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a review of

All-American Anarchist: Joseph A. Labadie and the Labor Movement, Carlotta R. Anderson, Wayne State University Press, Detroit, 1998, 324 pp., $34.95

As a native Detroiter, I was raised with a belief in the strength of the labor movement, the power of the unions, and the importance of the Almighty Henry Ford to the economic life of Detroit.

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Everybody knows what the cops and the National Guard are supposed to do during a “civil disturbance,” right?

They are supposed to stop Black people from looting, burning, and killing. The only problem with this formulation is that these guardians of law and order usually involve themselves in the very activities they are supposed to be suppressing.

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With the exception of one or two judges, the Recorder’s Court of the city of Detroit has never acted as anything more than an extension of the police department. The police can only hold a suspect for 72 hours. Recorder’s Court can do it for the rest of your natural born life.

Except for the volume of cases involved it will be impossible for the court to return to normal. It never departed from it. And while various sections of Detroit’s power structure were brought into sharp relief in recent weeks -Recorder’s Court surpassed itself.

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An Introduction to Graham Purchase’s Kropotkin

Graham Purchase’s essay reveals what a subtle and revolutionary thinker Kropotkin was. While underestimating the importance of the mutual aid theory (certainly it was more than the one per cent of Kropotkin’s theoretical perspective and his written work that Purchase claims, but this is a secondary point to the subject at hand), Purchase has demonstrated other aspects of the anarchist Prince’s thinking that were vastly important and prescient in recognizing where ideas about nature (ecological nature but also the very structure of the cosmos) were going in this century. Readers familiar with the Gaia hypothesis and chaos theory will find much here of interest. Finally, the convergence of Kropotkin’s perspective on anarchy and the modern synthesis of holism and organicism is a vindication of anarchy as both a theoretical perspective and a model or paradigm for nature.

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When Winston Smith, in Orwell’s 1984, sits down to begin the diary which he has secretly acquired and which in and of itself is a criminal possession, he is mortified to discover that he has nothing—and everything—to say, that to begin means to start from scratch, to recreate language and meaning, to challenge everything, to make a statement large enough to identify the horror which pervades life and yet which can transcend that horror.

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I pull up to the self service gas pumps,

all the clicking numbers, my windows dirty,

stuck. The gallons flowing, the gas arches

into the tank in a gush.

I look at what comes out of the hose—

diving ducks like black drips. Grebes

and cormorants unravel through the hose.

A warm belly

carries the deaths of Valdez.

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“Confront the Warmakers” is no idle phrase. Coming together from throughout the nation on October 21 and 22, war opponents will march, demonstrate, petition and culminate the activities by mass acts of civil disobedience inside the Pentagon.

The confrontation will be real and physical. Of the 200,000 plus participants, 10,000 are expected to sit-in to block the doorways of the Pentagon, says the National Mobilizing Committee, “preventing people from entering to work but permitting them to leave. If they are able to enter the building the direct actionists will also block the hallways and staircases.”

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Editor’s note: Cultural critic Ivan Illich died in December 2002 at the age of 76. In tribute after tribute, his personal friends and admirers of his work marvel at Illich’s enduring generosity, humility, and radical spirit. While many at Fifth Estate have appreciated his influence, we never paid proper tribute. Now with this unschooling issue, we share a poem from one of our regular contributors and a very brief excerpt from the essential and prophetic 1970 book Deschooling Society.

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Pumpkin Hollow, Tenn.—I’m trying to pick this narrative up off the gravel road, gyrating back into the woods. This odyssey of drift must stop somewhere; that somewhere is here. Perhaps my nomadic motion can continue in psychic space as my body plants itself firmly on the ground, my ground, our ground. I previously chose to be homeless, a vagabond, a hobo, roaming, raving and misbehaving.

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I used to like ‘em too, just like everyone else, caught-up in that follow-the-other-people, emotional group-cohesion thing. But then I began to think! The Stooges are one example of a group that takes us (the audience) for fools and chumps.

Iggy goes thru all this sexual stuff and then he poses and finally JUMPS out into the audience on someone! He did this at Olympia, Halloween, and almost started a fight with the guy he jumped on! He cursed at the boy and called him names saying “Hit me, I dare ya” and stuff like that.

