Full list of texts

SANTA ANA, Cal., Feb. 20—Dr. Tim Leary, his wife and son were found guilty here on charges of possession of marijuana and LSD.

Superior Court Judge Byron Mcmillian set sentencing for March 13. Leary and his wife remained free on bail but the bail of their son was revoked and he was taken into custody.

...

Someday, it’s possible that surveillance technology may become sophisticated enough to read your mind as you’re walking down the street. If that dystopian future comes to pass, you’ll probably want one of these stylish thought-blocking accessories: When they detect scanning technology in action, they’ll distract you with a zap or a flashing light.

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The news of the fighting in Lebanon fills the headlines of the newspapers across the US. “Fall of Tripoli Looms,” “Guerrillas Gain in Lebanon,” and on and on. Why is there fighting? What are they fighting for?

Reading the mass media, watching one’s TV, and listening to the news on the radio, quickly confirms the media’s “confusion” on the dynamics raging all around them. There is not any understanding manifested beyond the “cowboys and Indians” mentality.

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Read and considered, perused and recommended, liked and disliked, discussed and commented on in the following section:

Green Anarchy (current issue available from FE books for $4 or free with any book order, while supplies last) Issues #16 and 17, Spring and Summer 2004 PO Box 11331, Eugene, OR 97440 collective@greenanarchy.org

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LONDON, England—Liberation News Service—Europe’s left, new and old, has been brutally unanimous in its criticism of the Soviet military intervention in Czechoslovakia.

The Communist Parties of England, France, Italy and other nations issued long statements describing the Soviet action as an unjustified interference in the internal affairs of a Communist Party and socialist state.

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In astronomy, “revolution” refers to a return to the same place. For the left it seems to mean about the same. Leftism is literally reactionary. Just as generals prepare to fight the last war, leftists incite the last revolution. They welcome it because they know it failed. They’re vanguardists because they’re always behind the times. Like all leaders, leftists are least obnoxious when following their following, but in certain crises they step to the fore to make the system work. If the left/right metaphor has any meaning, it can only be that the left is to the left of the same thing the right is to the right of. But what if revolution means stepping out of line?

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Marijuana will become legal in the U.S. within one year, predicts the first issue of the Chicago Mirror, an underground satire magazine slated for publication this month.

According to the author of the article, whose source is an art director of an unidentified Chicago advertising agency, the legalization of pot “will be the result of one of the most fantastic public relations campaigns in the history of this country.”

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Between now and October 9^th the J.L. Hudson Gallery is offering the public a legal trip via the work of Michelangelo Pistoletto.

Pistoletto, a 34 year old Italian artist, has succeeded in opening up an entirely new dimension in art through the relatively simple device of mounting life-size photographs on highly polished stainless steel plates.

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The idea of an “anarchist saint” might seem kind of silly at first, but that did not stop Autonomedia publishers from starting its annual jubilee calendars of radical saints, now in its 26^th year. If anyone who has recently died qualifies for the status of anti-authoritarian saint, I would nominate the author, Ursula K. Le Guin, who is featured on the calendar with prominent and lesser known anarchists.

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LEMAR’s second meeting happened Jan. 4^th at the Artist’s Workshop and I mean IT REALLY HAPPENED, over fifty people showed up. The place was full of happy, alive, enthusiastic human beings. It was just downright out-of-sight. We’re getting together—here’s what came out of the last meeting:

1. A committee was formed to produce a one page flyer/bibliography. This will be a handout to make the people aware of us, what we are trying to do, and where they can get more information.

2. A research group was formed to compile material for a lengthy ten-to-twelve page booklet which will deal more extensively with some of the studies done on marijuana.

3. There will be a fundraising concert at the Workshop coming soon—watch for notices in this paper.

4. Plans for a Midwest Conference on Consciousness Expansion in the spring, and a symbolic puffin on May 1^st are still going ahead. Plus lots more.

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When Lenin and 32 other Russian refugees (30 adult revolutionaries and 2 children) were returning to Russia via a sealed train through Germany they encountered a number of problems living together. One of the earliest conflicts in the railroad carriage arose between smokers and non-smokers. Lenin was a nonsmoker and detested smoking. It had been agreed at the beginning of the journey that those people who wanted to smoke had to do so in the toilet. A line formed in the corridor outside the toilet and eventually arguments broke out between the smokers and the “comrades” who wanted to use the toilet for its intended purpose. Since the vast majority of the people were Bolsheviks, Lenin, as the leader of the Party, was called upon to settle the question. He wrote out passes, which had to be presented in order for the toilet to be used. There were two kinds of passes—those for organic use had the first priority, and those for inorganic, smoking purposes had second priority.

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I don’t know if people still buy comedy monologue records. We all know that after a couple of listenings we don’t play them until we have company and there is nothing else to do. But a Reprise-Bizarre (Frank Sinatra and Zappa together!) double album Lenny Bruce The Berkeley Concert is a service for the many of us who never heard him live.

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1992 marks the five hundred year anniversary of the Columbus expedition, which many governments and corporations are celebrating as “An Encounter of Cultures.” To counter this, a loosely organized movement under the banner of “500 Years of Resistance,” seeks to overturn the prevailing mythology about the Columbus voyages. Many people in Europe and the Americas are organizing cultural and educational events toward that end.

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I came home one night many years ago to find my then girlfriend crying on the couch. “What happened?” I asked. “Nothing. Just some guy in the street.” “What did he do to you?”

“He wouldn’t let me cross the street unless I told him my name and agreed to go out with him. He kept blocking my way.”

She told me that this total stranger kept harassing her for blocks and wouldn’t give up. No one intervened.

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“...[A] small number of big WTO Members are leading an undesirable globalization that is inhumane, environmentally degrading, farmer-killing, and undemocratic. It should be stopped immediately. Otherwise the false logic of neo-liberalism will wipe out the diversity of global agriculture and be disastrous to all human beings.”

—Lee Kyung Hae, Korean farmer & activist who took his own life on the barricades

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In 1936, groups of women in Madrid and Barcelona founded Mujeres Libres, an organization dedicated to liberation from their “triple enslavement to ignorance, as women, and as producers.” While it lasted for less than three years (its activities in Spain were brought to an abrupt halt by the victory of Franco’s forces in February 1939), Mujeres Libres mobilized over 20,000 women, and developed an extensive network of activities designed to empower individual women while building a sense of community.

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Better Late Than Never In the spirit of the weather and the season, a few obituaries. Harry Bennet, a chief gangster for Henry Ford, scabherder, thug, assassin, head of the Ford Motor Company’s notorious “Service Department,” drowned in his drool in a California nursing home. Suffice it to say that he won’t be missed around these parts.

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Inside sources have reported that Betty Ford, formerly of state furniture capital Grand Rapids, Michigan, has fallen into a deep depression since her celebrated plastic surgery at a laetrile clinic in Tijuana, Mexico. Unknown to most people, her surgery was a complete failure! She had intended to resemble the late Elvis Presley, and had planned a career as an Elvis impersonator! “I’m tired of Jerry being the only breadwinner in this family,” she said shortly before entering Dr. Ramon Cabron’s Clinica Veterinaria. “I too have talents and ambitions. I want to make something of myself.”

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from Detroit Free Press, April 5, 1966

Gentlemen:

Regarding the issue of negotiation vs. withdrawal, it would be most unfortunate to allow the question to take up the working time of the peace movement. We are not Johnson’s special advisors, and our precise policy statements need not be unified, or even entirely compatible. What would appear to count most is visibility and persistence. There are, however, many who disagree with that statement. Some contend that the more extreme positions are too easily accommodated by the administration. The key question then is the difference in the operating code of ethics between these factions. I suggest the following. Once a group decides and plans an activity, all those who can in good conscience assist with its execution should do so in accord with the ground rules set by the originally responsible group. I see no contradiction in restraining my sign to “urge negotiations” even if I were personally to favor immediate withdrawal...

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Tonight I am alone, which is rare, and the air is cold and clear, so I blow out the oil lamp and make my way down to the clearing to take in the new moon, the milky way, and the unsilent forest. It’s autumn, the season when we harvest the last of it from our gardens and the rest becomes compost to build on next year. It’s a natural time to look around, evaluate what we’ve been doing, and think about where we might go from here.

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American heoroes, the Fort Hood Three: (l. to rt.) Mora, Samas, Johnson

Although I am being held in solitary confinement, the prisoners and guards find occasion to speak with me. I was ordered to remove the name tags from my uniforms and from above my cage door. I now exist as the man without a country or a name; this plus instructions for no one to speak with me entices the prisoners and guards to find out my story.

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Teaching at Durfee Middle School in Detroit’s inner-city, I found that most students had not been exposed to books of any kind before entering school in first grade or Kindergarten. No one read at home, not to themselves, and parents did not read to their children.

At staff meetings and informal discussions with teachers at both schools, I tried getting a teacher book discussion club going. One reason was to model enjoyment of reading to our students. I was appalled to find out that most of the teachers didn’t read anything outside of school either. One year, I discovered that only one teacher out of 33 read out-side of school and that for a weekly bible study class at her church.

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FE note: See also the letter exchange “L’affaire Black Rose Books” in this issue.

Dear Editor,

With reference to the slanderous letter from a Mr. Joe Doaks in your June 1977 issue, we would like you to publish the following reply in full.

(1) Why did the English-language edition of Durruti by Abel Paz not include Part 4? The history of this question is as follows. A member of our book-publishing cooperative read the French-language version some two and a half years ago. We thought about publishing an English-language version, but naturally we were overwhelmed by the complexity of the project. The one French-language edition we had was returned to the person from whom it was borrowed. Some time later we received the translation by Nancy Macdonald. We then negotiated a contractual agreement with both the author and translator. Part of the agreement included that the contents and approval of translation was a matter between the author and translator. We frankly proceeded to the publication of the book without anyone of us being aware that there was a Part 4. Last month to our embarrassment a member of our cooperative while visiting Paris was told by Paz that we had not included Part 4. This was news to us as we had insisted that the translation be cleared by the author. We have written to Nancy about this and received the following reply which we quote in part: “About the 4^th part of the Durruti it was (Paz) who suggested to me that it be cut out of the English edition as the book would be too long. And I agreed. There was never any question again of my translating it. I sent my translation to (Paz) a long time ago for him to OK it and he never mentioned the 4^th section. I have already written him to this effect a few days ago since he raised the question with me by letter...” As far as BRB was concerned it was certainly not an act of censorship in any way. If there is another edition of the book we intend to include Part 4, unless Paz thinks to the contrary.

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Since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in April 1986, much information has come out about its terrible effects. The irradiation of (particularly European) people, animals and vegetation has been devastating. Dr. John Gofman, a Widely respected expert on radiation effects, estimated that more than a million people will develop cancers, half of them fatal, as a result of the accident.

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I’ve been in jail for so long now that I’ve lost count of the days, But such is the fate of the man who doesn’t have the money for bail ($10,000 or $1,000 for a bondsman).

I’ve found that there’s two types of justice in our illustrious nation: one for the rich, and one for the poor.

But if life in a “democracy” hands you a lemon, you don’t bitch. You find that there’s only steel bars to listen to you. So you do what any man who wants to make the world a better place to live would do. You squeeze the lemon and start a lemonade stand.

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The following letter was sent to an International Conference on Elisee Reclus, the 19^th century anarchist geographer and political theorist. The conference, which was held in Milan on October 12–13, was one of several planned for 2005 to celebrate the 175^th anniversary of Reclus’ birth and the 100^th anniversary of his death. I was invited to do a presentation but couldn’t leave New Orleans to attend. Fortunately, our electricity, which had been out for almost six weeks, resumed shortly before the conference, and I was able to write the letter hastily and find a place to email it. It arrived in Milan the day before the conference and was read during the proceedings, and it will be translated and published in the Italian anarchist magazine Libertaria.

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John Sinclair

Southern Michigan State

Prison Jackson, Michigan

Dear Leni & Everybody:

My letter yesterday from the Wayne County jail should be disregarded in large part since I was transferred up here this morning. It’s really good to get here at last—just like when you’ve been threatened with something for years and find out it ain’t so bad after all.

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Being a revolutionary, the threat of spending time in prison comes down on me from time to time. Not knowing much about the day-to-day life of women inside the prison walls, I have always been uneasy at the thought of that unknown world and put it out of my mind. The letter that follows was written by Jane Kennedy, an angry voice from inside the prison walls, running down the systematic pain and humiliation suffered by the women prisoners she lives with.

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Pumpkin Hollow, Tenn.—I’m trying to pick this narrative up off the gravel road, gyrating back into the woods. This odyssey of drift must stop somewhere; that somewhere is here. Perhaps my nomadic motion can continue in psychic space as my body plants itself firmly on the ground, my ground, our ground. I previously chose to be homeless, a vagabond, a hobo, roaming, raving and misbehaving.

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The late David Graeber perhaps said it best. “Bureaucracy has become the water in which we swim.”

For over 20 years, I was embedded within the New York City Board of Education as a licensed agent authorized to deploy weapons of mass instruction. These weapons were placed in our arsenal to control, and perhaps teach, but above all avoid scenes like the following, which happened just days after I started:

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first

Volunteer to serve the Negation

Never too late for Mrs Ludd

If Bugs Bunny’s a Surrealist

what’s that make Elmer Fudd?

Wherever you are tonight Mrs L

Tiamat Tara river nymph undine

Captain Moonlight & Saint Monday

flaneurs on ancient boulevards of spleen

never complain never explain

our secret society goes back to the Neolithic

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Dear Friends:

The murders of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in Chicago have awakened many Americans to the campaign being carried out against the Black Panther Party throughout the country. Since April 1968, 28 Panthers have died and countless others have been imprisoned. But the “search and destroy” operations against the Black Panther Party do not always take such dramatic forms.

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Send letters to fe — at — fifthestate — dot — org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220.

In order to engage in electoral politics by claiming it as harm reduction, you have to ignore the fact that each new law creates new criminals, and that the state has always sought to isolate and punish criminals. Aside from whatever fantasy of minimizing damage Kathy Ferguson proffers in her article, “Anarchism & the Vote,” in FE #413, Spring, 2023, that’s an objective harm to individuals and even entire classes of people.

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This letter is in reply to the article by Tom Haroldson entitled, “Vote No On Survival” which appeared in FE #99, February 19 — March 4.

Mr. Haroldson makes some very good points in regards to Nixon’s bullshit maneuvers regarding the ecology issue, and also by pointing out that the “...ecology movement is endorsed by the very people who make the movement necessary.”

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Dear F.E.,

Just got the new issue. It’s too good to be true! Two issues in a row with relevant, well-written, hip articles specifically for women [FE #105, May 14–27, 1970].

Women being equal with men in all things except glandular and physical makeup, such articles as the Women’s News Co-op’s are welcome [FE #105, May 14–27, 1970]. And the tone of these articles is so positive and pleasant-natured. They give the Fifth Estate a freshness it has been needing.

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I’d like to reply to SP Marc Nadeau whose trash was published in the Feb. 4, F.E. [Letters, FE #98, February 4–18, 1970]

Baby, I’m not under 25, and am old enough to be your mother. Guys like you make me want to vomit. You made a big issue out of an article on the Northland “happening”. I don’t condone what the “kids” have done, but they were exercising a constitutional right—free assembly.

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You will note with paradoxical titters that the “Silent Majority” of which Nixon speaks (that is, referring to “a nation of sheep”), is in fact a misnomer caused of social lingual conditioning. The silent majority in this country—I would like to believe—are those millions of young and old people both, who inside themselves, know the radical youth of today are right and correct.

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“Where grievances pile high and most of the elected spokesmen represent the establishment, violence may be the only effective response.”

—Justice William O. Douglas, U.S. Supreme Court

“Violence? We hate it. But is it violent to shoot a cop who breaks into your home bent on killing you? If so, the Panthers are violent.”

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Editors’ Note: Fifth Estate staffer Rick Londin is in Cuba with Venceremos Cane Cutting Brigade. The Brigade has been there since last November to assist the Cubans in harvesting 10 million tons of sugar cane as part of their program of attaining economic independence. The contingent Rick is with will be arriving back in the U.S. in early February and a second group will leave for Cuba at that time.

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I managed to get my hands on a copy of the Fifth Estate. Wow, what a paper. I passed it around my section and everyone thoroughly enjoyed it.

I’m a GI and I have been in Vietnam for six months. I despise the military and I believe the same as I did before I came here, that we don’t belong here.

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Send letters to fe@fifthestate.org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220.

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten.

Letters may be edited for length.

Your editorial on the Ukraine war in FE #411, Spring 2022 starts out promising, calling for the defeat of Putin by the Ukrainian resistance, and the overthrow of his dictatorship in Russia.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The following letter was sent to one of our subscribers who had sent Mich. Senator Philip Hart a copy of the speech given by Dr. Norman Pollack on U.S. participation in the war in Vietnam:

Dr. Pollack’s premise that “we are at war today because we cannot—or will not—solve the internal problems at home” is just all wrong. The first session of this congress enacted more social and economic legislation than any Congress since the early days of the New Deal, and the fear now is (not the pain, as Dr. Pollack seems to imply) that increasing costs in Vietnam will slow down full implementation of all these programs.

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Common Council, City of Detroit, 2 Woodward Avenue, Detroit 26, Michigan

Dear Sirs,

A meeting was held Wednesday, March 9 at Burton School promoted through the combined efforts of Cass Community Council, Cass Community Church, Burton School Mother and Dad’s Club, WCO affiliated groups (St.. Patrick’s Parrish and Central Methodist Church, Southern Baptist Convention, Priscilla Hall, St. John’s Episcopal Young Adult Fellowship and Cass Park Baptist Church).

