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This is the stockade. It’s to protect freedom. My freedom to give orders. And your freedom to make money.

Does this sound like your place?

Broken windows, rotted floors, leaking pipes, leaking toilets, garbage all over, or rats and roaches.

If your landlord has consistently refused to fix any of these housing code violations you no longer have to suffer in silence. The State of Michigan has passed new tenants’ rights legislation, which removes the hapless renter from the mercy of the avaricious landlord.

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According to a recent article in the Detroit Free Press only 17% of “deprived” families eligible for State aid under the Federal Food Stamp plan have taken advantage of it.

Food stamps are purchased from the Michigan Department of Social Services for, say $56 a month, and are redeemable at most supermarkets for $86 worth of groceries. That is a bonus of $30.

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GHETTO...the white suburban mind conjures up visions of....

GHETTO is now a game, a “simu-life” game made by Western Publishing Company. For the outrageous price of $23.00, those affluent liberals that wish to “understand” ghetto life can do so in the comfort, privacy, and safety of their own home or school.

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A “National GI-Civilian anti-war Action Conference” has been called for Chicago on December 28^th. This conference is part of a weekend series of meetings between GIs and civilians to plan joint projects and call a mass anti-war action in the spring.

The conference will be held during the Christmas holidays and in centrally located Chicago to make it easier for GIs to attend during their holiday leaves.

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a review of

GI Guinea Pigs: How the Pentagon Exposed Our Troops to Dangers More Deadly Than War by Michael Uhl and Tod Ensign. Playboy Press, 1980, 256 pp., $6.95

This account of the exposure of GIs to the atomic tests of the 1950s and the toxic herbicides in Vietnam is a teeth gritter of a story—both from horror and from anger.

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On April 5^th in Chicago, GIs and civilians will be marching together against the war in Vietnam. The demonstration will be protesting the suppression of GI rights in the army and demanding that the troops be brought home now.

Six other major demonstrations will be held that week in cities near army bases across the country.

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Directed by: David Maysles, Albert Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin. Starring: The Rolling Stones, Hells Angels and a cast of thousands.

“Ooo, the storm is threatening my very life today... But it’s all right, man, in fact, it’s a gas. It’s all right, I’m...an under-assistant, West Coast Promo Man...”

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On Feb. 26 a holy celebration was held here in Detroit. The stark grey coldness of the Administrative Services Building at Wayne State University was transformed for a few hours into a magic theater and the secret price of admission was your mind.

People came for many reasons that night. Some were there out of curiosity and some, despite the unfortunate lack of advance publicity, came because they heard that the poet Allen Ginsberg was going to be there. Some came with hope and some with contempt.

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“Welcome to the Republic of Darkness and Unemployment”

— Baghdad graffiti

It’s hard to be gleeful about the deteriorating situation in Iraq even when realizing that everything the anti-war movement predicted about Bush’s invasion for oil and empire has come true. Even mainstream publications are using the word “quagmire” to describe the situation while seventy percent of American’s in a recent Newsweek poll think the US will be bogged down in its $1 billion a month occupation efforts for years.

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ATLANTA, Ga. (LNS)—Anti-war GIs from around the country got together here over Memorial Day weekend to discuss ways of increasing nationwide cooperation in their struggle against the military machine.

Out of the conference came the GI Alliance, a national clearinghouse which is being set up in Washington, D.C., to provide GI organizations with support services—information, financial and legal assistance, material for political education—and to help coordinate activities and communications among various GI groups.

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Liberation News Service/The Movement

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.—Twenty-seven GIs at San Francisco’s Presidio Army Base stockade face the death penalty for staging a non-violent sit-down to protest the Oct. 11 murder of a fellow prisoner.

The victim, Richard Bunch, 19, was mentally ill. He had gone AWOL, returned to his home in Ohio, and told his mother he had died and been reborn as a warlock, able to kill enemy soldiers at a glance.