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I am a dumb old GI and I hate this MF Army. I want to subscribe to your underground paper. It’s not a very pleasant thing being here where I really don’t want to be.

The only thing that I want is to be back home (Detroit) and to be with my girl. I don’t want the war in Vietnam, or the Army or all of this unnecessary harassment. I’m not really proud of being in the Army although my parents seem to think so.

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Send letters to fe@fifthestate.org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length.

I appreciate Chellis Glendinning’s criticisms of modern, Western civilization, including modern agriculture, which has been highly detrimental to ecological and social balance in the world. (See “Linear Perspective, Fences & Nature’s Glory,” FE #396, Summer 2016.)

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We welcome your opinions.

Please send us your comments and ideas about what we have published by letter (typed or handwritten), email, or social media.

Address information is at our website: www.fifthestate.org

Florida Kollective

I’m writing on behalf of our small and growing kollective in northeast Florida.

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Send letters to fe — AT — fifthestate.org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length

As a fellow traveler/indie film maker, I have had the chance to learn about copyrighting from posting and also utilizing other people’s videos. [ See Fall 2011 FE, “Copyright or Wrong.”]

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FIFTH ESTATE LETTERS POLICY

We welcome letters commenting on our articles, ones stating opinions, or reports from your area. We can’t print every letter we receive, but each is read by our staff and considered for publication.

Letters via email or on disk are appreciated, but type- or hand-written ones are acceptable. Length should not exceed two, double spaced pages. If you are interested in writing a longer response, please contact us: POB 6, Liberty TN 37095. fifthestatenewspaper@yahoo.com

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Compiled in cooperation with Detroit Adventure

FRIDAY, JUNE 27

THE GOLDEN AGE OF COMEDY a selection from over 2,000 reels of magic moments with Laurel and Hardy, Will Rogers, Harry Langdon and others. And HAPPY-ANNIVERSARY (1961) and RUPTURE (1967) two delightful French shorts by Pierre Etaix. Rackham Aud. 60 Farnsworth. Adm. $1 students 75 cents.

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As we go to print, it is with great sadness that we report the passing of our compañero, amigo, padre, and abuelo, Federico Arcos, in Windsor, Ontario, at the age of 94. The last several months were very difficult for him, but all in all he lived long, fully, and admirably. He stood for lasting and noble human values. He cared about human beings and the Earth. He believed in justice and freedom and human solidarity and compassion. He had a powerful and permanent effect on us.

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We encourage your participation in this project with your comments on the publication & its perspectives. While we will read every letter, we will usually print the most enticing & engaging. E-mail letters or letters sent on disk are appreciated.

Write us! at PO Box 6, Liberty, TN 37095, or 4632 Second Avenue, Detroit, MI 48201, or email FifthEstate@pumpkinhollow.net

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Hello:

I would like to subscribe to the Fifth Estate. I’m impressed with the content or the majority of it enough to want to see more.

However, the format and layout will assure you that only the true believers will ever read it regularly. You don’t break up the columns, it’s endlessssssssss. Visually it’s dull; reminds me of The Weekly People, only with possibilities.

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On Saturday, January 4, Victory Fidelman and Ron Halstead, two members of the Resistance, along with two servicemen, Seaman Norman Gelnaw and Ray Greer, a member of U.S. Army Military Intelligence and a Vietnam veteran, distributed copies of The Bond to active duty servicemen at Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

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As a writer who is often criticized for being too difficult, academic or stylistic, I was immensely heartened by your response to London Greenpeace’s letter (see FE #326, Summer 1987) taking you all to task for those sins. I’d like to add a few points.

In England, “style” has certain class connotations; style is withheld from the underclass deliberately, & reserved for the literati who are almost without exception middle-to-upper-class. Therefore, among radicals (from the “plain”-speaking Quakers on) a distrust has arisen, a disgust for elegance (whether in the science-sense of “accurate & inspired” or in the aesthetic sense of “useless” beauty).

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Dear Comrades,

At a picnic held July 9 at Los Gatos we received an income of $841 in which we distributed as follows:

Freedom $75; Black Flag $75; Open Road $75; Fifth Estate $75; Rivista A $200; L’Internazionale $150; Volonta $121; Interogation $70.

Some of the contributors were not present—those being: John Vattuone $20; T. Martocchia $20; Peter Puccio $20; Fred Francescutti $20; Dal Fondo Nicola $100; San Vitulli $10; Armando $10; Romeo $10.

