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a review of

Revolutions in American Music: Three Decades that Changed the Country & Its Sounds by Michael Broyles. Norton 2024

in his 1955 book, America’s Music, Gilbert Chase raised a question that has remained of central concern to academic musicologists in this country ever since: What, exactly, is distinctly American about American music?

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Note: Originally, FE special correspondent Kellie Button valiantly embedded herself with a group of anarchist LSD enthusiasts (represented here by the initials “HO”, “KG.”, and “AJ”) in order to report on recreational drug use for this issue’s special “Escape” feature. Unfortunately, a very long weekend in southeastern Minnesota among these self-described “anarcho-acidheads” yielded very little usable material, but something that did come up that has a bearing on the anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist anti-RNC and anti-DNC actions currently under preparation. The relevant portion of one morning’s recorded discussion is excerpted here. Clarifying information provided by the editors appears in brackets.

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The American Civil Liberties Union urged the United States Supreme Court last week to review the constitutionality of Virginia’s state laws making racial intermarriage a criminal act.

The civil liberties organization argued that the miscegenation laws violate the equal protection and due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, the right of privacy, the right to marry, and civil rights provisions of the US Code.

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NEW YORK—In a Supreme Court brief filed recently, the American Civil Liberties Union called for the protection of free expression on behalf of a World War II Bronze Star veteran who burned an American flag as a protest gesture.

Representing Sidney Street, a World War II medal winner, the ACLU and its New York affiliate, the New York Civil Liberties Union, challenges New York state’s law prohibiting desecration of the flag. (Similar statutes exist in all the states plus the District of Columbia).

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Senator Philip A. Hart and Theodore Sachs were recipients of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Annual Bill of Rights Award on Saturday evening, December 4. The Award was made during the intermission of the show “VOICES, Inc.”, the musical production from New York brought to Detroit for one night only.

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On March 21, four people, including one from the Bad Attitude collective, 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 U.S. 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. Flags have also been in the news recently involving an exhibition in Chicago in which an art student placed a flag in front of his work so people would be forced to walk on it Veterans and other patriots demonstrated at the art school, and the U.S. Senate passed a law 97–0 making walking on a flag a federal crime.

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St. Paul, Minn. — Three activists and their attorneys won a $50,000 settlement May 23 in a lawsuit that challenged an August 30, 2008 police raid on a St. Paul home before that year’s Republican National Convention (RNC).

The plaintiffs in the case, Sarah Coffey (who wrote the FE’s Detroit anarchist convergence article in the Spring 2011 edition), Erin Stalnaker and Kris Hermes, are giving most of the award to the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, the Institute for Anarchist Studies, and the formation of a national legal defense fund for political activists.

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FE note: This is one of three responses to John Zerzan’s “The Case Against Art,” in FE #324, Fall 1986. The other two articles are: “Art, Life & Death” by Ratticus and “Journal Notes on Art” by George Bradford.

“Culture is dead. Create!”

—Paris graffito, 1968

“If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.”

—Emma Goldman

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“Everybody comes to you for gasoline boy, that’s some filling station you got there.”

--Jack Kerouac The Subterraneans

Hi, kids, it’s me, Artie, again. I got a story to tell you and something else too. You see, last Sunday (Nelson watches the gas station on Sunday) I was sleeping late with a pretty lady and a friend came over to my house & so did Sammy, my brother, & Sammy said what you gotta do is go to the Art Museum with me. So I said but I went there before & seen all that stuff before & it’s just a big shithouse, with old pictures by dead people & he said, no man they changed it so me and my lady got up & went after we had a hamburger cuz he would not let me get out of going.

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We, the undersigned organizations and individuals, hereby state that until the demands of the Black United Front are met, we will maintain a complete boycott of the Detroit News. Specifically, we will not assist the News in its so-called news gathering functions; we will not buy copies of the News, nor advertise in it, and will encourage others to join us.

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In order to convey some indication of the unique technical challenge represented by “Fantastic Voyage,” including the never-before-encountered photographic problems which it posed, it becomes necessary to present a brief synopsis of the extremely off-beat story:

Grant, a special American agent, delivers Czech scientist Jan Benes to an airport in the USA after helping him escape from behind the Iron Curtain. The entire Secret Service is involved in getting Benes safely from airport to city. But still the enemy manages to make one last desperate attempt to destroy Benes and the precious secret he carries in his brain. Benes suffers a severe head injury. A normal brain operation is impossible.

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Reprinted from The Daily Collegian

Looking for something different in newspapers? Like to see current topics treated from a new angle? Interested in cultural events that don’t appear in the major papers? You might take a glance at “The Fifth Estate,” a Collegian-size four-page paper, and a product of a University freshman, Harvey Ovshinsky.

