Full list of texts
Fifth Estate Collective
Bookstore in a Barn
Infoshop, gallery & mail order
Send check, money order, or well-concealed cash to:
Fifth Estate Books
PO Box 6
Liberty, TN 37095
Please add $2 shipping/handling for first item ($1 for the 2nd, .50 for the third, & so on).
All book orders include a sampling of free ‘zines & assorted propaganda! We carry current issues of the Earth First! Journal, Slingshot; Clamor, & Crimethinc’s latest Fighting for Our Lives!
Jun 19, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Bookstore Notes
FROM PARTISAN PRESS:
Partisan Press is pleased to announce the long-awaited release of Scottish anarchist Stuart Christie’s autobiography The Christie File.
British orders can be placed with Cienfuegos Press; all non-U.K. orders can be sent to us ($9.95). Coming Spring 1981: Festival and Revolt Italy anthology), Heretic (a new left libertarian journal), and more. Donations needed urgently! Join the Partisan Sustainer fund: $30/year (all publications for that year), or $100+ (lifetime). For orders and inquiries, write Partisan Press, P.O. Box 2193, Seattle WA 98111.
Jan 24, 2019 Read the whole text...
Dennis Fox
Border lines and Border Regions
As I wandered through Albania a few months ago, as unlikely a place as any during a six-month journey around the planet, a friend emailed a link to “Anarchist Traveling vs. Tourism.” *
The comments mostly reminded me that I’m not attempting an anarchist tour, whatever that might mean. I’m not looking constantly for political insurrection or utopian experimentation even though, inevitably, my anarchist lens focuses on signs of inequality and resistance, cops and soldiers, graffiti and posters (the circle-A, everywhere in Athens, is absent here in Oman).
Jun 18, 2016 Read the whole text...
E.B. Maple (Peter Werbe)
Seaweed
Both Sides Now
an exchange
FE Note: A spin-off from our letters section, “Both Sides Now” presents two distinct views on a controversial topic, side by side. On the left [in print edition], FE reader Seaweed elaborates points first raised in his “Land And Liberty” (FE #367, p. 22–23). His views might be shared by many Fifth Estate readers and writers, but by no means all, as clearly evidenced by EB Maple’s response (see “Guns again?” in Letters, FE #370, p. 52). Hence, on the right [in print edition], we present Maples’s elaboration of an “opposing” view.
May 13, 2015 Read the whole text...
Pieter Primatus
Bowling with Bonobo Bashers
In my life I’ve met only two bonobos face to face. I stared at them and they at me through the glass of their cage in the Berlin Zoo. The experience gave me the same creepy feeling I get whenever I see gorillas or chimps in cages. Their sadness at being confined is obvious, as is their slightly accusatory attitude, which seems to say, “Why me? and why are you free?”
Sep 30, 2014 Read the whole text...
Spencer Sunshine
Brad Will, 1970–2006
I found out that Brad Will had been shot to death from a message that went out over New York City email lists on October 27. It simply said, “Fuck, ya’ll, fuck,” followed by a link to an Indymedia story describing the events of that day. Soon, it was confirmed that Will, an IMC journalist and ever-present figure in the New York anarchist scene, had been gunned down in Oaxaca in southern Mexico where he had been chronicling the revolutionary upsurge building there since April 2006.
Mar 4, 2015 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Brass Boiling over Fort Wayne Exposé
Spec. Brown Transferred As More Irregularities Charged
The brass at Fort Wayne have taken their revenge for Spec. 4 Jerry Brown’s criticism of induction center medical examinations. Brown was given 36 hours to leave the post after an article appeared in the last issue of this paper detailing Fort Wayne’s improper procedures used to examine potential draftees. He was transferred to Fort Benjamin Harrison Indiana to await duty “overseas.”
Jan 10, 2024 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Brass Play Games with GI Lives
from Special and AP Dispatches
WASHINGTON—Gen. David M. Shoup, former commandant of the Marine corps, charges that an ambitious elite of high ranking officers, preferring war to peace, is turning the United States into “a militaristic and aggressive nation.”
Writing in the April issue of the magazine Atlantic, Shoup says that the search for promotion, interservice rivalry and an eagerness to test military doctrines lies behind the deep American involvement in Vietnam and the heavy invasion of the Dominican Republic.
Jun 14, 2022 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Brass v. GIs United
COLUMBIA, S.C. — The Army brass at Ft. Jackson is still trying to screw GIs for exercising their Constitutional rights. (See last issue, p.15 [“Free Speech for GIs: Analysis of a victory” by Michael Smith, FE #82, June 26-July 9, 1969] for background story.)
Pvt. Tommy Woodfin, one of the founders of GIs United Against the War in Vietnam, has just come through a second court martial. He was acquitted on two counts, but plead guilty to a third count of being Absent Without Official Leave. Woodfin went AWOL on Memorial Day to visit his sick girlfriend in a New York hospital. He was sentenced to one month at hard labor and busted in rank.
Apr 23, 2019 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Bravo Co. Won’t Go
Vietnam Mutiny
Reprint from Fifth Estate #128, April 1–14, 1971
KHESANH, South Vietnam—53 men of Bravo Troop, 1st Squadron, 1st Cavalry, Americal Division refused orders to move into a battle zone near the Laotian border March 20 to retrieve abandoned equipment.
One of the men in the two platoons, which refused to obey the command, said he did not follow orders because “the reason given wasn’t a very good one... I didn’t see any sense in risking any more lives.”
Nov 19, 2017 Read the whole text...
Howard Besser
Brazil Impeachment & Left Media
As Bill Weinberg points out (see page 14, this issue), much of the left media shamefully supports odious forces simply because they oppose the U.S. A contemporary example of a significant skewing the facts can be seen in its overwhelmingly biased coverage of the 2016 impeachment of Brazil’s president, Dilma Rouseff.