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Like the stars, the night

Like the sun, the day

The dawn, the morning

The flower, the petal

The bee, the nectar

The beehive, the honey

The lover, the beloved

So one carries the Ideal In one’s thoughts

You ask me if I can define anarchism. It’s very difficult for me to do concretely. Personally, I don’t consider myself good enough to call myself an anarchist because I have always believed that to be one it would be necessary to reach the extreme point of sacrifice and to devote oneself without reservation to doing good, without limit and without cease. I can say that I still find myself tied to those endless commodities that contemporary society has created, and even though I try to limit them as much as I can, it will never be enough. The Tolstoyan spirit that commends the freedom of the isolated individual, I will never be able to attain.

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Murray Bookchin must be getting cranky in his old age. Upon reading his latest broadside, Social Anarchism Or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm, I was rudely smacked in the face by déja vu. Evidently Bookchin is beating a dead horse, trying to breathe life back into an old controversy within the anarchist movement that dates back a century.

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Reprinted from Detroit Scope

“Detroit is controlled 100% by the Mafia,” says a man close to Mafia kingpins. Many Detroit police officers admit there is a great deal of truth in that statement because of the extent to which the Mafia influences police department activities.

These officers say the department has been so infiltrated by men in the power of the Mafia that Detroit police cannot be effective against organized crime. The Central Intelligence Bureau (CIB) has been denied authority to investigate killings and other activities associated with the Mafia even though it was originally created for the purpose of combating organized crime. Some officers say the orders to “lay off’ the Mafia come from the highest levels.

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An open letter can be read by anyone. You are welcome to read it or not, but let me explain what this letter is about and to whom it is addressed. It is a letter about Vietnam and Johnson and Death.

If you support the war in Vietnam because you want the National Liberation Front to win, this letter is not addressed to you. (I admire and respect the courage of the N.L.F. but I think I respect the Buddhists there more, struggling without guns, and in their naivete hoping to touch the mechanical heart of McNamara through self-immolation. They have died without killing—the greatest courage—and if anyone were to have my loyalty it would be the Buddhists.)

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The only good thing the Three Mile Island accident has provided is a needed kick in the butt to the anti-nuclear movement. Or rather the small, dedicated groups across the country which have been waging mostly losing struggles against nuclear energy may be at the point where the movement will take on mass proportions.

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Fifth Estate

1107 West Warren

831–6800

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

Naiomi Epel

Advertising

Leon Brenner

Joe Drozdowski

Tom Yates

Circulation

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The Fifth Estate is a cooperative, nonprofit project, publishing since 1965. The people who produce it are a group of friends who do so neither to secure wages nor as an investment in the newspaper industry, but to encourage resistance to an unjust and destructive society.

The Fifth Estate (ISSN No. 0015–0800) is published quarterly at 4632 Second Ave., Detroit, Michigan 48201 USA;

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The Fifth Estate (FE) is a cooperative, nonprofit project, publishing since 1965. As opposed to professionals who publish to secure wages Or invest in the information industry, our collective consists of volunteer writers, artists, and editors—friends who produce the paper as an expression of resistance to an unjust and destructive society.

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I imagine you, your voice stopped

by the speed with which the lives around you crumble.

I imagine you wanting, trying to write,

not about the blood stains at your door,

not about the fragments of your family

huddled in basements, nor about the hate

rising in pandemic streams

but about the tree hidden in some

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The Fifth Estate is a co-operative project, published by a group of friends who are in general, but not necessarily complete agreement with the articles herein. Each segment of the paper represents the collective effort of writing, typesetting, lay-out and proofreading.

The Fifth Estate Newspaper (ISSN No. 00150800) is published quarterly at 4632 Second Ave., Detroit, Michigan 48201 USA; phone (313) 831–6800. Office hours vary, so please call before visiting. Subscriptions are $6.00 a year; $8.00 foreign including Canada. Second class postage paid at Detroit MI. No copyright. No paid advertisements.

