Search

In response to the arrest of two antiwar GIs and the steady harassment of military organizers, the Detroit Resistance and the Detroit Committee to End the War in Vietnam have launched a law suit against the Board of County Road Commissioners.

The suit, which was announced by Attorney Marc Kadish of the National Lawyers Guild and Victory Fidelman of the Resistance at an April 8 press conference, will attack the regulation which governs the distribution of literature at Metropolitan Airport.

...

Abbie Hoffman, fugitive Yippie, has been on the lam for over three years following a New York City cocaine deal set-up by the police. Abbie has had plastic surgery to alter his appearance and has managed to elude the authorities even while popping up at protest demonstrations, rallies held in his behalf and he once even appeared as the guest chef on a Toronto TV cooking program.

...

The article which follows was originally produced as a leaflet and distributed at the Monroe anti-nuke demonstration on June 2^nd, 1979. The Monroe demo was itself even more frustrating than the Midland gathering, and has solidified for many of us involved in it our determination to undertake our own anti-nuke activities in our communities, outside of the context of the increasingly paralytic mass organizations.

...

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.”

...

Open City’s first financial setback occurred April 1^st when the Studio 1 benefit was canceled at the last minute. Bob Scott was supposed to receive enough backing to open his Optek Pharmacy at the old Studio location, but things back-rued and our April Fools benefit hit the dust.

Uncle Russ has come through for an Open City “Rites of Spring” benefit that will be held at the Grande on April 23. The celebration will begin at 7 p.m. and last only until 11 p.m.

...

The 24^th of January Movement met February 20^th to discuss the possibility of bringing suit against the Detroit Police Department for the illegal arrest of the 43 persons who were seized in the raid and released without charges.

Attorney Dennis James addressed the group, clarifying legal procedures and explaining what is necessary to collect damages in such a suit. He felt that the suffering experienced by those detained was slight, at least in a legal sense, and that a weak case at best could be brought by individuals against the police.

...

The effects of U.S. bombing on Vietnamese civilians will be the subject of a talk given by William F. Pepper, Sat., March 18, at 8 p.m., at St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church, Woodward at Holbrook.

Mr. Pepper is the author of the recent article in RAMPARTS magazine on the same subject. He recently visited Vietnam and was accredited by the Military Assistance Command. His main concern was the effects of the war on women and children and he visited many hospitals, orphanages, and shelters. He is the executive director of the New Rochelle Commission of Human Rights and an instructor at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.

...

Hey Breakthrough! We don’t want him!

Breakthrough has been on this kick ever since Mayor Cavanagh ordered the police to crack down on the rightist group. They’ve been trying to make the mayor out to be some kind of leftist.

In an invective issued earlier this month the parapatriots called Mayor Cavanagh a puppet dancing to the tune of the leftists. They implied he is a toady to such organizations as the Dubois Clubs, the National Lawyers Guild, Students for a Democratic Society, for the various peace groups around Detroit. They linked him with such men as Dr. Tracy Pullman, Fr. Maurice Geary, Ernest Goldman and Rev. David Gracie.

...

FILM

FILM. “Nothing But A Man,” with Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln, Benefit for SNCC & People Against Racism (PAR). Central Methodist Church (Woodward at Adams), March 4 8 p.m. Advance tickets $1.25 available at 5^th ESTATE Bookstore; $1.50 at the door; $5 patron, $7.50 couple. Also in Birmingham. Northminster Presbyterian Church (Big Beaver, east of Adams Road), March 3, 8 p.m.

...

LEMAR has its first publication out—The Case For the Relegalization of Marijuana. It is available at the FIFTH ESTATE Bookstore and Mixed Media for 25 cents. This group’s next major printing project will be the LaGuardia Report. Speakers are available to high schools, colleges, and any interested private groups. John Sinclair spoke before an assembly at Royal Oak Kimball High School on Feb. 16^th to a very receptive audience. If you are interested in a speaker from LEMAR call or write the group at the address below.

...

Bulldozers for all of Michigan? This was the fear of liberal delegates to the recent Democratic state convention in Grand Rapids as Patti Knox, wife of “Bulldozin’ Bob” Knox—Detroit Housing Director, was elected vice-chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party.

The Cavanagh “Irish Mafia” was in full evidence on behalf of the candidacy of Mrs. Knox as the “old guard” Democratic leadership of Staebler, Williams, and Scholle left open a big vacuum into which the well-oiled “Jerry-boys” could easily move.