Nov 17, 2016 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Breaking & Entering
Project to Document Harassment of Infoshops and Autonomous Zones
This project is seeking personal accounts of surveillance, violence, and repression upon temporary and permanent autonomous zones (convergence centers, info shops, community centers, squats, collectives, etc...). Titled Breaking and Entering: State Repression of Autonomous Zones, this book will be comprised of individual perspectives of raids, supplemented with theory-based analysis of repression. The effectiveness of this documentation relies on the participation of those who have been subjected to police repression.
Jul 18, 2016 Read the whole text...
Benjamin Olson
Breaking the Cycle of Trauma
Creating a New Lineage of Healing
Trauma is a subtle dominator of experience. Totalizing yet imperceptible, the massive mental shock re-contextualizes life so fully, one forgets what life was like before it.
Indeed, one forgets that there ever was a before. War, mass shootings, rape, famine, can all cause trauma. In fact, sometimes just hearing about these things (living with a loved one or being raised by a parent who once experienced them), creates its own trauma in the listener, causing a cycle that can intensify over generations.
Aug 31, 2018 Read the whole text...
Marieke Bivar
Breaking up Families
How Medical Colonialism in Canada is Retraumatizing Indigenous People
a review of
Fighting for A Hand to Hold: Confronting Medical Colonialism against Indigenous Children in Canada by Samir Shaheen-Hussain, Foreword by Cindy Blackstock, Afterword by Katsi’tsakwas Ellen Gabriel. Mcgill-Queen’s University Press 2020
On May 30, 2021, the land surrounding a former residential school in Canada was found to contain the unidentified remains of over 200 children. Since then, nearly a thousand other children’s graves have been uncovered. A horrified hush fell over those of us willing to accept this reality. Then rage.
Jan 2, 2022 Read the whole text...
John Sinclair
Breakthrough
“He who lives by the sword dies by the sword,” but the men who are now dying have no such simple entrance into their own lives—the swords they bear (whatever “side”) are not what they live by, not the terms of their living, but alien & unnecessary tools forced into their hands by men who have taken themselves so far from such actual simple tools.
Sep 2, 2015 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Brenda Christie FREE
On 19 May this year Brenda Earl Christie, a co-founder of the anarchist publishing house Cienfuegos Press, and her two-year-old daughter Branwen, were arrested at Hanover Airport in West Germany as they were boarding a Gatwick (England) bound flight following a three week holiday with her sister-in-law. Both Brenda and her daughter were held by GS-9 antiterrorist police when the Central Police Computer in Wiesbaden indicated that Brenda was wanted on a warrant issued against her eleven years ago in Frankfurt.
Jul 12, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Brief reviews
a review of
Let’s Get Free: a zine about Jeff “Free” Luers: Earth Defender, Anarchist, and Political Prisoner 11x17, 28 pages. Order for $5 (postage paid) from Break the Chains (checks made out to “Howl For Freedom”, and well concealed cash only) POB 11331 Eugene, OR 97440
Let’s Get Free is a new zine created by the Defense Network for ELF prisoner Jeff “Free” Luers. Serving a 22 year sentence for burning 2 SUVs in the summer of ’00, Free continues to fight for his freedom through the legal system, and to speak out for the liberation of all life. This zine is a major forum for Free’s writings, and a useful introduction to his case and his motivations for those who are just learning about radical eco-defense. The zine features reprints of mainstream media reports, letters and op-eds (some by Free himself), Free’s poetry, personal letters of support from Lorenzo Ervin and Grand Jury resistor Josh Harper, and an interview between Free and another Oregon anarchist prisoner, Rob “Los Ricos” Thaxton.
Jun 19, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Briefs
OTTAWA, Ont. (LNS)—Canadian Health Minister John Munro has indicated that the Canadian government is considering action within months to liberalize, and possibly abolish, laws which ban possession and use of marijuana.
Munro told a Canadian newspaper that increasingly widespread use of pot showed that harsh penalties were not working as a deterrent. He did not give any indication, however, that the government would change its stiff laws against the sale of grass.
May 22, 2023 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Briefs
WASHINGTON, D.C. (LNS)—The Supreme Court has upheld (7 to 2) the right of three Des Moines high school students to wear black armbands to school in protest of the Vietnam War.
The majority opinion stated that students and teachers don’t shed “their Constitutional right to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”
Sep 3, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Briefs
ATHENS, Greece (LNS) — Greece’s military dictatorship has imposed a rigid code of conduct on university students. Greece is already under martial law, but the new code could be used if martial law is relaxed later this year, as promised by the dictatorship.
The code imposes stringent penalties on students who show “disrespect” or participate in strikes or demonstrations. The code also permits action against students “not imbued with the spirit compatible with the established system.”
Aug 22, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Briefs
Global books, a long-time Detroit Marxist bookstore, has moved its headquarters to 4415 Second at Canfield.
The bookstore, which has been in operation since 1958, carries radical literature, both current and classic, periodicals from Socialist countries and books on black liberation, labor and economics.
Aug 13, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Briefs
Radical cheerleaders give a playful, yet militant, feminist flavor to anti-authoritarian protest. After reading through the third edition of the Radical Cheerleader Handbook, I want to grab a pair of pompoms and take to the streets.
The inspiring cheers and rants throughout this radical handbook prepare wimmin for the front lines and can transform a sober action into a party. Cheers for every occasion from a “Take back the night” rally to the anti-WTO/IMF/World Bank protests are represented in full voice.
May 19, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Briefs
by the Roach Editor
The Red Roach coffee house is open!
It’s hard to find, but look around the corner at Plum and Fifth, the barnwood door between two red and purple gaslights, go upstairs, you’re there,
The place is improvisional, a room for artists to meet, play their music, read they poems, just do their thing. There are two stages, one for the performer, one for the audience, a groove stage with bath tub and a large screen for light shows.
Mar 29, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Briefs
LONDON (PWS)—Traffic, one of Britain’s most highly rated groups, officially disbanded last week. The announcement was made here last week just as the group’s new single, “Medicated Goo,” was released and as their current album, “Traffic,” continued up the charts.