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Fifth Estate

EDITORIAL GROUP

Alan Gotkin

Peter Werbe

Cathy West

Tommye Wiese

DISTRIBUTION

Bruce Montrose

Fred Frank

BUSINESS & ADVERTISING

Bill Rowe

CITY EDITOR

Chris Singer

MUSIC EDITOR

John Sinclair

STAFF

Dena Clamage

Claudia Montrose

Franie Nelson

Dave Watson

Marilyn Werbe

The FIFTH ESTATE is published every other Thursday of each month by the Fifth Estate Newspaper, Inc., 1107 W. Warren, Detroit, Michigan 48201. Application to mail at second-class postage rates is pending at Detroit Michigan. Subscription rate is $3 for one year; $5 for two years. Canadian is $3.50; all other foreign are $5 per year. Phone: 831–6800.

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THE FIFTH ESTATE

A NEWSPAPER OF DETROIT

EDITORS

Harvey Ovshinsky

Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Cathy West

CIRCULATION

Tommye Wiese

NEWS EDITOR

Alan Gotkin

MUSIC EDITOR

John Sinclair

PHOTO EDITOR

Mike Tyre

ART DIRECTION

Blallen

ADVERTISING

Gunnar Lewis

CALENDAR

Resa Jannett

IDEOLOGUE

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EDITORS

Harvey Ovshinsky

Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Cathy West

CIRCULATION

Tommye Wiese

Pat Klees

DISTRIBUTION

Eric Watkins

ADVERTISING

Gunnar Lewis

ART DIRECTOR

Ed Bania

CALENDAR

Naomi

STAFF

Cindy Lee

Marlene Tyre

Michael Tyre

Marilyn Werbe

The FIFTH ESTATE is published on the 1^st and 16^th of each month by the FIFTH ESTATE NEWSPAPER, Inc., 1007.W. Warren, Detroit, Michigan 48201. Subscription rate by third class mail is $3 for one year; $5 for two years. Canadian is $3.50 per year, all other foreign countries are $5 per year. Phone 831–6800.

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Our friend and comrade, Mick Vranich, died March 29 following a terrible construction accident in February. If you ever met Mick, you wouldn’t forget him. You may have seen him perform his poetry, punctuating lines with a stoic stare or watched him play guitar, amazed at his ability to perfect each note, each chord in sync with poetic ease. Perhaps you attended one of his benefits calling for freedom for Leonard Peltier. Maybe you just stopped by his Solstice campfire in the middle of Detroit and were offered a cup of coffee and some real, true talk, or poems like the ones of his on this page.

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“SMV: Social Media Virus” by A. Esmie Wright was one of the many plays presented at the 11^th annual Montreal International Anarchist Theatre Festival (MIATF) May 17 and 18, 2016. It is the world’s only such event; a yearly, volunteer labor of love, presenting provocative, socially engaged, freedom-loving theatre from around the world at an affordable price. It adheres to the anarchist tradition of no government handouts or corporate sponsorship.

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Monday, Nov. 7, the Wayne Committee to End the War in Vietnam staged a Teach-In as part of the November Mobilization for Peace, Jobs, and Freedom at Wayne University’s Community Arts Auditorium. Breakthrough, a militant right-wing group, provided a slight pause in the big action at the Teach-In.

Three members of Breakthrough attempted to elbow their way into the auditorium as Joe Mora, brother of Dennis Mora from the Fort Hood Three, was speaking. The Breakthrough group was met by a contingent from the WCEWV who attempted to remove the unruly group from the auditorium. As the two groups scuffled by the entrance, Donald Lob-singer, leader of Breakthrough, was struck solidly on the left cheek by an unidentified man.

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The cover graphic of the mushroom cloud with the word WAR! in seven centimeter lettering across the front struck me as highly appropriate for the Fifth Estate (See FE #307, Nov. 19, 1981). It would seem to me that a worldwide nuclear war would surely be a progressive step towards “Paleolithic Liberation.” In all your polemics against technology and in your point by point rebuttals to pro-tech arguments you never seem to deal with the sort of question I am inclined to raise. Namely, how do you expect 4 billion people to sustain themselves on this planet in a hunter gatherer mode of production?

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Nothing much to report or rap about; so just a few brief notes.

Our abortive record deal with ESP records is still fouled. We wrote the record company in New York and asked if they could mail the bonus records to our new subscribers, but they have not answered to date.

A few people have come into our office to pick up their albums, but the majority of them remain here in the office confronting us accusingly. If you live in the Detroit area please come and get your record or if you live a distance away write us a note and we will send it to you.

