Search

American heoroes, the Fort Hood Three: (l. to rt.) Mora, Samas, Johnson

The shocking prison treatment of the Fort Hood Three, the three GIs who refused to go to Vietnam, has improved slightly as a result of the publicity of their situation and a flood of letters to government and Army authorities.

The restrictions against the three men speaking have been removed, and at present David Samas and James Johnson are celled with four other prisoners and are permitted to eat meals in the mess hall. Dennis Mora is with three others; however, he is still unable to leave his cell for meals. They still have no library privileges. They must still remain standing from 5 a.m. til 6 p.m. each day. The often promised, and supposedly “regular” exercise periods, are still unavailable.

...

Scenes from the November Mobilization for Peace, Jobs, and Freedom march held in downtown Detroit, Nov. 5^th. Demonstrations and rallies were also held in over 50 other cities across the nation the same day.

Photos by Emil Bacilla and Wilson Lindsey.

...

A drug which is readily available on prescription has been shown to have the same psychic effects as LSD. The current issues of Diseases of the Nervous System and the Archives of General Psychiatry carry articles on the efficacy of Sansert in producing the same effects as LSD.

Sansert is a drug which has been used for the prophylactic treatment of migraine headaches. It’s method of action is the inhibition of serotonin production, a long known effect of L SD.

...

Hardly louder than the wet snow that was falling over the assembled marchers, Al Harrison softly said “All right brothers, lock your elbows and let’s march for peace and freedom,” as he and members of the Afro-Americans For Peace led the Mass March held Saturday, November 5, as part of the November Mobilization for Peace, Jobs, and Freedom.

...

A few weeks ago the New Yorker’s man in jazz, Whitney Balliett, went out to the Coast to catch the Monterey Festival. While he was there he spoke with some of the “workers’ aristocracy” of jazz, the white musicians who make their living primarily from studio gigs.

Like all aristocracies, this one has worked out a complete ideology which “justifies”—in its own collective mind, at least its privileged class position. Thus Balliett:

...

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.

...

The American Civil Liberties Union asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case of a Richmond Professional Institute student who was kept out of the college for his senior year because he sported a beard and long hair.

The Virginia liberal arts college refused to allow Norman Thomas Marshall to register in September, 1965. In a brief filed with the high court on behalf of Marshall, a 26 year old scholarship student and past editor of the college’s literary magazine, the civil liberties group contended that the school’s “arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable” action refusing him registration on account of his groom violated the constitutional rights to free expression, due process of law, privacy and protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

...

Well, attentive readers, I must say there is nothing like an occasional attack to sharpen up one’s reflexes... Having had several lately, I shall at this point contribute several counter-attacks...

To our friendly neighbor “Virile American”...(see letters, last issue) I would not ordinarily dignify such arch-type fascist ravings with a response, however I feel that this letter is representative of the thinking of a good many people, so therefore: Dear V.A.: Thank OM that there is no F.C.C. type of agency monitoring the papers... In the popular Press, the effect is much the same when you consider the fact that the AP and UPI must pass along to the public the obvious propaganda as delivered to them by the government news agencies, or risk losing their sources...There is, however, still room for some free journalism...The “pasty-faced faggoty followers” in my comparison were actually the “Virile Romans,” as they called themselves... As a humane person, genuinely concerned with the welfare of my fellow Americans, I hope, Mr. V.A., sir, that you will be able to overcome your rather psychotic hang-ups about “org**m”, “Pasty-faced faggots,” and “commie perverts”...Moreover, I am quite sure that your stated intention of being in Hell will be easily fulfilled...Just continue to be a “Virile American” and before long you’ll be living right in the middle of hell, right here in the good old virile U.S. of A...

...

Just finished reading a friend’s copy of THE FIFTH ESTATE.

Enjoyed very much Mr. Ovshinsky’s article about Dr. Hoffer and LSD [FE #13, August 30, 1966]. It was refreshing to read an article that dealt with experimental facts and a word of expert caution, rather than a shocking expose attempting to scare the pants off you!

...

Myself and another head, were very mellow on the bunker line, when we happened to glance at your paper “The Fifth Estate.”

Since then it hasn’t left our hands. Our souls and hearts would be yours if we could get more of this paper, just to keep our minds straight.” We would appreciate your free subscription as soon as possible.

...