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FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (LNS) Fayetteville witnessed its first anti-war GI-civilian demonstration on Oct. 11 as 50 GIs from Ft. Bragg led a march of 1,000 people down the town’s main street.

The crowd marched through the streets shouting slogans like: “Rich Man’s War, Poor Man’s Fight,” “Um, Umgowa, People Got the Power,” and “Nixon’s Indicted by GIs United.” They encountered little harassment from either the cops or town residents.

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On November 9, 1969, the GI Press Service placed in the New York Times an advertisement signed by 1,365 active duty servicemen. The ad announced the GIs’ support for the November 15 demonstrations in Washington and San Francisco, and called for the immediate withdrawal of all American troops from Vietnam.

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MANNHEIM, West Germany—In a violent clash with military police, imprisoned G.I.s staged a massive riot at the Army stockade in Mannheim, West Germany. On March 19^th, the U.S. Command there fought with imprisoned soldiers for 5 hours and the reported damages inflicted on government property amounted to $10,000.

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Three Michigan men are among a group of 18 GIs who have sought sanctuary in a Honolulu church because of their opposition to the war in Vietnam. They are Matthew Biggerstaff of Westland, Arthur Parker of Holland and Daniel Overstreet of Garden City.

The scene began when Airman Louis Parry came to the Church of the Crossroads which offers refuge to military asylum. By August 15 the other 17 men, from all branches of the service had joined him.

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Editors’ Note: The following is a Liberation News Service interview with two anti-war GIs recorded at the Ft. Dix Coffee House.

“People don’t realize why soldiers march,” says Staff Sergeant Rick Williams, a husky, quiet-spoken soldier of Southern poor-white origin.

“It’s because when you march you don’t have a mind of your own. You can’t think about a right face before you get the order, or you’ll do it before it’s time. Once you get a soldier to march, you can get him to do just about anything you tell him.”

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If you are a serviceman in Vietnam receiving a free Fifth Estate subscription the only notice you will get of its expiration is the sudden disappearance of the paper from your life.

We still want to get you guys the news about our culture, the GI movement, and anti-war activity, so if you qualify for a renewal (still in ‘Nam) send us a letter telling us to put you back on our subscription list. If you are short we will be glad to send you papers for your remaining time. If you are still in the service, but not in ‘Nam, a year’s sub is $2; if you’re completely free of the green machine it’s $3.75. Power to you.

Pioneering French anthropologist Marcel Mauss studied “gift economies” like those of the Kwakiutl of British Columbia. A former amateur boxer, he was a burly man with a playful, rather silly manner, the sort of person always juggling a dozen brilliant ideas rather than building a great philosophical system.

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Over 100 persons picketed the Chrysler main headquarters in Highland Park on October 25 to protest the auto company’s role in the production of war material and its support of the racist government of South Africa. The marchers also were supporting the demands of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) against the Chrysler Hamtramck assembly plant. The demonstration was sponsored by the Black Panther Party and Students for a Democratic Society.

NEW YORK (LNS)—Those castrating bitches are at it again. Give ‘em an inch...and they...er...never satisfied...just gave ‘em a cover story...back for more....

Newsweek’s cover story on women’s liberation had just hit the stands when 46 women on the staff filed a complaint Monday, March 16 with the Federal Government charging that Newsweek had violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964—which prohibits “segregation, classification, and/or limitation of an employee” on the grounds of race, color, religion, or sex.

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Consensus is boiling that humans have become hyper-exploiters, impacting and taking so much from nature that remaining ecosystems are entering death spirals. Is it possible for human’s bred-in exploiter culture to shift from a taking lifeway from the wild to a way of giving?

Just as humans can turn civilization’s wrenches against logging machines to halt destruction, they can turn their civilized brains and bodies to recovering earth’s wild.

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When small political groupings of people raise the possession of weapons to the level of military strategies and tactics, rather than the need for protecting their personal security, it usually guarantees the reverse.