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That g.d., m.f., c.s., s.o.b., J.L. Hudson is running for mayor.

F. Janorin

Detroit

Love and flowers from a sleeping city.

I subscribed to your Oracle in August and took some issues with me to school in September. I have changed a lot of attitudes with the FIFTH ESTATE’s help.

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The Underground Press has opened the eyes of many Americans to much of life that they otherwise would not know of. But many of the more intelligent readers still do not understand homosexuality, especially some hippies who, due to their long hair, etc., have been falsely accused of being gay.

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Please tell Mike Bloomfield (“Honkies Can’t Dig Soul Music,” FE #39, October 1–15, 1967) that he can take his idea about us Honkies (I’m from Grosse Pointe) and stick it up his ass.

Just because we buy the Doors doesn’t mean we’ve never heard Howlin’ Wolf. We can see this ugly world, too. The method is not the message.

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We just finished reading your paper “the 5^th Estate” dated April 3–16, which couldn’t be classified as good trash. After wasting 4 books of matches we finally got your paper burning so we could heat our C-rations.

You probably are wondering why we are writing this letter to you. Well, we read some articles concerning Vietnam and some of the letters from men in Vietnam which we will call clerks, because we know they haven’t seen any combat by the letters they have written. The rest of the articles were written by the girlish boys back in the world.

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I have read your newspaper many times and for the most part, found it very enlightening. You have helped answer many of my questions, and set me on the right foot on some important issues. Now, I’m asking another favor. Your acceptance and backing of minority groups is what has prompted me to write to you.

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Thanks for reprinting my Other Scenes article on nudity in and out of the theater (They Can’t Get Any Nuder. FE #75, March 20-April 2, 1969). I’ve just seen it and you did an esthetically nice job. But a line was dropped from one of the final paragraphs.

My point (the important part) was that “the real qualitative difference in the experience of public nudity lies in its goals. If one’s goal is to convince a skeptical public that nudity need not lead to sensuality, then one’s participants dare not touch. But if one’s goal is personal self-fulfillment—and nudity is just a means to that end—one will want to touch. And to be touched.

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I’ve been watching all the shit going down around Detroit and our revolution either means we’re fighting for communism or black supremacy. I am not prejudiced, but want equality for all; not white or black supremacy.

And I’ll be damned if I’m in this revolution if it’s for communism. I wanna change the government, but not have the government change me.

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I read your paper today for the first time and I dig it to the max.

I’ve been around army posts for 6-1/2 years and just recently my eyes were opened to what the vast “green machine” is really like.

I don’t believe we had any business getting involved in Vietnam.

We went in as advisers! Like always. We wound up fighting their war.

...

Myself and another head, were very mellow on the bunker line, when we happened to glance at your paper “The Fifth Estate.”

Since then it hasn’t left our hands. Our souls and hearts would be yours if we could get more of this paper, just to keep our minds straight.” We would appreciate your free subscription as soon as possible.

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Just wanted to let you know how much I, and many of my friends who read the paper, dig the poems you’ve been printing lately, especially Diane DiPrima’s.

I always say that a good anarchistic poem is worth a thousand MC-5 jams since very few of the 5’s songs have any revolutionary message to them while the poems have a lot. I can now see William Leach’s point that music isn’t revolution.

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I was dismayed, but not overly surprised, upon reading William Spencer Leach’s article [“The White Left—Serious or Not?” FE #70, January 9–22, 1969]. Brother Bill has made several good points and suggestions.

He is right in the need for “white revolutionaries” to work in factories (and in fields, I might add). He’s also correct in his call for going into churches with the Word; some of the most important work can be done by going into “straight” gatherings.

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Just a short note of congratulations on your editors’ notes column in the last (Jan. 23) issue of the Fifth Estate.

It is not often that a good cultural newspaper is willing to admit that the working class contains more than a bunch of fat contented racists. While I am one of those lucky individuals who can be both worker and hippy, I am the first to realize that this is impossible for most of the population.

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William Leach from the Black Panther Party is absolutely correct (“The White Left—Serious or Not?” FE #70, January 9–22, 1969) when he points out that white so-called revolutionaries have not organized anyone in the white community—we must ask ourselves why?

Is it because we are afraid to challenge the handful of Wallacites in Hazel Park, or Wyandotte who are attempting to give leadership to the thousands of young white workers who live there.

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John Watson and the Fifth Estate are revolutionaries and that’s why they support the Teamster workers. [See “The News Gets Ready,” FE #68, December 12–25, 1968.]

Revolutionaries remember 1937 when industrial workers in Flint fought the National Guard, just as students at San Francisco State College are fighting the Tactical Police.

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Send letters to fe — AT — fifthestate — DOT — org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220.

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten.

Letters may be edited for length.

My partner brought home a copy of The Anarchist Review of Books and I wanted so much to love it.

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On the afternoon of November I, there was a demonstration in front of the 13^th precinct police station on Woodward. The purpose of the demonstration was to protest the brutal treatment which the police inflicted upon a group of anti-Wallace demonstrators at a rally earlier in the week.

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Due to a surprising thing to come, I wish to cancel my subscription.

I’m on a heavy cruiser off the DMZ (Vietnam) coast. On 18 Jan. 1969 the ship returns to the United States and I am to be released from active duty.

Upon my return home to Detroit I will again be in the groove. This will enable me to buy the Fifth Estate at my local hangouts. Thus, I won’t need your subscription at my current address.

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Since their seems to be some controversy about calling police “Pigs,” I would like to say that when you call any group any one name, that you are generalizing.

Whether you call a policeman a pig, a long haired freak a hippy, or a black man a nigger it’s all the same.

Believe it or not police are people and by classing them together as one name, you are guilty of exactly what their doing. Not to say that the majority of police aren’t sadists, I’m sure they are, but you have to realize that police work naturally caters to sadists.

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Send letters to fe AT fifthestate DOT org or Fifth Estate, P.O. Box 201016, Ferndale, MI 48220.

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten.

Letters may be edited for length.

Rob Blurton’s article, “Anarchy in the Midwest,” [FE #406, Spring 2020] uses the term Native American to describe the people living in the lands invaded by Europeans.

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Send letters to fe@fifthestate.org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten.

Letters may be edited for length.

Your Winter 2019 issue [FE #405] is full of fine writing and provocative thinking, particularly so in the review of Godless: 150 Years of Disbelief by Peter Werbe. The final section, beginning with “Let’s devise a spiritual belief system...” is a beautiful manifesto worth sharing. I wish I’d written it!

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Send letters to fe AT fifthestate DOT org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten. Letters may be edited for length.

...

Shit, man! I despise philosophical cretins like letter writer A.M. Holton [Letters, FE #64, October 17–30, 1968]. His archaic mind nurtures an imagination that’s 2,000 years behind the times. No wonder he got all shook up after reading Ayn Rand’s bullshit concerning the “mindless masses.” His idiotic outcry against us, reflects his despair at the thought of being a mediocrity. He says he’ll destroy us! There is no need to destroy him, cause he’s a self-destructive motherfucker.

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This letter was sent to the Editor of the Detroit Free Press.

About the arrogant note on page 7-C of the Free Press of Nov. 8 that “writer Richie Yorke of Toronto has supplied the Detroit Free Press with the first newspaper review in the United States of the Beatles’ new album, ‘The Beatles.’”

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The following writer is one of the Vancouver Five. See our coverage of the start of their trials elsewhere in this issue.

Dear Fifth Estate:

I’ve just finished reading the Summer 1983 issue of the paper which you sent me. As usual, I found lots to think about in it, and it is a joy to read many ideas that I am more than less in agreement with. Zerzan was thought provoking, but I especially liked the article on economic recovery, and the replies to the letter by Ron Haley.

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Send letters to fe [@] fifthestate [dot] org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten.

Letters may be edited for length.

Fifth Estate note: We usually don’t print letters of this length, but thought this encapsulated the sexual immiseration suffered by many. We don’t offer advice in this matter, but invite others to suggest how best to navigate sex and partnering.

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I used to like ‘em too, just like everyone else, caught-up in that follow-the-other-people, emotional group-cohesion thing. But then I began to think! The Stooges are one example of a group that takes us (the audience) for fools and chumps.

Iggy goes thru all this sexual stuff and then he poses and finally JUMPS out into the audience on someone! He did this at Olympia, Halloween, and almost started a fight with the guy he jumped on! He cursed at the boy and called him names saying “Hit me, I dare ya” and stuff like that.

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The Students for a Democratic Society, the Radical Education Project (REP) and other radical groups in Detroit, were set up for harassment in the Detroit Free Press article of October 30, 1969 which printed one of our names and several addresses. The article implied that we were responsible for the unrest in local high schools this fall.

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Arthur Parumba’s review of Richard Brautigan’s three books [FE #94, December 11–24, 1969] was the best thing to appear in the Fifth Estate in ages. His Shell Station sounds like the greatest spot this side of Alice’s Restaurant. By the way, is “Parumba” for real?

Thomas Haroldson

Editors’ Note: Sure he’s real. The Parumba Bros. Shell Station is right on the corner of Prentis and Woodward. Drop in and see them.

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Ever since I’ve been reading Hank Malone’s articles, I acquired the irresistible urge to blast his ideas out of our midst into oblivion, where they belong. Malone’s reflections on art are a classical example of revolutionary cretinism.

Malone’s views have been attacked (rather irrationally) by another reader before me, and his response is curiously analogous to vice-president Agnew’s: “I’m not for censorship” said Agnew, after subtly advocating censorship in a previous speech.

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I just finished reading your latest “words of wisdom.” Isn’t it about time you knocked it off? Words are works, I agree, but more appropriate adjectives may be found in any pocket dictionary.

You must be aware of the fact that “straight” people find your choice of words more than a little distasteful. If you’re trying to “turn on” the squares, come on slow, in a way acceptable to all.

...

Hey John, I’ve been digging your doings way back since 1965. I have always respected and, I might add, shared, your point of view on this whole pig establishment.

I’ve been keeping in touch with the scene even though I’ve been in Vietnam more than a year, via the Fifth Estate and news-clippings and papers sent by friends back in Detroit.

...

On August 2, Denny Dunn and Carlson Tuttle were arrested in an anti-Humphrey demonstration at Cobo Hall. Later in the evening a bail fund was collected in hopes that we could get enough money to get our brothers out of jail. We collected $206.00. As it turned out the bail was set at $1,000:00 each, so we had to pay a bondsman the $200.00.

...

I’m still alive and well in the U.S. Navy. Much has happened since the MP hassled with Ray Greer last Jan. 4^th at Metro airport. If you’ll remember I was on a TV news spot last Feb. 27^th when I left for Norfolk. Va.

Haven’t been home since Feb. 27^th when I left for Norfolk, Va. to join the U.S.S. Yorktown CVS-10, a “Hunter-Killer Force” anti-submarine carrier.

...

I’ve really been digging the stuff that’s been going down in your (no THE it’s for everyone) paper, and I’d just like to mention a few radical things around.

First, I’m surprised that, except for once on ABX, no one in the left media has mentioned the only radical program on nationwide TV at the present. This being “The Prisoner” on CBS/Thurs., 8 pm.

...

Enjoyed our paper over here in Nam. They really get worn from use. I’ll be back home to Detroit in 3 weeks so you should stop sending it. I will subscribe when I’m back.

Read with great interest the John Sinclair story. He spoke at our high school a few years ago, and the instructor that brought him down was dismissed.

...

The letter in your August 7 issue [FE #85, August 7–20, 1969] from the corpsman in Da Nang harbor has prompted me to relate a similar experience to you.

I was a corpsman at the hospital at Fort Ord, Cal., for almost two years, where I was appalled by the condition and treatment of over 1000 patients who were packed into a hospital staffed for 250 beds. Most of these patients were Vietnam returnees, and seeing them (and in fact the whole experience) turned me on to the resistance and the revolution.

...

Send letters to fe — AT — fifthestate — DOT — org or

Fifth Estate,

POB 201016,

Ferndale MI 48220

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten.

Letters may be edited for length.

As always, thank you for everything your team does. I’ve been working my way through the Winter 2019 issue of Fifth Estate after my shifts at Starbucks, and it really grounds me and makes me feel sane after working for capitalist madness.

...

I am a dumb old GI and I hate this MF Army. I want to subscribe to your underground paper. It’s not a very pleasant thing being here where I really don’t want to be.

The only thing that I want is to be back home (Detroit) and to be with my girl. I don’t want the war in Vietnam, or the Army or all of this unnecessary harassment. I’m not really proud of being in the Army although my parents seem to think so.

...

To the Editor:

Your paper has done so much for our heads simply because it is so meaningful.

We would like to add just one thing for your other readers: “Respect the Revolution and you shall inherit the earth.”

The Iron Butterfly Conspiracy

Danang

I was in your town the past week and got caught up in the action there. I’m from Pittsburgh where there is absolutely nothing happening. And I mean nothing!

...

Listen and dig the “fair” deal the troops get in good old Vietnam by the military-pig-racist-establishment.

Currently I am being framed on a phony marijuana bust. I have an eyewitness to testify in my favor but it will be the word of two enlisted men against the word of two 1^st Lts. who can do no wrong as far as the military is concerned.

...

I have dug the newspaper for almost 8 months and I’m really for the People having the power, because the Establishment has fucked this country completely up. I feel that your paper really gets down to the natural nitty thang in every printed page!

I especially dug your hip reply to the brainwashed men of the 3^rd Plt., B Co., 1/6 Inf., 5^th Div.

...

In March of this year, citizens of the Republic of New Africa suffered physical attacks by the Detroit Police Dept., were deprived of their legal rights by the police and the Wayne County Prosecutor, and were the victims of racist hysteria whipped up by the mass media, notably the Detroit News.

...

The strike of the Third World peoples and white supporters at San Francisco State College was a part of expanding the movement in this country toward liberation. It was a strike, an action with a direction toward a revolutionary level because it was based upon principles drawn from the foundation of oppressed Third World people’s needs.

...

Send letters to fe AT fifthestate DOT org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220.

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten. Letters may be edited for length.

Enjoyed your review of John Zerzan’s A People’s History of Civilization, “The Way of the Passenger Pigeon,” by Peter Werbe in FE #401, Summer 2018. In your reviewer’s analogy of civilization being a train heading towards a bridge that is out without the realization of those supping in the dining car, if I enjoy that last supper as it crosses that trestle, is that decadence?

...

In the July 18 edition of the Detroit American, Anthony J. Wierzbicki, the paper’s president and publisher, wrote an editorial in response to the barrage of criticism directed at the paper’s use of uncomplimentary terminology when referring to law-breakers, precisely black law-breakers.

...

Send letters to fe@fifthestate.org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220.

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten. Letters may be edited for length.

Thank you for finally calling out your fellow privileged white lefties for their, “I choose not to vote,” bullshit. (See “In Defense of Tactical Voting,” by Bill Weinberg, FE #400, Spring 2018.)

...

In regard to the events of Chicago during the convention week, I would like to submit the following information:

On August 26, 10:30pm, a friend and I went to Lincoln Park. At this time a large group of people, mostly young, was gathered in the park listening to different speakers, chanting and sitting near fires talking. Soon some of the people began “antagonizing” the present police with name calling.

...

Dear Sirs,

I have been a subscriber to your paper for a long time and hope to be a subscriber for a long time to come, but that’s not why I wrote.

I wish to congratulate you on your last issue (vol. 3, no. 7), it was great!

I also wish to criticize you on your letting John Sinclair ruin your fine newspaper by printing all of his bullshit on the MC5.

...

As I was sitting in Grant Park in Chicago August 28 what to my tear-gassed eyes should appear but a beautiful young girl with a free copy of the Fifth Estate.

She handed me a copy with a smile on her face so I immediately began to read every page, through the tears in my eyes. It was beautiful to say the least.

...

Editor’s Note: The following letter was written by an American serviceman in Vietnam. It was sent to one of our readers, who in turn forwarded it to us with permission to print it in our letters column. The writer’s name has been omitted for his own protection.

Dear Bob,

This is a place of horror, and I am frankly unequipped for it. I can perform my duty; cleaning the jungle mud from gaping wounds, folding a man’s near-severed lower leg up against the intact part and binding them together, or swathing a head in bandages to keep the brain from falling out, as much as any other purpose. I can carry a shapeless bundle from a helicopter and assist in opening it to find inside little more than a jumble of severed limbs, intestines, and chunks of charred muscle. I can even fish a blood-soaked envelope from the bundle and fill out a tag for the body from its address, noticing that the same name, plus, “mrs.” is repeated in the return address.

...

The Fifth Estate has always looked beautiful to me, from the very beginning, typos and all. But even more so lately. It’s always saying something provocative visually, too. There is such a wonderful vitality about it. And obviously the only way to keep it alive and assure longevity is to print the Fifth Estate “at home”—with a printer who is sent to school by the Fifth Estate and Inner City Voice jointly.

...

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee has asked support for a nationwide trading stamps drive through which it hopes to equip its Atlanta, Ga., garage. SNCC has recently been able to obtain, through redeeming such stamps, three mini-buses as well as several battery chargers, and tire-changing, wheel-balancing and other equipment which enables it to keep its cars operational.

...

I am more than happy to state my opinion of the Army and the war in Viet Nam. I’ve been in the service nearly a year now and I have had several unpleasant experiences with the foolish and incompetent leaders of this organization.

I have been very fortunate and I have not had to kill to save my life, but many of my friends here have not been so fortunate. Three weeks ago we had 10 men killed and approximately 40 others who were wounded in an ambush just North of this city.