The San Francisco Mime Troupe, fresh from a successful ten months run in Northern California, and as a part of their nationwide tour, will bring its current production, “A MINSTREL SHOW/OR: ‘CIVIL RIGHTS IN A CRACKER BARREL’ “ to the Detroit Institute of Arts, Oct. 7, under the sponsorship of the American Civil Liberties Union. See ad for details and ticket information.

...

A national conference was held in Cleveland Sept. 9–10 to plan for a united nationwide peace action this fall.

The conference was called by the University Circle Teach-In Committee of Cleveland, with the assistance of the Inter-University Committee. The meeting was attended by a wide range of Peace, Civil Rights, and religious groups.

...

Fifth Estate

A Newspaper of Detroit

FIFTH ESTATE #75, March 20-April 2, 1969, Vol. 3 No. 23, page 2

EDITORIAL GROUP

Alan Gotkin

Harvey Ovshinsky

Tommye Wiese

Peter Werbe

Cathy West

PHOTO EDITOR

Mike Tyre

DISTRIBUTION

Bruce Montrose

MUSIC EDITOR

John Sinclair

STAFF

Claudia Efimchik

Ann Mikolowski

...

a review of

The Me Nobody Knows: Children’s Voices from the Ghetto edited by Stephen M. Joseph. Avon Books, 1969, paperback, 95 cents.

“On a nice cold September morning, I got up and was afraid to go to school.”

—Linda O., age 13

Our public schools aren’t educating most people whether in the inner cities or the suburbs. There is little learning going on—if learning means growth, understanding and increasing awareness of self and others.

...

THE MFS MESS: Emil Bacilla’s article on the Midwest Film Society last issue touched off a lot of under-the-table shit, which was, even weirder since Emil was in SF when the paper came out and couldn’t see what was happening. Briefly: Noel Cooper of the MFS contacted me through Peter Werbe about screening the MFS films at the Artists’ Workshop, which was for me a happy occurrence and was immediately implemented. JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS was shown at the Workshop Saturday, September 17, to a good-sized crowd, and flyers were passed out advertising the MFS fall lineup at the Workshop. Everything was groovy.

...

In the last issue of the FIFTH ESTATE John Sinclair put down “acid rock” in favor of new-thing jazz, implying that Coltrane is really where it’s at and that rock is nowhere. His opinion revolves around the term “psychedelic”. Sinclair feels that jazz is truly psychedelic while rock merely exploits the term. I asked Robin Tyner, lead singer of the MC-5, now appearing at the Grande Ballroom, what he considers to be the true psychedelic music.

...

Special to the Fifth Estate

Ann Arbor: Elise Boulding of Ann Arbor has begun a write-in campaign for Congress from the Second District of Michigan. The district, which consists of the counties of Washtenaw, Livingston, Lenawee and Monroe, is presently represented in the House of Representatives by Wes Vivian. Vivian has backed the administration’s policy in Vietnam and vacillated on HUAC. His Republican opponent, State Representative Esch, has an equally unimpressive record.

...

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

...

“The free election of masters eliminates neither the masters nor the slaves.”

—Herbert Marcuse

American politics, as has been noted here before, is the politics of non-alternatives and pseudo-choices. If we needed any evidence, the present election provides it. Search and fantasize as we might there simply are not any radical possibilities. Consider the following:

...

Maybe film was only playing possum. It sure looked dead, though... Nothing was happening. The few people I had managed to find that were interested in film were leaving town. Most of the good theaters were closing. There was obviously no hope. Then I wrote a couple columns for The Fifth Estate and BHANG, the floodgates opened. Things started happening. So many things that I can’t really cover them in depth, because of a lack of space and information; I just haven’t had time to learn all that I want to learn about them. All I can do is mention them and promise to elaborate sometime in the future.

...

A drug is known by the controversies that it raises as a person is known by the enemies he makes. The first argument around LSD was the kind of mental abnormality that it produced in research subjects. Some scientists contended the loss of contact with reality resembled schizophrenia while others said that it was comparable to a toxic mental condition such as may be seen with a high fever in a physical illness. The LSD psychosis was eventually conceded by most to be different from schizophrenia. It remains of scientific importance to study the changes associated with LSD but it cannot serve as a model for schizophrenia. It was hoped that drugs which cut short or prevented the LSD state of mental distress would be effective against schizophrenia. This was only partly true. Wishful thinking, attempts to find a short-cut to fame, poor observation and a lack of training in scientific method were responsible for the early conclusions that the LSD psychosis was like the schizophrenic illness and similar factors have led some workers to conclude that the medical use of LSD is a cure for illnesses ranging from neurosis to drug addiction.