Originally formed in early 1967 when singer Stevie Winwood parted company with the Spencer Davis Group, to join forces with Jim Capaldi, Chris Wood, and Dave Mason, the group scored heavily through live performances and several hit singles.
Apr 11, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Briefs
The Winter Offensive against the war in Vietnam is beginning. The Fall Offensive culminated in 800,000 persons in Washington and people came back to Detroit with even a greater sense of the need to bring all the troops home now.
The December Moratorium will focus on organizing and support of anti-war GIs.
Sep 10, 2019 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Briefs
SOMERSET, Ky — A 14-year old boy jailed for auto theft led three other prisoners in a break from the Pulaski County Jail Thursday.
Authorities said the boy obtained what appeared to be a.32-calibre pistol from an unknown source.
Deputy jailer Gary Johnson said a prisoner, Donald Ray Lynn, 24, of Somerset, received a telephone call and was let out of the cell block to take the call.
Jun 7, 2019 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Briefs
Greet The Man!
Be the first in your commune, home, block, etc., to wear the latest in fashion—“All Power to the People” and fist on finest quality T-shirt; sizes S, M, L and X-Large. Send $2.50 to: T-Shirts, Box 1711, Ann Arbor, Mi. 48106. Also custom T-shirting for your group or club.
May 8, 2019 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Briefs
A Federal indictment was returned May 3 charging three suspended Detroit cops and a private guard with violating the civil rights of ten persons during last summer’s uprising.
Included among those whose civil rights were violated were two of three black youths shot to death by the cops at the Algiers motel.
Dec 10, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Briefs
The 3rd Annual Twin Cities Anarchist Book Fair (TCABF) is the weekend of Sept. 15–16 at the Powderhorn Park building in Minneapolis.
The organizers say while the primary purpose of the Book Fair is to promote and debate the ideas of anarchism, it is also open to organizations and individuals who seek a radical restructuring of our current society to be more democratic, less oppressive, and just for all people.
Sep 10, 2013 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Briefs
In Southern Germany in a town by the name of Bayreuth, the German police are in a quandary. The town’s dog poo is under attack. Police are hunting pranksters who have been sticking miniature US flags into piles of dog shit in public parks. Josef Oettl, parks administrator for Bayreuth, said: “This has been going on for about a year now, and there must be 2,000 to 3,000 piles of excrement that have been claimed during that time.”
Mar 13, 2014 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Bringing it All Back Home
Interview with Larry Miller
Editors’ Note: Larry Miller, known to his longtime listeners in the Detroit area as the man who invented “underground radio,” has returned to Detroit after two years as “Midnight Miller” on KMPX-FM in San Francisco and is presently partying on at WABX on Saturdays and Sundays.
His radio programming is probably the most tasteful in the country, and his influence has spread to stations and disk jockeys all over the U.S.A. Miller’s Saturday afternoon shows on WDTM in Detroit in 1965 and 1966 introduced contemporary rock and roll music (Beatles, Stones, Bob Dylan and the Byrds at that time) into the FM radio scene, and his midnight-to-6 am show on KMPX in San Francisco set the scene for the current FM-rock revolution.
Dec 2, 2019 Read the whole text...
Chuck 0
Bring the War Home
The latest escalation of the fighting in Iraq is a clear sign that the people of Iraq reject their “liberation.” The United States, led by the Bush regime, can’t decide why it invaded Iraq and refuses to pull out of Iraq. The Bush regime is dedicated to the continuation of the American program of empire building. A withdrawal from Iraq would be seen as a setback of this ongoing effort to build a Thousand Year Reich in which the world would be run by America. The quagmire in Iraq has not deterred the United States as it continues to intervene in the internal affairs of other countries (Haiti) and actively threatens other countries (Syria, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and on and on).
Jul 4, 2016 Read the whole text...
Stuart Christie
British Anarchists Found Not Guilty
The trial lasted 61 days, but in December a hand-picked jury pulled off a major surprise by finding four anarchist defendants in the British “Persons Unknown” trial not guilty!
The case started in 1978 when the British government’s elite Special Branch and Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) arrested Iris Mills, Dafydd Ladd, Ronan Bennet, Stewart Carr Vincent Stevenson and Trevor Dawton charged with being “terrorists” planning to take “positive steps” to overthrow society.
Nov 29, 2018 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
British Anarchists Given Bail
We recently received the good news from England that some of the six comrades who were arrested last spring on charges of “Conspiracy to Cause Explosions” (see “Anarchists Arrested in Britain,” FE #293–294, August 21, 1978), have been released on bail and the “Conspiracy” charges have been dropped.
Aug 20, 2018 Read the whole text...
anon.
Brotherly Love?
PHILADELPHIA—The police state atmosphere legitimized at the Democratic Convention continues to grow. The arrest of four people here September 9 dramatizes the fact that the “authorities” will no longer tolerate any form of dissent.
The four arrested were among those seeking to make a peaceful protest at the opening of Hubert Humphrey’s presidential campaign in Philadelphia. Three of the four were members of the Philadelphia Resistance. The fourth, Ronald Whitehorse, is a member of People for Human Rights (PHR), the Philadelphia affiliate of National People Against Racism (PAR).
Sep 2, 2015 Read the whole text...
Gary Snyder
Buddhist Anarchism
Buddhism holds that the universe and all creatures in it are intrinsically in a state of complete wisdom, love and compassion; acting in natural response and mutual interdependence. The personal realization of this from-the-beginning state cannot be had for and by one-“self’ because it is not fully realized unless one has given the self up; and away.
Jun 14, 2021 Read the whole text...
Various Authors
Building A Movement
Coming Events
Honoring the Haymarket Martyrs
The U.S. National Park Service has declared Chicago’s Haymarket Martyrs’ monument a National Historic Landmark and the Illinois Labor History Society (ILHS) is sponsoring a celebration, Sunday afternoon, May 3. The ceremony will take place at the former Waldheim cemetery, now called Forest Home, at 863 Desplaines Ave. in Forest Park, Ill., outside of Chicago.