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The 1967 Detroit Rebellion began unexpectedly. Still, it should have been anticipated. At 3:45 a.m. on a still scorching hot early morning on July 23, 1967, cops raided an all black, after-hours drinking spot, locally called a blind pig, and began roughly herding patrons into police wagons.

This was no different an occurrence than had happened numerous times previously. The Detroit police were roundly hated by black people as a white occupation force staffed by corrupt and brutal racists who routinely made life even more miserable for a mostly impoverished community. Normally, arrests and police harassment went unanswered.

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Welcome to our Fall 2020 edition. It immediately follows our Spring number, so you haven’t missed an issue. How glorious yet challenging when reality becomes so radical that it easily outstrips anything the printed word can provide. Still, we think the articles in this issue bring a unique perspective to the crises of race and pandemic the world faces. A great reckoning is at hand around the question of racial justice, while the Covid-19 virus raises the question of whether mass civilization can meet the existential challenge it poses. This is the time to advocate and act for what we need for justice and perhaps existence. The old ways spell only disaster.

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The second annual Socialist Scholars Conference will be held in New York at the Hotel Commodore, September 9–11, 1966. The noted historian and political analyst Isaac Deutscher and the social philosopher Herbert Marcuse will participate in a discussion “On Socialist Man” to lead off the Conference.

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I remember being carried from the treatment room to a pleasant, sun-filled living room as I regained consciousness. The doctor carefully tucked a blanket around me and presented me with a smile and a cup of tea and asked how I felt.

I could hardly believe that I’d just had an abortion and remember the multiple crash of feelings I experienced at that moment—relief, tenderness, despair. The relief was due to the fact that it was over and that I was free again to make plans, to take up my life where I had left it, and that through the whole thing I had been treated with simple human dignity.

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

Oakland? Detroit? Manhattan’s Lower East Side?

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

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The Michigan State News ran a front-page headline this summer, “Find No MSU Students Using LSD, Dope,” and an article this fall quoting the director of the University Health Center on “Dr. O’Leary,” the man who was deceiving the nation on the dangers of psychedelic drugs. Things may not be as bad at MSU as this makes them seem, but it was into an atmosphere not terribly knowledgeable about psychedelics that Timothy Leary descended November 17, to speak before an audience of more than 4,000 MSU students and faculty on “LSD: Man, God and Law.”

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Moving from ideas to action has always been central to the anarchist project. Our work has long been inspired by visions of a transformed world, one in which prevailing institutions and relationships are overturned to create more liberatory ways of living and relating to each other.

Yet powerful forces stand in our way. Not only the entrenched ruling order with its vast resources including its repressive apparatus and cultural spectacle, but perhaps even more of a bulwark against change, a deeply ingrained mass culture of submission to authority which generates a fear of living liberated lives.

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So-called “national-liberation” struggles (read: establish an indigenous bureaucracy in power with its police rather than that of the colonial power) have pretty much been discredited in recent years except among dismal leftists. High on the list of leftist boosterism has been the Polisario Liberation Front which according to Western intelligence sources appears to be all but defeated in their 8-year war with Morocco for control of the Western Sahara in North Africa.

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Images that appear in our pages are separate statements on the subject addressed in an article.

P. 29 Lars van Dooren is a Brooklyn-based artist. He is a 2020 Frederieke Sanders-Taylor Studio Projects Fund grant recipient. arsvandooren.com.

P. 20 Carla Repice’s work investigates systems of oppression and memory, and probes the effects of racism and dehumanization on the human psyche. She has an MFA in performance art, and studied painting and feminist theory at The Lorenzo de Medici School of Art in Florence, Italy. She lives in New York City.

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The following interview with Chris Clark, editor of the Earth Island Journal, publication of Earth Island Institute, was taped the week of January 18. I chose Clark to interview since he and his organization seem sensible in their theoretical and activist approach to defense of the environment. This may appear as an endorsement to some and a condemnation to others.

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Note: Hangovers are cantilevered buildings in New York City. Italics are quotes from Wislawa Szymborska’s poem.

Arise! Time to leave squalor, filth behind

the wars, carts of corpses, sludge and ashes

instead, let’s build heavens in New York’s blue skies

ignore the shards of glass, the bloody rags below

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Editor’s Note: The following is an interview conducted by the Fifth Estate with representatives of the Free University of Detroit, a new independent educational institute which will open it’s doors at the end of the month. A full schedule of courses offered at the Free University is printed elsewhere in the paper.

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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.