By 1969, the Fifth Estate founder, feeling increasingly isolated by the radical fervor of the staff, quit the paper following his disagreement with a vote to print a front cover taken from a Cuban poster featuring an array of guns and the quintessential one-word slogan of revolutionary impatience, “NOW!,” in four-inch type.

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Arthur P. Hughes is a short, timid appearing young man of 23. He wears thick glasses and a large turquoise ring.

On May 19, Mr. Hughes, a painter who resides in New York City, stood before hundreds of stockholders of the General Motors corporation assembled for their annual Freakout in Cobo Hall.

He announced that a few days before, upon learning of the nature and extent of GM’s investments in South Africa, he had divested himself of 955 shares of General Motors stock by turning it over to the African Aid and Legal Defense Fund. The stock was worth more than $80,000.

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a review of

Godless: 150 Years of Disbelief edited by Chaz Bufe; Introduction by Don Arel. PM Press, 2019 pmpress.org

More than a thousand years ago, a Chinese Zen master wrote: Magical power, Marvelous action! Chopping wood, Carrying water. The eleven essays assembled here by See Sharp Press publisher Chaz Bufe are effective diatribes against belief in gods that completely destroy every aspect and argument on which Christianity and other religions are based.

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Streams of 70 MPH mechanical plankton seethe out from radio nurtured exhaust warmed (”...and the murk index rating today is a low lean keen 50...”) metal sargasso sea. Detroit. FoMoCo Roto Moto get down town.

“Yeah...the people there are all ready to shoot even tho they don’t know what for...”

Detroit—R. Crumb’s furnace fantasy—recedes into a smudge over I-75’s cornfield borders. But childhood flashes born of a vacation packed car bring ghosts of summers past all back home.

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The opening shot in Airman Ted Goldflies versus the Air Force, Round Two, was printed in the last issue of the Fifth Estate [FE #83, July 10–23, 1969]. That was a letter of “Admonition” from Major Fred Smith, Commander of Selfridge Air Force Base, to Goldflies, warning him that he would face prosecution under Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice for “conduct unbecoming a soldier” if he continued to distribute either The Fifth Estate or The Ally either on base or off base.

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The most insidious biases one carries are those of which we are unaware. Philosophy and history, as far back as the very origins of our present civilization, have carried within them an enormous bias that remains strangely transparent, yet hidden. They have, almost in their entirety, been thought, discussed, constructed, analyzed and transmitted by men, for men.

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When I was a kid, the guys in my crowd used to view changing the oil in our cars as sort of a manly rite of passage on the way to adulthood. We’d dump the used oil down the nearest sewer laughingly, saying, “Hello Cleveland,” knowing that it would travel through the Great Lakes waterways to the cities downstream. That was before the age of ecological awareness, but we still had the realization the oil was going somewhere.

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The Selective Service Repeal Act of 2021 was introduced in Congress on April 14 with bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate. If this becomes law, registering for the hated draft will no longer be required.

The draft laws have always contradicted the 13^th Amendment that forbids involuntary servitude. The draft laws are the worst kind, forcing citizens to do the dirty, and often criminal work of the government in its endless wars, almost all of which are based on lies.

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a review of

“Karma,” Pharoah Sanders (Impulse)

Editors’ Note: The following review of Pharoah Sanders’ killer new album was found in the Fifth Estate office without the author’s name on it. Would he please contact us so proper credit can be given.

Saying that “Karma” is Pharoah Sanders’ new album should be enough. Beginning with his close association with the late giant John Coltrane, Sanders has been a moving force in the new jazz of the 1960s. Though he undoubtedly stands in Trane’s shadow to a certain extent, he is forging his own path, one as wide and deep, important as any before him.

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Hot diggity! Free food and good vibes on a Wednesday evening at Royal Oak’s Memorial Park, courtesy of potluck and the Yipfugs.

Tomatoes, rice, guitars and flutes were shared by pretty suburban hi skool frocks who are into turning on their brothers and sisters heads with feed festivals and films instead of TV and pep rallies.