...

Is it wrong to hope? Is it wrong to have a dream and to keep searching for the realization of that dream? I’ve been told that anything worth obtaining is invariably very difficult to obtain. To some people this means working overtime to get the resources for a long awaited vacation; to others it is the sacrifice of social position in return for personal integrity; and to still others (and these are few, unfortunately) it is the complete denial of oneself in order that someone else’s dreams be fulfilled. Of course, there are very few of us who are willing to go beyond the first mentioned sacrifice.

...

Send letters to fe — AT — fifthestate — DOT — org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220. All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length.

Taking part in protests is an act of defiance which may result in violent retaliation. “In Defense of Self Defense” by Paul Walker in the Fall 2017 Fifth Estate (#399) made this clear.

...

Send letters to fe@fifthestate.org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length.

I appreciate Chellis Glendinning’s criticisms of modern, Western civilization, including modern agriculture, which has been highly detrimental to ecological and social balance in the world. (See “Linear Perspective, Fences & Nature’s Glory,” FE #396, Summer 2016.)

...

Send letters to fe--at--fifthestate--dot--org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220. All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length.

Enclosed is $30. Please send us a bundle of the Summer 2015 Vietnam issue. Thank you for putting out this paper! Printed propaganda is where it’s at!

...

We welcome your opinions.

Please send us your comments and ideas about what we have published by letter (typed or handwritten), email, or social media.

Address information is at our website: www.fifthestate.org

Florida Kollective

I’m writing on behalf of our small and growing kollective in northeast Florida.

...

The Fifth Estate welcomes letters at PO Box 201016, Ferndale MI 48220, or fe-AT-fifthestate-DOT-org

I am no fan of the United States Government, nor of any of its agencies, including the FCC. As far as I can tell, we have government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich, and only a revolution in the human psyche will change that. Nevertheless, I found much to disagree with in Ron Sakolsky’s article “No More Safety Valves” (#372, Spring, 2006).

...

I read with some surprise EB Maple’s letter (see FE 370, Fall 2005) regarding an article I wrote which was published in the Winter 2005 issue of the Fifth Estate.

Maple writes: “The standard issue primitivism of the article’s message appeals to me in many ways...” Thanks, a rather condescending way to agree with some aspects of my vision, but an acknowledgment nevertheless.

...

The following is in response to an item which appeared in the Fall 1983 Fifth Estate which listed the Columbia (Mo.) Anarchist League as one of the sponsors of a Yippie! coordinated demonstration to be held at the 1984 Republican convention.

Fifth Estate:

For the record, the Columbia Anarchist League has nothing to do with “Freeze Reagan/Bush.” I told the NYC Yippies that we did not want to endorse it because it was a move in a reformist direction away from the nobody for president idea. However, I told him it would be okay with us if they put the Columbia Nobody for President Committee as an endorsee (since we could make our point this way).

...

Send letters to fe@fifthestate.org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220. All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length.

Thank you to the comrades of the Fifth Estate for publishing John Clark’s review and remembering my father so fondly. (See Winter 2017 FE, “Sam Dolgoff: A life at the center of American anarchism for seventy years.”)

...

Send letters to fe — at — fifthestate — dot — org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220. All formats accepted, including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length.

I am really glad the FE has published and continues to publish articles that cover the experiences of people in various parts of the world that haven’t conformed neatly to the dominant narratives on the left or the right, or the cheerleaders of any government. As anarchists, these are the stories we need to know about, and often the people are the ones we want to be in solidarity with, when we know they are there!

...

Send letters via email to fe<AT>fifthestate<DOT>org or Fifth Estate, P.O. Box 201016, Ferndale MI 48220. All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten. Letters may be edited for length.

I had just thought about Pat Halley yesterday. (See “FE Staffer Puts a Pie in God’s Face,” FE Spring 2015)

...

Send letters to fe — at — fifthestate — dot — org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220 All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length

Want to write a letter about our Anti-Marx section?

We assume our essays critical of Marxism will generate a large number of responses. Limit letters to 400 words. If you want to suggest an essay in reply, please contact us.

...

Send letters to fe — at — fifthestate — dot — org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220. All formats accepted, including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length.

I now live in London, England, but back in 1968 I lived in Walled Lake, Michigan, not far from Detroit. I was in the 10^th grade and angry about Viet Nam.

...

Send letters to fe — AT — fifthestate.org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length

As a fellow traveler/indie film maker, I have had the chance to learn about copyrighting from posting and also utilizing other people’s videos. [ See Fall 2011 FE, “Copyright or Wrong.”]

...

I, too, have fears about the Americanization of Cuba and that it will end up “just like other Caribbean resorts” and that IMF-driven and other economic decisions will lead to the end of the many services provided to everyone and a change in the life and culture and well-being of its citizens. [See “Adios, Socialismo,” by Walker Lane, Summer FE 2010.]

...

Send letters to fe — AT — fifthestate — DOT — org or Fifth Estate, POB 204016, Ferndale MI 48220.

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length.

Greetings Comrades,

I just want to say thanks for keeping FE going. Yes indeed, the longest running radical mag in the US. I just ordered another year’s subscription.

...

Send letters to fe — at — fifthestate — dot — org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale, MI 48220

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length.

Spencer Sunshine’s review of John Zerzan’s Twilight of the Machines begins promisingly enough with a brief summation of Zerzan’s history and a lengthy description of Twilight’s contents.

...

Send letters to fe — at — fifthestate — dot — org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length.

Seattle’s first ever anarchist book fair will be held October 17–18.

So, let’s say education is the lifeblood of social change and the written word--books, zines, texts, blogs--the circulatory system spreading that lifeblood around. A little to the hands to keep building, a little to the brain to keep thinking, a little to the digestive tract to keep energy levels up.

...

Send letters to fe — AT — fifthestate — DOT — org or Fifth Estate, PO Box 201016, Ferndale, MI 48220

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length.

Sorry to hear about your financial situation. As vile and evil as it is, money is still the life force of the modern world. Without proper funds to sustain a project, more often than not, it will all come tumbling down.

...

Dearest Hippie Editor:

I think you guys at the Fifth Estate are the biggest clot of hypocrites I have ever had witness to. Some people wrote some letters to the Editor in your Aug. 15–31 issue. They called you hypocrites. They were right. So give them this idiot reply “Go back to your bar-b-ques and rock gardens and go soak your head in gravy, and hang yourself on a telephone wire,” and other kindergarten sayings.

...

Send letters to Fifth Estate, P.O. Box 201016, Ferndale MI 48220

I appreciate the thoughtfulness of Cookie Orlando’s “Unlocking the Girl Lock: Gender Trouble at Burning Man.” (FE, Winter 2007). However, what’s missing is the girl’s point of view.

The article tells us that she didn’t feel like going to a lecture at the Burning Man festival in Nevada that her boyfriend wanted to attend, so he left her in the “Girl Lock,” a service much like left luggage at the airport.

...

Send letters to Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale Ml 48220

Congrats on changing anarchist to anti-authoritarian on your front page description. Too much baggage on the word anarchist. It’s glamorous for those with that identity; fear and mistrust for those outside the milieu.

There was that period from about 1880 to 1920 when anarchists were killing people. Like monotheists, they thought they were in touch with the higher moral values of the Universe and thus were free of morals in this world.

...

To the Editor:

May I say one thing, I hope that the Fifth Estate is not losing it’s awareness, love, peace and spiritual splendor.

From reading the August 1–15 issue, exploiting the Detroit Riot scene, and all—that excess-baggage that was written along with it was just too much for me to bare.

I’ve been very loyal to the Fifth Estate and I hope to continue, but please for heaven’s sake don’t drop your fine paper into the acid of terror, etc.

...

Over five different decades, though dogmas inside my head and your pages have come and gone, something seems to have largely been constant: the Fifth Estate treats ideas as serious things even worth pissing-off friends for (now and then).

And, that’s the sure sign of a genuine radical.

...

Fifth Estate letters policy

We welcome letters commenting on our articles, ones stating opinions, or reports from your area. We can’t print every letter we receive, but each is read by the collective and considered for publication. Letters via email or on disk are appreciated, but type- or hand-written ones are acceptable. Length should not exceed two double spaced pages. We reserve the right to edit for length or style. If you are interested in writing a longer response, please contact us.

...

Dear FE,

Neither the simple abuse by Ratticus nor the extended commentary by George Bradford seemed to me to engage the two most basic points or arguments of “Language: Origin and Meaning” (FE #315, Winter 1984), namely that language is the model of ideology and that it derives from earliest division of labor. Thus they rejected the piece while failing to deal with the essentials referred to by its title, an odd tack possibly reflecting on my craftsmanship as its author.

...

To the Editor,

As the yearly retreat to the diploma mills nears I thought your readers would like to know of the continued existence of some essentially less repressive alternatives.

Especially since 1960, there have existed an increasing number of very small, essentially student run, institutions that would now most aptly be considered “counter-community” colleges. The first was Mark Golden’s experimental personalist college, Emerson, in Pacific Groves, California, which is mentioned in Saul Landeau’s anthology on the New Left.

...

To the Fifth Estate:

I disagree with Fifth Estate picking on Hugo Chavez (See Spring 2007 FE, “In Chavez’s Venezuela: Continued Repression of Popular Protest”).

Most of the charges made are correct; his regime is dictatorial. But there’s also the tremendous work done in the barrios (or misiones as they call them), where clinics staffed by Cuban doctors are now almost in all of them, and public housing has been built. I visited one in Caracas on opening day: 218 units rented to poor families at 10 percent of their salary, or free if unemployed.

...

Send letters to fe (at) fifthestate.org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220.

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length.

A long time ago, my heart was busted by a girl who had her kicks with me but wasn’t ready for a long time commitment. As these things go, I was tremendously trashed, heartbroken, and horny. Things got so bad it devolved into clinical depression. I was losing my head. So, I thought, go to a red house for some well needed relief.

...

Send letters to fe — AT — fifthestate.org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length.

The Fifth Estate/Support Marie Mason table at the 5^th annual New York City Anarchist Book Fair, April 8–10. Several FE staff members and friends from Detroit and New York distributed 300 copies of the new FE, sold books, and back issues, and raised funds for Marie. The fair featured dozens of exhibitors, a film festival, workshops, children’s programs, and the 3^rd Annual NYC Anarchist Art Festival PAnarko Lab” and art exhibit, including a Living Theatre performance. Hundreds of attendees crowded Judson Memorial Church.

...

The population of hard core anarchists from the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s is slowly dwindling, and the next generation is unprepared to take up the slack.

Young people today are filled with apathy in a day and age where apathy is the one thing you don’t want. So, where are you guys? Where are the huge mass gatherings of rage and indignation? Where are the fliers, the meetings, the banners and protests?

...

Fifth Estate Letters Policy

We welcome letters commenting on our articles, ones stating opinions, or reports from your area. We can’t print every letter we receive, but each is read by the collective and considered for publication. Letters via email or on disk are appreciated, but typed or hand-written ones are acceptable. Length should not exceed 400 words. We reserve the right to edit for length or style. If you are interested in writing a longer response, please contact us.

...

I thought that “yellow journalism” had a reputation as bad as Lobsinger. I thought it had gone out with the Hearst newspapers, that its only remains were in such rags as the Inquirer. I was wrong.The Fifth Estate has become, in recent issues, the worst piece of journalism that I have ever seen. The early editions seemed promising as spokesmen for Detroit’s youth.

...

To Whomever Is Interested:

Well, it seems it was a pretty tame bunch of tabbies up at Wildcat Mountain late in July. Once again, nothing was accomplished at a Social Revolutionary Anarchist Federation (SRAF) conference, but the determination of a time and place for next year’s rerun. Some people were disappointed that nothing of substance was produced, while others, such as myself, wondered why the temporary assemblage of such a heterogeneous group had to “accomplish” something anyway.

...

Greetings!

Me, and some good comrades are being held prisoner in this pigsty called prison, and we came upon a copy of the April Fifth Estate. Needless to say, we are always trying to Fuck Authority, but there are no RICH around here to EAT, so we ate your newspaper, and that fucker sure was good food for thought.

...

Dear FE Readers:

Well, here we are with issue no. 2 from the new staff and only two letters--one a form letter that went out to all the left press. We can only conclude one of several things from the lack of reader response: a) all of you agree with everything we say and there is nothing to comment on; b) you don’t agree with anything we say, but are too disgusted to bother with a response; or c) you just don’t give a shit about anything we say and are doing something else. In any event, we would like your comments and criticisms of what is being said in the paper and welcome your letters.

...

Letters to Fifth Estate

Greetings:

You are to be commended for surviving despite the premature reports of your publication’s demise coupled with the other difficulties the Fifth Estate has faced recently.

I was greatly pleased to find your September issue on the newsstands. What a great issue. Your politics are a breath of fresh, fresh air--especially when compared to the drivel in The Sun and the so-called Michigan Free Press.

...

Dear Fifth Estate:

I refuse to renew my subscription to your radical rag for the simple reason I have some absurdist evidence you’ve been running a bogus journalistic revolution in the Motor City. That’s right! I talked to Mr. Green jeans yesterday and he said you guys are being FUNDED BY THE CIA! It does make sense, you know. After all, how can you freaks continue to run a radical rag with NO advertising, continually asking your subscribers to put up bucks here and there and go to benefit parties. Come on. I’ve got a degree from Wayne State and I’ve been out of work since November 1975 (actually I’m bragging but the point is where the hell are you guys getting your money?) I actually don’t give a shit since I don’t give a shit about money any more than you guys do. The thing is, if you guys are being funded by the CIA that means you can continue perpetually with your anarchist ideals and absurdist philosophies. Something fishy in Detroit, and it ain’t Mother Waddles.

...

To Sonny Tufts, Wonder Woman, the Detroit Auto Dealers Association, and all the imbeciles who revere the article “Propagandada Discovered in Detroit,” (F.E. March 1976):

Besides applauding your own impotence and illusory liveliness, propagandada, etc., a kind of mechanical senility, only demonstrates the seemingly unlimited powers of the spectacle--the continuing vanguard of the banal.

...

Welfare Hit

Dear Fifth Estate:

I would like twelve copies of your FUCK AUTHORITY poster. The day after I received it I put it up on a wall in my office in the Welfare Dept. here in San Francisco. Great responses of approval from the welfare applicants whose intake papers I process--“I’d like one,” and from fellow employees. Even more than from the “Fight Celibacy” bumper sticker I’ve put up.

...

Learned recently that funds for the arts have been cut drastically in Detroit or Michigan, and that a “state representative” Wierzbicki defended the policy by saying that music, art, and dance have nothing to do with people’s lives. Of course, Wizbugger, or whatever his name is, is correct. As dadaist Richard Holsenbeck once said, “Art regarded from a serious point of view is a large scale swindle.”

...

Dear FE,

I generally enjoy your paper, but have two criticisms: 1) I think it should contain more reporting on working class and community struggles—nation-wide and especially in your own backyard. Of course, most of these are led by reformist or Leninist groups...all the more reason to get in there and tell what’s going on. I think it could also win many more working people to your readership.

...

Nature of Work

Dear Friends:

Barbara and I were glad to receive the most recent issue of the Fifth Estate. The critique of the Boggs pamphlet was especially good. I think Durruti and I part company, however, in his assertion after the Marx quotation that “that was work under capitalism in 1844, that was wage work under capitalism in the 1930’s and that remains the nature of work today.”.

...

Dreary Marx

Dear FE:

Our high at your printing of our article on the decomposition of capitalist society waned appreciably when we noted that about 30% of the original had been deleted. We had, of course, performed our own editing job before submitting, on the wealth of available data.

Neither were we heartened to see so much space devoted to A.R.‘s dreary Marxist determinism entitled “The Big Picture.” “Never before in the history of human society,” we are informed, “has the whole social order been confronted with the possibility and necessity for consciously evolving into a whole new social form...”

...

To the Editor,

I would like to congratulate you and your staff for being so ambitious as to save our city from the blight which exists at the present time. The blight which I refer to is the lack of communication between the people of Detroit as a result of our inadequate news media. The result has been an uninformed, robotic society.

...

Related: See Comment from the Fifth Estate regarding Black Rose Books, Ltd. in this issue.

Dear FE:

The economist-minded, techno-fascist remains of the situationists, the socialist corpses who whine about the need for federations in their “libertarian” mouthpiece, Synthesis, and the worshipers and arbiters of commodity relations (i.e. Black Rose Books and their business-is-business cohorts) ought to rumble with SRAFers assembling their conference on Wildcat Mountain this summer. It would make for a better ecology; I know I’d enjoy the breath of fresh air.

...

To The Fifth Estate:

We had a dim premonition the shallow-minded comedians would one day use what they thought to be DADA as a way of deadening men’s minds.

“Propagandada Discovered in Detroit” (Fifth Estate, March 1976) confirms this. YOU NORMALS are too weak to be good, too good to be really bad....only weak and in consequence, pathetic.

...

NOTE: The following Letter to the Editor of the Detroit News was written by Alvin Harrison, NSM [Northern Student Movement] field secretary in Detroit, in response to a number of letters published regarding his participation in a Teach-in on Viet Nam at Wayne University. Mr. Harrison was quoted as saying “That’s your flag, baby, not mine.”

...

