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OAKLAND—Plans for a four-day siege of the Oakland Induction Center, October 16–21 were announced to day by spokesmen for National Stop the Draft Week Committee. Compulsory conscription was labeled “a criminal conspiracy against American youth that must be stopped.”

“We have picketed, protested, leafleted and argued against the draft and the racist war in Vietnam,” said Terence Cannon, member of the Stop the Draft Week Steering Committee. “There is only one way to keep young men from being shanghaied into the armed forces and that is to stop the draft from operating. We declare that we are opposed to the government’s policy and will do everything we can to bring it to a halt.

...

a review of

It Did Happen Here: An Antifascist People’s History, Editors: Moe Bowstern, Mic Crenshaw, Alec Dunn, Celina Flores, Julie Perini, and Erin Yanke. PM Press, 2023

We Go Where They Go: The Story of Anti-Racist Action by Shannon Clay, Kristin Schwartz and Michael Staudenmaier. PM Press, 2023

...

The Detroit office of the Student Nonviolent Co-ordinating Committee (SNCC) was bombed on May 17. The office is located at 12322 Dexter.

Two SNCC members, Kinley Summers and Roy Swan were slightly injured by the blast and the flying glass. The police said they found the remains of what appeared to be a home-made bomb.

...

Position: Man is but a part of the fabric of life—dependent on the whole fabric for his very existence. As the most highly developed tool-using animal, he must recognize that the unknown evolutionary destinies of other life forms are to be respected, and act as gentle steward of the earth’s community of being.

...

Fifth Estate

Radical Publishing since 1965

Vol. 58, No. 2, #414, Fall 2023

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

No ads. No copyright. Kopimi — reprint freely

Welcome to another Fifth Estate! This marks our eighth issue since moving to Pumpkin Hollow. With an editorial office in the Barn and an editorial collective all over the continent, we are proud to approach our 40^th anniversary with a thriving publication as opposed to authority as ever.

When we announced the theme as “Conspirarchy and Elections,” little did we realize how much the edition would emerge as one focused on politics and rhetoric. In particular, we examine the growing tension between the horrific hallucination known as democracy and the utopian vision known as anarchy.

...

Powerlessness and the lack of control which black people are allowed over their own community was not a major cause of the Detroit rebellion, Mr. Lomax tells us.

Nor was the cause the culture of violence which the United States has perfected; a culture which would make it UnAmerican for black people not to use violence as a means to effect social change.

...

The Detroit Friends of the Student Non-Veiolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) last week launched a local drive to help raise money to build shelters and to buy land in the deep South. The Poor Peoples Land Fund, headed by Ronald Bennett has already approached Detroit store-owners to ask for their support by serving as sponsors of the project.

...

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following article is the statement issued by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee concerning U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam. Julian Bond was refused his seat in the Georgia House of Representatives when he publically endorsed this statement.

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee assumes its right to dissent with U.S. foreign policy on any issue, and states its opposition to U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam on these grounds:

...

Trouble time again at Northland. The punk rent-a-pigs out there have been giving our salesmen such a hard time when they are trying to sell that we are going to begin a suit against the shopping center to enforce our legal right to sell in a public area.

Our staff and our attorney, James Lafferty, met with the jerks that run the place last year and came to an agreement whereby the harassment of sellers would stop, but apparently it meant nothing to the businessmen who are trying to drive elements of the free community out of the shopping center.

...

<em>

The Never Alone national tour hit 30 cities in April, speaking to hundreds about long-term anarchist prisoner support. It focused on the cases of Eric McDavid and Marie Mason, using multimedia presentations and included strategizing about how to effectively encourage a culture of resistance and support. Above, from the left, Jason, Jenny, Ian, and released political prisoner, Jeff “Free” Luers at a tour stop at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Ore., April 26. Photo from becausewemust.org. The tour raised nearly $7,000 after expenses which will be split between McDavid and Mason support groups. To offer support, donate, or get information about the cases, go to</em> supporteric.org and supportmariemason.org. Info on the tour at http://neveralonetour.wordpress.com.

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CHARACTERS

SEVEN: A young woman, mid-20s. Architect of the virus.

GEORGIA: A young woman, mid-20s. Friend of Seven.

CLEANER: Works for Seven.

CLEANER: Works for Seven.

SETTING: A window-less room with a desk and chair. Located in Washington DC.

TIME: Present. Seven is in a window-less room, monitoring activity on her computer. Her friend, a woman by the name of Georgia enters the room distraught.

...

“Someday the power will die

the lights will fade...

the stars will shine...