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I mistrust people who smoke pot loudly. Bragging, yelling, telling.

I don’t think it’s wrong to turn new people on. I’d just never thought of trying to sell marijuana in mass form. It seemed that LEMAR was trying to prove that psychedelics were safe “for the whole family.” I think they’re right, only I instinctively shrink away from anyone trying to lay something on me. American TV commercials did that to me.

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a review of

Parenting Without God: How to Raise Moral, Ethical, and Intelligent Children, Free from Religious Dogma Second edition by Dan Arel; forward by Jessica Mills. PM Press 2019

Although this may be beating a dead horse (that would be gods), there remains the pro-religionist argument that without God, anything is permissible. However, since under the sign of God, all horrors imaginable have occurred, it makes sense to look for a secular grounding for our ethics.

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The Internet wasn’t supposed to be like this. John Perry Barlow, Internet pioneer and friend of the Grateful Dead and contributor to their very early virtual community, The Well (or Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link), wrote this in his 1996 A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace:

“Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.”

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Since the arrest last May of four Earth First! (EF!) activists on charges of attempting to sabotage a nuke plant (see Summer 1989 FE), the federal government has widened its campaign against the radical environmental movement.

Throughout the summer and fall, the FBI fanned out across the Western states interviewing numerous people associated with EF!, and in several areas, grand jury subpoenas were issued, suggesting that more indictments and arrests could follow. On October 4, seven people associated with Wild Rockies EF! were called before a grand jury in Missoula, Montana investigating a tree spiking incident.

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Signs are that the government has begun an assault on radical environmental groups with the arrest of four people associated with the Earth First! movement and the order that 12 others appear before a federal grand jury. As we go to press, all we have are sketchy reports from the daily media and a quick call to the EF! Tucson headquarters, but it appears as though a class set-up is at work.

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The Grande Ballroom, through the goodness of Uncle Russ, will again be the scene of a huge benefit dance/concert for Trans-Love Energies Unlimited, the Detroit hippie / artists coop.

Titled “Homage to John Coltrane,” the concert will celebrate the birth of the late musical giant (Trane was born September 23^rd, 1926, on the first day of Libra) and commemorate his passage from this planet July 17^th, 1967. Music will be donated by the MC-5, the Up, and the Charles Moore Ensemble, Detroit’s first and most forward avant-garde jazz unit. Moore’s original group, the Detroit Contemporary 5, performed in a “Homage to John Coltrane” concert at the old Artists’ Workshop on Forest Avenue in November of 1964.

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There’s so much to say, man, that I don’t know where to start...maybe with the Five...the MC5 are a really classic example of environment and music coming together. There’s a Simple declaratory sentence for you...

The music affects the environment and...the environment affects the music. Dig? The machine, man. Detroit is a machine, The Machine even, and in the music of the Five...the frenzy, the anger...is the music of the Machine. Did you ever work in a factory? Jesus, I hope not. There’s music in the factory, but it’s the music of...metal crunching metal...a melody of violence...the Five are Man against Machine, baby, that’s all.

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The work that’s being done by the new Italian cinema continues to amaze me, and the latest entry proves no exception.

“Grazie, Zia” (Thank you, Aunt) was written and directed by Salvatore Samperi at the preposterous age of twenty-four. Yet it is a film of uncommon depth and shapeliness, so clearly the work of a mature, sophisticated artist.

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Unaccustomed though I may be to giving advice which will earn money for someone other than myself I feel duty bound to give you some information concerning two forthcoming attractions at the Grande Ballroom.

Foremost, by date of appearance only, is the Jeff Beck group. Some of you will probably remember Jeff as being the guitarist in whose shadow stands, and always will stand, Jimmy Page, present “Lead Player” with the Yardbirds, who having now disbanded leaves him as the lead player to Chris Dreja, bassist.

