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Before becoming Situationists and involving themselves in the business of social war and cultural revolution in 1960s Europe, Guy Debord and his friends were active in the Lettrist International. They read too much Baudelaire and Marx, drank too much cheap Beaujolais, and aimlessly prowled the streets of Cold War Paris seeking liberty, love, the supersession of art, and an escape from post-Marshall Plan consumer culture while staying one step ahead of the cops. From 1954 to 1957, the Lettrists published a free periodical called Potlatch, which later became the Situationist International’s internal newsletter. Debord explained the choice of title for the publication in an essay in 1959: The goods that a free bulletin such as this distributes are non-salable. Only the further elaboration of these new desires and problems by others can constitute the corresponding return gift.” As would be seen later in Debord’s thinking on the spectacle, Potlatch was meant as a way to critically assess the vicious cultural logic of capitalism, the dead world of commodities, and the ways in which the accepted dynamics of the modern exchange economy had neutralized classical working-class Marxism. Instead, the Lettrists were hearkening to an alternative to the capitalist exchange of equivalence. This alternative was practiced by the aboriginal peoples of the Pacific Northwest famously described by late nineteenth century ethnographer Franz Boas and pre-World War II anthropologist Marcel Mauss.

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It started around 10:30 p.m. Monday, July 24 on Prentis, while there was a small integrated group sitting in front of our apartment building, talking like they do every night, and the police came by and saw them and said “Get in the house, white boy, and you too nigger!”

Fifth Estate co-editors Ovshinsky & Werbe interview looters as they window-shop at a cleaners at the corner of Trumbull and Forest. Photo by C.T. Walker.

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The Legal Self Defense (LSD) benefit February 4^th was the greatest success in my memory: over 1200 people attended and offered their bread for support, and the LSD Fund netted over $2200.00 for the community.

A Board of Directors for LSD was set up to handle the disbursement of the money when people need it, and a bank account was opened in the name of Legal Self Defense. The Board comprises Brother Jack Forest, Detroit Captain White Panthers; Brother John Watson, editor of the South End newspaper; Brother Pun Plamondon, editor of the Sun (Ann Arbor) and Minister of Defense, White Panthers National Office; Brother Alan Gotkin, of the Fifth Estate Editorial Group and Minister of Propaganda, Detroit White Panthers; and Revs. James Markunas and Robert Morrison from St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church.

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On April 30, the professional headbusters of the Detroit Police Department turned a love-in into a violent hate-in.

On Sunday, May 22, at a Toledo, Ohio mock war show, several hippies and new leftists tried a reverse procedure. They tried to stage a love-in at the cite where the Toledo Chamber of Commerce and the local military had built a Vietcong village which they planned to destroy as an exercise for Armed Forces Day.

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Now that things have cooled down a little for the MC5 and myself after all the excitement of recent weeks maybe I can get into some of the things I promised when I started this column—although the stuff you’ve been reading about the MC5 saga serves as an illustration of the original point: that there’s a lot more to the rock and roll industry than just paying your $3.50 and digging the show stoned on your ass. All those things you read about in the last three or four issues really happened.

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In the past two weeks since the last issue of this paper a bunch of new developments have taken place: Almost every job for the MC5 brings a new and different creep scene into being.

At a Wednesday night job in Tecumseh, Michigan, at the local teen center, guitarist Wayne Kramer ripped a pair of pants early in the second set and went off to change them. Later in the same set he ripped the second pair of pants, this time accidentally exposing his genitals to the tender crowd.

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The biggest mistake in bringing Shakespeare to the screen is to construct some sort of stone effigy to him. But France Zeffirelli’s film production of “Romeo & Juliet,” at the Studio 8, pulsates with a life all its own.

In translating a stage drama to a visual medium, much of the dialogue has been cut in favor of the action. Surprisingly, this works beautifully. “Romeo & Juliet” is a remarkably visual movie that could stand on its own for the imagery alone. The result is a thoroughly “cinematic” film adaptation.

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In the aftermath of L.B.J.‘s sudden shocker,* a heated dialogue between Phil Ochs, folksinger, and Jerry Rubin, Yippie organizer, took place on the subject of America, Johnson, Kennedy and the movement. Perhaps it was not untypical...

