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Though he never recorded, his spirit hovers over the American musical imagination, whispering his hidden secret worldwide to all those with ears to listen to the interraciality of what is typically portrayed as racially separate.

Receiving his slave name from Revolutionary War veteran and slavemaster Mathias Shultz of the Green River region of western Kentucky, Arnold was the child of the last of his ancestors to have once lived in slavery. He began as a songster playing guitar around the turn of the twentieth century. At this time in isolated mountain communities, those of African-American and European-American descent made music together at square dances, picnics, and other occasions calling for string bands.

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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.

A Psychedelic treat! Magic Veil Light Co.—Call Skip or Jerry (313) 833–9871.

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We are initiating this column as a means of communicating with the Fifth Estate readership. We hope to be able to give you periodic progress reports, answer your questions about the paper, and hopefully give you the feeling that there are real live people behind the newsprint and ink.

Although our Detroit circulation is increasing, distribution still remains our major problem. We feel our circulation could double if a method could be devised to get our paper close to the potential buyers. Any suggestions?

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The U.S. government got the pound of flesh it wanted from the radical environmental movement, but not from Earth First! co-founder Dave Foreman, the prime target of a three-year FBI entrapment scheme.

Foreman and four others, Mark Davis, Peg Millet, Ilse Asplund and Marc Baker, were charged with a long string of conspiracy violations including planning sabotage of a nuclear facility. (See Summer 1991 FE).

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Reprinted from San Francisco Express Times

Surely it isn’t brazen self-confidence that drives Nelson Rockefeller, scion of the most powerful network of vested interests in the Free World, to appear as the Galahad of the forces of Change in the pre-convention scramble. After all, empires are not administered by headstrong individuals but by hereditary networks, families, tribes—Nelson does not go off on his own to contest control of the Republican Party. Then what could he have in mind?

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This year marks the 30^th anniversary of publication of the pamphlet Wildcat: Dodge Truck, June 1974, written and produced by several of the people who became the core of the Fifth Estate collective the next year when it was transformed into an overtly council communist, and then, anarchist publication. A short excerpt is reprinted below.

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a review of

Live Free or Die. National Geographic Cable Channel

While I love the peace and challenges of backwoods camping, I admit that I don’t engage with them that often, and when I have, the thin lines between adventure and annoyance, between serenity and boredom, barely exist.

If you want to see a person with an intellectual critique of civilization get infatuated with civilization’s creature comforts, watch their most intimate reactions to home-cooked meals and hot showers after a few days or even weeks roughing it in the woods.

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October 8^th, Jack Forrest was awakened by the noisy spectacle of nine Federal agents bouncing off the vestibule wall of his mother’s apartment on Pingree.

Streaming through the kicked-in door in wild disarray, they gathered their forces around Jack’s bed and, guns drawn, proceeded to shout some dialogue that they had heard on television.

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The London bookshop Freedom was damaged in an arson attack in the early hours of February 28. Nobody was hurt in the fire which partially gutted the ground floor and damaged the building’s electrics.

However, there was extensive damage to the shop’s archives which contained publications dating back to the 1800s. Freedom Press is Britain’s longest running anarchist publisher and traces its history back to the original Freedom newspaper started by Charlotte Wilson and Peter Kropotkin in 1886. It is still printing and is available through freedompress.org.uk.

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How much is your long hair worth to you? Eight Ann Arbor brothers who were scalped during a short stay in the Washtenaw County jail think theirs is worth about $200,000.

This is the sum the eight, who were arrested following demonstrations against GE, on February 18^th are suing Sheriff Doug Harvey and two deputies for. They are also seeking a court order restraining Harvey and his men from similar actions in the future.

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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.

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Unicorn Riot premiered its free documentary, “Black Snake Killaz: a #NoDAPL Story” in November at Minneapolis’ Parkway Theater. The screening was followed by a question and answer session and an after-party featured performances by the punk folk band, Ungrateful Little String Band, Indigenous hip-hop artist, Alas, and DJ MOTHER t ReSA.

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The anthill signals its submissiion to the leader by holding aloft his religiously imbued sayings.

Since the struggle for power within the Chinese bureaucracy sharpened following the death of Mao Tse-tung in September, events have begun swirling at an ever faster rate.