WE ALREADY LIVE IN RUINS”

I recently sat down to a dinner of roadkill venison. As an ex-vegetarian who occasionally eats fish or poultry, I did not approach this culinary choice lightly. However, I love an adventure, and I savored each succulent morsel as it emanated wood-smoke and blood.

...

I’d like you to meet some friends of mine

lesbians

women I write to

women in prison.

Last year I decided corresponding with them was a good way to continue my political work

being too disabled to go to meetings or to demonstrations.

Valerie was the first

a Cherokee-Chicana femme doing long time in Nevada prison.

An artist without art supplies,

she sends me cross-hatch portraits of her sister inmates

rendered with ballpoint on lined paper so thin it tears.

She has cystic fibrosis

at 26 she’s getting old

for someone with CF.

She tries not to think about what that means.

After all, she says,

no one at the jail thinks she’s disabled.

Her job includes scrubbing the bathrooms with bleach

three times a week.

I try to figure a way

to smuggle in a charcoal mask.

...

Welcome to the second issue in the fortieth anniversary year of this publication. The first was published in February and was our official commemorative edition. It was the largest and most colorful issue ever printed since we began in 1965. The anniversary issue was a double one constituting our publishing efforts for both Spring and Summer 2005. Hence, you have not missed an issue and you are reading the next in our series.

...

October marks the 16^th anniversary of the Fifth Estate and a little over five years since we’ve been publishing this paper as an explicitly libertarian project (see the Oct. 1979 FE for a brief history), and we are pleased to report that the ship of anti-state remains healthy. We say this even though the Post Office has reduced our status to that of a quarterly. This has served as a reminder of how we’ve let our publishing frequency precipitously slip from that of a monthly to, in this case, once every four months. Readers write to us all too often complaining that they have missed an issue, when it’s just been our sloth. Please be assured, all of you will get the six issues you subscribed to no matter if they don’t fall into a given calendar year. Financially we’re holding our own (contrary to a year ago when we were dead broke), but please, don’t let this declaration act to forestall the generous donations that many of you have been sending to the paper, because it is exactly those extra dollars or two or $20! with a book order or subscription renewal that have carried us in the direction of solvency. We can rarely do so individually, so let us thank all of you collectively who continue to have faith, not so much in this paper, but in the ideas it embodies, Who have helped us so much over the last year. And as usual, a special debt of gratitude must go out to our Italian comrades on both coasts and in Florida who continue their lifelong commitment to anarchist ideals by support of the world libertarian press including this one.

...

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.

...

a review of

The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy by Murray Bookchin. AK Press. 2005. 491 pp. $23.

An influential theorist with a background in anarcho-syndicalism and Marxian theory, Murray Bookchin has spent the past thirty-five years developing and promoting social ecology, one of the few anarchist schools of thought to have its own school, the Institute for Social Ecology in Vermont. The latter part of his career has been devoted to curmudgeonly crusades to “save” anarchism and ecology from what he sees as its pitfalls: mysticism, biocentrism, and something called “lifestylism.”

...

a review of

Vision on Fire: Emma Goldman on the Spanish Revolution. David Porter, editor, New Paltz NY, Commonground Press, 1983, 346 pp., $7.50.

Georg Groddeck once wrote that his aim in life was not to cure others but to become a human being. Throughout Emma Goldman’s life, this human struggle was identified with freedom: freedom to love and grow, learn and create, work and seek fulfillment, think, experience and act in every domain of interest.

...

Wes Montgomery—“March 6, 1968” (Riverside)

Wes Montgomery is simply one of the two greatest jazz guitarists of all time, the other being Charley Christian. A writer may go on and on and on about the innovations, contributions, and prestige this man gave to jazz but it may suffice to say that he undoubtedly was the best. This album was previously released on the old Riverside label and definitely doesn’t possess the clarity and forcefulness of his later Verve performances. (Due only to dated recording techniques.) But newly converted Wes Montgomery fans may find his old recordings a source of knowledge and a chronicled account of a great artist’s transition and maturation.

...

a review of

Anarchy! An Anthology of Emma Goldman’s Mother Earth, Edited with Commentary by Peter Glassgold, Counterpoint, 2001, 428 pages, $25.

“A spectacle, the terrible events of today strengthen this conviction, that war is permanently fostered by the present social system. Armed conflict is the natural consequence and the inevitable and fatal outcome of a society that is founded on the exploitation of the workers...To all the soldiers of all countries who believe they are fighting for justice and liberty, we have to declare that their heroism and their valor will but serve to perpetuate hatred, tyranny, and misery.”

...