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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.

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LOS ANGELES, Calif.—An Air Force Academy graduate, Richard T. Hubbard, under orders to go to Vietnam on March 30, says he will risk courtmartial and endanger his professional career as a physician rather than obey those orders.

Hubbard is a practicing Methodist whose home town is in Mt. Gilead, Ohio. As a result of his religious background, he is morally against the war. Hubbard stated, “I am opposed to the War on an emotional basis...I am opposed to military life on a religious basis...I accept nonviolent resistance as a form of Christian Witness.”

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Once again the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund scaled back big annual meetings in DC in the face of popular opposition. Folks from the DC Anti-Capitalist Convergence organized a People’s Strike for Friday, September 27^th. The call was out for affinity groups to engage in- autonomous actions to disrupt business as usual for the ruling elites in DC. Many DC commuters stayed home, so traffic was light. There were probably 1000 radicals in the streets, and a large critical mass clogged up some traffic. However, the 3700 pigs were very well organized, and any time they caught up with a large group, they corralled protesters with bikes, motorcycles and armor clad storm troopers.

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Social revolutions are not “made” by parties, groups, or cadres; they occur as a result of deep-seated historic forces and contradictions that activate large sections of the population. They occur not merely (as Trotsky argued) because the “masses” find the existing society intolerable, but also because of the tension between the actual and the possible, between “what is” and “what could be.”

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The calendar is prepared by Fifth Estate calendar girls Karen Kovac and Naiomi Epil with cooperation from Detroit Adventure. Copy deadline is the 6^th and 22^nd of each month and should be sent to the Fifth Estate, Calendar, 1107 W. Warren, Detroit, Michigan 48201.

Sat the 1^st

CONCERT—Meadow Brook Music Festival. Detroit Symphony with Sixten Ehrling. Oakland Univ. 8:30 Adm. 338–7211, ext. 2301. 7/1

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Many are marking 2019 as the 400^th anniversary of the arrival of the first captured Africans in Jamestown. So, even more than usual, we will hear chattel slavery referred to as the nation’s original sin.

It isn’t.

That framing is itself a window into the white way of thinking. It’s meant to perpetuate the mythologies of Christianity That doctrine incorporates the belief that humans are flawed, weak and often badly behaved. And, since that’s God given, it will always be true.

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The Safe Energy Coalition (SECO) is a broadly-based, loose coalition which meets in private homes and encourages the formation of local groups, some of which have been established in places such as Allen Park, Romulus, Westland and other areas. There is no real leadership and little organization. SECO supporters advocate every possible strategy for an anti-nuclear struggle from direct action and occupations to inviting sleazy politicians like Coleman Young to speak at their public forums. Political hacks, such as the Socialist Workers Party, have (in their own jargon) “intervened” in the movement undoubtedly in hopes of transforming such a movement into an SWP-led “peaceful, legal” pressure group and a recruiting ground for their party along the lines of its activities within the U.S. anti-Vietnam war movement. So far its results have been minimal and unimpressive.

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As opposed to the mechanistic, cold, pseudo-scientific dogma of Marxists and others, we know that the urge for revolution has to come from a deeper place in our lives. The Spanish anarchists said they had “a new world in their hearts,” which provided a vision for their struggles. The idea of re-enchantment of the world mirrors that longing as a prefiguring of what we want. We dedicate this issue to those in the past who have fought for a new world and to those today who continue in their footsteps.

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Related: see “Anarchy, food and sustainability” (theme intro) in this issue.

It doesn’t take a health food nut to see that modern society has a dysfunctional relationship with food. As in almost every other arena of life, our priorities are elsewhere--if not in wage slavery and staying out of debt, then in escapist entertainment or self-numbing addictions. Even among radicals and anarchists, healthy and mindful dietary practices are often considered a luxury reserved for that mythical post-revolutionary era that we are supposedly laying the groundwork for, when our children’s children, or their children, can enjoy safe, pure, nutritious food. Sounds like a plan. Except for a few things...

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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.

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We were struck immediately by the similarities in the conclusions that Russell Means has reached and our own, in particular, in relation to the question of technology and a critique of Marxism.

We have been speaking as orphans and fragments, searching for roots and a tradition of resistance to civilization anywhere we can find them. We have embarked upon an adventure which began first of all with the criticism of all of our former presuppositions, that is, of Marxism and anarchism, technological progress, modern society, the functions of art and culture, workers’ organizations and self-organization, the existence and function of classes and other questions. We don’t claim to have resolved these fundamental problems, but we have headed in a general direction of rejection of the presuppositions of society in all its forms.