I was heartened to read your issue concerning Earth First! [FE #327, Fall, 1987]. I’ve had a gut feeling about that group for a while, felt uncomfortable with the male-dominated norm of most all environmental groups, even the so-called radical, anarchist ones. Then I heard about the AIDS comment by Foreman and got upset even further. But I thought, maybe that’s west coast innocence; I just came from New York City where AIDS is the #1 killer of women between the ages of 25 and 29. Still, it bugged me, and I began debating with people about Earth First!, about the nature of an anarchist ecology group which refuses to recognize human social relationships and problems as the cause of environmental disaster To make a long story short, thank you. I thought I was alone in an uncomfortable feeling about Earth First!. Now I’m not alone.

...

FIFTH ESTATE LETTERS POLICY

We welcome letters commenting on our articles, ones stating opinions, or reports from your area. We can’t print every letter we receive, but each is read by our staff and considered for publication.

Letters via email or on disk are appreciated, but type- or hand-written ones are acceptable. Length should not exceed two, double spaced pages. If you are interested in writing a longer response, please contact us: POB 6, Liberty TN 37095. fifthestatenewspaper@yahoo.com

...

First Letter: ‘In The House of the Hanged, One Does Not Speak of the Hemp.’

Today there’s a great deal of preaching to young people. One can hear the tongue clicking of sophisticated adults worrying about what is happening to the younger generation. There’s also the thoughtless embracing of the superficial fads of youth today by those adults who wish to appear to be “with it.” I don’t feel I’ve suffered from any generation gap, at least, this is how you have always treated me, so let’s get to the heart of some of the important things that bother all of us, Young and old, today. I have never worshipped at any shrine and I know that you, at least, will not mind the irreverence that I might express. After all, one of the things I want to warn you about is not to accept a man’s words except as you learn from them, but judge him by his deeds as you see him.

...

Dear Great-grandfather [sic],

I am writing to you because I feel that you have an honest desire to understand. You lived in a time of much confusion and you felt the need to seek new solutions to many problems. You sought your own solutions to your own problems so you must realize that you could only find your own answers.

...

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten. Letters may be edited for length.

Send letters via email to fe@fifthestate.org or Fifth Estate, P.O. Box 201016, Ferndale MI 48220

Youth Sexualization

In your Spring 2012 issue, reviewer Paul Comeau questions Paul Goodman’s “advocating the sexualization of adolescents and children.” (see “The Anarchist Writings of Paul Goodman”).

...

I want to compliment you on the very fine article which you co-authored in the January 1 through 15, 1967, issue of the Fifth Estate [“Spare the Rod…?” FE #21, January 1–15, 1967]. I think that it was a well written article which discussed and documented very well the kinds of problems we have around corporal punishment here in the Detroit Public School system.

...

Leaving aside his descent into scatology and personal abuse, Shelley Manne’s letter [FE #21, January 1–15, 1967] claims that I am in error regarding the degree of integration in 1) his group; 2) his club; 3) the movie-TV-recording studios.

As evidence for 1), he informs us that he offered Teddy Edwards, a black tenor player, a job in his group. So? If true, and if Edwards had accepted, that would have raised the number of Negro musicians in Manne’s group for the last dozen years to 4 instead of 3 (assuming Down Beat is correct in reporting that pianist Hamp Hawes has joined Manne). That hardly makes Manne a flaming integrationist: Dave Brubeck has had a greater percentage of black musicians in his quartet during the same period.

...

Your article called “The Jazz Scene in America” [http://[FE #18, November 15–30, 1966[FE #18, November 15–30, 1966]]] was three columns of misinformation.

For your information, of which you need much, there has not been a succession of saxophone players in my band since Joe Maini died. There has only been one other than Frank Strozier, who is in the band now, and that was Charlie Kennedy, a starving jazz musician and the father of six children. I didn’t look to see what color he was. I listened, something I gather that you never do. Many musicians felt Charlie had enough OBVIOUS talent to be a great alto player if given a chance.

...

I have unfortunately been one of the many observers of that bloated piece of miscarried construction the UNIROYAL TIRE on I-94. [See “Get That Tire!” FE #19, December 1–15, 1966.] It would be best to have the tire destroyed by indirect means, i.e., through use of mind manipulation, have someone destroy it for us.

...

That Artists’ Workshop Public Notice in your last issue — Public Notice for more members — I found somewhat amusing [see FE #18, November 15–30, 1966]. Especially where it said “There is no hierarchy, no exclusiveness, no formal structure ...”

Reminds me of the Holy Roman Empire — which was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.

...

Please send one year’s subscription of this thing you call “The Fifth Estate’ to me. It gets pretty cold out here in the wintertime and I gotta have something to burn in my fireplace. Ever tried to heat a 3 room house with a flaming draft card?

Oh, Yea! One other thing. Please try to keep your columnist out of jail (i.e. John Sinclair). Now that I got MONEY invested in your organization (and I use the term very loosely), I would like to see it go somewhere. And I don’t mean prison.

...

To the Editor:

Several things. It’s a long term blues and bound for longer but I find, in the FIFTH ESTATE, some hope. For that, thank you. Also for:

A. Printing news items of conceptually strangulated editorial policies, conventional newspapers either minimize and bury with the obits or omit entirely. This is especially valuable to me, vitally involved and interested and yet geographically removed from the essential dialogues.

...

Just finished reading a friend’s copy of THE FIFTH ESTATE.

Enjoyed very much Mr. Ovshinsky’s article about Dr. Hoffer and LSD [FE #13, August 30, 1966]. It was refreshing to read an article that dealt with experimental facts and a word of expert caution, rather than a shocking expose attempting to scare the pants off you!

...

We were delighted to receive your last edition and think that you have made some great improvements in the format.

It has occurred to me that your people might want to consider some of the issues that are being highlighted—such as civil rights, housing and displacement of people, poverty programs, employment of Negro youth, etc. Is it possible to highlight these problems? There are some real “nitty gritty” issues in Detroit that need to be brought out in the open and your people could provide a real means of communication.

...

Dear Marshall:

I have just read the article you wrote in the May 15^th issue of The Fifth Estate, pertaining to the Spike-Drivers. To say I am angry about what you have written would be a gross understatement.

The reason for my anger is that no one is more aware than me of the conflicting sides of this story from its very inception and what you have written is a very inaccurate, untrue and one sided version. How you could refer to me as a “headless manager” without ever having an interview with me from which you then could draw your own conclusion shows a lack of respect for your profession, which is to delve into all aspects of a situation, meet the various participants and then make a personal evaluation.

...

War criminal Nixon orders invasion of Cambodia. graphic—Liberation News Service, 1970. Fifth Estate files.

Send letters via email to fe — AT — fifthestate.org or Fifth Estate, P.O. Box 201016, Ferndale MI 48220. All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten. Letters may be edited for length.

...

A reply to Mr. Wilbert McClendon; not because he will listen (he won’t) but because someone has to maintain the balance:

Mr. McClendon: You said one right thing in your article and that was that some of the white people who protest the war in Vietnam are phony. Actually, you didn’t even say that right because you said they were ALL phony and that, Mr. McClendon, is ridiculous. There are a great many white protesters who are not phony. They have rallied in support of the Negro cause and that cause is much more honest and meaningful because of them. But even the phony white protesters are not harmful.

...

Dear Editor:

Since you are one of the few progressive newspapers around, we have a special request for you. A group of citizens of Mill Valley, California are handling a National Stamp Drive to help equip our garage.

Over the past couple of years, we have been able to exchange stamps for a great deal of the equipment which keeps our cars operational for our field workers. Among the things which we have acquired are: electrical tire-changing apparatus, several battery chargers, analyzing machine, an air meter, voltage regulator machine, a wheel balancer, and three ’65 Falcon Econoline buses. This has been of invaluable service to us and our work.

...

Send letters to fe — AT — fifthestate — DOT — org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220.

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length.

What Size?

Not many mistakes in your Summer 2013 edition, but one I saw that referred to the 7-1/2” penis. It shrank significantly from the headline measurement of “Lessons from a 7-Foot Penis.”

...

To the Editor:

The U.S. Congress is a disreputable club. It’s easy to find fault with anybody who’s a member. But if you are going to pan a congressman, why pick on the best one in sight?

The question occurred to me as I read Plafkin’s silly, self-important, time-serving attack on John Conyers. Let me explain my adjectives. It’s silly to yell “Opportunist!” at one of the handful of congressmen with guts enough to oppose Johnson’s requests for money for the dirty war, to oppose the jingo flag-burning bill, and to oppose using government money on projects in lily-white towns like Weston, Illinois.

...

Letter to the Peace Movement.

Pick one—

What fear is there, or manipulation of the truth is there on your part that blocks you from telling the people what’s happening?

The war is only a byproduct. Another step in a culture that degrades all spirit but war and lust.

You call yourselves the Peace Movement. At the recent so-called “Anti-War Art Festival” it was I who read the only ANTI-WAR poem. No, this isn’t just talk. FACE THE TRUTH! Certainly poets come out against war, but this is still war! Those who went there saw and heard a Mantra consisting of the word PEACE. Peace is anti-war, not protest.

...

We encourage your participation in this project with your comments on the publication & its perspectives. While we will read every letter, we will usually print the most enticing & engaging. E-mail letters or letters sent on disk are appreciated.

Write us! at PO Box 6, Liberty, TN 37095, or 4632 Second Avenue, Detroit, MI 48201, or email FifthEstate@pumpkinhollow.net

...

“Where were the police and how could such a thing happen” were the questions asked by a stunned audience at the Art Institute on Friday, Oct. 21. They had come for an evening of beautiful music, superbly played by the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Rudolf Barshai.

Outside the hall were about 20 police vehicles to protect concert-goers from the Breakthrough picket line. Yet within the auditorium there was insufficient surveillance. Known members of Breakthrough were allowed in the lobby to create minor disturbances; others were seen to be seated in the hall. The concert proceeded. The first selection was played and as the ovation burst forth, four men sprang onto the stage, from the wings, with two huge insulting signs. Police arrived to quell the disturbance some minutes after some of the audience had taken their own action.

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Editor’s Note: The following letter was sent to us by a subscriber presently incarcerated in Southern Michigan Prison at Jackson.

Mr. Brown is known to the FIFTH ESTATE staff as one who contributed generously to the paper while he was on the “outside.” He has expressed an interest in receiving letters from other readers. Those interested In doing so may write him at the address below.

...

Send letters to fe — AT — fifthestate — DOT — org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length.

I moved to Detroit recently from the suburbs, but wasn’t even born when the 1967 Rebellion occurred.

...

The article in your last issue—“Playboy’s Tinseled Seductress”—I liked [FE #17, November 1–15, 1966]. The pointing out Playboy’s magnificent superficiality was, I thought, sound and much needed. But the conclusion!—ugh!—that the marriage institution suffers thereby—that “somehow the glow has gone out of marriage.” How sad!

...

The first meaning in The American College Dictionary defines “reform” as “...the improvement or amendment of what is wrong, corrupt, etc.; social reform.”

But how does Governor Romney define the term? One can only assume from the public position he has taken that reform is the furthest thing from his mind. Ever since Con-Con, Romney’s gubernatorial launching pad, his opposition to a state graduated income tax has been patently clear. But now when the state supposedly needs money, he doesn’t fight the addition of this new tax to the polyglot of provincial personal state taxes already in existence.

...

Howdy, Folks!

(That’s the only non-sexist salutation I can think of.)

I’ve been an unaffiliated Anarchist for years. That’s mainly because I’m from a lower-class background and most Anarchists I’ve ever met have either been college students or punk anti-everythingers. It’s good to see that there are some serious people out there who realize the scale of the struggle we have before us.

...

Dear Fifth Estate:

We appreciate your kind mention of our group in your last issue (see “300,000 at Pro-Choice Demo—Plus Us,” FE #333, Winter, 1990), but we are not “Storm Warning” as the article identified us.

Our name is Tornado Warning and we are a feminist action group devoted to Womyn’s self-determination, self-help, and self-knowledge.

...

Bon Jours Cinque Etate:

Allors!—as France’s leading Anarchist & Public Enemy Number One, I wish to offer my congratulations on your fine paper. As a revenue generating device, may I suggest an idea for a t-shirt: on the front a picture of padre Jim Jones w/logo, “He died for your sins” & on the back the picture of Sid Vicious with logo, “I died for mine.”

...

Note: Last issue’s article on “State-Fetishism” has again given rise to the much debated question of revolutionary violence. We invite further reader response in this matter.

Dear Fifth Estate,

This is an answer to the article “State Fetishism” [FE #296, January 19, 1979].

The article points out many mistakes in the conception and carrying out of revolutionary violence in recent years.

...

A rising new cause of severe brain dammage: Narcotics officers.

...

Letters Policy We welcome letters commenting on our articles, stating opinions, or giving reports of events in your area. We don’t guarantee to print everything received, but all letters are read by our staff and considered for publication.

Typed letters or ones on disk are appreciated, but not required. Length should not exceed two double-spaced pages. If you are interested in writing longer responses, please contact us.

...

Hi:

In his review of Counterfeit Currency, E.B. Maple asserted that gold has served as money because of arbitrary human assignation, an analysis which treats money in general as a mere sign. (See Winter 1992 Fifth Estate.)

In actuality, processed gold assured its role because, like other commodities, it is (even in its rawest form, sifted flakes) the product of human labor. But unlike other commodities, it is chemically stable, compact, and generally useless except as a medium of exchange.

...

Dear Fifth Estate,

Without wanting to get involved in your mag too much, there is one criticism that I feel more important than whatever else I might want to say about it. It’s where you say “South Africa is bound to fall in the next few years.” (See FE #321, Indian Summer, 1985, “South Africa: Reform or Revolution.”)

...

The Fifth Estate encourages letters commenting on our articles, raising issues we haven’t presented, or reports from your area. Although we live in a digital age and comments in Microsoft Word are the most convenient for us, all formats are welcome, including type- and handwritten ones.

We read them all, but we can’t promise every letter will be published and some may be edited for length, grammar and punctuation.

...

In the Spring 2006 edition of FE, Fred from San Francisco wrote, “Congrats on changing anarchist to anti-authoritarian on your front page description,” and we asked, “Do readers have any thoughts about the change?” This issue, more readers responded, and so did we.

Recently, FE posed the question: Do readers have any thoughts about dropping anarchist from the masthead, and replacing it with anti-authoritarian?

...

To the Fifth Estate:

If it is wrong for a woman to be put on trial when she is raped, isn’t it equally wrong for a society to be put on trial when it is raped?

Prejudice predates capitalism and is found in all societies. The same can be said of crime. Smash the State! Let the workers control the factories they work in. Do all of this and you will have a small residue who will want to do harm to their fellow man.

...

To F.E.:

Anarchism can provide the perfect defense mechanism for dilettantes. In your “reply” to John and Paula Zerzan [“FE Criticized & Our Response,” FE #291, April 30, 1978] you come perilously close to demonstrating this when you excuse your conceptions of the. FE by reference to the nexus of capital within which, not surprisingly, you find yourselves.

...

To The Fifth Estate:

The latest issue of Invariance (in French) is at the printers in Milan, but to pay for the printing we need one million Italian lire (FE note: about $1,350). So we’re wondering if among people interested in Invariance in the U.S. there might be some who could help us financially. Please excuse this request, but we are really at an impasse.

...

To the Fifth Estate:

The feature on the “Crisis in Health Care” (June FE) is O.K. However, I think it should include some coverage of the so-called mental health system. (The Brain Police wear white uniforms!)

Another facet of the medical end of things deserves mention, too. During the revolution, members of the peoples’ militia will not be covered by Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Every hospital will probably have special security Pigs whose job will be apprehending wounded revolutionaries. Think about this.

...

Fifth Estate Letters Policy

The Fifth Estate always welcomes letters commenting on our articles, stating opinions, or giving reports of events in local areas. We don’t guarantee we will print everything we receive, but all letters are read by our staff and considered.

Typed letters or ones on disk are appreciated, but not required. Length should not exceed two double-spaced pages. If you are interested in Writing a longer response, please contact us.

...

Fifth Estate Letters Policy

The Fifth Estate always welcomes letters commenting on our articles, stating opinions„ or giving reports of events in local areas. We don’t guarantee we will print everything we receive, but all letters are read by our staff and considered.

Typed letters or ones on disk are appreciated, but not required. Length should not exceed two double-spaced pages. If you are interested in writing a longer response, please contact us.

...

Fifth Estate Letters Policy

The Fifth Estate always welcomes letters commenting on our articles, stating opinions, or giving reports of events in local areas. We don’t guarantee we will print everything we receive, but all letters are read by our staff and considered.

Typed letters or ones on disk are appreciated, but not required. Length should not exceed two double-spaced pages. If you are interested in writing a longer response, please contact us.

...

Friends:

Remember the 1–800 numbers game? It costs lots of money. It costs them lots of money and it’s free! Col. Oliver North Defense Fund now has a 1–800 number.

Just dial 1–800—521–0200 and pledge lots of money at whatever name and address you want and the North Defense trust will send out some mail to collect.

...

We welcome letters commenting on our articles or other topics, but can’t print every one we receive. Each, however, is read and considered for publication.

Letters via email or on disk are appreciated, but typewritten and legibly handwritten ones are acceptable. Length should not exceed two double-spaced pages. All submissions must have a name and return address, which will be withheld upon request.

...

We welcome letters commenting on our articles, ones stating opinions, or reports from your area. We can’t print every letter we receive, but each is read by our staff and considered for publication.

Letters via email or on disk are appreciated, but type- or handwritten ones are acceptable. Length should not exceed two double spaced pages. If you are interested in writing a longer response, please contact us.

...

We welcome letters commenting on our articles, stating opinions, or giving reports of events in your area. We don’t guarantee to print everything received, but all letters are read by our staff and considered for publication.