Thirteen months into Operation Iraqi Humiliation (actually 14 years into the Bush Family’s well-financed takeover Of the Middle East), all of the predictions made by activists and other assorted radicals a year ago about the utter stupidity of the Empire’s expansion into the Fertile Crescent appear to have been fierce understatements.

...

This column is primarily concerned with contemporary jazz, relevant jazz, music with not only social significance, but sounds derived from environment, relating directly from experience. The very word jazz to many listeners conjures up stereotyped images. Most common is the movie image, the usual pseudo biographical tale of a musician tormented by the everyday series of musician’s “furies” dope, women and/or booze—not necessarily in that order. There is usually a social hangup or two with the hefty bleached blonde that quickly fades into oblivion leaving tons of grief in her wake. The musician, of course, is portrayed by Sammy Davis.

...

I was a bit disappointed with the Summer 1990 FE. Since when have the FE staff and paper become boosters for sacrificial reformist protest politics? There seems to be wholehearted support for “Redwood Summer, “ anti-nuke civil disobedience and rather unanarchistic (not even particularly “militant”) anti-incinerator protests to politicians.

...

“With the aid of the high-powered rocket modern man is indeed conquering space. But in the very act of making this achievement possible, the megamachine is carrying further its conquest of man...At the bottom of this whole effort lies a purpose that animates the entire megamachine, indeed, figures as its only viable consummation: to reduce the human organism itself, its habitat, and its mode of existence, and its life-purpose to just those minimal dimensions that will bring it under total external control...So the ultimate gift of space technics, it now turns out is to establish in experimental small-scale models the requirements for imprisoning, conditioning, and controlling large populations.”

...

The almost two-year-old labor battle against the Motor City’s two corporate daily papers is almost at its conclusion (see the first page of The Rumble insert for latest details). Belatedly, the national AFL-CIO has called for a mass mobilization in Detroit June 20 and 21 to demand an equitable settlement of the strike. Attendance is expected to be over a hundred thousand.

...

FRI. JAN. 24

“PARIS ON THE BARRICADES,” film of May-June events in France, will be shown at Debs Hall, 3737 Woodward at 8 p.m.

INTERNATIONAL FOLK DANCING every Friday night at the International Institute. 111 E. Kirby, 8 p.m.

KENNETH JEWEL CHORALE saluting Karl Haas. WSU Comm. Arts Aud. Cass at Kirby 8:30 p.m.

...

Milicia women at the Madrid front, 1936

a review of

The CNT in the Spanish Revolution, Volume I

by Jose Peirats, Edited and Introduced by Chris Ealham; Translated by Paul Sharkey

PM Press / Christie Books; 432pp, 628; www.pmpress.org

The Spanish anarchist movement and revolution of the late 1930s are undoubtedly the historical force and context most praised by Western anarchists. In absolute numbers, in proportion of the overall population they were part of, and in the radical transformation they accomplished in much of Spanish society, the reputation is well deserved.

...

WED., MAY 1

WHICH GOD IS DEAD? Agnostic Humanist Rabbi SHERWIN WINE speaks in the Detroit Rackham ESD Aud. at Farnsworth & Woodward at 8:30 p.m.

EMERGENCY IN THE GHETTO: Family, Pathology & Power. Dr. Hyman Rodman speaks at Merril Palmer Institute, 71 Ferry at 8:30 p.m.

THURS., MAY 2

THE KNACK, Richard Lesters crazy film starring Rita Tushingham, MSU Welles Hall in the Student Union.

...

A large, well-produced poster titled Libertarians found its way to our office not long ago. It is chiefly a translation of a text written in Spanish by “The International Friends,” denouncing the detention of more than fifty libertarians in Spanish prisons (as of September 1980) for alleged participation in armed activities. It contains a summation of the predicament of these libertarian and autonomous comrades, an analysis of the modern Spanish state (“the tardy reconciliation of all the victors of the counter-revolution”), criticism of the reconstituted CNT which “feels some real discomfiture in this affair. It is not out of indifference or prudence that it was brought to remain silent. The leaders of the CNT want to be an axis of regroupment of libertarians on a trade-unionist basis, in fact moderated and acceptable to the established order. The comrades who have resorted to expropriations represent, by this fact alone, an absolutely opposite axis of regrouping. If some are right, the others are wrong. Each person is the offspring of their works, and one must choose between these or the others by examining the meaning find the finality of their actions....” It then urges practical action to free the imprisoned libertarians, “those [actions] that create the most Scandal [being] the best.”

...

José Peirats, The CNT in the Spanish Revolution, published by The Meltzer Press (Vol. 1) and Christie Books (Vol. 2). They are essential reading.

Stuart Christie, We, The Anarchists, The Meltzer Press. A telling and thorough look at the FAI.