Coming on the heels of the political turmoil in the capital city, the startling news that several sections of the country are at the point of armed insurrection certainly lays waste to the myth of China as a peaceful, unified nation -struggling to build socialism.”

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“...all poets are outlaws.”

--Stephane Mallarmé, The Evolution of Literature (1891)

Art historians, literary historians and theorists seldom bother to learn anything about their subjects outside their own little bailiwicks, especially when it comes to anarchism.

A painter or poet might have been an anarchist, but entire biographies and studies of him or her can be (and are) written without mentioning the fact. If any academic bothers to notice the matter, it will be done perfunctorily and with embarrassment.

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A POEM FOR JOHN SINCLAIR

we are lonely

we will attack you w/ our smallest uttered parts

we will move w/ the mask of darkness w/ simple weapons

& slit the bellies of yr women

we will replace each foetus w/ a phoneme of our loneliness

a barely uttered beast sound that will take root

and grow until yr women’s bellies explode w/ bizarre totems

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As long as people have been ruled, they have expressed their dissent. Throughout the modern era, art has been a powerful tool to voice this political defiance.

With their bold woodcut images of ruling classes and mocking skeletons, art movements like the Taller de Graphica Popular (“the People’s Graphics”) founded in Mexico City in 1937 served not only as satirical commentary but were inclusive enough to inform illiterate people of current events. Further, the Dadaist’s anti-aesthetic creations and protest activities were fueled by their disgust for bourgeois values and despair over World War I. Their disregard for traditional artistic values still resonates today, especially in punk and avant-garde communities.

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The Fifth Estate

1107 W. Warren

Detroit 48201

EDITORS

Harvey Ovshinsky

Peter Werbe

NEWS EDITOR

Frank H. Joyce

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Cathy West

CIRCULATION MANAGER

Tommye Wiess

ACE REPORTER

John Sinclair

ART AND LAY-OUT

Gary Grimshaw

Carl Lundgren

FILM EDITOR

Joe Finemen

CALENDAR GIRLS

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Fifth Estate

A Newspaper Of Detroit

FIFTH ESTATE #76, April 3–16, 1969, Vol. 3 No. 24

EDITORIAL GROUP

Alan Gotkin

Tommye Wiese

Peter Werbe

Cathy West

DISTRIBUTION

Bruce Montrose

MUSIC EDITOR

John Sinclair

PHOTO EDITOR

Mike Tyre

STAFF

Claudia Montrose

Franie Nelson

Marlene Tyre

Marilyn Werbe

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One characteristic that seems pervasive recently among many political actors (including anarchists) is a fixation with the State’s incessant “failures.” From the vulnerability that the State experienced on 9/11/01 to the breakdown of the State during Hurricane Katrina, there is a palpable sense that we are witnessing a “crisis” that is strategically exploitable. But who finds this account compelling? It is no revelation to say that State “failure” is often a way of developing a more powerful State. This narrative fuels Leninists and other shadow-dwellers waiting to seize opportunities for a revolutionary moment. Failure can happen within capitalist states (e.g. “failure of communication” among intelligence agencies leading to more integration via the Department of Homeland Security) or within a Marxist critique (“your State and its service-providing function has failed you, we will enter and fill the lack with our bigger State provider”).

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NEW ORLEANS, La., Sept. 12, The Word/LNS—A Fort Polk soldier was busted here, during his participation in a peaceful protest demonstration against Governor Wallace.

The soldier, Private Michael Borne, of Chalmette, La., approached the marchers and asked the nature of the demonstration. He was told, and invited to join which he did. He marched approximately five minutes, amidst cat-calls, and jeers from Legionaire hecklers.

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Editors’ Note: this interview with poet Allen Ginsberg took place at 10 a.m. on October 15 while driving from Detroit’s inner city to Macomb College, where he was reading. Ginsberg was in the area doing a series of readings for the John Sinclair Defense Fund and a benefit for the Ann Arbor Argus.

Fifth Estate: What place does poetry have in the United States, at the present time, in connection with the movement?