RUBIN: The six-gun has surrendered; the machine will now move back into control of America’s banks. Rationality will replace the sloppy hand. Kennedy, the mechanical consumer product, will replace Johnson, the existential gambler. And things won’t be as interesting up there.

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The Evergreen Alliance, a Detroit-based federation of individuals devoted to stopping the Detroit trash incinerator, has put out a call for a Regional and International Mobilization to Save the Great Lakes, May 13-May 16. [See schedule in this issue.] This weekend of activities Has been organized to focus attention on the systematic destruction of the Great Lakes bioregion. The weekend will include a large-scale demonstration which will march past the Detroit incinerator now under construction and a rally at the Wayne State University campus. A conference and forum the following day will serve to educate participants with workshops, and several nationally known speakers have been invited to participate. A direct action contingent will utilize civil disobedience to blockade the trash incinerator on Monday, May 16.

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As I was sitting in Grant Park in Chicago August 28 what to my tear-gassed eyes should appear but a beautiful young girl with a free copy of the Fifth Estate.

She handed me a copy with a smile on her face so I immediately began to read every page, through the tears in my eyes. It was beautiful to say the least.

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Is it wrong to hope? Is it wrong to have a dream and to keep searching for the realization of that dream? I’ve been told that anything worth obtaining is invariably very difficult to obtain. To some people this means working overtime to get the resources for a long awaited vacation; to others it is the sacrifice of social position in return for personal integrity; and to still others (and these are few, unfortunately) it is the complete denial of oneself in order that someone else’s dreams be fulfilled. Of course, there are very few of us who are willing to go beyond the first mentioned sacrifice.

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This band’s blues roots were first formed years ago during the British blues invasion started by The Rolling Stones. During this embryonic stage, many teenagers had suspicions that the Stones were copying...yes, copying, but from whom?

Some started research, combing through old Negro blues LP’s until they happened on a song title they recognized, and discovered that the Stones were drawing from many blues sources.

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A good voice and a standard arrangement just are not enough for today’s ears. Within that thought lies a lot of truth and a lot of music conforms to just that formula.

Creativity: if the record medium is to mean anything in that light, then the effort, big E, has to be there from the outset. To wit: Joan Baez’s latest cuts on Vanguard are what some would call competent, but to me they just sound lazy and uninspired. Joan’s ventures into the rock idiom, even if you called them interpretations, are almost funny due to their lack of fortitude or GUTS!

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In The Underground History of American Education, the renegade educator John Taylor Gatto traces the genealogy of compulsory public-school education in the US back to the system of pedagogy created in the nineteenth-century northern European state of Prussia. Prussia is often seen by historians as the architect of German nationalist unification; after the Napoleonic invasion of 1806, the Prussian military aristocracy decided that it needed to reform education in that kingdom so that new, centralized schools could produce “obedient soldiers to the army; obedient workers for mines, factories, and farms; well-subordinated civil servants, trained in their function; well-subordinated clerks for industry; citizens who thought alike on most issues; and national uniformity in thought, word, and deed.” The Prussian education model became heavily geared toward patriotism and civic virtue after the near-success of the Revolution of 1848; the ruling class in Prussia wanted to insure that the contagion of revolutionary ideas was not being picked up in the schools.

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“A nuclear power plant is infinitely safer than eating, because 300 people choke to death on food each year.”

— Dixy Lee Ray, former head of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), now governor of Washington

“You can’t have a riskless society.”

— Nelson A. Rockefeller on the leakage of radioactive water from the two million cubic feet of buried radioactive trash and 600,000 gallons of highly radioactive liquid wastes at the West Valley, New York nuclear waste recycling plant

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At this time every year, aliens are required to register with the United States Government, who bring you Chevrolets, racism, Herb Alpert and the Tiajuana Brass and other fine products.

In spite of the fact that the government has kindly erected big, prominent buildings called post offices where aliens can register, each year many people who should notify the authorities of their alienation fail to do so.