Feb 4, 2016 Read the whole text...
Stacy Flynn
Bullet Points
two reviews
The body is the locus of authoritarian control in Meg Elison’s Big Girl (number twenty-five in PM Press’s Outspoken Authors series.) Gorgeously surreal, the collection includes speculative short stories, essays and an interview with Elison by Terri Bisson.
Elison, whose debut novel Book of the Unnamed Midwife won a Phillip K Dick Award in 2014, has a stunning emotional range. Her work can be prosaic, comic, rageful, grotesque and full of sorrow, all within the same piece, sometimes within the same sentence. The title story recounts, through news reports, the journey of a sixteen-year old girl who grows to enormous proportions. She wakes one morning with birds roosting on her eyelashes, she slogs through the San Francisco bay, she flicks away men who climb her, and she comes to occupy her own island like a B-movie monster.
Feb 19, 2021 Read the whole text...
Kae Halonen
Bullets Fly at Anti-Draft Center
The resistance to the Draft Resistance Committee office at 12820 Hamilton in Highland Park has been stepped up into a Mississippi-style harassment campaign.
At 11:20 p.m. the night of August 28 someone shot three slugs from a large-caliber rifle through the front window of the office. Two more shots were fired through the front windows of the office in the dark hours of the morning of September 1.
Mar 6, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Burn All Flags
reprint from FE #332 Summer 1989
On March 21, four people demonstrated at the Federal Bldg. in downtown Detroit for the right to be anti-patriotic. In so doing, they burned a small American flag, much to the outrage of passersby and security guards.
The date of the protest coincided with a US Supreme Court hearing of a criminal conviction of a demonstrator who also burned a flag as a political statement at the 1984 Dallas Republican convention. We give full support to all acts of flag desecration and encourage others to commit similar provocations.
Mar 7, 2014 Read the whole text...
Jeff Shantz
Burning Colonialism
Canadian Wildfires and Indigenous Resistance
2023 has officially been designated as the worst fire season on record in so-called Canada, with almost 20 million acres burned by summer’s end. While these wildfires deeply ravaged many communities, they have most severely impacted Indigenous communities, many of whose territories are northern, rural, or wilderness.
Jan 7, 2024 Read the whole text...
PanDoor
Burning Man
A Festival in the Desert
I have just left Black Rock City, the site of Burning Man, a yearly arts festival and temporary autonomous zone based on radical self-expression, and find myself in the paradoxical situation of being inspired to give written form to things that are utterly inexpressible.
In the desert of Nevada, Black Rock City is constructed entirely of art. It exists in material form for only one week in August every year, and then it disappears, as though into the ethers, its citizens dispersed to various faraway places.
Nov 17, 2015 Read the whole text...
Pierre Garine
Burning Man Comes to China
Burning Man began with a wooden effigy and a single match on a beach in San Francisco in the late 1980s. When the police came and closed down the beach burning of the Man it was John Law and Michael Michael, two members of the Cacophony Society, a group of legendary urban pranksters, who told local artist Larry Harvey of a place they knew of in the desert “where you could burn things.”
Nov 26, 2014 Read the whole text...
Sascha Engel
Burning Money
Ridding the world of capital’s representation
Freeing ourselves from the state, capital, and civilization requires radical action. Radical means going for the jugular. The blood pumping through the jugular is money.
Without money, labor power can no longer be commanded. Nor can wealth be hoarded, which means labor power cannot be commanded further down the line. Without taxes, the state’s war machine can not reinforce capital, nor police our bodies.
Jan 23, 2023 Read the whole text...
Matt Keene
Burnpile Press
Jacksonville’s Anarchist Collective
Anarchists sweat in Florida. Dumpstered foods spoil quicker, black bloc protests require balaclavas made with moisture-wicking, breathable materials, and mosquitoes relentlessly target the sugary-sweet blood of anti-capitalists.
Out of this sultry subtropical environment has sprouted Burnpile Press. Founded in 2012, Burnpile is an informal, community supported project dedicated to producing, printing, and distributing radical literature free-of-charge. They often distro as many as 200 Fifth Estates each issue as well as Berkeley’s Slingshot periodical, and many other radical used books, zines, and accessories at no cost to the reader. With no current info-shop location, all material is literally hand distributed through face to face interactions with those living in the region.
Feb 26, 2015 Read the whole text...
Marge Piercy
Burying Blues for Janis
Your voice always whacked me right on the funny bone
of the great-hearted suffering bitch fantasy
that ruled me like a huge copper moon with its phases
until I could partially break free.
How could I help but cherish you for my bad dreams?
Your voice would grate right on the marrow filled bone
Sep 11, 2015 Read the whole text...
anon.
Buses set to Roll This month
Busing Won’t Change Authoritarian Schools
“When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school; it’s a wonder I can think at all.”
--Paul Simon; “Kodachrome”
Trying to make sense of the busing issue is like the classic story of the blind men and the elephant--every piece you touch feels different and suggests a different definition. The trick is to make sense of the whole animal.
Dec 21, 2013 Read the whole text...
Mitchel Cohen
Bush Ready for Next War
Is the Anti-War Movement?
Bush is clearly gearing up for another “short” war before next year’s elections. Although many people have mentioned Cuba, Libya, and Korea as possible targets, it is likely he’ll go back into Iraq to “finish the job.”
Regardless of the location of the next “zap” war, however, anti-war activists in the U.S. have yet to seriously grapple with the inability of our movement to stop the last war. From the start of the “crisis” we were lied to by the government and corporate media, who carefully planned their deceptions to rouse the breast-beaters and militarize the public mind.
Sep 5, 2018 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Businessmen: “Resume Iran Trade”
NEW YORK—Despite the lingering bitterness over the hostage crisis and the horrible events surrounding the inaugural crash, as many as 50 inquiries a day have been pouring into the Commerce Department from companies interested in resuming business ties with Iran.