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Related story: “Tony” Revealed, Fifth Estate #377, March 2008

On July 26, 1900, officials of Western Penitentiary in Woods Run, Pennsylvania, discovered a tunnel which zigzagged some three hundred feet from the basement of the red brick house of 28 Sterling Street, which bordered the southern wall of the prison, to a point just inside the east wall. A superlative feat of engineering, the underground passage was equipped with an ingenious ventilation system as well as an electric warning device.

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Recently the staff of the Fifth Estate, members of the Zulus motorcycle club and people from Detroit Newsreel a movement film making group, went to a press screening of “Easy Rider.”

The film is about two bikers played by Peter Fonda (Captain America) and Dennis Hopper (Billy), who produced and directed the film, riding out to Mardi Gras in Search of America on two beautiful choppers.

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THE FIFTH ESTATE

A NEWSPAPER OF DETROIT

FIFTH ESTATE #80, May 29-June 11, 1969, Vol. 4 No. 2, page 2

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

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The first public meeting of The Birmingham-Bloomfield Committee on Open Occupancy was held at the Birmingham Unitarian Church on Sunday, November 14. An unexpectedly large turnout of 250 people responded to the speakers’ demands for an end to the organized exclusion of Negroes by the realtors in the area.

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<em>

Anarchy 101</em>, edited by Dot Matrix, is a crowd-sourced introduction to anarchist ideas. The content comes from the website anarchy101.org, which poses and answers ongoing questions it receives. They represent the best responses from dozens of contributors to hundreds of queries about the “Beautiful Idea: this thing called anarchy,” as Ardent Press, the book’s publisher, puts it. See ardentpress.com.

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Through September 2

A traveling RV-gypsy gathering that will join with local people in 14 cities across North America to create temporary autonomous zones, make art, cook food, establish squats, play music, celebrate, & protest. For a complete list of cities, call Arrow at 212/ 614–0393 or write: 209 E. 7^th St., NY, NY:

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Another Saturday afternoon rally. Signs wave above the Crowd. Someone has been speaking semi-audibly through a borrowed PA system.”\What do we want” they shout. “Fill in the blank!” cries the crowd, a little bored. A bass drum becomes audible a block away, and people begin to tap their toes. As it comes closer, people begin to shift their balance in time with the tune. Why not wave that banner like a flag? Why not dance instead of shuffle? As a festive mood rises, the band leads the rally down the street.

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a review of

Blood Lake: A Filomena Buscarsela Mystery by Kenneth Wishnia. PM Press edition 2014; Spanish translation 2018. Originally published HB 2002

Anarchist fans of detective novels and murder mysteries who don’t like cops have to suspend a little of their social critique since it is the police, ex-cops, and private eyes who are solving the crimes. Anarchists as a rule don’t do much sleuthing.

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It was with shock and sadness that we learned of the sudden death of our friend and collaborator Bob Brubaker, of a severe asthma attack at his home in Numazu, Japan. Bob died in the night of April 23–24. Memorials for him were organized by friends, coworkers and his students in Japan; by his family in Pittsburgh; and by friends in Detroit.

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Dylan, eyebrows up and lids down, spoke in intense staccato. He’d throw words out in rhythmic phrases, testing the articulation of his thought by speaking it. He would smoke distractedly, bob his knee as if dandling a kid, and diddle with his fingers...continually nervous. We’d been introduced by mutual friends and the talk had been straight and communicative for an hour or so. His nervousness wasn’t irritation, it was restlessness. Dylan is a quester, a grower, a doer; and growth is a nonsleep engagement.

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In Dylan’s sixth album he sings a major poem called “Desolation Road.” One stanza has to do with Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot sitting in the captain’s tower arguing for power while calypso dancers leap on the deck and fishermen hold flowers. The image is relevant to any interview with Dylan, for it illustrates his basic attitude towards showplace words. It has to do with experiencing life, partaking of its unending facets and hangups and wonders instead of dryly discussing it. A typical Dylan interview is more an Absurdist Happening than a fact-finding dialog. He presents himself in shatterproof totality—usually a somewhat bugged and bored mode of it—and lets components fall out as the interview pokes at it. He’s not taciturn, he’s simply aware of his absurd situation and the desperate clamor of folks who want to know how many times he rubs his eyes upon awakening and why.