Much of our knowledge of the anarchist resistance to Franco comes from the work of Antonio Tellez and Miguel Garcia. All of the above publications are available from AK Press akpress.org and deserve close reading.

...

Detroit’s own SPIKE-DRIVERS, having just finished a mind-blowing engagement at the Living End Lounge, are now preparing for their first concert appearance in a benefit for the FIFTH ESTATE.

Besides doing their unusual brand of folk-rock (including their new Reprise release, “Baby Let Me Tell You”), they will add two amplified violins and a flute on several tunes to produce strange and mysterious sounds.

...

REVIEW: Various artists remixed by DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid, Live Without Dead Time. From Adbusters #47 “Nightmares of Reason,” May/June 2003.

The Live Without Dead Time CD can be found in the anti-consumerist art magazine Adbusters; it highlights DJ Spooky’s uncanny skill in crafting deep sonic climates with up-front agitprop intentions. Paul D. Miller grew up in DC and now works as a conceptual artist, writer, and musician in NYC where he is best known as “DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid” collaborating with the likes of ex-Rage Against the Machine vocalist Zach de la Rocha in a blistering anti-war shout called “March of Death.” Rather than cobbling together tracks for the dance floor, DJ Spooky welds together seamless and densely-detailed collective hallucinations better suited for headphones.

...

A review of

Radical Gotham: Anarchism in New York City from Schwab’s Saloon to Occupy Wall Street, Tom Goyens, ed. University of Illinois Press, 2017

New York City is well known for its radicals, past and present. The lives and deeds of some noteworthy anarchists who have lived there (including Emma Goldman, Paul Goodman and Murray Bookchin), and the high points of local movement history have been discussed extensively in articles and books. Yet there is a shortage of bottom up histories describing and exploring the lives of non-famous anarchists of earlier times or currently.

...

When we set out to produce an issue on and of literature, we had wide eyes and wild ideas. Ideas like Thoreau suggested, “In literature it is only the wild that attracts us. Dullness is but another name for tameness.” Guided by these instructions, we set out searching for the same sense of “uncivilized free and wild thinking” that Thoreau found “in Hamlet and the Iliad, in all the scriptures and mythologies, not learned in the schools.” Rather than see books as stuffy culture, we would endorse Thoreau’s claim: “As the wild duck is more swift and beautiful than the tame, so is the wild-mallard-thought, which ‘mid falling dews wings its way above the fens. A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild-flower discovered on the prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East. Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible, like the lightning’s flash, which perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself ...”

...

Don’t say you can’t turn back the clock—you do it every year, dupe of daylight savings time—as if you could add or subtract one hour from light by bureaucratic fiat. The really progressive position is reversion.

—Peter Lamborn Wilson “The Alchemy of Luddism”

Graphic: James Koehnline http://www.koehnline.com/

Special to the Fifth Estate

Editors’ Note: Nick Medvecky, former News Editor for the WSU South End, is currently touring the Middle East and will send back periodic on-the-spot reports from his travels.

He will visit Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Israel, visiting with revolutionaries, student groups and government officials.

...

Los Angeles’ (De)Center is an autonomous, non-profit, collectively organized space providing access to anarchist ideas and culture, open daily 3-7pm. It offers hard to find anarchist and radical books, periodicals, zines, CDs and tapes and t-shirts. There are regular political events, a film series, and a Tuesday night coffeehouse. (De)Center is at 6122-1/2 N. Figueroa, Los Angeles CA 90042; phone (213) 344–7017.

...

The FE BOOKSERVICE is located in the same place as the Fifth Estate Newspaper, both of which are located at 4403 Second Avenue, Detroit MI 48201—telephone (313) 831–6800. The hours we are open vary considerably, so it’s always best to give us a call before coming down.

HOW TO ORDER BY MAIL:

1) List the title of the book, quantity wanted, and the price of each;

...

DETROIT—Veterans of the Chicago battle have been approached by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in an attempt to get detailed information on Movement activities during the Democratic National Convention.

At least four local residents who were busted in Chicago have since been approached by FBI agents who said “Mr. Hoover wants to get all the facts about this business. he’s very concerned about it.”

...

Fifth Estate Books is located at 4632 Second Avenue, just south of W. Forest, in Detroit, in the same space as the Fifth Estate newspaper. Hours vary, so please call before visiting.

HOW TO ORDER BY MAIL

1) List the title of the book, quantity, and the price of each;

2) add 10% for mailing costs—not less than $1.25 U.S. or $2.00 foreign (minimum for 4^th class book rate postage);

...