Typed letters or ones on disk are appreciated, but not required. Length should not exceed two double-spaced pages. If you are interested in writing longer responses, please contact us.

...

Fifth Estate Letters Policy

We welcome letters commenting on our articles, stating opinions, or giving reports of events in your area. We don’t guarantee to print everything received, but all letters are read by our staff and considered for publication.

Typed letters or ones on disk are appreciated, but not required. Length should not exceed two double-spaced pages. If you are interested in writing longer responses, please contact us.

...

Fifth Estate Letters Policy

We welcome letters commenting on our articles, stating opinions, or giving reports of events in your area. We don’t guarantee to print everything received, but all letters are read by our staff and considered for publication.

Typed letters or ones on disk are appreciated, but not required. Length should not exceed two double-spaced pages. If you are interested in writing longer responses, please contact us.

...

We welcome letters commenting on our articles, stating opinions, or giving reports of events in your area. We don’t guarantee to print everything received, but all letters are read by our staff and considered for publication.

Typed letters or ones on disk are appreciated, but not required. Length should not exceed two double-spaced pages. If you are interested in writing longer responses, please contact us.

...

Dear Folks,

Re: Toronto Anarchist Gathering coverage (FE #329, Summer 1988): I am trying to scrape together a ‘zine to write about, among other things, The Gathering. Time is running on and it’s almost old news now but I still think it’s important that there be an ongoing discussion about the events surrounding the July 4 Day of Action.

...

I’m reading the latest (FE #328, Spring 1988) and finding it enjoyable as always, I would like to take issue, however, with your slam on the Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL). [See “Even More Minneapolis Anarchy,” FE #328, Spring, 1988.]

It appears to me that your anti-organizational ideology is blinding you to the real activity of real people.

...

Due to space considerations, some of the letters on these pages may have been excerpted. We ask that letter writers make their remarks as concise as possible.

Dear FE,

The Christians to the lions stuff in the last issue was in pretty bad taste (“Hail Mary Not Quite!,” FE #323, Summer, 1986). The original victims of the Roman state were communal, love-thy-neighbor, subversive types, much different from today’s fundamentalist/fascist types. And even then, I don’t think it would be very appropriate to feed anyone to lions, but I’m probably being my humorless self.

...

To “A Comrade” c/o The FE:

I am fed up with the “murder of the innocents” argument re: abortion. (See Letters, FE #321, Indian Summer 1985).

Nature murders the “innocents,” i.e. fertilized cell clusters, by the billions each and every month. These natural abortions are flushed down the toilet without fanfare by sexually active women whose bodies nature finds not prepared to carry the cells to term.

...

Greetings:

The summer ’84 issue of the Fifth Estate was quite good. I’m glad that Bill Kellerman and Bill McCormick put the christian anarchist position so well [“Anarchy & Christianity: An Exchange,” FE #317, Summer 1984], and I’m glad that George Bradford responded in a calm and reasonable manner. But he is missing one important point.

...

Dear People:

I was really glad to see the extensive coverage given to the Big Mountain struggles in FE #317, Summer 1984. The graphics were great, too. More regular updates on indigenous struggles in N. America, the Amazon, Australia and elsewhere would be greatly appreciated.

The direct action anti-war movement, with its external and internal struggles, seems to be overflowing into the anarchist circles now. The War Chest tours over the summer represented, I think, a real breakthrough, along with actions like Rock Island (see FE #317, Summer, 1984).

...

Dear Fifth Estate:

As one about to escape the clutches of the US Army (an equal opportunity oppressor) I want to thank you for your paper and its role in keeping me sane/insane. Keep it up, even if you have the misfortune to become the next New Republic (yecchh...)

Strange resistance,

...

Dear Fifth Estate,

“Meat as Murder” in last issue’s letters [FE #317, Summer 1984], should have been titled “Vegetarian Fascism.” Vegetables are also living and to eat them is also murder. We suggest sucking on rocks or having a solar device attached to one’s skull.

The freedom to be a vegetarian is a struggle in the corporate controlled food industry. Most vegetables, fruits, and grains are just as chemically poisoned as meat and dairy products. We would not want anyone (the A.M.A. included) to dictate our diet or any other aspect of our lives.

...

Dear Fifth Estate:

Generally, the Fifth Estate is great. Articles are principled, well reasoned, sometimes poetic. But the review of Noam Chomsky’s book by Pat Flanagan (see Chomsky, Freedom & Truth, FE #320, Spring 1985) ended with Flanagan’s advocacy of “intolerance of the intolerant,” or more specifically, intolerance of what someone judges intolerant.

...

The Fifth Estate always welcomes letters commenting on our articles, stating opinions, or giving reports of events in local areas. We don’t guarantee we will print everything we receive, but all letters are read by our staff and considered.

Typed letters or ones on disk are appreciated, but not required.

...

Television is not relaxing
Television dominates the senses
Television is addictive
Television is not a “neutral” technology
Television can only present biased views
Television creates social homogeneity
Television suppresses imagination
Television makes people impatient & irritable
Television cannot depict reality
Television isolates its viewers

...

FE Letters Policy

The Fifth Estate always welcomes letters commenting on our articles, giving reports of events in your area, or stating your opinion. We don’t guarantee we will print everything we receive, but all letters are read by our staff and considered.

Typed letters or ones on disk are appreciated, but not required. Length should not exceed two, double-sided pages. If you are interested in writing a longer response, please contact us in advance.

...

FE Letters Policy

The Fifth Estate always welcomes letters commenting on our articles, giving reports of events in your area, or stating your opinion. We don’t guarantee we will print everything we receive, but all letters are read by our staff and considered.

Typed letters are appreciated, but not required. Length should not exceed two double-spaced pages. If you are interested in writing a longer response, please contact us in advance.

...

Howdy, Fifth Estate!

There is some serious stuff happening here in Austin. A liberated Learning Collective has been established. Part of it is a how-to course to teach would-be publishers to use the L LC press to produce their own news papers.

I’m taking this class with the hope to put out my Anarchist networking newsletter for Texas and the bordering states. Hopefully, this will provide a forum for the exchange of ideas and information for Anarchists in the region.

...

Dear Fifth Estate:

I enjoy your publication and find it very thought provoking. As far as criticism of the existing social order is concerned, it is perhaps the most consistently inclusive I have run across. It is obvious to me that our current world is rife with injustice on a previously unimaginable magnitude, and is rapidly self-destructing.

...

Fifth Estate Letters Policy

We welcome letters commenting on our articles, stating opinions, or giving reports of events in your area. We don’t guarantee to print everything received, but all letters are read by our staff and considered for publication.

Typed letters or ones on disk are appreciated, but not required. Length should not exceed two, double-spaced pages. If you are interested in writing longer responses, please contact us.

...

Fifth Estate:

The debate on sex; the burning of Porno Palaces, etc. was quite amusing. Last issue’s letter writer fumed over the actions of the Wimmin’s Fire Brigade who stated with alarming urgency—“the struggle for universal sexual freedom ought to be a top priority among anti-authoritarians” (see FE #312, Spring 1983).

...

Dear FE folks,

Congratulations on the 25^th anniversary.

I found the four-person exchange [“Environmentalism and Revolution: A Challenge to the Fifth Estate and Responses,” FE #335, Winter, 1991] a good one, and I’d like to see more of that. Although at this time I don’t have anything to add that hasn’t been said. These issues are what I had in mind for a “rethinking anarchy.”

...

Hello:

I would like to subscribe to the Fifth Estate. I’m impressed with the content or the majority of it enough to want to see more.

However, the format and layout will assure you that only the true believers will ever read it regularly. You don’t break up the columns, it’s endlessssssssss. Visually it’s dull; reminds me of The Weekly People, only with possibilities.

...

Dear FE:

With only 12 shopping days left ‘til nuclear war, I thought I’d better get some bucks off to you to renew the old sub. Thanks a million, or should I say thanks $4 bucks? Whatever, the FE is always welcome on my doorstep.

I like the new big format. Makes me feel like I’m really reading something and it holds more kitty litter. No, seriously, the paper is greatly appreciated for its sane thoughts in a world long gone mad. Keep up the excellent work.

...

Dear Friends:

I am resubscribing to the Fifth Estate plus $1.00 extra for a prisoner’s subscription. I support the work of the FE and believe that it is of critical value to all revolutionaries. However, I strongly disagree with your printing of the “Challenge to the Prison Movement” (See FE #307, Nov. 19, 1981) piece of fascist dissension.

...

Dear FE,

I have absolute revulsion for the “Friends of Entropy,” Animals Liberation Front and others of that ilk. While they will take the most violent and desperate measures to “rescue” a dog, guinea pig, and white mice from their cages (as described in their letter, FE #304, December 31, 1980), they stand mute while state fascist agents rape, murder, and oppress people in prison all over this country. (In fact, Arkansas has the most brutal prison system in the country, yet no one has ever dynamited that slaughterhouse at Cumming Farm where the bones of 60 men were found in a mass grave in 1969.) It is a hypocrisy for “Liberationists” to fight for the rights of animals, but to passively stand by while prisoners are slaughtered at Attica, San Quentin or Leavenworth (where I am) or other such death camps. These “animal lovers” hate people, and are sick!

...

Dear T. Fulano (and the FE)

I read your response to the defenders of technology with great trepidation [“Uncovering a Corpse: A Reply to the Defenders of Technology,” FE #307, November 19, 1981]. At every turn I expected you to say: “This is what we need to do: let’s dismantle everything and turn the clocks back to 700 A.D. or 500 B.C.” I thought you might announce a program that would alienate the people who oppose only parts of technology and oppose it for a variety of reasons; e.g., because they love old, vanishing crafts, because they are Christians, because they are nostalgists, or simply because they are technological incompetents.

...

FE Note: The letters which appear on these two pages are mostly responses to our July 1981 edition which was devoted mainly to a discussion and critique of technology and the modern world it has spawned. Single copies of that issue are still available from our office for 50 cents a copy. (See our index of available back issues on page 19 of this issue.) T. Fulano, author of last issue’s “Against the Mega-machine,” responds to supporters of technology elsewhere in this issue.

...

Comrades:

At the recent cena (dinner) held by the Italian comrades $1,061 was raised. It was decided to divide it among the following publications: Black Flag, Fifth Estate, Freedom, Internationale, Open Road, Revista A, SRAF, North American Anarchist, Work and Pay, and Voluntà.

Best Wishes

...

Dear FE:

“Carter’s Phony War Crisis” (FE #301, Feb. 26, 1980) was excellent. I’d only fault it in one respect—I feel that ‘you’re unduly optimistic in stating that, “Third World countries such as Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia...(will become) the super consumers of tomorrow.” My reasons are:

...

Dear Fifth Estate,

I believe Harvey Ovshinsky (talkshow host of WRIF) is doing the FE a lot of harm by claiming he has “founded that paper.” If indeed he did, someone must have done a frontal lobotomy on him since.

Have you listened to him on WRIF ever? Treat yourself! He’s an establishment sell-out, a mealy-mouthed corporate echo.

...

Dear People,

The cena at Negri’s on Saturday, January 12, 1980 raised money for anarchist propaganda, as well as $75 for the defense of Kamalla Miller.

Those present at the dinner choose to send you $50.00 to help with your valuable work.

Yours for the works,

Jim Bumpas

FE Note: Fund raising picnics and dinners have a long tradition in the anarchist movement as means of supporting libertarian groups and publications. A group has met in Florida twice since the appearance of our last issue and sent us $30 and $25 from each of the picnics. Below is listed the other recipients of the contributions as sent to us by a participant:

...

To the FE:

Cuban Greens/anti-authoritarians need our aid. Orlando Polo and Mercedes Paez of Cuba’s anti-authoritarian/ecological/ anti-Militarist Green Path group have been touring the U.S. recently.

Arrested many times in Cuba, they are being repressed again as Cuban authorities are refusing to allow them re-admission to the country.

...

To The Fifth Estate:

There you go again: the $pliterates attacking TV! (See FE #292, June 19, 1978).

1. Literacy produced modern technology, including capitalism and industrialism. 1, 2, 3 = a, b, c; that’s why men invented it.

2. What about the “dehumanized aspects of the centralized $pliteracy source: left brained publishers—depressed, repressed presses?

...

Staff note: For at least two years this newspaper has received a portion of money raised at dinners (cenas) held regularly in California by a group of Italian anarchists. The purpose of the fund raising was specifically to support and encourage libertarian propaganda work. After the appearance of our last issue we received the following letter from Jim Bumpas of the Social Revolutionary Anarchist Federation (SRAF) who had taken over the role of disperser of the funds raised at the dinners.

...

Send letters to fe-at-fifthestate-dot-org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length.

I’m writing to ask about the amazing excerpt on the back cover of Spring 2008 Fifth Estate.

Who is or was Erica A. Smith? When was “On the Political Situation Experienced in Our Era” written? Most of the language in the excerpt seems to be late 19^th or early 20^th Century. But “colonization,” in context, seems to be contemporary. Perhaps I’m mistaken, but I don’t believe it was used in quite that way a century ago.

...

Dear Friends:

The Primitivist Network aims to promote networking of broadly defined anarcho-primitivists. The network is not an organization and has no fixed ideological line. It is designed to act merely as a means of fostering contact between like-minded people with the aim of generating projects that are broadly anarcho-primitivist in nature.

...

As a writer who is often criticized for being too difficult, academic or stylistic, I was immensely heartened by your response to London Greenpeace’s letter (see FE #326, Summer 1987) taking you all to task for those sins. I’d like to add a few points.

In England, “style” has certain class connotations; style is withheld from the underclass deliberately, & reserved for the literati who are almost without exception middle-to-upper-class. Therefore, among radicals (from the “plain”-speaking Quakers on) a distrust has arisen, a disgust for elegance (whether in the science-sense of “accurate & inspired” or in the aesthetic sense of “useless” beauty).

...

FE note: Due to space considerations, some of the letters on these pages may have been excerpted. We ask that letter writers make their remarks as concise as possible. We will print the addresses of letter writers who request it.

Dear FE:

In general, I agree with E.B. Maple’s warnings about cozying up to the Left; (See FE #325, Spring 1987); anarchism’s blood-feud has always been with the Bolsheviks, even if its war has been fought against the Right. However, I get the sense of a subtext here, an attempt to “purify” anarchist ideology of all syndicalist, socialist & Left Revolutionary tendencies, to once again define who is & who is not a “real” anarchist.

...

Comrades:

You have won a place in my heart forever. The lions’ response to the letter, “Pretty Bad Taste” (FE Vol. 21 No. 1) was right on!

When I started reading the letter, I kind of slunk back, kind of anxiously awaiting the FE’s response. Then, when I read the lions’ response, a roar of laughter came out of me that took the roof off, strung my intestines out of my split gut, and kept me laughing my ass off two blocks down the street!

...

Fifth Estate:

People can call themselves anything they like but I would think the differences between Christianity and anarchism are so massive as to preclude anyone calling themselves Christian anarchists (see FE June19, 1982 Letters column). There are similarities between the two doctrines which would lead someone to adopt such a label; they both speak of a love for humanity.

...

Dear Tomega Therion,

Your article on coffee (FE #305, March 18, 1981) confused the evils of capitalism and of working for someone else instead of for oneself with the “evils” of coffee. The latter is merely a tool which offers people the option of changing their energy rhythms. The purpose it is used for must determine its value in that instance. However, increasing the number of options is, in itself, a good thing whether we use every option or not.

...

Send letters to

fe — at — fifthestate — dot — org

or

Fifth Estate

P.O.B. 201016,

Ferndale MI 48220

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length.

Counterfeiting Mischief

I’ve been taking my time enjoying the Summer 2008 issue of Fifth Estate and just read “Counterfeiting Sovereignty” by Don LaCoss. The story about the superdollar in the last paragraph of column 1 and then the top of col. 2, p. 20 is amazing. Given the reported cases where people (like Iraq proconsul Paul Bremer) have gone into hot spots and started handing out money, the counterfeit idea makes a certain sense. I suppose the stuff keeps a certain value, as long as it keeps circulating abroad, causing who knows what sort of mischief.

...

Fifth Estate Letters Policy

We welcome letters commenting on our articles or other topics, but can’t print every one we receive. Each, however, is read and considered for publication.

Letters via email or on disk are appreciated, but typewritten and legibly handwritten ones are acceptable. Length should not exceed two double-spaced pages. All submissions must have a name and return address, which will be withheld upon request.

...

Filled with debates and discussions, challenges and responses, clarification and indignation, a lively letters section is a crucial component in an anarchist journal. At times in our past, a huge portion of any given edition would be filled with long letters and responses to them.

Recently, however, the tradition has changed. The kind of debate once found on this letters’ page has not disappeared from the radical press, but it has relocated. Today, the more heated exchanges often take place on interactive websites and bulletin boards. Notably, the anarchist website Infoshop is known for its lively threads. Local indymedia sites are also places where debate takes place.

...

Dear Fifth Estate,

After reading the June 19^th issue [FE #298, June 19, 1979] I would like to make some comments regarding your attack on “civilization” and your glorification of hunter/ gatherer life.

First, I agree with the point that increased technology does not increase leisure time and in fact has the opposite result. However this is not a new “revolutionary” theory. Marvin Harris has made the same point in Culture, People, Nature several years ago, and has drawn similar conclusions about the “virtues” of technological progress.

...

To The Fifth Estate:

I have been delegated by the Anarchist Fund Raising Picnic held Sept. 11 at Santa Teresa Park, San Jose, California, to disburse the following funds to support the anarchist propaganda projects in the English language including Black Flag, Black Star, Freedom and Open Road.