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Unclassifieds cost 50 cents per line per issue. Figure four words per line. (A word is a word including one and two letter words. A phone number is a word. Street numbers are words. Abbreviations should be sensible. DISCOUNT RATES: Five runs cost 35 cents per line.

All unclassifieds must be paid for in advance.

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Once in the Jurassic, about 150 million years ago, the Great Sun Buddha in this corner of the Infinite Void gave a great Discourse to all the assembled elements and energies: to the standing beings, the walking beings, the flying beings, and the sitting beings—even grasses, to the number of thirteen billion, each one born from a seed, were assembled there: a Discourse concerning Enlightenment on the planet Earth.

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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 handwritten ones are acceptable. Length should not exceed two double spaced pages. If you are interested in writing a longer response, please contact us.

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a review of

Society Against the State, by Pierre Clastres. Mole Editions, Urizen Press, N.Y., 1977, 186 pp. $12.95

A shockingly high price for such a slim volume, but this book from a publishing house “owned by its employees and sharing profits with its authors and translators” is the best general work on anthropology I’ve read. Clastres not only evaluates “primitive communism” from the inside, the viewpoint of the tribe itself, but also manages, almost despite himself, to avoid romanticizing everything for the poor civilized reader, so hungry for rumors of freedom.

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London (UNS) By Mail — Stokely Carmichael participated in the International Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation in London at the Round House.

During his stay here, he also spoke with Black people from Asia, Africa and the West Indies.

On Sunday, July 23, he addressed a massive, mostly Black, session of the Congress and announced he would be unable to attend further meetings next week because he was leaving unexpectedly.

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A couple of us went downtown to Cobo Hall on a cold Friday night to check out the rally to “overturn the Reagan program” and to pass out a few copies of the last issue to the curious. The rally was being staged by the “All Peoples Congress” all-weekend convention, a left-liberal amalgam; everyone from Dykes Against Racism Everywhere to trade unionists, feminists, Democratic Party hacks looking for a constituency, and leninists looking for cannon fodder. The posters had been all over the city since summer, free bus rides were being offered every fifteen minutes or so from various welfare and unemployment offices, Gil Scott Heron was supposed to perform on Saturday night for a benefit—it had all the makings of a slick, combination carnival and revival meeting. The revival, that is, of the Popular Front to Fight “Reaganism,” led by liberal politicians and trade union bureaucrats and staffed by the minions of the leninist parties looking for a piece of the action. But we had a lot of extra papers lying around turning yellow, and we were starting work on another issue, so we decided to potlatch them out of here and hand them out to the folks who might have taken the free bus ride to go somewhere where it was warm, and to perhaps shake up the true believers with some blasts against civilization.

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NEW YORK (LNS)—Four hundred demonstrators massed in front of Penn Station August 2 to support 38 Fort Dix, N.J. GIs who face court-martials for having participated in a stockade uprising.

The protesters called for the elimination of all Army stockades, dropping charges against the Ft. Dix 38, and the freeing of all political prisoners—including Black Panther Minister of Defense Huey P. Newton.

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The FIFTH ESTATE is published every other Thursday of each month by the Fifth Estate Newspaper, Inc., 1107 W. Warren, Detroit, Michigan 48201. Second class postage paid at Detroit, Michigan.

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I’m interested in unschooling because it’s an applied philosophy rather than a teaching method. This philosophy, which I strive to use daily with my son, who is now 16 years old, is also the one used in free schools. For me, this approach to life and to children’s’ development encourages independence, confidence, and pleasure in living. Experiencing unschooling with my son has permitted us to go beyond the simple accumulation of knowledge.

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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. 0015–0800) is published quarterly at P.O. Box 02548, Detroit, Michigan 48202 USA;

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In a virtually unprecedented move, Reverend Robert Morrison, rector of St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church, has called for the resignation of Richard Emrich as diocesan Bishop of Michigan, calling him “unchristian, inhuman and irresponsible.”

This call comes in the wake of the decision of the Episcopal diocese of Detroit to cut off funds for Reverend Morrison’s church because he allows the Gay Liberation Front, a homosexual group, to meet at the Church.