“Even as the remains of the dead were being removed from Pennsylvania Avenue, businesses were calling up asking for information. In fact the number of inquiries reached a high point in the hours after the crash,” a department official said.
Jan 27, 2019 Read the whole text...
Bill Blank
Busking behind the Barricades
Book review
a review of
A Busker’s Adventure by David Rovics. Various e-book formats at davidrovics.com/
David Rovics hails from a long lineage of gifted topical American folk guitar singers originally birthed by Joe Hill, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, and Pete Seeger, with blazing torches passed on through its most notable stepchildren, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton and, of course, Bob Dylan, at least before he “went electric” (as alarmingly noted in that 1965 first issue of the Fifth Estate).
Jun 7, 2017 Read the whole text...
Peter Werbe
But It All Falls Apart
A Leftist Guide for Seizing the Power of the State
a review of
Seizure of State Power, Part 3 of Manual for Revolutionary Leaders by Michael Velli. Sources of Velli’s thought annotated by Fredy Perlman. Black & Red (2019) BlackandRed.org
Spoiler alert: This text is not well-intentioned advice for those seeking to lead the working class and seize the power of the state. Quite the opposite. It is a polemic against those who seek such a role.
Oct 10, 2019 Read the whole text...
John Zerzan
But It Doesn’t Move
Book review
a review of
And Yet It Moves: The Realization and Suppression of Science & Technology, by Boy Igor, 1986, 120 pp., $5, Zamisdat Press, GPO Box 1255, Gracie Station, NY NY 10028.
Boy Igor’s provocatively titled text gets off to a start that suggests a real depth. It challenges modern science as inseparable from the development of capitalism and pronounces “proletarian” science as bourgeois as proletarian art or the proletarian state.
Sep 10, 2017 Read the whole text...
Pat Medicine
Butt Mousse and Beach Whistles
“I want my plastic.” All bright colors and boppy hairstyles, it looks more like a music video than a television commercial. She’s a free young woman of the late ‘eighties, she wants it all, and she wants it NOW. These days, a little square of plastic can get it for her—instant cash or commodities, instant gratification, instant recognition. No wonder she wants her plastic. And you, the viewer, are hypnotized by desire, yet redeemed by the message. You too can be as cool and confident as the new-wave chick with her polyvinyl petroleum product. On the TV, the clean and sexy mannequin flashes her smile along with her new status symbol...after decades of manufacturing cardboard applicators for their “feminine hygiene” products, in order to compete with the other companies. Tampax has finally switched to plastic. And the cool chick, knowing this will get her everything and everyone she ever wanted out of life, sparkles and exclaims, “I want my plastic!”
Oct 3, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Buy It By The Lb.
ANN ARBOR—This city witnessed the first public expression of dissent by Women’s Liberation groups of Michigan Saturday night, March 22, at the Miss Ann Arbor Pageant.
Outside the Auditorium doors of the Ann Arbor High School where the Pageant was being held about 100 women picketed in protest of the local meat auction which will eventually culminate in the Atlantic City Miss America prostitution rites.
Jun 14, 2022 Read the whole text...
Karen Kovac
Naiomi Epil
Calemdar
The calendar is prepared by Fifth Estate calendar girls, Karen Kovac and Naomi Epel, [Naiomi Epil —Web Archiver] with cooperation from Detroit Adventure. Copy deadline is the 6th and 22nd of each month and should be sent to the Fifth Estate, Calendar, 1107 W. Warren, Detroit, Michigan 48201.
WED. NOV. 15
Jan 20, 2023 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Calendar
The calendar is a regular feature of the FIFTH ESTATE. It carries news of what is happening in the Detroit to Ann Arbor area. You can help make the calendar more complete by sending us information about activities you know about or that you are involved in. Deadlines for the calendar are the 8th and 23rd of each month.
Sep 1, 2024 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Calendar
The calendar will be a regular FIFTH ESTATE feature. We know that there is more happening in the Detroit and Ann Arbor areas than what we have listed, so we need your help. Send us information about what your group is doing or just anything you hear about. We think the items listed below disprove the contention that “nothing ever happens in Detroit.” The deadlines for the calendar are the 8th and 23rd of each month.
May 22, 2024 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Calendar
The calendar will be a regular FIFTH ESTATE feature. We know that there is more happening in the Detroit and Ann Arbor areas than what we have listed, so we need your help. Send us information about what your group is doing or just anything you hear about. We think the items listed below disprove the contention that “nothing ever happens in Detroit.” The deadlines for the calendar are the 8th and 23rd of each month.
Jun 24, 2024 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Calendar
Saturday October 15
FILM. Famous Films of Famous Directors: Part. II. Akira Kurosawa’ s “Yojimbo”. Rackhman Aud. 80 Farnsworth, 8 p.m. Adm. 10/15
Sunday October 16
FILM, Famous Early Movie Series. Henry Ford Museum Theatre. 2 and 4 p.m. Adm. 10/16
PROGRAM. Student Sunday Program, movies and dancing. International Inst. 4–6 p.m. 10/16
Mar 8, 2024 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Calendar
The calendar will be a regular FIFTH ESTATE feature. We know that there is more happening in the Detroit and Ann Arbor areas than what we have listed, so we need your help. Send us information about what your group is doing or just anything you hear about. We think the items listed below disprove the contention that “nothing ever happens in Detroit.” The deadlines for the calendar are the 8th and 23rd of each month.
Mar 24, 2024 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Calendar
November 1 to 15
Wed. Nov. 1
PLAY “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” WSU Hillberry Classic Theater, 2:30 p.m. Adm. 11/1.
LECTURE Sander Vanocur speaks, Mercy College, 12:30 p.m. 11/1.
CONFERENCE Communism in China: Democracy in India, Oakland U. Center, 10:00 a.m., 11/1.
FILM “Old and New” (1929), Sergei Eisen-stein, Architectural Aud., Ann Arbor. 7 p.m. and 9:05 p.m. Adm. 11/1.