...

To the Fifth Estate:

The FE is usually a delight to read. Only a couple of small things have detracted from that: Using “man” to mean “people”(in the article on a Michigan landfill) is sexist and a turnoff to me.

In the cover article of your gang issue [#276, September 1976] I was never certain what you felt about the gang attacks. Seems when you sound more situationist—like you become less clear and less subjective. The other articles on gangs were fine—the open letter to the columnists, a delight.

...

Dear FE,

Puritanism is pernicious & petty. It goes against the grain of libertarianism. In the sexual sphere are two Puritan-isms, of the right and of the left.

The Puritanism of the right we’re quite familiar with—the old Victorianism, sex as dirty, sex for procreation only, no sex before marriage, etc. The Puritanism of the left, however, is more subtle, less easy to explain. This is because it often wears libertarian clothes.

...

Note to Writers

Due to space considerations, we ask that letter writers make their remarks as concise as possible and when typing please double-space. It’s not our desire to trim ideas to fit the space available, but practical limitations do confront us and we would appreciate this being taken into account. In general, two pages is ideal—anything longer would better be considered as an article.

...

Dear Fifth Estate,

In response to E.B. Maple (“On Organization: Two Reviews of The Camatte/Collu Pamphlet,” FE #279, December 1976), I can only say that calling me a “Leninist” does not make it so.

I have not suggested that we should “organize the workers”; I have only argued-that we should organize ourselves to begin the struggle for what we want. On the other hand, I am convinced that only a libertarian organization composed of tens of millions of working people can possibly overthrow class society. Scribbling slogans on walls won’t do it (another lesson from SDS).

...

Saludos Companeros:

Your review of the Dolgoff book on Cuba (FE #286, Sept. 1977) left a lot to be desired. As anarchist propaganda that book is a disaster. At the least, it’s sloppy work and may be even worse than that. One thing anarchists do not need to do is run out a line of bullshit rhetoric, exaggerate and distort when attacking an authoritarian enemy. Soviet style authoritarians provide sufficient ammunition and targets; there’s no need to create new ones. For sure, “names will never hurt them.”

...

Greetings Comrades:

I thought I’d forward some news about authority inside prison....

I did 30 days in solitary for wearing a “Fuck Authority” tee shirt! They went nutty behind it. I’ve found out that one can fuck ANYTHING of theirs, but if one fucks with their authority they put you in the BOX! What ever happened to the First Amendment???????

...

Dear FE & Readers:

Some clarification of myself is needed here before too many people waste time making statements about me that are completely out of whack with who I am. (See Letters, FE #290, March 2, 1978).

First off, I’m not afraid of bruises, nor am I afraid of putting my life on the line. I’ve put my life on the line many times in the 25 years of it. I’ll do so again right here:

...

To the FE:

Let me make some observations regarding the recent debates in the FE on organization, worker’s councils, and so on. I hope you take what I say as friendly criticism rather than as the beginning of a polemic.

First of all, many of the statements in the paper, both by correspondents and by FE staff, display considerable pomposity, as well as a desire to dismiss as idiotic or reactionary the views of opponents. This kind of revolutionary one-upmanship not only fails to clarify the issues; it also risks discouraging the participation of people who doubt their own glibness or literary skill.

...

[In response to Rich Take Non-Aspirin Over FE Ad, #274, July 1976]

Dear Sirs (sic):

We have kidnapped your staff member, E.B. Maple. If you do not deliver $300,000 in one dollar bills or the Chairman of the Board of General Motors, whichever weighs more, to a site known only to us, we will be forced to release him.

...

Dear Comrades,

At a picnic held July 9 at Los Gatos we received an income of $841 in which we distributed as follows:

Freedom $75; Black Flag $75; Open Road $75; Fifth Estate $75; Rivista A $200; L’Internazionale $150; Volonta $121; Interogation $70.

Some of the contributors were not present—those being: John Vattuone $20; T. Martocchia $20; Peter Puccio $20; Fred Francescutti $20; Dal Fondo Nicola $100; San Vitulli $10; Armando $10; Romeo $10.

...

To FE:

In the last issue of FE in the Letters section, FE made a comment that I really didn’t understand, and as a P.O.W., I was somewhat disappointed with: “This paper has a long history of supporting political prisoners. Some of them committed acts of terror against the state.” (emphasis added) Why was the word terror used to describe our armed campaign? This would imply that we are terrorist. It is this type of language that gives credence to the KKKovernment’s effort to criminalize the legitimacy of our armed struggle in order to justify our illegal imprisonment and their refusal to acknowledge our P.O.W. status. From the late 60s to the early 80s, the death or injury of a civilian has never occurred as a result of the Black Liberation Army. All targets were legitimate.

...

Like the stars, the night

Like the sun, the day

The dawn, the morning

The flower, the petal

The bee, the nectar

The beehive, the honey

The lover, the beloved

So one carries the Ideal In one’s thoughts

You ask me if I can define anarchism. It’s very difficult for me to do concretely. Personally, I don’t consider myself good enough to call myself an anarchist because I have always believed that to be one it would be necessary to reach the extreme point of sacrifice and to devote oneself without reservation to doing good, without limit and without cease. I can say that I still find myself tied to those endless commodities that contemporary society has created, and even though I try to limit them as much as I can, it will never be enough. The Tolstoyan spirit that commends the freedom of the isolated individual, I will never be able to attain.

...

FE Note: This letter was not written specifically for the FE, but was shared with us by William Koethke, whose article, “Earth Diet, Earth Culture,” appeared in FE #325, Spring, 1987. Our next issue will include a review and discussion of ecology and social critique, in particular the deep ecology perspective and movement.

...

Editors’ note: On July 21 at Central Methodist Church over 200 persons representing the Detroit anti-war movement met to discuss a series of actions against the war that had been proposed at an Independence Day conference in Cleveland.

The proposals included an SDS sponsored anti-imperialist action for October 8–11 in Chicago; an October 15 student strike called by the Vietnam Moratorium Committee; and a “legal, peaceful” March on Washington on November 15. The New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam has appointed two staffs; one each to coordinate the marches in Chicago and Washington.

...

Mark Rudd, National Secretary

Students for a Democratic Society

Brother Mark,

When SDS proposed having an action in Chicago October 11, focusing on anti- imperialism, we at The Fifth Estate felt that it had the potential of being a very heavy action and crucial to the growth of a revolutionary movement in this country.

...

At first he just wanted us to pull our car over to the curb.

Deciding to milk the scene for all it was worth, he changed his mind—“Just get out of the car right here—hands up! Put your mother-fuckin’ hands on the roof and don’t MOVE!!”

His partner jumped out of the wagon and walked down the road a few feet to talk to one of the undercover state troopers that had been harassing the entire neighborhood for a month and who had undoubtedly set us up for the bust that morning.

...

MIAMI—The vicious and unprovoked police assault on demonstrators during the recent Miami Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) talks produced waves of indignation and anger among both participants and observers. Witnessing Kevlar-armored, weapon-laden RoboCops kick the crap out of teenagers (and some middle-aged people, as well), it’s easy to focus solely on these despicable acts of brutality rather than what generated them.

...

It’s time to celebrate

the Late-sleepers

and merry drinkers,

the loafers & slackers & slow-pokes.

The ones on permanent vacation,

unhurried and unworried,

the rose-smellers & growing-grass watchers, what harm

did they ever do?

How about a cheer

for siesta snoozers

and Lazy losers,

the long joke-tellers

...

Repression is coming down heavy on the youth of America. Though millions in the U.S. smoke pot, it is the young who get busted for it by selectively enforced laws. Though millions in the U.S. are neurotic patriots, it is the young who get prosecuted for desecrating the flag. Due process of law, a constitutional right, is denied to those who most need legal protection because they are the ones that are repressed: under the law.

...

How to love Poppa while he’s beating you on the hind end will be the theme of the Conference of Concerned Democrats all day Saturday, June 10 at the MacGregor Memorial Conference Center on the WSU campus.

A bunch of pretty decent-type Demos are going to get together and discuss the Democratic Party and its current stance on Vietnam, Civil Rights, etc. One of the main speakers will be happy warrior Zolton Ferency, Democratic State Chairman.

...

Most public health concerns are ultimately local. Mutual aid projects and autonomous zones from New York City to Seattle, and from Chiapas and Rojava have shown how democratically controlled, non-hierarchical communities provide not only food and shelter but also health education, training and tools for people to care for themselves and their communities, families and comrades.

...

Everybody has some idea of the kind of heavy political repression the power structure has been laying down, if only from the power-structure media itself.

The Liberation Conference Against Repression January 29–30 at St. Joseph’s Church should be able to clarify a lot of the distortions, fill in some of the gaps and describe the national-regional-local pattern of repression. See ad for list of speakers and workshops.

...

a review of

Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims by Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1883; Kindle edition, 2017. Also, free online

This is an amazing autobiography and first-hand account from Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins (born Thocmentony, meaning “Shell Flower;” c. 1844—1891) the grand-daughter of Chief Truckee (d. 1860), medicine chief of the Northern Paiute.

...

“Sridevi and her relatives collected nine types of Dioscorea tubers; some extended deep underground. The ease and flow of the work, and the general lack of rules governing the way spouses cooperated in doing this job, struck me.”

—Nurit Bird-David, Us, Relatives: Scaling and Plural Life in a Forager World

...

The lynching of a black man, George Floyd, by a white Minneapolis policeman on May 25, sparked widespread and sustained protests, some escalating to uprisings, across the country and the world. They began as a cry against police killings of Black and Brown people, and many grew to include broader demands such as the abolition of the police and prisons and the widespread surveillance and control of daily life. Many also identified with demands for eliminating racial oppression, de-colonization and reparations for past wrongs.

...

At 47, Edith Marie Price shows more than a few signs of wear. While her mannerisms generally convey a buoyant and carefree geniality, her face’s gauntness betrays the ravages of decades of intravenous drug use, poverty, and the inevitable progression of HIV. Even when she laughs, her dark eyes seem to sparkle with the disarming intensity of all that they have seen.

...

Editors’ Note: The author of this article is currently doing time in a federal prison in West Virginia on a conviction of possession of two grams of marijuana. Prior to his transfer, he spent close to a month in Wayne County Jail where he wrote the following commentary.

Upon reading the article in the South End of February 24, “Seven Days in Detroit’s Hell Hole” I was inspired to write this commentary on the Wayne County Concentration Camp where I am presently incarcerated.

...

The awesome magnitude and incomprehensible physical destruction and human suffering caused by the tsunami that ravaged and rattled the earth in December render any statement about it, any explanation, painfully inadequate. Towns were demolished, villages and whole stands of trees smashed to splinters, trains swept off their tracks and bent and twisted like toys. People were swept back into the sea, crushed under rubble, pulled from each other and drowned in the flood waters, left mangled and askew in trees and power lines by the terrible waves.

...

a review of

We Won’t Be Here Tomorrow (and Other Stories) Margaret Killjoy. AK Press, 2022

We Won’t Be Here Tomorrow (and Other Stories) is a promising work by Margaret Killjoy, who has written novels in the steampunk and folk horror genres and whose stories have appeared regularly in science fiction and fantasy magazines. She is described on the book’s back cover as a transfeminine author with no fixed adult home.

...

I recently read an incredibly annoying article in a 2015 New York Review of Books. This liberal-policy-wonk and literary monthly is run by Secular Humanoids, i.e., people trained by universities in the humanities who worship science more than most scientists, who (having studied science) do not usually confuse it with theology

...

Murray Bookchin must be getting cranky in his old age. Upon reading his latest broadside, Social Anarchism Or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm, I was rudely smacked in the face by déja vu. Evidently Bookchin is beating a dead horse, trying to breathe life back into an old controversy within the anarchist movement that dates back a century.

...

BERKELEY, Calif. (LNS)—The National Guard pulled out of Berkeley the morning of June 3 at 6 o’clock.

People’s Park, which they had occupied for over two weeks has been left to a handful of Burns Agency rent-a-cops, who wander forlornly about the perimeter of the fenced-in lot.

What was it like to have the National Guard come to town?

...

a review of

Kimi, Dir: Steven Soderbergh, 2022

Director Steven Soderbergh is well-known for both prolific output (an astounding 47 films and counting) and speed of production (roughly a movie a year over the past decade). Yet his work’s quality seems not to suffer from such a pace.

On the contrary, something about its fleetness belies a fascinating realism of the outlandish. Fittingly, in Soderbergh’s latest, his third collaboration with the streaming arm of HBO, a film simply titled Kimi, a villain’s posture bumbles unceremoniously. A tech millionaire conducts a Zoom interview in his garage before a pitiable, fake bookshelf background. The manner in which these characters are painted, all through edits and camera framings, bleeds with an obscure intentionality. Form as function.

...

a review of

Let There Be Night: Testimony on Behalf of the Dark, edited by Paul Bogard. University of Nevada Press, 2008

The “Reconsidering Primitivism” issue of Fifth Estate #365 (Summer 2004) carried a short article called “Support for the Forces of Darkness” by Luci Williams that lamented the poisonous infection of the nighttime skies by industrial-commercial lighting and called for “direct action in defense of the dark” against “selfish aggressors waging perpetual war against the night.” Ringing with manifesto-like intentions in that same issue of FE was a piece by Peter Lamborn Wilson warning against electricity: “Some people like Black-Outs: consciously because they enjoy seeing things fucked up, perhaps unconsciously because the filth of dead light and noise suddenly dies with a moan. Other people fear Black-Outs for the same reasons. It depends on your relation with night, with darkness and primitivity.”

...

The article from which this excerpt is taken, “Stopping the Industrial Hydra: Revolution Against the Megamachine,” appeared in our Winter 1990 issue. It provides analyses of the Exxon Valdez oil spill of March 1989 from the standpoint of a global criticism of industrial capitalist society.

The Valdez was the source of the worst oil spill to that date in U.S. history, spilling eleven million gallons into Alaska’s Prince William Sound, where it ran aground.

...

Linear perspective is a way of seeing things. Things closer to us are large, it tells us; things farther away get smaller and smaller as they recede toward a singular dot in the distance. The vantage point, from slightly above the scene, is that of a “bird’s eye view”

Many Westerners accept this way of seeing as a complete description of reality. Let’s look again. As psychologist Robert Romanyshyn describes in Technology as Symptom and Dream, seeing creation with the mathematical precision of linear perspective means seeing it from a very particular stance-and one with grievous implications for human psychology and the Earth’s creatures: detachment.

...

Marches, demonstrations, and other anti-war actions are a credit to the Peace Movement, but have not had enough impact on the men in uniform. This is the view of a group of Vietnam veterans opposed to the war who have formed an agency to build communication between servicemen and peace organizations. They call themselves the Servicemen’s LINK to Peace.

...

On Feb. 4, 1980 in Los Gatos, California, the life of Lino Molin (a long-time supporter of the Fifth Estate) ended. He was the victim of a tragic automobile accident while he was crossing a street with heavy traffic. His remains were cremated without religious service.

A native of Cadore, Italy, Lino emigrated quite young and came to the United States almost 60 years ago. He lived for almost ten years in Detroit where he made contact with the anarchist movement and participated in the activities of the groups there. He moved to California where he lived most of his adult life.

...

a review of

Small Beauty by Jia Qing Wilson-Yangas. Metonymy Press, 2016, $16.95 CAD

During a discussion hosted by Montreal’s L’Insoumise anarchist bookstore and DIRA anarchist library, the novelist Lola Lafon was asked how she includes her politics in her novels.

(A review of her 2014 We Are the Birds of the Coming Storm appears in the Summer 2015Fifth Estate.)

...

a review of

The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic by Alan Moore and Steve Moore. Top Shelf Productions and Knockabout Comics, 2024

Two writers, life-long friends, became practicing magicians and decades later decided to share what they have learned. Alan Moore is almost certainly the most important comics writer of the last half-century, having greatly expanded both the range and the depth of the medium, subverting, deconstructing, or reinventing every genre in which he has worked.

...

Perhaps the most important thing we learned in Chicago is that we are right. We suspected it all along, but it took clubs and gas and Humphrey’s grinning face to cinch it. We know now for sure that the values of this society are fraudulent and used only to support the unjust system that benefits only the few in positions of economic and political power. The values that we have begun to devise through living and struggling together are superior to the ones of this society. They are revolutionary values and all of us that are serious must begin to live the revolution now as well as struggling to make it a reality.

...

a review of

Live Free or Die. National Geographic Cable Channel

While I love the peace and challenges of backwoods camping, I admit that I don’t engage with them that often, and when I have, the thin lines between adventure and annoyance, between serenity and boredom, barely exist.

If you want to see a person with an intellectual critique of civilization get infatuated with civilization’s creature comforts, watch their most intimate reactions to home-cooked meals and hot showers after a few days or even weeks roughing it in the woods.

...

For us, here in inner-city Detroit, the crumbling of a “progress-oriented society” is very real and present. Its evidence--ragged empty shells of concrete-lined streets leading to their untimely ends, amputated by expressways or isolated corporate megaliths, the occasional pathetic charades of well-being, the razed and desolate spaces--pervades everything we do, even attempts to distract ourselves from the ruin. Everyone living here is profoundly aware of the failure. It is bred in our bones, as during our lives we’ve witnessed not just this city’s demise, but the cumulative result of misdeeds performed throughout history by an increasingly urban society impelled by a limitless want of power brought to self-destruction.

...

If anarchist politics, the politics of communal liberation, is to escape from its present historical impasse, it must become, above all, a practice of creating the free community, here and now.