...

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

...

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

...

A minor illustration of the contemporary disappearance of chivalry is the extensive use of a new rifle by United States forces in Vietnam: the M-16. It shoots a tiny, .223 calibre, 55 grain bullet at the very high muzzle velocity of 3,185 feet per second. Its power to inflict wounds is of the magnitude usually associated with the soft-nose and exploding bullets outlawed by the Hague Conventions.

...

The Conference on Drug Abuse at Oberlin College sponsored by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) came off not quite as planned. The weekend of Feb. 17, 18 and 19 found a gathering of the drug elite crowded into this tiny collegiate community with the purpose of presenting an objective view on the abuse of drugs.

...

Over 100 members of Detroit’s Negro population have banded together to form an Afro-American Museum.

Headed by Dr. Charles H. Wright, founder of the African Medical Education Fund, the group is united in a common interest of Black Men in history. The International Afro-American Museum (I.A.M.) hopes to demonstrate how a knowledge of Negro history will restore a sense of pride and dignity to all black Americans.

...

Sidney Peck, one of the National vice-chairmen of the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam and coordinator of the Western Reserve University Circle Teach-in Committee in Cleveland, spoke to a group of over 80 people, Sunday, March 5, at Wayne State University.

Dr. Peck was gathering further support for the April 15^th effort to mass hundreds of thousands of people protesting the war in New York and San Francisco. He made a special plea for unity around the April 15^th action and to broaden support for the mobilization.

...

Profits are the law and life. If survival carries with it struggling with one’s own values than a movie theater must frequently submit to fourth run showings and nudies. In fact, this vain grasp at subsistence usually takes a downward spiral as the drowning business first revives and then submits, meeting bankruptcy its final reward. Sympathetically the owner is on trial. Curiously his jury is likewise his lifeguard and his sentence often is the road of least respect.

...

MACBIRD by Barbara Garson. The complete text, 75 cents

STUDIES ON THE LEFT. Panel from the Socialist Scholars Conference on The Roots of Slavery, $1

THE LOVE BOOK by Lenore Kandel. Banned in San Francisco, $1

HASHISH COOKBOOK by Panama Rose. Get high on the range, $1 65

ENTRAILS Magazine. Latest issue reads from right to left, comes complete with yamalka, $1

...

The Jefferson Airplane arrived in New York for what is probably the beginning of the San Francisco music “explosion-exploitation.” I still can’t believe I heard them on the radio advertising some thing besides music; but since that was the only time I heard them via mass media I guess I shouldn’t put it all down. Its like color TV, the commercials are better than the shows themselves.

...

Two months ago Detroit LEMAR started planning a Law Day (Law Day is May 1^st) Puff-in for Love. The group has written various LEMAR groups in both the East and West coast suggesting that this could be coordinated on a national level with Puffins taking place in love centers across the country.

Rather than limiting the puff-ins to one area, i.e. marijuana, LEMAR will expand it to human be-ins all across the country taking place on April 30^th, the Sunday preceding Law Day. This would bring the local tribes together and still allow the Detroit Community to share the total love-consciousness of all groups across the country.

...

I thank Mr. Kofsky for calling me a major critical figure [“The Jazz Scene,” FE #24, February 15–28, 1967].

I have the feeling that he has rarely read my Voice column because I have often written about the agonies of “abandoning my preconceptions and biases” about the new jazz. I have stated very clearly that I WAS biased but that I realized it and that I was trying to make contact with the new music.

...

London will be the scene for an International Congress known as the Dialectics of Liberation this coming July 15–30. The purpose of the congress, sponsored by London’s Institute of Phenomenological Studies, is to examine societal influence, conditioning, and control of man and the resulting alienation of his true self within that system.

...

EDITOR Harvey Ovshinsky

MANAGING EDITOR Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Cathy West

ART Dave Carlin

TRAVEL EDITOR Sheil Salasnek

MUSIC & LITERARY EDITOR John Sinclair

CALENDAR Rhona Whipple

ADVERTISING Leon Brenner

FILM EDITORS: Joe Fineman, Shirley Hamburg

NEWS EDITOR, Frank Joyce

CIRCULATION, Rita Cole, Wilson Lindsey

...

“The highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato and Milton is they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought.”

—Emerson, in “Self-Reliance”

Now that the first stage of the Adam Clayton Powell fiasco is over, it is with great humility that I must point a reluctant finger at a young man of potential greatness and leadership who has faltered, not irreparably I hope, and succumbed to the “traditions” of other “men.”