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In late May and early June 2007, sentences were handed down for ten activists who pled guilty to a series of Earth Liberation Front/Animal Liberation Front (ELF/ALF) actions.

In addition to jail time, eight of the activists also received a federal “terrorism enhancement,” which allows for increased penalties of up to 20 additional years. The Civil Liberties Defense Center said this was the “first time in US history that the federal government” had sought “such a sentence enhancement for property crimes that neither intended nor resulted in injury or death to humans.”

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Response to:

A Bicentennial moment: Haymarket Square Riot by Bob Nirkind, Fifth Estate #272, May, 1976, Vol. 11, No. 8, page 10

To the Fifth Estate:

A brief note concerning Bob Nirkind’s treatment of the Knights of Labor in the May issue of the Fifth Estate.

Most historians have seen the Knights of Labor as a backward-looking organization grounded in the craftsman’s rejection of the development of wage-slavery and the destruction of his skills—and privileges. There is a certain grain of truth in this, especially as far as the early years of the organization are concerned (1879 through 1884), and the leadership itself. However, in my own work (which meant looking at the Knights in great detail on both the local and national level) I found a more useful framework.

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Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: Is it possible to get high on morning glory seeds? If so, is it dangerous?

ANSWER: Morning glory seeds contain ololiuqui which is basically lysergic acid monethlamide. Ingesting the seeds gives an LSD-like experience but there is also almost invariably a prolonged period of severe nausea and vomiting. A real bummer.

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WARNING: Word is out that some tripsters are using the anesthetic cyclopropane (Trimethylene) for their highs. I hope this message reaches you in time.

Cyclopropane is far more dangerous than laughing, gas (nitrous oxide). Arrhythmias of the heart and respiratory failure are not uncommon effects of this gas. In other words, the heart may stop beating or beat so quickly and weakly that blood is not circulated through the body. Or the brain centers which control breathing may be so heavily anesthetized that breathing stops.

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A few days before the commencement in Pittsburgh of the July 23^rd conference, “A Remembrance of Alexander Berkman, The Man Who Shot Frick,” Sunfrog and I headed for a little town on the Pennsylvania/West Virginia border called Confluence where several rivers come together. We figured if rafting was good enough for Earth First! founder, Dave Foreman, maybe we should give it a try as well.

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Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

QUESTION: My lover and I heard a record on KMPX-FM one evening while in bed, about beating and biting one another as a way to come to sexual satisfaction.

We practiced along with the record and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I would beat on his back and he bit me all over. particularly around my armpits and breasts. It was very reciprocal and so pleasing we felt we should tell our friends. But since then we have been rejected as weirdoes.

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I concluded last issue by saying that, whereas in previous ages, nonconformists were able to “escape” society by taking refuge in an agrarian life, etc.; nonconformists in the interdependent society cannot escape. They can only rebel. And their rebellion demonstrates the absolute contradiction between the Social System and the Human Id (as a symbol of human freedom and satisfaction).

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The burden of war always falls heaviest on the toilers. They are taught that their masters can do no wrong and go out in vast numbers to be killed on the battlefield. And what is their reward? If they escape death they come back to face heavy taxation and have their burden of poverty doubled. Through all the ages they have been robbed of the just rewards of their patriotism as they have been of the just rewards of their labors.

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A review of

SACCO AND VANZETTI, Directed by Peter Miller, Willow Pond Films, www.willowpondfilms.com

To many anarchists, there are few more sympathetic characters in our movement’s history than Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.

The Martyrs’ Farewell
That we lost and have to die, does not diminish our appreciation and gratitude for your great solidarity with us and our families. Friends and Comrades, now that the tragedy of this trial is at an end, be all as of one heart. Only two of us will die. Our ideal, you our comrades, will live by millions. We have won. We are not vanquished. Just treasure our suffering, our sorrow, our mistakes, our defeats, our passion for future battles and for the great emancipation.
Be all as of one heart in this blackest hour of our tragedy. And we have heart. Salute for us all the Friends and Comrades on the earth.
We embrace you all and bid you our extreme good-bye with our hearts filled with love and affection.
Now and ever, long life to you all, long life to liberty.
Yours for life and death.
--Nicola Sacco, Bartolomeo Vanzetti (Death House, August 21, 1927)

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In mid-August, a three year-old lawsuit charging that environmentalist groups were religious extremists comparable to some of the more violent, intolerant ultra-orthodox Islamic sects collapsed when the attorney failed to meet a re-filing deadline with the U.S. Supreme Court.