The greatest transformative force is living life together in a community of liberation and solidarity in which the greatest possibilities for personal and communal flourishing are unleashed through mutual aid and free association. A recognition of the power of this collective force must guide our practice.

...

The Living Theatre, triumphantly poised at the controversial edge of the avant-garde theatrical movement, will sweep into Detroit to take the chill off December.

The repertory troupe known as America’s most original and acclaimed by critics as the most artistic, Julian Beck and his energetic band will present three different productions December 12, 13, 14.

...

“The area between 55^th and 62^nd streets, St. Clair Avenue and the lake became an inferno. Gas flowed down the streets and into the sewers. The slightest spark exploded it. Manhole covers flew high into the air, then fell like bombs back on the fleeing crowds.

“Twenty-nine acres of homes and stores were completely gutted. At the center of the death zone temperatures reached nearly 3000 degrees. Birds were incinerated as they flew and fell back to the blazing streets. Gas in the streets ignited, making them rivers of flame....

...

In a spasm of concern for the political education of Oakland University students, the O.U. Young Dems invited Donald Lobsinger, chairman of the ultra-rightwing Breakthrough organization, to address the student body on Monday, February 6.

It was a circus. Over 400 people packed Oakland’s Gold Room to point, gape, and laugh at the Superfreak. All the campus hippies were there. SDS came to chuckle. A festival atmosphere pervaded the crowd.

...

Donald Lobsinger, head of the right-wing organization Breakthrough, was sentenced to two years probation and $208 court costs for disturbing the peace.

The charges stemmed from the January 20 appearance at Cobo Hall of Father James Groppi, the Milwaukee priest who led open housing marches in that city.

...

Social resistance has reached a certain impasse, a conundrum as nation states impose austerity as an extended regime of governance throughout social life.

In North America, movements still race from crisis (response) to crisis (response), while organizing often occurs around rather narrow issues.

The alternative globalization politics of the last two decades, Occupy and the street protests against the IMF, World Bank, and G20, are posed as having emerged spontaneously as resistance to the state and capital.

...

The first half of August 2012 found my wife Alice and I in London, but not for the Olympic Games. The nonprofit contemporary art gallery Raven Row invited me to participate in a series of talks and displays titled “The Real Truth: A World’s Fair.”

The talks took place on successive weekends at the gallery on Artillery Lane in the East End just north of Whitechapel. We arrived too late to take in the first one on the history of wor

...

The London bookshop Freedom was damaged in an arson attack in the early hours of February 28. Nobody was hurt in the fire which partially gutted the ground floor and damaged the building’s electrics.

However, there was extensive damage to the shop’s archives which contained publications dating back to the 1800s. Freedom Press is Britain’s longest running anarchist publisher and traces its history back to the original Freedom newspaper started by Charlotte Wilson and Peter Kropotkin in 1886. It is still printing and is available through freedompress.org.uk.

...

How much is your long hair worth to you? Eight Ann Arbor brothers who were scalped during a short stay in the Washtenaw County jail think theirs is worth about $200,000.

This is the sum the eight, who were arrested following demonstrations against GE, on February 18^th are suing Sheriff Doug Harvey and two deputies for. They are also seeking a court order restraining Harvey and his men from similar actions in the future.

...

“White man’s justice” in Detroit courts has again been offered to members of the city’s hip community, the Fifth Estate learned this week in two separate reports from Detroit longhairs.

“White man’s justice” is that peculiar form of legal blindness which punishes black people equally and allows errant white middle-class youths the chance to redeem themselves in the eyes of their society. It is evident usually in marijuana cases, where hippies are offered probation and a fine in exchange for going straight, i.e. cutting their hair, putting on decent clothes, and returning to school or a job. The alternative, of course, is a quick lock-up.

...

A police and FBI raid of the Long Haul Infoshop in Berkeley, Calif. August 27--supposedly to figure out who might have sent threatening emails to University of California animal researchers traced back to the Long Haul internet connection--succeeded in seizing 14 computers from the Long Haul, but failed to break the spirit of Berkeley activists.

...

VANCOUVER BC—Twenty years. That was the sentence handed down by Judge S.M. Toy May 18 to Julie Belmas, of the Vancouver Five. Toy explained that the harsh sentence was to “deter others from acts of anarchy and terrorism.”

Ten years were allotted for the Litton Industries cruise missile factory bombing in Toronto in October 1982; another ten were given for conspiracy to rob a Brink’s truck and other sentences to run concurrent with the 20 years for weapons, arson and theft charges.

...

Everyone knows the origin of meat, but few want to face the facts. Sue Coe’s art and Alon Raab’s review [this issue, FE #349, Summer 1997] invite the reader to a “naked lunch,” Burrough’s pungent phrase for that moment when everyone sees what’s on the end of everyone else’s fork. But at this meal, it’s a bloody carcass of a being that lived a miserable life and suffered a horrendous death before ending up as a burger on your plate.

...

Fifty years ago France was on the verge of social revolution, with millions of workers on strike, factories occupied, and students striking and occupying universities and high schools all over the country. Anarchists and anti-authoritarians were deeply involved in this massive movement which took many, but not all, by surprise.

...

“Without the exposure of these Vietnam policies as criminal, there is every likelihood of their repetition in subsequent conflicts.”

—Richard Falk, speaking at the Congressional Conference on War and National Responsibility, convened in Washington, D.C. in early 1970

“Historical memory was never the forte of Americans in Vietnam.”

...

The war’s legacy of lies continues in an official commemoration that stands history on its head. 2015 marks the third year of a fifteen year, congressionally designated commemoration of the U.S. empire’s monstrous war in Vietnam.

It is also the fortieth anniversary of the final defeat and withdrawal of U.S. military forces.

...

This article first appeared in FE #320, Spring 1985 under the pen-name George Bradford. It is reprinted on the 20^th anniversary of the defeat of the U.S. empire in Vietnam.

by Richard Drinnon

Another decade has passed and it is Spring 1995, twenty years since the “fall of Saigon to the Vietnamese,” in David Watson’s mordant words, and the man who gave his name to that war has just published In Retrospect, a memoir from which he broadcasts what everyone by now has heard: “we were wrong, terribly wrong.” Now the ur-Whiz Kid tells us that he had become a covert convert to the antiwar movement even by 1967, the year twenty thousand resisters tried to shut down his Department of Defense. If only the erstwhile carpet bomber had then come outside to join the fair number of us who had slipped by the soldiers and the marshals to piss on the Pentagon, what a triumphant relief that would have been, what an epiphany! Yet after twenty-eight years we can still say that Robert S. McNamara’s tardy outing is better late than never, no?

...

This statement was received July 7 from the publishers of Bulldozer magazine.

On June 13^th the Metropolitan police raided our house on Cambridge Ave. as part of the ongoing investigation into the bombing of the Litton Systems Plant outside the city last October (see FE #311, Winter 1982–83).

On one level, this is just one of a series of raids which have taken place in Toronto. Unfortunately, there are many indications that this is a definite escalation of the harassment that has been directed against anti-authoritarians and activists within the peace movement.

...

by Alan Franklin

He called me a peculiar, bungling misfit, and right away I knew things weren’t going to work out quite as well as I’d hoped. Oh, sure, I’d filled out the form all right, even signed my name at the bottom as best I could remember it, but I could see from the disposition of his ears that expressing an appreciation of my efforts was not at the top of his to-do list.

...

Corridor Lording

Ten years ago, the number of residents in the Cass Corridor, bounded by Adams, Cass, Penn Central RR, and the John Lodge X-Way, numbered well over two hundred thousand. Today that number has dwindled to under ninety thousand. Most of the people have relocated in other parts of Detroit, buying up property abandoned by the flight of middle and low income whites to the suburbs. This relocation, usually accounted for along the lines of racial prejudice, stems as much from the nature of real estate values as simple racial realignment.

...

Members of the anarchist group The Quijotes of the Ideal, Barcelona, 1937

On July 17, 1936, Spanish nationalist forces, led by right-wing General Francisco Franco attempted a coup d’etat against the newly-elected popular front Republic. In the context of the social and political upheaval following the mass based resistance to the fascist uprising, the anarchist movement in Spain organized the strongest and most radical opposition to fascism as well as a far-reaching social revolution.

...

The next project of Abigail Susik, author of Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work, investigates the radical connections between anarchism and surrealism through the little-known figure of Jonathan Leake and his work in the 1960s with the magazine, Resurgence.

It is devoted to the extremely rare surrealist, anarchist, IWW, and anti-racist underground zine which had twelve mimeographed issues printed in New York, Chicago, San Francisco; between 1964 and 1967. It contains reprints of all twelve issue covers, as well as page selections from each issue, including the recently discovered, formerly lost issue #4.

...

I’ve just discovered why it’s been so hard to write this article. I was really hung up on the word “Lesbian.” I had never applied this label to myself. With this label came associations of sick, abnormal, neurotic and dyke. But if my actions and attitudes are labeled lesbian, then I know that those associations are wrong and only reflect the sick attitudes of this society.

...

“Side by side with the exigencies of life, love is the great educator.”

—Sigmund Freud

“Some day, men and women will rise, they will reach the mountain peak, ready to receive, to partake and to bask in the golden rays of love. What fancy, what imagination, what poetic genius can foresee even approximately the potentialities of such a force in the lives of men and women.”

...

a review of

Letters of Insurgents by Sophia Nachalo and Yarostan Vocheck, as told by Fredy Perlman, with a new introduction by Aragorn!. Left Bank Books, 2014, 722pp., $20 leftbankbooks.bigcartel.com

In 1976, Fredy and Lorraine Perlman and other people at the Detroit Printing Co-op published Letters of Insurgents, which at more than 800 pages qualifies as a hefty novel. Although Perlman wrote the book, he didn’t include his name on the cover, instead attributing it to Sophia Nachalo and Yarostan Vochek, the two main characters whose letters make up the text.

...

Talk about going out, not with a bang, but a whimper. Love & Rage, the failed attempt at a continental anarchist federation, formally imploded earlier this year. So insignificant was their demise that we were unable to find out any of the sordid details surrounding the final collapse.

We do know that a faction led by L&R chief bureaucrat, Chris Day, has ditched anarchism for a more general leftist approach and has begun a new organization. Why is it that he and his cohorts only picked up the worst ideas about splits and factions from their original partners in L&R, the Revolutionary Socialist League? To be fair, it is ironic that ex-RSL members are the ones keeping true to anarchism, while the former anarchists have turned to organizational leftism. Now, they can have all the alliances they choose with authoritarians like the RCP without having to suffer the barbs of their libertarian critics.

...

Dear Allen,

Are you really dead? I don’t believe it. My hands are black with ink & my eyes are wet with the sting of The New York Times front page. You are embalmed in the headlines as “Countercultural Guru” & “Master of the Outrageous,” by journalists who try to synthesize & summarize the volumes of your subversive words. I’m at work in a drab warehouse in Nashville where most of the folk don’t even know I’m a faery, where even gentle graffiti evokes the talisman of fear. The closet you helped me explode has its door shut & locked tightly here.

...

a review of

Lower East Side Librarian Winter Solstice Shout Out. Contact Jenna Free at leslzine--at--gmail--dot--com for barter to library workers; $3 to everyone else.

With the new age personal ‘zine found on blogs and in online journals, the photocopied pamphlet as personal soapbox has become a novel antiquity. But in all its cut-and-paste glory, Jenna Free’s annual Shout Out is the best of what this genre can and should be.

...

As a follow-up to the Nov. 8 elections in Alabama, and as a result of black people voting in those elections for the first time in their lives, the white landowners are retaliating by evicting large numbers of black farm workers from their land.

In Greene County, the Greene County Freedom Organization reports that there have been a series of evictions, resulting in 70 families being evicted from the land which has been their home for years.

...

A drug is known by the controversies that it raises as a person is known by the enemies he makes. The first argument around LSD was the kind of mental abnormality that it produced in research subjects. Some scientists contended the loss of contact with reality resembled schizophrenia while others said that it was comparable to a toxic mental condition such as may be seen with a high fever in a physical illness. The LSD psychosis was eventually conceded by most to be different from schizophrenia. It remains of scientific importance to study the changes associated with LSD but it cannot serve as a model for schizophrenia. It was hoped that drugs which cut short or prevented the LSD state of mental distress would be effective against schizophrenia. This was only partly true. Wishful thinking, attempts to find a short-cut to fame, poor observation and a lack of training in scientific method were responsible for the early conclusions that the LSD psychosis was like the schizophrenic illness and similar factors have led some workers to conclude that the medical use of LSD is a cure for illnesses ranging from neurosis to drug addiction.

...

Dr. Sheil Salasnek addressed a crowd of over 130 people at the LEMAR Legalize Marijuana meeting Feb. 2^nd in Lower DeRoy Auditorium.

The paranoia from the recent bust was evident as everyone originally sat in the back of the room, avoiding the (bugged for what?) front rows of seats. However, after Joe Mulky urged everyone to move UP, and the doctor started talking, the meeting turned to a relaxed and comprehensive discussion of LSD and the psychedelics.

...

Tragedy of the Sixties: If you turn on and tune in—such heavily technophilic metaphors!—you can’t really hope to drop out of the technocracy. Too bad turn off, tune out, and secede isn’t nearly so snappy a slogan.

Car ads make great play with our unconscious realization that we need cars to get away to some place where there are no cars. To escape. The “freedom” of the American automobilist is a freedom from community, from place, from the human. It accomplishes all this, as Virilio might say, by its speed, which alienates (or “liberates”) the human from organic connection to space. The car causes pollution, death and disease; it demands paved highways and parking lots. It transforms nature into a tourist destination. It “makes” constant omnipresent noise, global warming and aesthetic blight—to name a few “side effects.” But the car produces social breakdown. This is what people buy their SUV’s for. There is the hidden hook in all car ads.

...

a review of

Luigi Galleani: the Most Dangerous Anarchist In America by Antonio Senta. AK Press, 2019 akpress.org

Sacco and Vanzetti, the Italian-American anarchists executed in Massachusetts in 1927 for a robbery and murder they probably had nothing to do with, had a favorite newspaper. They regularly visited its editor and his family on their farm outside of Boston.

...

It’s no secret that police departments around the country are arming themselves to the hilt in anticipation. They intend to get ready for anything and everything.

A couple of national magazines have even run features on all the new weapons now available.

One of the newest of these is mace, an extremely dangerous combination of chemicals which comes in pocket sized aerosol cans. A weapon specially designed for crowd control.

...

“Historically, all reactionary forces on the verge of extinction invariably conduct a last desperate struggle against the revolutionary forces, and some revolutionaries are apt to be deluded for a time by this phenomenon of outward strength but inner weakness, failing to grasp the essential fact that the enemy is nearing extinction while they themselves are approaching victory.”

...

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when societies began to exhibit mass madness, but it certainly happened as the political state arose some scant four thousand years ago. What delusions of grandeur must have inhabited the mind of the first man to stand atop a ziggurat and announce that he was the representative of the gods on earth, or, crazier, that he was a god manifest with the right to rule over his subjects.

...

Here it is folks, an interview with Joshua Newton, demolition expert for the Rebel Army.

Q. Well, Josh, I guess we’ll get started with a little background: how old are you?

J. Twenty-one.

Q. So much for the background: how did you get started in this? I mean blowing up police cars and CIA offices is a pretty big step, I mean it’s the real thing.

...

Michigan militiamen at a gun rights rally, Lansing, Mich., Sept. 25, 1994. Photo/Bruce Giffin

We live in a world where television announces what is important and solemnly pronounces how loyal citizens are to respond—patriotism: the Gulf War; mourning: the death of the war criminal Nixon; joy: the Olympics; or indignation: the Oklahoma City bombing. The public is inundated with carefully selected images, which are dropped as soon as they fulfill their function of affirming the ruling scheme of things.

...

Within the space of one week in March, two films dealing with different aspects of nuclear madness appeared on Network television. In “The China Syndrome,” a film which had been released right at the time of the Three Mile Island blow-up, the viewer is confronted with an attempt to cover-up a dangerous accident at a nuclear reactor in California.

...

a review of

Maps to the Other Side: The Adventures of a Bipolar Cartographer, Sascha Altman DuBrul, 2013, Microcosm Publishing, 189 pp., $15.95, microcosmpublishing.com

“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain...” once wrote the renowned Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran. “Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy. Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.” While the term “bipolar” had not yet been introduced into the world of psychiatry when Gibran wrote these words in 1923, the sentiment is strikingly similar to that found in the eclectic mixture of essays, interviews, eulogies for deceased friends, and self-reflective ramblings which compose Sascha Altman DuBrul’s latest book, Maps to the Other Side. This slim volume is part punk memoir, part how-to manual for guerrilla gardening, and part rallying cry for a revolution in terms of our cultural perceptions of and reactions to mental health.

...

Reprinted from Detroit Scope

“Detroit is controlled 100% by the Mafia,” says a man close to Mafia kingpins. Many Detroit police officers admit there is a great deal of truth in that statement because of the extent to which the Mafia influences police department activities.

These officers say the department has been so infiltrated by men in the power of the Mafia that Detroit police cannot be effective against organized crime. The Central Intelligence Bureau (CIB) has been denied authority to investigate killings and other activities associated with the Mafia even though it was originally created for the purpose of combating organized crime. Some officers say the orders to “lay off’ the Mafia come from the highest levels.

...

Last issue we hinted that perhaps Detroit Police Commissioner Johannes Spreen was trying to do something about the brutal and racist nature of his police by disciplining officers involved in incidents of brutality at the Veteran’s Memorial Building and Poor People’s March. Criminal charges were even brought against two officers for their roles in brutalizing two teenagers.