Dec 25, 2022 Read the whole text...
Karen Kovac
Naiomi Epil
Calendar
The calendar is prepared by Fifth Estate calendar girls Karen Kovac and Naiomi Epil with cooperation from Detroit Adventure. Copy deadline is the 6th and 22nd of each month and should be sent to the Fifth Estate Calendar, 1107 W. Warren, Detroit, Michigan 98201.
Thurs the 15th
Muhamed Ali-Lewis Fight. Exhibition. Cobo Hall at 8:00 p.m. Adm. 6/15
Oct 23, 2022 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Calendar
Thursday June 1
JUSTICE! Judge Gillis’ Courtroom 1326 St. Antoine. Trial Preliminaries concerning the “great reefer raid” of January 24th. John Sinclair and others will be up before the bench. Friends and sympathisers are urged to attend. 6/1
FILM: “Ipcress File,” 7:30, WSU Community Arts. Free. 6/1.
May 1, 2022 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Calendar
Fri. Sept. 6
DIALOGUE ’68. A festival of radical rock music for three nights. The UP, Billy C. and his Killer Blues Band, and the Psychedelic Stooges will play Prior to the performances
A SHOWING OF UNDERGROUND FILMS will be presented by the Detroit Repertory Theatre, at the first Unitarian Church, Forest and Cass. $2.50 per night or $6.00 for all three nights. Tickets may be purchased at Hudson’s, Grinnell’s, or at the church.
Aug 21, 2015 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Calendar
SAT., SEPT. 30
PLAY: Pantageize, APA repertory company, Michel de Gheldero’s “farce to make you sad” Lydia Mendelssohn Theater, Ann Arbor, 8:00 p.m. 9/30
SUN., OCT. 1
PLAY: Same as 9/30 2:30 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. adm. 10/1
CONCERT: The Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Premiere of a new work by Roger Sessions commissioned for the U. of M. Sesquicentennial Celebration. Hill Aud., 2:30 p.m. adm. 10/1
Apr 8, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Calendar
PLAY — Court Theatre presents George Buchner’s “Leonce and Lena” opening May 10–20. 8:30 p.m. at Court Theatre 2555 Burns Ave. Phone 822–6655 Adm.
PLAY Sheridan’s “The Rivals” WSU Hillberry Classic Theatre, Cass & Hancock 2:30 p.m. Adm. May 27.
PLAY, Children’s Holiday Theatre. Talking Drums, Percival Borde Dance Co. Det. Inst. Arts Aud., John R St. entrance. 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Adm. May 20.
May 19, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Calendar
The calendar is prepared by Fifth Estate calendar girls Karen Kovac and Naomi Epel with cooperation from Detroit Adventure. Copy deadline is the 6th and 22nd of each month and should be sent to the Fifth Estate, Calendar 1107 W. Warren, Detroit, Michigan 48201.
SUN the 16th
HEAL along with Oral Roverts at Cobo Hall. Sponsored by North American Baptist Convention. Call Cobo for ticket info. 8/16
Feb 12, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Calendar
The calendar is prepared by Fifth Estate calendar girls Karen Kovac and Naiomi Epil with cooperation from Detroit Adventure. Copy deadline is the 6th and 22nd of each month and should be sent to the Fifth Estate, Calendar, 1107 W. Warren, Detroit, Michigan 48201.
Sat the 1st
CONCERT—Meadow Brook Music Festival. Detroit Symphony with Sixten Ehrling. Oakland Univ. 8:30 Adm. 338–7211, ext. 2301. 7/1
Jan 31, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Calendar
The calendar is prepared by Fifth Estate calendar girls Karen Kovac and Naomi Epel with cooperation from Detroit Adventure. Copy deadline is the 6th and 22nd of each month and should be sent to the Fifth Estate Calendar, 1107 W. Warren, Detroit, Michigan 48201.
wed. the 2nd
DEMONSTRATION: LBJ in Detroit August 2nd. All opposed to the war, demonstrate on August 2nd at Cobo Hall, 7:30 p.m. For information call 832–5700 or 963–7711. 8/2.
Jan 27, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Calendar of Resistance
June 28-July 5 — Earth First! Round River Rendezvous
Annual gathering of the Earth First! Movement. Contact: www.maineef.org, maineEF@yahoo.com, 1-800-MY-YAHOO mailbox # 922-487-3887, 224 West Side Drive, Verona Island, ME 04416
June 30-July 4 — We Are Resisting! Conference Anti-Imperialist/Anti-Capitalist gathering in Lawrence, KS, followed by a day of action on July 4, in Leavenworth, KS. For more information, please visit the website http://www.kansasanarchist.net/WAR/
Jul 19, 2016 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Calendar of Resistance
April-September 2004
April 5: Trial of Camilo Viveiros scheduled to begin in Philadelphia. Defend Camilo! Defend Dissent!
www.friendsofcamilo.org
April 9–11 — Positive Action’s Fourth Annual DIY/T (Do It Yourself/Do It Together) Fest and gathering in Athens, Ohio. If you’re interested please email pos_act@yahoo.com for more info.
Jan 11, 2017 Read the whole text...
Liberation News Service
Calley Rally Flops
ATLANTA (LNS)—Super-patriots have been trying to turn Lt. William Calley, accused of playing a major role in the Song My massacre, into some sort of a military hero.
Last month, members of the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars planned a rally in support of Calley. They expected 3,000 people, but only 34 showed up.
Oct 20, 2023 Read the whole text...
No! G8 Japan
Call for anti-G8 Action
In July, 2008 heads of the states that monopolize two-thirds of Earth’s wealth will gather at Toya Lake in Hokaido, Japan. Although the so-called “Group of Eight” (G8) does not have any legitimate right for deciding planetary affairs, they have self-appointed themselves world ruler. Thus the G8 has driven neo-liberal globalization at the same time as spreading poverty, violence, hatred, segregation, and environmental destruction.