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Editors’ Note: Linda Evans, from Motor City SDS, was one of seven Movement people who went to North Vietnam to retrieve three captured American military men. Their original goal of merely receiving the prisoners and escorting them back to the U.S. was changed as the Vietnamese realized that most of them represented segments of the Movement that were not pacifist, but had actively joined in the struggle of the Vietnamese and were fighting in the U.S. to end the war.

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Send your publication for review.

Anchorage Anarchy # 11 December 2007, $1 from BAD Press, PO Box 230332, Anchorage AK 99523 bbrigade (at) world (dot) std (dot) com

Individualist anarchist periodical from Alaska. (12 pp)

Black Flag #226, BM Hurricane London, WC1N 3XX UK black_flag (at) lycos (dot) co (dot) uk

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From a leaflet by the Angry Workers Group, 2000 Center St., No. 1200, Berkeley CA 94704, which was passed out during Fleet Week in San Francisco, October, 1985.

The past few years have seen a wholesale rewriting of the history of American involvement in Vietnam. From the official government versions of the events to extremely violent television shows and movies like “The Deer Hunter” and “Rambo,” the people who rule us are attempting to glamorize the slaughter of the Indochinese Wars as a prelude to the next war. It might be in the Philippines or Southern Africa, Central America or Korea. It might be fought on five or ten fronts simultaneously with the Soviet Union. Or maybe they’ll send us off to massacre the populations of Spain or Italy or Britain in the suppression of a revolutionary civil war in Western Europe.

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CU CHI, South Vietnam—Some time ago, Capt. Frank Smith (Bravo Company, Second Battalion, 27^th Infantry) passed the word down to his First Platoon that he needed a patrol near the Cambodian border.

The platoon, however, declined to go.

Smith, faced in fact with mutiny, said immediately that he was not asking for volunteers. He was ordering the platoon into activity and he expected instant compliance.

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Editors’ Note: People Concerned About Urban Renewal (PCAUR) is a community based organization that has resisted the expansion of Wayne State University and demanded local control of all renewal projects.

Their main political strategy is to build neighborhood block clubs and to agitate for the rights of the citizens of the Warren Forest area. This article taken from an article in the weekly paper, The Community Reporter, was written by Bob Repoley. PCAUR may be reached at 831–5664.

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New Orleans headquarters of the Common Ground Collective

The mutual-aid tendency in man has so remote an origin, and is so deeply interwoven with all the past evolution of the human race, that it has been maintained by mankind up to the present time, notwithstanding all vicissitudes of history.

-- Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid

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The 15 minutes of fame for Ted Kaczynski, the convicted Unabomber, are not up after all. He’s been in the news several times recently. Kaczynski is releasing an autobiographical account of his life, entitled Truth Versus Lie, printed by Context Media. This new, small, New York City publisher picked up the manuscript after hearing that Simon and Schuster rejected it.

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The prolific III Publishing group, PO Box 1581, Guala CA 95445, recently released two new books. Saab Lofton’s A.D. is set in 2410 where society is organized according to libertarian principles, but a menace from the past threatens the future. J.G. Eccarius, author of the blasphemous The Last Days of Christ the Vampire, latest book. Resurrection 2027, is a post-apocalyptic thriller set in the year of the title where rebellion is the only way out for children resurrected from the dead. III is also publishing Anti-Christ magazine, formerly The Stake, and wants to exchange ads with other zines.

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From Coimbra, Portugal comes Pravda, put out by Fenda Editions. Pravda, with its obviously tongue-in-cheek title, describes itself as “a magazine of evil arts” and has just published its third issue. Although it refuses categorization, it could be described as a dada-esque journal of anti-politics and anti-art. It is infused with an impassioned desire to fight against the isolation which consumes us all. It will do this, its editors tell us, “by the undiplomatic unjournalistic communication between individuals who do not recognize themselves in that which the world of practical shit happiness avows and promotes.” They are defiant against this world in which “misery is the vicious synonym of wealth, and submission the frenetic synonym of liberty.”

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LONDON (PWS) Beatle John Lennon is scheduled to head the list of guest stars set for the Rolling Stones’ first American television special, “The Rolling Stones’ Rock and Roll Circus.” Lennon, along with Eric Clapton, Keith Richard, and Mitch Mitchell of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, will form a supergroup especially for the show.

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