...

Three sisters

Sit in judgment-

Darkly, mutely on the mesa,

Apportioned their appointed part

In the cosmic monotony.

.

A man is shot dead

On ancestral lands (now

“Ran” by the national park

service) praying to

The four directions, hand

On his chest & over

The heart. Belligerent

At the command to leave,

...

a review of

Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands by Kelly Lytle Hernández. WW Norton, New York, 2022

It is definitely a hopeful sign that a briskly selling book from a mainstream publisher (one long-listed for the National Book Award) not only features anarchists, but actually treats them with seriousness and presents them as the good guys—even heroes.

...

CHICAGO—Judge Julius (Magoo-Hitler) Hoffman finally had his day in court as he sentenced all of the Chicago Conspiracy Seven and their defense counsel to long jail terms in prison for contempt of his Kangaroo court.

Chief Defense attorney William Kunstler was sentenced to four years in prison; two years, five months to Dave Dellinger; two years, one month to Rennie Davis; one year, two months to Tom Hayden; eight months to Abbie Hoffman; Jerry Rubin received two years, one month; John Froines, six months; Lee Weiner, two months; and defense attorney Leonard Weinglass to a year and eight months.

...

It’s Late February in central Maine. A group of anarchists and other anti-racists have gathered at the Margaret Chase-Smith bridge in Skowhegan to respond to recent Ku Klux Klan activity around the state.

Anti-Racist Action says “No,” to the Klan in Skowhegan, Maine in Feb. 2017

Anti-Racist Action Maine put out the call to condemn these racist terrorists. Mainers are out on the streets to let our neighbors know we will defend each other from KKK terror. This is not a plea for the authorities to protect us. Only we can protect ourselves.

...

Collect unemployment and earn up to $97 a week for 39 weeks, $67 a week for another 26 weeks!

And pay no taxes! (just like the big corporations!)

Find out how easy it is to get paid for not working!

Tired of getting screwed by your boss and having to break your back at a useless job? All for a couple dollars an hour?

...

An open letter can be read by anyone. You are welcome to read it or not, but let me explain what this letter is about and to whom it is addressed. It is a letter about Vietnam and Johnson and Death.

If you support the war in Vietnam because you want the National Liberation Front to win, this letter is not addressed to you. (I admire and respect the courage of the N.L.F. but I think I respect the Buddhists there more, struggling without guns, and in their naivete hoping to touch the mechanical heart of McNamara through self-immolation. They have died without killing—the greatest courage—and if anyone were to have my loyalty it would be the Buddhists.)

...

Words embody, embrace, define an era. Make Love, Not War, a slogan 1960s rebels created fifty years ago in March 1965 is still around today, often echoed, modified, mocked, transformed. (A wonderful Berkeley Bakery, for instance, boasts, “Make Bread, Not War,” on its banner.)

The original saying was created at Chicago’s Solidarity Bookshop, a “do-it-yourself-revolution project” of Roosevelt University anarchists and IWW members who decided to make an anti-war button. What came to mind was the old Fellowship of Reconciliation slogan “Make Peace, Not War,” but this didn’t reflect our thinking; it was too tame.

...

In the aftermath of 9/11, I pretty much dropped everything to produce media about the protests against the war in Afghanistan. However, I was clueless about the alter-globalization movement and that mass mobilizations had been happening all over the world for the two years preceding the Twin Towers attacks.

...

Film can be a powerful social and political tool. As anarchists, socialists, DIYs, and every other type of fellow traveler, we need to make videos to motivate and inform us. What does an anarchist world look like? What does an anarchist do in a political suspense movie? I challenge storytellers to make movies that answer these questions. What do we want to have them say? Do we have any idea what we want to have happen as a result of people watching our videos?

...

I won’t name the city or the group--it isn’t necessary. Similar situations have occurred in every anarchist community. A middle-aged man with obvious mental health difficulties attached himself to an anarchist activist project in a major city. He had time and energy to spare. He also had difficulties managing his behavior sometimes. A group of young women thought his occasionally aggressive words and actions were threatening, and they were lobbying for his expulsion from the collective. Others grumbled that his personal hygiene was lacking, and that his presence drove away potential members.

...

a review of

The Impossible Community: Realizing Communitarian Anarchism by John P. Clark. Bloomsbury, 2013, 272 pp., $30 paper; $120 hardback; bloomsbury.com

John Clark’s The Impossible Community is something of a mixed bag or should I say a treasure trove? Clark describes himself as an eco-communitarian anarchist theorist and activist. He lives and works in New Orleans where his family has been for twelve generations.

...

“...all poets are outlaws.”

--Stephane Mallarmé, The Evolution of Literature (1891)

Art historians, literary historians and theorists seldom bother to learn anything about their subjects outside their own little bailiwicks, especially when it comes to anarchism.

A painter or poet might have been an anarchist, but entire biographies and studies of him or her can be (and are) written without mentioning the fact. If any academic bothers to notice the matter, it will be done perfunctorily and with embarrassment.

...

The man responsible for the death of Oakland, Calif. social justice activist, anarchist, and baker, Jen Angel, was sentenced to seven years imprisonment for manslaughter and robbery. Twenty-year-old Ishmael Burch accepted a plea deal in August of last year.

Angel was dragged to death in February 2023 when she became entangled in the car Burch was driving after he had stolen her purse.

...

At a time when the Pinochet dictatorship’s murderous repression of political opponents has isolated it internationally to the point that the blood-soaked regime is even a public embarrassment to the White House, help has arrived from the Maoist bureaucracy in Peking.

“The Chilean military junta, increasingly isolated and beleaguered at home and abroad, is seeking stronger ties with China, one of its few remaining friends,” Hugh O’Shaughnessy reported in the November 23 issue of the Observer.

...

Just as in George Orwell’s 1984, “opponents of the working class” in China not only disappear physically, never to be heard from again, but also historically. A case in point are the two photographs printed here which demonstrate one of the most cynical ways to re-write history: the use of doctored photos.

...

Lynne Clive

A stone’s throw away—

here, behind the pane, housed,

relatively safe.

But you, you draw me out,

outside my house, outside myself,

you, homeless one,

urban nomad.

I think some sleepless nights

to join you,

to close this box and break

my pane, to move, walk

away, walk about.

.

But I romanticize you with daydreams

...

The Court Theatre has announced the cancellation of its scheduled production of Marat / Sade due to its revival in New York.

As an alternate the Court will present the Detroit premiere of Joan Little-wood’s London hit, “Oh, What A Lovely War.” Subtitled “A Musical Entertainment” the play is often referred to as a music-hall show. Songs and dances of the World War I era are interwoven with actual stories and news events of the War.

...

It’s marching time again in Detroit.

The Detroit Coalition to End the War in Vietnam Now has called for a mass march down Woodward on April 15^th to demand an immediate withdrawal of all troops from Vietnam. The march will be part of a nation-wide week of protests called for April 13–18 by the New Mobilization Committees.

...

Scenes from the November Mobilization for Peace, Jobs, and Freedom march held in downtown Detroit, Nov. 5^th. Demonstrations and rallies were also held in over 50 other cities across the nation the same day.

Photos by Emil Bacilla and Wilson Lindsey.

...

The only good thing the Three Mile Island accident has provided is a needed kick in the butt to the anti-nuclear movement. Or rather the small, dedicated groups across the country which have been waging mostly losing struggles against nuclear energy may be at the point where the movement will take on mass proportions.

...

March on Washington Committee, 23 East Adams, Detroit 48226

The March on Washington will take place by bus, planes, car pools, and possibly railroad. It is imperative that we know as soon as possible if you are coming and which means of transport you Would prefer.

The trip by railroad (if there are enough interested people) will be organized as a traveling workshop. On the way to Washington we will have workshops and discussions on Vietnam and other foreign policy issues. We will have written materials and discussion leaders.

...

The National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, which organized the massive April 15 demonstrations in New York City and San Francisco, is now arranging for a mass mobilization to confront the warmakers in Washington, D.C. It will be on October 21, with supporting demonstrations around the world.

...

a review of

Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America, Ellen Chesler, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1992, 639 pp.

Chesler obviously admires and empathizes with early twentieth century feminist and birth control advocate Margaret Sanger, but portrays Sanger honestly, showing how her personal faults and foibles affected what she was trying to accomplish, and how her strengths allowed her to accomplish so much.

...

Margot Adler, 1946–2014, at an NPR mic.

Margot Adler, if known to Fifth Estate readers at all, is probably known as a longtime correspondent for NPR radio since 1979. She died on July 28 of cancer at the age of 68.

However, those who do know of her may also be aware that she considered herself a Wiccan high priestess who adhered to the tradition for more than 40 years. Also, there is a specific Fifth Estate connection quite distant from Nationalistic Pentagon Radio (more fitting for its acronym than its actual name).

...

As BP continues to devastate the Gulf of Mexico for generations to come, militant eco-radicals like Marie Mason, who have dedicated their lives to halting exactly this kind of environmental destruction, helplessly watch from inside the dungeons of the State.

Mason is serving almost 22 years for two acts of environmentally-motivated property destruction, the longest sentence of any Green Scare prisoner. The Green Scare is the name given to the recent slate of prosecutions of radical environmental and animal liberation activists. Her sentence is under appeal.

...

Marie Mason, a long-time Fifth Estate contributor, sentenced in February to almost 22-years in prison following a guilty plea for two acts of property destruction on behalf of the environment, is now an inmate at the Waseca federal prison, 75 miles south of Minneapolis. (See Fifth Estate #380, Spring 2009).

...

In the most recent development in the Noel and Marie Murray murder trials, Marie has been sentenced by the Special Criminal Court in Dublin to life imprisonment after being found innocent of capital murder, but guilty of shooting policeman Michael Reynolds on September 11, 1975 following a bank robbery.

...

Your fingers twitch in your sleep

for a moment before you open

your eyes and roll onto your back

You brush a small critter from your face

and pull a twig from your hair

A pink grey sky envelopes the landscape

as you make your way along an outcrop

of shale thru a field

of wet greens and browns

...

WASHINGTON (LNS)—Marijuana may well be very good medicine for victims of tetanus, migraine, high blood pressure, and sunstroke, according to long-secret medical research just made public.

Encouraging studies, done ten years ago at the Army chemical warfare laboratory at the Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland, were disclosed when proceedings of a 1969 National Institute of Mental Health conference were published, according to a February 2 Washington Post dispatch.

...

I want to throw up because we’re supposed to quietly and politely make house in this killing machine called America.

—David Wojnarowicz, Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration

I think of Wojnarowicz’s disgust as I sit across from my friend, Marius Mason, in this maximum-security prison visitor’s room. We are allowed one embrace before we seat ourselves. A surveillance camera looms over head. A guard is posted a few feet away in this sterile cement room. The echo is oppressive as our thoughts and feelings spill out, hurried by the time allotted to us. No paper, no pens or photos of home; only our voices.

...

“Helmeted Hornbill” Marius Mason 2019

MARIUS MASON, AN ANARCHIST TRANS PRISONER serving 22-years for environmental sabotage, has been moved to a low security prison in Danbury, Conn.

The painting above will be one of two dozen as part of an exhibit of Marius’s work at the Maine Film Center in Waterville, Maine on Sept. 20. Fifth Estate staff member, Peter Werbe, will speak and singer/songwriter, David Rovics will perform. Check the Fifth Estate web site and Facebook page for more info.

Marius Mason has begun hormone treatment for medical gender transition in a Fort Worth, Texas federal prison after a long awaited decision by officials to allow it.

Mason, assigned female at birth, is an anarchist, environmental activist, and former Fifth Estate writer.

He was sentenced in 2009 to 22 years imprisonment for the 1999 sabotage of a Monsanto laboratory on the Michigan State University campus in East Lansing, and is currently held in a highly restrictive unit at Carswell Federal Medical Center.

...

“Clemenceau, Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson. Three old men shuffling the pack, dealing out the cards: The Rhineland, Danzig, the Polish Corridor, the Ruhr, self-determination of small nations, the Saar, League of Nations, mandates, the Mespot, Freedom of the Seas, Trans-Jordania, Shantung, Fiume, and the Island of Yap: machinegun fire and arson, starvation, lice, cholera, typhus, oil was trumps.”

...

“The tighter that our humanity closes ranks to conquer nature on Mars, the tighter the elements close theirs to avenge the victory.”

—from Aleksandr Malinovskii Bogdanov’s Red Star (1908)

It’s easy to laugh off the Bush-Cheney regime’s plans for “establishing an extended human presence” on the Moon and Mars. “We will build new ships to carry man forward into the universe, to gain a new foothold on the Moon,” said Bush, a man who constantly fails to correctly pronounce the word “nuclear” and whose own scientific wisdom has had him publicly defending creationist fairy tales over Darwinian evolutionary theory. “We choose to explore space because doing so improves our lives and lifts our national spirit.” Coming out of the mouth of such a cowardly, belligerent, and proudly ignorant obscurantist like Bush, talk of interplanetary missions sounds as unbelievably silly as the music on a Christian rock CD.

...

Marshall Rubinoff, former Fifth Estate rock and roll columnist, died of injuries sustained in an accident while he was riding his motorcycle in San Francisco July 7.

Marshall was known in this area for his work as lead singer and rhythm guitarist for the second edition of the Spikedrivers. While he was with the band he wrote much of their material. He left Detroit for San Francisco shortly after the Spikedrivers broke up and after trying unsuccessfully to form a new band here.

...

Inside the walled compound of a Buddhist monastery on the outskirts of Kyoto, Japan, the monks who reside there have created a meditation garden consisting of raked sand and about a dozen large stones. The stones are adroitly arranged so that no matter where one stands on the perimeter of the garden, at least one of the rocks is blocked from the sight of the viewer. The Zen wisdom behind this arrangement suggests that the world in all of its aspects is never completely knowable; that something always remains hidden.

...

FE NOTE: The following exchange concerns an interview done by Ariel Salleh with German ecofeminist author-activist Maria Mies, titled “Patriarchy and Progress: A Critique of Technological Domination,” and printed in FE #338, Winter 1992.

In a generally excellent issue, FE #338, Winter 1992, the interview with Maria Mies was disturbing in a number of ways. I would like to focus here on one major problem, her distortion of Marx’s ideas, which enables her to present him as a patriarchal techno-fixated materialist with no moral principles (as if he were indistinguishable from your average capitalist).

...

“Subjection of nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground—what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labor?”

—Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto

...

“... [I]n my view, anarchism has no significant contribution to socialist theory to make.”

—Eric Hobsbawm, “Reflections on Anarchism,” 1969

Hobsbawm, the late British Marxist historian, in his snobbery, unintentionally poses the question as to the function of theory of any sort in revolutionary challenges to the present system. Marxists believe it is important to come to the confrontation armed with memorized critiques of capitalism and history, believing this provides them with the organizational and critical tools for overthrowing the system.

...

From July 1845 to September 1847, Thoreau lived at Walden Pond outside of Concord in a small cabin he built largely from scrap. Uninformed cynics typically criticize him either for staying close to town instead of seeking authentic wilderness—or for staying in the cabin only briefly; Thoreau himself made no great claims for his experiment, as he called it, explaining that he was attempting to “live deliberately,” to explore himself, to turn his attention to the woods. (In his essay, “Walking,” he also says that he prefers a kind of “border life” at the boundary between civilization and wilderness). Thoreau finished Walden after returning from the woods to embark on the “other lives” he said he still needed to live.

...

On July 16, 1877, railroad workers in Martinsburg, West Virginia, walked off their jobs in response to a 10% wage cut instituted by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. Wage cuts had become common practice on the railroads, in fact throughout American industry, since the onset of a severe depression in the fall of 1873.

...

Cultural theorist Raymond Williams has suggested that the technology for television was available years before it was utilized. It was held back because the conditions for it were not ripe yet.

Those conditions were urbanization (which masses an audience in one place), the regularization of employment, the homogenization of culture and the concurrent erosion of communities, the need for communication to customers of large concerns (such as department stores) and the need for insipid entertainment for drones whose jobs leave them physically unimpaired but mentally drained.

...

Probably one of the most unusual groups ever to meet in Detroit is the Aetherius Society headquartered at 20771 West 8 Mile Rd. The Aetherius Society is a worldwide non-profit organization which was organized says Miss Edna Spencer, head of the Detroit Branch “at the command of the Cosmic Masters who inhabit Mars and Venus and other highly-cultured planets in this solar system.”

...

STAFF

Debbie Brentz

Steve Dunn

David Gaynes

Alan Gotkin

Mike John

Keep on Truckin’ Co-op

Jim Kennedy

Lee Ann Kennedy

David Levison

Rick London

Nick Medvecky

Bruce Montrose

Claudia Montrose

Harvey Ovshinsky (dig this!)

Dave Riddle

Bill Rowe

Eddie Silver

Marilyn Werbe

Peter Werbe

Cathy West

...

Fifth Estate

Radical Publishing since 1965

Vol. 59, No. 1, #415 Summer 2024

The Fifth Estate is an anti-profit, anarchist project published by a volunteer collective of friends and comrades.

www.FifthEstate.org

No ads. No copyright.

Kopimi — reprint freely

The Fifth Estate

923 Plum Street

Detroit, Michigan 48201

962–9336

EDITOR AND PUBLISHER

Harvey Ovshinsky

NEWS EDITOR

Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASST.

Cathy West

ART EDITOR

Gary Grimshaw

PHOTOGRAPHY

Lena Sinclair

CARTOONIST

Rob Derminer

The Fifth Estate is a member of the Underground Press Syndicate (UPS).