Oct 14, 2014 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Call for Contributions
Unless we build a sustained practice of free relationships and liberated lives, we risk lengthening the long list of those who have created partial revolutions. The revolution is inside as well as outside ourselves. Misery and alienation reproduce themselves--not just in authoritarian institutions--but in our own character structure, imprisoned by the catastrophe of repressive consciousness.
May 17, 2015 Read the whole text...
anon.
Call for Student Power at Wayne State
The long-denied files of Wayne University students’ political and personal activities were discovered last week amid a protest about the lack of student involvement in the decision-making processes of the University.
While 30 student leaders staged an all-night vigil Wednesday, outside the University president’s office, James McCormick, vice-president for Student Affairs, and a delegation of five students found the “non-existent” files in the University’s department of Safety and Security office.
Apr 22, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Call for submissions
... for Issues 378 and 379
The ultimate representation; the symbol of all that is alienated in the modern world; the driving force of pathological greed; the whip that coerces wage labor; the basis of wars. Ten million millionaires world-wide control $37.2 trillion dollars in financial assets, assuring a planet of immiseration for billions of people.
Sep 30, 2014 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Call for Submissions
We seek analytical articles, news reports, essays, poetry, and fiction on ways of re-envisioning, re-creating and re-enchanting the world either individually or collectively. Also, art, graphic illustrations, and photographs.
Before submitting articles, read our writer’s guidelines at FifthEstate.org.
May 29, 2019 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Call for Submissions
Spring 2019 Fifth Estate
We are seeking analytical articles, news reports, essays, poetry, and fiction on acts of refusal and resistance, either individually or collectively; also graphic illustrations and photographs. Before submitting essays or articles, please read our writer’s guidelines at www.FifthEstate.org.
Dec 25, 2018 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Call for Submissions
for Fith Estate Issue 375, Spring, 2007
Revelations
The word apocalypse, counter to centuries of disinformation, does not refer to the end of the world. The word’s actual meaning is “uncovering” — a revelation of truths that are concealed from the majority of the human population. This spring we suggest a rebirth of understanding about the world around us-through revelation.
Mar 7, 2015 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Call for Submissions
Deadline: September 15
Publication date: October 15
Themes
* FE — Celebrating fifty years of promoting revolution everywhere
* Resistance to the U.S. Vietnam War
Before contacting us, please read our Writers’ Guidelines.
<strong>Submit manuscripts for short pieces and proposals for longer essays, along with graphics and photographs, to:
Sep 5, 2015 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Call for Submissions
Deadline: May 1
Publication date: June 1
The war in Vietnam, the first great defeat of American imperialism, came to an ignominious conclusion 40 years ago, at the end of April 1975.
The United States Congress has authorized the Secretary of Defense “to conduct a program to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War.” This obscene commemoration of a shameful war should not go unanswered. We need to remind the world of its true heroes and victims--the Vietnamese people, the anti-war movement, and the draft resisters--and say No! to the celebration of the imperial war machine.
Mar 15, 2015 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Call for Submissions
Fifth Estate Fall 2014
Deadline: July 1
Publication date: August 1
Issue Theme: Art & Anarchy. The creative spirit of anarchy often acts as muse in all aspects of the arts, historically and today. We welcome your help in celebrating this in essays and graphics. Also, general articles in keeping with the ideas of this publication are sought.
Jul 17, 2014 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Call for Submissions
For FE #386, Theme: “Revolution”
The Fifth Estate has always proudly displayed the FBI’s description of this publication as “supporting revolution everywhere,” but the world has greatly changed since the U.S. secret police prowled around our offices and kept tabs on staff members in the 1960s.
Those evil gumshoes knew little about what constitutes an authentic overthrow of the current misery and the restructuring of its causes along revolutionary principles. But, perhaps the armored toadies of the state intuited something important: that society perpetuates itself through people’s habit of submission to authority, and that even the smallest act of rebellion contains the seeds of total revolt.
Nov 7, 2013 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Call for Submissions
Send us your ideas & images for FE 367, “Economy & Community”
As we go to print, the US Ministry of Fatherland Security has just raised its color-coded freakout level to ORANGE, citing “credible and specific” terrorist threats against “financial institutions in New York, New Jersey and Washington DC.” Sure, we all hate capitalism, but what is it, exactly, that inspires people to load a truck with dynamite and drive it into the lobby of a stock exchange? Would desperate terrorists plot for four years to blow up a community-supported agricultural farm, a free store, a mutual-aid labor exchange center, or a file-sharing website?
May 31, 2016 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Call for Submissions
Never SUBMIT!
Never SUBMIT! Contribute to the Fifth Estate!
Next issue: CULTURE, RACE, & RITUAL
deadline: November 1st
Q: When radicals adopt, appropriate, or adapt the cultures and rituals of marginalized minority groups, they
(a) disrespect the integrity of the original forms through cultural tourism and neo-racism;
Nov 20, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Call for Submissions
Never Submit! Contribute to Fifth Estate
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The IWW is the oldest anti-capitalist trade union federation in history. Their mission, the abolition of the wage system, still holds today; their practice of justice and fairness and their commitment to worker empowerment serves as a model for all trade unions.
Mar 17, 2014 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Call For Submissions
SEX, Fifth Estate, Winter 2012–2013 Theme
“Full sexual consciousness and a natural regulation of sexual life mean the end of mystical feelings of any kind. In other words, natural sexuality is the deadly enemy of mystical religion.”
--Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man
Deadline: November 1, 2012 Publication date: December, 2012
Sex. It is perhaps the most loaded word in the English language, with numerous connotations and denotations. In this issue of Fifth Estate, we want to explore sex and sexuality in all its forms, exposing the naked truths, and teasing out the possibilities. No topic is too risqué.
