture, which makes use of every tool, every energy and every media we can get our collective hands on. We take our program with us everywhere we go and use any means necessary to expose people to it.

...

The White Panthers arrested in New Jersey after the Woodstock Music Festival have all been released on bond and are back in Ann Arbor.

Although defense attorneys feel there are good chances of the charges being dismissed, the Panthers see this as an enlarging pattern of attempts by the authorities to eliminate their organization.

...

a review of

Run Home if You Don’t Want to be Killed: The Detroit Uprising of 1943 by Rachel Marie-Crane Williams. UNC Press 2021

Rachel Marie-Crane Williams’s new graphic history examines the violence that erupted in Detroit during the summer of 1943 in 230 evocative and beautifully rendered black and white images and text. But erupted might be the wrong word to describe what has been called variously a race riot, a pogrom, or, as Williams says in her title, an uprising.

...

In many respects the November 15^th March on Washington was a monumental success: the issue of the war in Vietnam was once again brought before the American people with the drama that only masses in the streets can achieve. Many new participants were drawn into the anti-war movement and demonstrators left the capital with a sense of accomplishment and commitment rather than the disillusionment of less meaningful days.

...

The rather quiet release of “The Weather Underground,” the new documentary of this late 1960s bomb-toting, clandestine splinter group, presents us with a fascinatingly decisive (and divisive) historical moment, a collision within call-and-response activism still relevant today. This is simply an inspiring film, even if much of the Weathermen’s more repulsive politics remains hidden in the smoke of their detonations.

...