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On January 28, a guard woke anarchist grand jury resister Jerry Koch in his cell and told him to get ready for court. They handed him some thin prison sweats and cotton slippers, then kicked him out in downtown New York City without even a phone call. He had to run six blocks in fifteen-degree weather to his lawyers’ office.

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“The work we are going about is this, to dig up Georges Hill and the waste grounds thereabouts, and to sow corn, and to eat our bread together by the sweat of our brows.

“And the first reason is this, that we may work in righteousness, and lay the Foundation of making the Earth a Common Treasury for All, both Rich and Poor, that everyone That is born in the Land may be fed by the Earth his Mother that brought him forth, according to the Reason that rules in the Creation.”

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(reprinted from the LA Free Press)

Somewhere in Los Angeles this week, a small group of men and women are preparing the tenth in a series of weekly radio programs of news and critical commentary on America’s foreign policy which they tape and send to Hanoi for broadcast to American troops.

Since it is very possible that the activities of Radio Stateside, as the group calls itself, are illegal (they are urging American soldiers to oppose America’s role in Vietnam), everything is done in clandestine fashion.

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The graphics/collages on pages 9–13 are taken from “Manual for Revolutionary Leaders” by M. Velli, and appear in the book in full color. It is available through our book service and is listed on page 18.

Each construction contains a variety of images representing the rise to power of the leader and his party, and the process of modernization and industrialization.

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a review of

The Solutions are Already Here: Strategies for Ecological Revolution from Below by Peter Gelderloos. Pluto Press 2022

The climate crisis is here. While climate change coverage in mainstream media remains paltry, it is impossible to miss the ways the climate crisis is unfolding. Year after year of record wildfire seasons, of the warmest years on record, of devastating heat waves in Europe and Asia. And, this is only the beginning.

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Three years ago, Fifth Estate ran an article on the activities of the two dozen or so privatized armies in Occupied Iraq. The essay claimed that the name of one rent-a-gun company--Blackwater USA--was derived from the term used by the US Navy to describe stealthy, night-time Swift Boat assaults (like the one that former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey went on in 1969 when he single-handedly cut the throats of at least twenty women, children, and old men in the small Vietnamese hamlet of Thanh Phong).

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John Wayne BIFF! has made a new movie POW! called “The Green Berets” AAP! It’s currently appearing at the Adams Theatre, and I want all you weak-kneed, yellow-bellied draft dodgers out there to double time down to see it.

The real-life John Waynes display their handiwork in Vietnam. The photo was sent to Vietnam GI, an anti-war paper edited by Vietnam Vets in Chicago. Photo courtesy of Vietnam GI/LNS.

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The ludicrous charges against the federal Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act Four (AETA4) show the absolute depths to which the Green Scare has plummeted. According to the Civil Liberties Defense Center (CLDC), the four animal liberation activists are charged with “terrorism” under the AETA for (and, we kid you not, because I could not make up something so ridiculous if I wanted to) “protesting, chalking the sidewalk, chanting and leafleting--and the alleged use of ‘the Internet to find information on bio-medical researchers.’”

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The solar array’s passive tracking system wakes to the first rays of the Pennsylvania summer sun. The solar panels don’t care that today is the solstice, or that the sun will rise on its arc to an angle of 72.5° at noon.

Its rusting actuators will strain to follow the sun all the way to its apex. As freon warms in the black copper tubes that run along the edges of the frame, the liquid vaporizes and moves from one side to the other. The tracker begins its daily task of following the thermal energy of the sun, keeping the photovoltaic panels facing into the sunlight as it moves along a course from east to west.

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a review of

Rebellious Mourning: The Collective Work of Grief, ed. Cindy Milstein. 37 essays, 412 pp. with 32-page color insert. AK Press, 2017

Rebellious Mourning is an ambitious edited volume by Cindy Milstein with enormous depth and breadth of highly relevant and timely cross-cultural case studies. This work by Milstein (sole author of Anarchism and Its Aspirations, AK Press) represents her third edited book project.

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