Sep 11, 2013 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Call For Submissions
SUBTEXT, SUBVERSION and SABOTAGE
This winter, Fifth Estate seeks to put out good reading for hibernation. Work that focuses on underground political, cultural and social activity as well as subtextual analysis. We seek discussion on how radicals and everyday folks subvert the dominant culture in a meaningful way. We seek analysis on the unspoken meanings of current social, economic, semiotic and political phenomena such as the environmental crisis and the Green Scare, bio-ethical decisions, entertainment, gender, institutionalized violence. We seek to examine the parts we play in subjection and subjugation This winter we seek to exhume the churchyard and provide readers with an invisible choir that will sing audibly and precisely about the hidden meanings of things.
Jul 6, 2014 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Call For Submissions: Education
For: Fifth Estate, Fall 2012
Deadline: August 1
Publication date: September 5
Fall is the traditional time when students resume their studies. At present, there are tuition strikes, austerity strikes, student loan debt crises, and other dilemmas regarding education playing out in the public arena. For much of mainstream society, even the very value and meaning of education is now in question.
Sep 7, 2013 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Call for Submissions: Fifth Estate Fall 2013 Issue
Deadline: August 15 Publication date: September 15
Issue Theme: Mad! A word whose meaning ranges from rage to enthusiasm to mental illness and more, even as an acronym for the truly insane Cold War nuclear policy of the U.S. and the Soviet Union [Mutually Assured Destruction].
Your ideas for news articles, essays, and art are welcome. Submit manuscripts for short pieces and proposals for longer essays, along with graphics and photographs to:
Sep 23, 2013 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Call for Submissions for FE #389
Deadline: April 15
Issue Theme: Sex
Your ideas for news articles, essays, and art are welcome. Submit manuscripts for short pieces and proposals for longer essays, along with graphics and photographs to: fe--AT--fifthestate.org or Fifth Estate, PO Box 201016, Ferndale, MI 48220, USA. Please put “Submission 389” on the subject line of email.
Jun 17, 2013 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Call for Submissions for Issue #400
Next issue will be our 400th since we began publishing 52 years ago. If you’d like to be part of this historic edition, please send proposals for essays, articles, and fiction to our email address or post office box.
Photographs, art, and poetry are also welcome. Please view our submission and manuscript guidelines on our web site. All submissions should be consistent with our political views.
Jan 11, 2018 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Call for submissions for next issue
Summer 2012, Vol. 47, #2, #387
Deadline: April 1,
Publication date: May 5
For the past several years, each edition of the Fifth Estate has had a specific theme. Maybe it’s the excitement of the era which has just opened up, but we have decided not to have a particular theme for our Summer edition, and simply let the imagination of writers get as wild as the times demand.
Oct 13, 2013 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Call for submissions for next issue
Get Ready to Play!
Play as a concept has always animated the anarchist/underground milieu with an infectious spirit of playful experimentation and exuberance. Riding wild and playful energy, we created seeds of an insurrectionary alternative reality that could one day replace or overthrow the dominant system. Physical, political, ideological, and imaginal spaces seemed open to us.
Aug 1, 2014 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Call for Submissions for Next Issue
Theme: “DIY: Culture, Ethics, Aesthetics”
Next issue: FIFTH ESTATE #384 Winter 2011
Maybe the most persistent of all forms of external authority in our lives are the day-to-day tyrannies of specialists and experts. The Fifth Estate’s next issue investigates strategies of resistance to and liberation from this insidious system of technocratic mystification and domination with a look at the culture, ethics, and aesthetics of do-it-yourselfism.
Feb 10, 2014 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Call for Submissions for Next Issue
Belief / Disbelief / Unbelief
Belief systems--cognitive constructions--determine our perception of reality which can chain us to old ideas or free us with visions that go beyond dominant paradigms. The entire modern era has been one of contestation as to which belief systems will rule in societies--ones that link us to submission and acquiescence to hierarchal authority or those which rebel against them.
Mar 29, 2014 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Call for submissions for Winter 2009 FE
Subtext, Subversion and Sabotage
This winter, the Fifth Estate seeks to publish good reading for winter hibernation. Work that focuses on underground political, cultural, and social activity, as well as subtextual analysis. We seek discussion on how radicals and everyday people subvert the dominant culture in a meaningful way.
We seek analysis on the unspoken meanings of current social, economic, semiotic, and political phenomena such as entertainment, gender, institutionalized violence, the environmental crisis, the Green Scare, bio-ethical decisions or anything you can fit into the theme. We seek to examine the parts we play in subjection and subjugation. This winter we seek to exhume the churchyard and provide readers with an invisible choir that will sing audibly and precisely about the true meanings of things.
Aug 13, 2014 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Call for Submissions, Spring, 2014
Deadline: January 15
Publication date: February 15
Issue Theme: Anarchy, Anarchism & Anarchists.
We welcome your ideas for news articles, essays, and art. Submit manuscripts for short pieces and proposals for longer essays, along with graphics and photographs to:
fe--AT--fifthestate--DOT--org
Dec 14, 2013 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Call for Submissions, Winter 2006–2007
The winter issue of FE will critically reflect upon contemporary anarchist and radical anti-authoritarian political movements. What directions should radicals--who wish to both create a revolution in our everyday lives, as well as to destroy the various and overlapping systems of oppression--take in our current political situation? We welcome theoretical, historical and practical pieces on political and cultural issues.
Mar 13, 2015 Read the whole text...
A. Shady Character
Calling Long Distance on Ma Bell
1977 credit card codes
When the voice on the phone announced himself as Alexander Graham Bell calling from the Yipster Times newspaper in New York, we knew the Yippies had done it again—snatched the new long distance credit card codes almost as soon as Ma Bell put them out.
The publication of the secret codes has been an annual event in the Fifth Estate as a small way the captive customers of profit-swollen Bell can even the score a bit. Since last February when we published the 1976 codes, the Michigan Public Service Commission has caved into Bell requests for a multi-million dollar rate hike and the upping of pay-phone calls to 20 cents—both unnecessary other than to fatten the company’s profit margins.
Sep 28, 2016 Read the whole text...