...

The Fifth Estate’s Pittsburgh correspondent, Frederick I (Hohenstaufen) reports that the narcotics raid that hit that city 10 February [see “Pitt Pot Bust,” FE #25, March 1–15, 1967] has had a happy conclusion.

All 55 persons arrested have had the charges against them dropped including those against Frank Goldsmith who had been charged with “possession of a dangerous drug.” The “drug” being 5 prescription cold tablets.

Editor’s note: Detroit poet John Sinclair talked about marijuana at Royal Oak’s Kimball High School, and Royal Oak hasn’t quite gotten over it yet. Below is a story reprinted from that city’s newspaper, the Royal Oak Tribune:

Royal Oak City Commissioners expressed concern Monday night about a speaker last Thursday at Kimball High School who advocated legalization of marijuana sales.

...

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

...

Ammunition Books

4403 Second

Detroit, Michigan 48201

Telephone: (313) 831–6800

Office Hours: Tuesday thru Friday, 1pm--5pm

AUTHORITARIAN CONDITIONING, SEXUAL REPRESSION & THE IRRATIONAL IN POLITICS

Maurice Brinton

An analysis of Reichian psychology in its relation to politics and the Russian revolution. Its title pretty much says it all.

...

The Fifth Estate’s benefit party on February 20^th was a rousing success which saw the paper raise $400 over expenses and provided a party-down good time for about 450 revelers. Although the 5 kegs of beer went out faster than we expected, brilliant performances by the Shadowfax Band, creative theater by The Acme Theatrical Agency and Primitive Lust, and mystifying magic by Art DeAwful combined with the resources of the people in attendance made for a fun night for all.

...

This article is the second in a series of counter-Bicentennial pieces dealing with the more sordid and less-acknowledged incidents in America’s 200-year-old history.

March 16, 1968, My Lai 4, Quang Ngai Province, 7:30 A.M. Under direct orders from Lieutenant Colonel Frank A. Barker Jr., command leader of assault unit Task Force Barker, nine troop-transporting helicopters preceded by two gunships enter the My Lai area.

...

THIS PAGE IS YOUR PAGE. All ads are FREE for the asking. We hope this page becomes a place where we can communicate and take care of our basic needs outside of the capitalist, consumption market. Send to THE FIFTH ESTATE, 4403 Second Detroit, MI. 48201 No ads accepted by phone.

SALE OR TRADE--Ex-sci-fi devotee wishes to divest self of remnants. Large and very fine collection of sci-fi hard and paperback books, many first printings. Will trade for Art, “serious” literature, interesting stuff or will sell 3 paperbacks for $1.00. Call 894–7753 and keep trying (nights).

...

The following are quotations from a variety of “leftist” politicians and organizations:

“Any romantic attachment that goes beyond the distance, outside the marriage bed, is actually a statutory offense, worth six months in jail for the over eager young man...”

-- from Women in China by Helen Snow

...

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.

...

In House appropriations Bill 4445 for fiscal year 1975–1976, the State Legislature has instructed the Department of Social Services (DSS), the Department of Labor (through the MESC) and the Department of the Treasury to “develop a plan for the exchange of data as a check on the financial eligibility of recipients of financial aid.”

...

Lawyers involved in the State Police Red Squad case are urging people who believe they may be the victims of spying activity to request a court hearing in Lansing to view the dossiers compiled on them. And recent revelations about Detroit Police spying show that local cops were working with plant protection agents in Chrysler Corp. plants to blackball leftist organizers.

...

Editors’ Note: Bill Hutton’s tribute to the Eisenhower Years first appeared in this paper in the Jan. 15, 1968 issue and is reprinted now on the occasion of the General’s passing. This piece is part of a newly released book by Bill Hutton entitled “A History of America.” It is published by The Coach House Press in Toronto.

...

Millard Berry

Alan Franklin

Ralph Franklin

Dennis Rosenblum

Bob Nirkind

Pat Halley

Colleen Jensen

E. B. Maple

J.J. Markin

Mr. Venom

Sonny Tufts

Pat O’Bryan

Peter Werbe

Algirdas Ratnikas

Marilyn Werbe

The Fifth Estate Newspaper, a non-profit Michigan corporation is published monthly at 4403 Second, Detroit, MI 48201; phone: (313) 831–6800. Office hours are: 1:00–5:00 P.M., Mondays thru Fridays. Subscriptions are $3.00 for 12 issues. Call 842–8888 for retail sales outlets. Second Class postage paid at Detroit, Michigan. No copyright. No commercial advertising accepted.

