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Students confront Dow representatives

A determined three-day demonstration against UCLA cooperation with the makers of napalm bombs blossomed out at the university’s Student Placement Center last Monday through Wednesday.

Groups of picketers numbering between 20 and 30 gathered each of the three days inside the building and in front of the office which a representative of the Dow Chemical Company was using for job interviews with students.

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“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.”

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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.

Detroit is a killer city. It is a city in which radicals and reformers of various political stripes have found it nearly impossible to survive.

Internal difficulties of personnel and finance along with external pressure from the police and other elements of the establishment have combined time after time to murder grass roots community organizations, peace groups, civil rights forces and radical religious organizations.

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Robert Buckeye, Wayne State University English instructor, falsely arrested along with his wife, Nancy, during the January 24 “narcotics” raid while visiting the home of one of his ex-students, is filing suit against the City of Detroit, Ray Girardin and six policemen.

The suit, based on personal damages suffered by Buckeye both to his person as well as his academic career, was filed last week by Attorney Albert Best, and asks for $350,000 damages.

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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.

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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.

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Probably no sector of American capitalism displays more cutthroat competitiveness than the recording industry. Entry into the field is, unlike the case in basic industries such as auto and steel, still relatively unrestricted. Any adventurer with a couple of thousand dollars can get an LP produced (even less for a 45 rpm single) and—who knows?—if he is lucky can make it supremely big. Such is the story of Barry Gordy of Motown Records and, on a much reduced scale, of Bernard Stollman of ESP, for whose label the surprisingly red-hot Fugs record.

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Reprinted from The Berkeley Barb (Underground Press Syndicate).

Did you ever have to

make up your mind?

Pick up on one and leave

the other behind.

It’s not often easy and not often kind.

Did you ever have to make up your mind?

Did you ever have to finally decide?

And say yes to one and

let the other one ride.

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Veterans Against the War (VAW) a local group of armed forces veterans formed to oppose the war in Vietnam have been carrying out a program to convince other veterans and those presently in the service of their views.

The group has written to over 500 GIs in Vietnam explaining their position on the war and why they as ex-soldiers oppose it. Nick Medvecky, VAW secretary, said he felt that this has been the group’s most successful activity. “We have found that from the replies we receive from Vietnam there is a substantial amount of opposition to the war among the troops doing the actual fighting.”

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A campus-wide referendum on the war in Vietnam will be held at Wayne State University on April 6 as part of Student Vietnam Week in Detroit. Student Vietnam Week, April 3–14, will culminate in a mass mobilization against the war on April 15 in New York.

In the elections last November, 40% of the voters in Dearborn voted in favor of withdrawing U.S. troops from Vietnam. The final vote was 20,667 against withdrawal and 14,124 in favor of it. The high percentage of those voting for withdrawal prompted the Wayne Committee to End the War in Vietnam to decide to hold a campus referendum and compare students’ attitudes toward the war with those of the Dearborn citizens.

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a review of

Dismantling the Master’s Clock: On Race, Space, and Time by Rasheedah Phillips. AK Press, 2025

In a discussion during the early winter of 2024 with radical political scientist Richard Gilman-Opalsky facilitated through Incite Seminars, there arose the essential thread of imagination and its usefulness as a tool for decolonization, along with the reaffirmation of future potentialities hidden within playful and creative anti-capitalist exercises.

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The greatest alienation that capitalism has wrought on humanity is perhaps not labor power, as posited by Marx, but rather the ability to live a life reliant on nature. Where once humanity was in intimate contact with the natural world, cityscapes, abstract economies, and industrial technocracy now dominate our lives.

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In the 1971 movie, Harold and Maude, a boy-man sewn into an upper class lineage headed by a satirically tyrannical matriarch stages his own suicide again and again. The first scene depicts his fake self-hanging, “OH HARRROLD!” His mother’s admonishment is delivered with all the horror-shock Harold meant for her, but also cloying authority, the absolute order Harold cannot escape.

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A review of

Revolution in 35mm: Political Violence and Resistance in Cinema From the Arthouse to the Grindhouse 1960–1990, Editors: Andrew Nette and Samm Deighan. PM Press, 2024

“Leftist terrorism and state terrorism, even if their motivations cannot be compared, are two jaws of the same mug’s game. The state hates terrorism, but prefers it to revolution.” So says Buenaventura Diaz in the 1974 French/Italian co-production Nada, one of the dozens of films profiled in Revolution in 35mm, edited by Andrew Nette and Samm Deighan.

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On Jan. 1, 2024, the city of San Francisco sent New Year’s greetings to its beleaguered citizens with the cheery news that a suicide net had been installed under the Golden Gate Bridge thanks to funding from the California Mental Health Services Act.

Heralded as a “suicide deterrent system,” the supposedly solid rationale behind this marine grade stainless steel safety net, upon closer examination, turns out to be not so surprisingly full of holes. The erstwhile proponents of this costly $217 million bridge boondoggle have simplistically argued that if access to the material means of suicide are reduced, then deaths can be prevented. Just put up a net under the bridge to catch would-be suicides...presto, problem solved!

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

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

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a review of

War of Dreams: A Field Guide to DIY Psy-Ops by Jason Rodgers. PM Press, 2024

At the height of the zine movement in the 1990s, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands—what could be thought of as armies of people—would march off to their post office boxes every day to engage in an ongoing assault on mainstream culture using low-circulation publications as their weapons of choice.

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