The suit had been brought against Forest Guardians, the Superior Wilderness Action Network, and the U.S. Forest Service by the 125 companies that make up the Associated Contract Loggers (A.C.L.) of northern Minnesota. The loggers were asking for $600,000 in damages and permission to plunder timber from the Superior National Forest.

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a review of

“Blade Runner 2049.” Director: Denis Villeneuve 146 min. (2017)

“Blade Runner 2049” slightly recalibrates the social dimensions of Ridley Scott’s 1982 android rebellion tale, “Blade Runner”—based on Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?—tailoring it for a new generation.

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The barn is bursting with new titles & more to come. If you’d like us to review and/or distro your independent publication, bring it on

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UNCLASSIFIEDS cost 50 cents per line per issue. Figure four words per line. (A word is a word including one and two letter words. A phone number is a word. Street numbers are words. Abbreviations should be sensible. DISCOUNT RATES: Five runs cost 35 cents per line.

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A lot has happened since the last time I wrote this column, and I still don’t know what’ll come of it, but all we can do is ride it out and see what we can do with it. My own situation has changed a great deal even though I certainly don’t feel any different as a human being, but it sure is weird to walk or drive down the street and have strangers smile and wave because they saw me on TV and were given to believe that “John Sinclair is the high priest of the hippies in Detroit” or whatever.

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I was speaking of the change taking place in this nation, and would say that in America the change is most evident in two sectors or subcultures of the civilization. In the black stinking ghettoes of the poor and exploited, and in those sections of cities and land where the enlightened young have gathered for all intents and purposes outside the rigid general social framework of this America. These two sectors illustrate the two “major steps” outlined in this column last time.

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There is a growing movement in this country to end the exploitation and oppression of the people in our own country and the people of the world. As it grows, so do the attempts to squash that movement and its supposed leaders.

The latest attempt is to blame the trouble that arose on the November 15 march on Washington on a conspiracy of the leaders of the New Mobilization Committee.

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a review of

Isabelle Walks With Angels: A Montreal Urban legend by Norman Nawrocki, Illustrated by Ivan R. Les Pages Noires, 2023

Norman Nawrocki’s novella is a beautifully illustrated story, allegory, or fable about a woman who had a home, but lost it. All her adult life there have been abusive men: lovers, landlords bosses, restaurant clients. She loses what little she has and is now living on the street, defending herself from predators the best she can. All the avenues have been closed, there’s only one left...jumping into the freezing waters of the Saint-Laurence Seaway from a high bridge.

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A high school diploma. Whether it’s meaningful or not is your own trip, but I think you’ll have to agree that it’s often an essential ingredient in getting a job or going to college in this bizarre country we inhabit.

If you’re a dropout and have been putting aside the idea of going back because of the hassles involved then read on brothers and sisters, it’s a whole lot easier than you’d think.

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This story begins in the middle of a long night. I had been reading a tale in which the noted storyteller Baal Shem Tov appears and this was a dream I had in response to this reading.

A Jewish orphan born in Poland in 1698, Baal Shem Tov was a legendary personality of the heretical, Hassidim movement who sublimated in acts and words the aspirations of the medleant and wandering Jews.

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“In areas where our people are the constant victims of brutality, and the government seems unable or unwilling to protect them, we should form rifle clubs that can be used to defend our lives and our property in times of emergency...When our people are bitten by dogs, they are within their rights to kill those dogs.”

—Malcolm X

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Editors’ Note: The following is the introduction to a speech written by John Sinclair at Marquette prison and read by Jesse Crawford at the Free John Sinclair Day benefit at the Grande Ballroom, Jan 24. Contrary to reports on WABX’s Rock and Roll news the audience received the fifty minute reading with great interest and solemnity.

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