FILM. “King of Hearts” at the Studio North. Student rates Mon. & Tues. ce

FILM “A Man For All Seasons” at the Studio New Center. Student rates Mon. & Tues. ce

CANTERBURY HOUSE. 330 Maynard, Ann Arbor. Skip James performs Nov. 4–6. Adm. ce

RAVEN GALLERY. 29101 Greenfield. The Gun Folk perform thru Nov. 5 Then Charley Latimer and Paul Bowles, Nov. 6–19, Adm. ce

...

not since I was seventeen

have I been in a similar state of lockdown

.

back then it was

beaming home with the early light

with complete disregard for any promises

of minding a curfew or sobriety

jeep a degenerate comet

reeking of beer and weed

and I an alien approaching a staircase

where I cross paths with my captors

...

The following is taken from a declaration on sexual ethics published by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. It was issued in January of this year and is considered church doctrine by Catholics.

“Experience teaches us that love must find its safeguard in the stability of marriage if sexual intercourse is truly to respond to the requirements of its own finality and to those of human dignity. Those requirements call for a conjugal contract sanctioned and guaranteed by society.”

...

Hungary ’56 by Andy Anderson

Black & Red-Solidarity 138 pp., $1.25

Revolt In Socialist Yugoslavia by Fredy Perlman

Black & Red 23 pp., $.25

Worker Student Action Committees: France May ’68 by R. Gregoire & F. Perlman

Black & Red 45 pp., $.75

The Bolsheviks And Workers Control by Maurice Brinton

Black & Red-Solidarity 86 pp., $.85

...

The Fifth Estate benefit on April 10 was one of the best ever with Detroit bluesman Bobo Jenkins and his band turning everybody on to their strong rhythms and FE supporters and friends dancing and drinking the night away. Unfortunately, our paper didn’t reach people early enough and many of the usual revelers missed the festivities. We took in about $400, but that was just enough to make expenses.

...

Though we do not accept commercial advertising, this Unclassified ad space is free for our readers’ use. We do not accept ads over the telephone, so please send your ads in writing to our office at: 4403 Second Ave., Detroit 48201

FOR SALE--Cyclone Fencing. 8 x 4 x 4. Slightly damaged but easily fixed. $80.00 or closest best offer. Call Marilyn between 1:00 & 5:00, Mon. thru Fri. at 831–6800.

...

This article is the fourth in a series of counter-Bicentennial pieces dealing with the more sordid and often less-acknowledged incidents in America’s 200year-old history.

As discussed in last month’s issue of the Fifth Estate (see Bicentennial Moment No. 3, “The Ludlow Massacre”), the period beginning in 1865 with the conclusion of the Civil War and continuing through 1919 marked the turning point in America’s economy from individual, agrarian-based capitalism to corporate monopoly capitalism.

...

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.

...

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.”

...

Part II of this article appeared in Fifth Estate #273, June 1976.

The American health care system is currently undergoing a barrage of criticism from every corner; particularly, it has become fair game for dissection on the pages of newspapers all over the country. Last month the Detroit Free Press headlined a front page story “Doctors Blamed for Health Costs,” with a subhead running beneath it which read: “Study Cites Monopoly Fees; Hospital Bills Triple in a Decade.”

...

During the first week of April 1976, Gerald Woltjer, an Ottowa County, Michigan, dairy farmer, shot down his 235-head dairy herd in order to draw attention to the nightmare of PBB--poisoning of Michigan livestock, poultry, and dairy products.

Shortly afterward, the story hit the national news media and within weeks the spectre of a new Minamata-style plague loomed over the heads of Michigan residents. (1) Later in the month, the Michigan House of Representatives approved legislation that will eventually ban the sale of meat from PBB-contained herds for sixty days. A bill is also pending which will result in the liquidation of all tainted animals--virtually every farm animal in the state.

...

If you are one of the thousands of persons hoping to get a look at the information collected on you by the Detroit and State police anti-subversive (Red) squads, your chances may be dimming.

Lawyers bringing suit against police intelligence unit spying have been trying to force both police agencies to open the 50,000 dossiers to those named in them, but legal counsel for the city and state have resisted this at every turn.

...