You can’t turn on the news these days without hearing about unemployment. The national unemployment rate hovers at about 8.3 percent, although experts agree that the number of people outof-work far exceeds that figure.

The 8.3 percent figure only reflects the number of people actually looking for work. It does not count the growing number of people who have stopped looking for work.

...

Angela DeSante

Alan Franklin

Ralph Franklin

Bill Griffith

Pat Halley

Jay Kinney

E.B. Maple

Tina Nachalo

Rudy Perkins

Duke Skywatcher

Sonny Tufts

Bratach Dubh

Peter Werbe

Marilyn Werbe

Brenda Sabbagh

Norm Thomas

The Fifth Estate Newspaper, a non-profit Michigan corporation, is published monthly at 4403 Second Ave., Detroit MI 48201; phone: (313) 831–6800. Office hours are sporadic, so call before coming down. Subscriptions are $4.00 for 12 issues; $6 for foreign. Call 259–1888 for retail sales outlets. Second Class postage paid at Detroit, Michigan. No -copyright, No paid advertising accepted.

a review of

Starlight on the Rails: Songbook, U. Utah Phillips, 4 CDs, AK Press, 2005, $39

Memory Against Forgetting, Casey Neill, CD, AK Press, 2005, $15. Available from http://akpress.org

Anarchist ideals have been expressed in a myriad of musical genres from rock to funk to jazz to world to trance. But the forms thoroughly connected to agit-prop are the most exemplary to me as they are extreme: folk, rap, and punk. This is not to say there’s never any revolutionary aspect to a saxophone riff or violin solo--or even an intoxicating sample tweaked to perfection on a laptop.

...

Since the anti-wizard who disenchanted the world was Capitalism, we must assume that Capitalism will have to vanish by evolutionary necessity in order for re-enchantment to triumph.

Is it really possible to embrace such optimism? Let’s try.

An April 1, 2019 article in The Nation, “Warning: The Plastics Crisis is About to Get Worse,” begins with a “midrange” estimate of the amount of plastic garbage that is dumped in the ocean every year—eight million tons.

...

You seldom wavered

You always questioned

When we never trusted

the smoke, the steam, the fog

or more precisely

the cooling towers

and modern chimneys

and their endless denials

in the names of our children;

Can you still detect the distant battle drums

beyond their crude walls

The silica source of our glass embrace

The contrast against concrete monuments

of their unrestricted restrictions,

Bringing us closer to fermented red serenities

and the eventual savoring

of the fresh water’s edge,

Long after the shareholder meetings we disrupted

We recall your robin song voice

and better futures

with frank sense and mirth

Respecting zebra mussels

and mocking invasive authorities

Toasting unnamed friends

and unimaginable foes;

...

FIFTH ESTATE #13, August 30, 1966, Vol. 1, No. 13, page 2

The Fifth Estate, 937 Plum Street, Detroit, Michigan 48201, 962–9334

EDITOR & PUBLISHER: Harvey Ovshinsky

NEWS EDITOR: Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT: Cathy West

STAFF: Ron Halstead, Steven Simons, Debbie Osment, Marlene Tyre, Frank Dedenbach, Paula Stone, John Sinclair, Lena Sinclair, Emil Baccilla, Larry Miller, Frank Joyce, and Jeanie Sheahan

...

EDITOR & PUBLISHER: Harvey Ovshinsky

NEWS EDITOR: Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Kathy

STAFF: Annie Katzen, Lena Sinclair, Marilyn Werbe, Steve Simons, Deborah Osment

THE FIFTH ESTATE 937 PLUM ST, DETROIT, MICHIGAN

48201 962–9334

THE FIFTH ESTATE

1107 W. Warren

Detroit 48201

831–6800

Member, Underground Press Syndicate

EDITORS

Harvey Ovshinsky

Peter Werbe

NEWS EDITOR

Frank Joyce

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Cathy West

ART

Gary Grimshaw

MUSIC & LITERARY EDITOR

John Sinclair

CALENDAR GIRLS:

Karen Kovach

Naomi Epel

ADVERTISING

...

Millard Berry

Guyora Binder

Alan Franklin

Ralph Franklin

Pat Halley

Kathy Horak

Pat Kazenko

Bob Nirkind

E.B. Maple

Pat O’Bryan

Pete Rachleff

Algirdas Ratnikas

Dennis Rosenblum

Marilyn Werbe

Peter Werbe

John Zerzan

The Fifth Estate Newspaper, a non-profit Michigan corporation is published monthly at 4403 Second Ave., Detroit MI 48201; phone: (313) 831–6800. Office hours are: 1:00–5:00 P.M., Mondays through 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.