...

The Fifth Estate

923 Plum Street

Detroit, Michigan 48201

962–9336

EDITOR AND PUBLISHER

Harvey Ovshinsky

NEWS EDITOR

Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASST.

Cathy West

ART EDITOR

Gary Grimshaw

PHOTOGRAPHY

Lena Sinclair

CARTOONIST

Rob Derminer

The Fifth Estate is a member of the Underground Press Syndicate (UPS).

Unwind and uncomplicate. Let go, on Oct. 7 the Mime Troupe did. They touched on all the touchy issues. They gave us a quick look at ourselves, black and white.

The exaggerated makeup, the powder blue satin tails, the bentwood chairs were all an integral part of mime in the classic tradition, satirizing the minstrel show and putting us all down.

...

Due to the incompetence of the Post Office bureaucracy the subscribers did not receive their FIFTH ESTATES until a week after they were mailed. This is a double drag since our office staff really busted their asses trying to see that the mailing got to the subscribers before the papers hit the streets. Well, have faith, God and the old P.O. willing you should have this in your paid subscriber’s hands the day after we get it back from the printers.

...

Several full-time movement activists in the Michigan area have been arrested in recent weeks on trumped-up felony charges.

At East Lansing, Bill Ayers of the SDS Regional Staff and Mike Price of East Lansing SDS were both arrested for allegedly assaulting a TV-2 camera crew with a dangerous weapon—supposedly a two-by-four.

...

Underground newspapers, books & magazines & records & posters

buttons & bumperstickers

all kinds of things you need

ESP RECORDS!! The FUGS Broadside album — the FUGS second album — Timothy Leary Speaks on LSD Albert Ayler Spirits Rejoice! New York Ear & Eye Control

Patty Waters Sings!

Marion Brown Quartet!

...

Open City, Detroit’s service organization to the free community, has begun operation. So far most activity has centered around people calling in problems to the switchboard.

Although many of the calls regard minor services like telling callers who is at the Grande or where they can read material on LSD, many calls have been of a more serious nature.

...

Film, the liveliest art, is, for all intents and purposes dead. At least in Detroit. Those wanting to attend services, needn’t bother, since there usually aren’t any for a stillborn that was just dumped in a garbage can for expediency.

Since the end of WWII there has been an increasing interest in film in this country. Foreign films developed an audience and in almost every city with a population over 200 underground movements sprung up, with independents making films from high art to low trash. In Detroit, however, nothing has happened. At different times different people have attempted to give life to some kind of movement, and each time all that ever developed was a few kicks that gave signs of life but ended in miscarriage.

...

After closing the office on Plum Street and selling my last “Sterilize LBJ” button, I walked downtown where the old Vanguard Theatre used to be. It provided a few minutes of indecision because two skin-flicks were playing and I had already seen one.

The last time I was in the Vanguard was two years ago. I remember seeing THE FIREBUGS there. THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH was good too, and e. e. Cummings’ HE did a pretty neat job of stoning (all twenty members of) the audience.

...

Conformist Logic & The Political Question

(An open letter to the Artists’ Workshop and the Detroit Committee to End the War in Vietnam.)

“But for art to transform as well as reflect, there must be a great distance between the artist and life, just as there is between the revolutionist and political reality.”

...

It was with interest that I read an article on Dr. Abram Hoffer in the last issue of The Fifth Estate [FE #13, August 30, 1966]. As a medical researcher on LSD I have had the occasion to refer to Dr. Hoffer’s work many times and hold the greatest respect for him as a competent scientific investigator.

...

On August 9–12 a fantasy now known as the “East Side Riot” was staged by the Detroit Police with the assistance of the prosecutor’s office, city government and the press. The major villain of the drama was Alvin Harrison, Director of the Afro-American Unity Movement and spokesman for Black Power. Below is The Fifth Estate’s interview with Mr. Harrison.

...

EDITOR & PUBLISHER: Harvey Ovshinsky

NEWS EDITOR: Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT: Cathy West

STAFF: Marlene Tyre, Frank Dedenbach, etc.