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The iconic scene of a Navy sailor kissing a nurse following the Japanese surrender in 1945 is depicted in this statue, tellingly entitled, “Unconditional Surrender.” The three-ton sculpture is on loan to New York City from the Santa Monica Midway Museum since 2007, and sits in Times Square. It will soon be replaced by a permanent bronze version in December. Donations will cover the $1 million price tag. Rather than a surrender, the act today would be considered a sexual assault.

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If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him with absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar.

—Mikhail Bakunin

Modern fiction is replete with stories of revolt and failure. The setting might be a brutal dictatorship, maybe it is a medieval fantasy or a cyberpunk dystopia, but the ending is similar. The usual tropes are presented: violence of policing, spy agencies and brutal military forces, all of whom perpetrate torture, disappearances and murders.

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The deportations, detentions, and disappearances have begun. Matched only by mass denial among Babylon’s denizens, the brave new empire has struck back. The many-headed capitalist dragon is licking its lips for an Easter dinner of Iraqi children. No, it shouldn’t be news that someone’s stolen the century. Clearly, the global Godzilla of geopolitical, techno-industrial trauma has treated us all to a gory preview of hell.

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from Liberation News Service-Liberation magazine

Tim Leary’s invitation, in the Beatles’ words, to “turn off your mind, relax and float down the stream” did not, at one time, send shock waves through the New Left. The vision of multitudes seduced by psychedelia into a blissful, passive, apolitical euphoria sent shivers throughout the alphabet soup of the straight-laced Left establishment.

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Almost all John Zerzan essays feature accompanying introductions in which the word most frequently used to describe his method and conclusions is “provocative,” (see, for instance, Anarchy, Summer 1987). Some may think this only an ugly little term meant to distance a publication from the wild assertions that John so often makes in his writings (“wild,” by the way, is a word which I know he will not take as a pejorative). Realistically though, provocative accurately describes what is the common reaction to reading a Zerzan article—you are provoked, to anger or to thought.

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a review of

The Politics of the Joy of Printing: The Detroit Printing Co-op by Danielle Aubert. Artbook/D.A.P.

The text of this history of the Detroit Printing Co-op is engaging enough by itself, even without its colorful, graphic-filled pages of the work produced in the decade beginning in 1970 at an all-volunteer project amidst the city’s industrial ruins.

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a review of

Among the Boat People: A Memoir of Vietnam by Nhi Manh Chung. Autonomedia 2019 autonomedia.org

“When wars are over, people only want to know who won, what exciting battles took place, and all that military idiocy. People never know what the innocent victims have to say.”

—poet and artist Yuko Otomo

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a review of

Spoor (Pokot). Dir. Agnieszka Holland 2017

Deemed by some to be an eco-terrorist story, Olga Tokarczuk’s feminist novel, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is adapted by director Agnieszka Holland into Spoor, an exceptionally accurate rendering of a Polish language anarchist thriller.

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“Safe sex” has put sex in the safe. The three number combination lock reads: heterosexuality (two turns to the right), ultra-monogamy (two more turns to the right), and condoms (one reluctant turn to the left), unlocking the Final Solution for the far right. Even if AIDS isn’t the result of covert germ warfare testing, the CIA couldn’t have created a better weapon against the subculture of drug use and “deviant” sex.

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Earlier this year, I created a fifteen-minute presentation on the ethical implications of the program Midjourney and other A.I. art generators for the Northeast Modern Language Conference, then released it online through the University of New Hampshire.

A week later, a computer science PhD student emailed me asking to meet up. As a literature PhD, I wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted. Perhaps it was to gossip about the plethora of A.I. software spreading like a digital kudzu, or maybe he would pitch me a business idea.

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Selfridge Air Force Base is an idyllic installation on the beautiful shores of Lake St. Clair about twenty miles north of Detroit. It houses a SAC installation, a fighter-wing, and miscellaneous other units.

Victory celebration by Airman Theodore Goldflies, and his lawyers, Marc Stickgold and Marc Kadish. Photo/Alan Gotkin

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On June 17, Father’s Day, a march and vigil was planned outside of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) headquarters in Southwest Portland, Ore., to protest the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. It quickly developed into something that the organizers hadn’t planned for: a six week occupation of the building that effectively shut it down for an extended period of time and brought ICE activities into sharp public attention.

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“A Humble Call to Subvert the Human Empire” by longtime Fifth Estate collaborator David Watson is from a recent collection of his writing, Against the Megamachine: Essays on empire & its enemies (Autonomedia, 1999); it’s one of a few in this highly recommended volume that has not previously appeared in this newspaper. See Bookstore page for ordering information.

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