MEMBER: U.P.S. [Underground Press Syndicate]

News of a new independent artists’ group in Detroit: The Instage, a gathering of musicians, dancers, painters, and others to present their own work in their own context, has been drawn together by pianist Kirk Lightsey, bassists Ernie Farrow and Dedrick Gover, trombonist George Bohanon and others. Now in search of their own performing facilities, Instage will present a program of its members’ work at the Community Arts Auditorium, Wayne State University, on Sunday, October 2, at 8:00 p.m. Featured will be paintings by Gloria Bohanon and seven others; a dance event featuring Barbara Willis, Don Hellimus, and Jackie Hillman, backed by Lightsey’s band; and a concert of music by the groups of Ernie Farrow, George Bohanon, and Harold McKinney. Tickets are on sale for $1.50 per person, $2.50 for couples, from Instage members and at the WSU box office.

...

On September 2, 3 and 4 the Lafayette Park Players presented their production of “A Thurber Carnival” at the Chrysler School Auditorium. The cast has worked together only once before last fall in “Monique”; and, although the program notes show that many members have extensive background in other plays, the amateur character of this attempt was painfully obvious.

...

WHILE BRAVE MEN DIE had its Detroit premier on Saturday September 10. Sharing the bill at lower DeRoy Auditorium was OPERATION ABOLITION, a right-wing expose of communists in the peace movement. As expected, the entire evening of film phantasmagoria was an exercise in high cinema camp and low grade stupidity.

...

Staff Note: The following is a letter that was recently sent to the Fifth Estate by Lorenzo Komboa Ervin. For more information about Komboa, see “Komboa: Anti-Vietnam Warrior,” FE #292, June 19, 1978.

Dear Comrades:

I am an Anarchist political prisoner confined in the infamous Control Unit Behavior Modification Program at the Marion Federal Penitentiary. Ten prisoners have died in the Control Unit In the past few years (3 deaths in 1977 alone!) and hundreds of others have been-driven to self-mutilation or insanity.

...

The question of what constitutes revolutionary activity is raised again on these pages in two articles; 1) an in-depth analysis of the Italian situation and 2) a review of a book on anarchism in the U.S. Claudio Albertani explodes the mystification surrounding the militancy of the autonomous groups and the fetish of armed struggle held by organizations such as the Red Brigades. The article by Marcus Graham, a long time friend of the Fifth Estate, raises the question in a more subtle way (see FE #293–294, August 21, 1978, page 14). We have had his manuscript for several months, but had declined to print it due to a staff disagreement over his usage of the terms “anarchist” and “anarchism.”

...

Attacking what they call “terrorists” and “idealistic persons” who would take “positive steps” to overthrow society, the British government’s elite Special Branch and Anti-terrorist Squad (ATS) have conducted a series of raids designed to create an atmosphere of conspiracy and suspicion.

The raids, generally directed against leftist groups and anarchists, have proven to be at times little more than acts of sheer buffoonery. One carefully planned foray into an assumed “den of anarchy” on the part of ATS landed the Special Branch in a legally licensed night club in North London which had been occupied by a political group two years earlier. In Highbury the ATS broke into a flat after bashing down the door with a sledge hammer and took three family photo albums; and in Finsbury Park on a raid, they arrested one person for a small quantity of dope.

...

FE note: See our introduction, “Revolution & Counter-revolution in Italy,” [FE#293–294, August 21, 1978] in this issue.

A conspiracy of silence and careful distortion of what doesn’t fit the picture of Italy as a panting country trying to catch up with the other industrial “democracies” have mystified the Italian events in the past year. If one believes the American press, the only problem is to know how long the Carter Administration will succeed in keeping the so-called Communist Party out of the government: however, another much more dangerous reality, whose lineaments we will attempt to trace, seems to threaten the management of the crisis and the project of integration of the country into the new international economic order.

...

In November of 1970, Benjamin Mendoza y Amor attempted to assassinate Pope Paul VI at Manila’s International Airport. Unfortunately, Mendoza made one mistake—-he was caught. Give this man a second chance!

In what ranks among the finest assertions of life over death in human history, Benjamin Mendoza y Amor, a Bolivian surrealist, stated that he had made an attempt on the Pope’s life because “There is no God” and that Pope Paul “represents the kind of superstition which must be destroyed by removing him.

...

NEW YORK—Marijuana smokers are “significantly more likely” to report attending happenings, reading underground newspapers and participating in mass protests.

That is one of the unsurprising findings of a study of young people made by a Michigan legislative committee. Chairman Dale Warner, a young hip legislator who hung around with John Sinclair and the MC5 commune people, produced a report that’s basically sympathetic to the benevolent herb. One quote, for example: “It is our impression that adults often know less about the subject than the adolescents do.”

...

On Sunday, November 7, 3,000 people had descended on the Piazza Vetra, Milan, taking the police, who were prepared for a routine operation, completely by surprise. Bursting into four cinemas, they soon mounted a demonstration some 4,000 strong. Following this, a price reduction was proposed for (movie) matinee performances. The response was a new demonstration, this time involving 52 of Milan’s “youth circles,” with their banners decorated with garish colors and drawings. The Apache emblem (a hatchet) in the forefront, flags, guitars, the pink and flowered flags of the feminist and gay groups.

...

“Bread and roses.”

(Paterson, N.J., 1912, slogan of the revolutionary women)

“Molotov, Champagne!”

(Milan, 1977)

For all those who, due to opportunism or congenital idiocy, believe it impossible that the communist movement should ever reappear, the Italian events of the past year have demonstrated that the capitalist project of domesticating humanity has encountered insoluble contradictions. If after the days of May the Situationists could write of the mouvement des occupations that it was “the refusal of all authority, of all specialization, of all hierarchical alienation; the refusal of the state and thus of parties and unions as well as sociologists and professors, of repressive morality and of medicine” (Internationale Situationniste No. 12, September 1969), we perceive in the 1977 riots of the “Italian Spring” a continuity with the modern revolutionary project contra the real domination of capital, a project which, having announced itself near the end of the ‘60s, having been suppressed and recuperated afterwards, is now returning to express itself with renewed radicalism in one of the weakest spots in the whole precarious world economy.

...

Editors’ note: The following interview by FIFTH ESTATE film editor Joe Fineman took place at the recent Ann Arbor Film Festival. Participants in the interview were film judges Henri Chapier, critic for COMBAT magazine; Gerard Malanga, superstar; and Andrew Lugg, U of M Cinema Guild. The winners of the festival will be shown in late April by FNCC Lower DeRoy Aud. on the Wayne Campus.

...

W.D. Snodgrass, professor of English at Wayne State University and a Pulitzer Prize winning poet, will be the third poet in the “Dialogues on the Art of Poetry’ series at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 4, in the Community Arts Auditorium on the WSU campus.

Snodgrass’s volume of poems, “Heart’s Needle,” won both the Pulitzer Prize and the $1,000 award in poetry of the Ingram Merrill Foundation.

...

FILM

FILM: April 1, Luis Bunel’s “EL” (This Strange Passion -1953) at 8:15 p.m. in Community Arts Aud. WSU Campus. Adm. 75 cents for students and $1 for general public. Info: 831–4310

FILM: Friday, April 7^th — Movie Night. “Way Out West” Laurel and Hardy, “La Chein D’Angelieu’ (dir. Dali 1928) & ‘Music Box” Laurel and Hardy. Lower DeRoy Aud., WSU campus. 8:15 p.m. Free.

...

Trans-Love Members Pose on Top of Artists’ Workshop

A group of Detroit artists and craftsmen have banded together to form a cooperative called Trans-Love Energies Unlimited. The participants will work to draw the local “underground” community closer together and help market its services in the aboveground world. Included in the organization will be rock bands, jazz groups, graphic artists, photographers, hip merchants, light-show companies, and other individuals and groups who can make use of its services.

...

The other day an old friend and FIFTH ESTATE contributor staggered into our office fresh from the local Ft. Wayne induction center. Bruised and bleeding, with chains, jewelry, and iron crosses hanging from his black leathers, he told a gruesome tale of unprovoked assault (well, almost).

At the draft center, our hero had understandable difficulty following military regulations. After several “incidents,” the unwashed beardo was sent to lunch. Calmly reading his FIFTH ESTATE in the cafeteria, he was approached by several MPs who had apparently been called by distraught cafeteria personnel.

...

The great freak-rock New York band THE FUGS will be in Detroit the 6^th of April for a one-night only concert, under the auspices of the Friday Night Coordinating Committee (FNCC) of WSU. The Thursday night freak-out will take place twice that night at Wayne Comm. Arts Aud., with shows at 7 and 9 p.m. Tickets are on sale at the Fifth Estate and at Mixed Media, at $2 and $3.

...