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As a charter member of the “Bonnie and Clyde” cult, Thomas Haroldson’s hostile review of the movie in the last issue of the FIFTH ESTATE [“Bonnie & Clyde Shot Down,” FE #40, October 15–31, 1967] was slightly disconcerting. Enough so that I went to see the movie. For the third time.

My faith was restored. “Bonnie and Clyde” is one of a small number of great American movies. Haroldson’s review is wrong about nearly everything except the fact that some scenes would have been more effectively shot in black and white. Some wouldn’t.

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Five new productions, including three classics and two contemporary plays, will be featured at the Hilberry Classic Theatre during its Wayne State University Centennial season of repertory.

A revival of last year’s record-breaking success, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” will be performed in the fall.

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INFORMED SOURCES, a novel by Willard Bain: Doubleday, 1969, 144 pp., $2.95.

“Power is the ability to define phenomena and make them act in a desired manner.”

—Huey P. Newton, Minister of Defense, Black Panther Party

Willard Bain’s book was originally printed by the Communications Company in San Francisco the summer of 1967 and given away free in the streets. Informed Sources is the first post-Burroughsian novel I’d say, post-McLuhan also, and in its intentions and design strictly contemporary. Bain (who has the same initials as Burroughs—WSB—strangely enough) has gotten down to the simple major questions of control and power and what language has to do with it.

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

Antoinette Dishman was a 17 year old Barnard College freshman who died January 31^st of a heroin overdose. She had sniffed heroin at a party and was found dead the next morning. Hers wasn’t an exceptional case. Heroin overdoses killed more than 200 teenagers in New York City alone last year. The drug is made even more dangerous when used in combination with alcohol or barbiturates.

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A “dark-horse,” William Cahalan, has been named new Wayne County Prosecutor to replace the evasive Sam Olsen, who captured a Recorder’s Court post last fall, and hopes are up that there will be a more liberal spirit in law enforcement.

Cahalan, another alumnus of the University of Detroit, appears to be another crony of Mayor Cavanagh—and that’s neither good nor bad in itself, except that it adds a little more fuel to the potent “Irish Mafia” political machine in Wayne County.

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

Dear Dr. Schoenfeld:

The other day a girlfriend of mine asked me to see a movie called “Daughters of Lesbo.” Something about this girl disturbs me.

First of all, the boys call her “Big Daddy Linda” and have said some very bad things about her. Although she is a bit domineering and aggressive she always seemed quite friendly with us all. My boyfriend says she’s a “Butch and a Dyke.” Could you please give me a definition for these names?

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The Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) had its long-awaited dinner at the Rackham Bldg. recently, only a few days after anti-war demonstrators had clashed with the warmakers and local gendarmes in the same locals.

I tend to think that the spontaneous outbreaks which resulted in 14 arrests probably had more effect (if anyone can have effect) in dramatizing opposition to the War in Vietnam than the ADA gathering of 500 $10.00 dinner-goers passively listening to ADA National Chairman John Kenneth Galbraith—in a setting which was essentially a reunion of the Democratic Party.

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Dear folks,

Here is a list of safety tips and advice for your paper. I have tried these techniques in testing areas and found them successful. With proper application there is no reason for anybody to get hurt in a nuclear war. If these techniques fail, however, I refuse to be held responsible as people do not always follow explicit instructions while they are severely injured.

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Gothick Institutions by Peter Lamborn Wilson (Xexoxial 2005) $10 (see the review on page 38)

Garden Planet by William Kotke (AuthorHouse 2005) $11 (see the reprint on page 33)

Passion Fruit (Passion Fruit 2005) $5 (see the reprint on page 30–31)

Hymns for Brueghel: Brambles of Berries, Rants, and Poetic Orgies by (un)leash. (Primal Revival Press 2005) $20 (see the review on page 32)

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One nice thing about public feuds between politicians is that it gives everybody a rare chance to see part of what’s going on inside governmental circles. We learn, that at least to some extent, many decisions are made on the basis of personal vanity, pride, and ego conflict—and not solely as the result of some impersonal “power structure” beyond the reach of our full comprehension or influence.

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Recent articles in the Michigan State News and in Penthouse Magazine have exposed the existence of a nation-wide “surveillance clearinghouse” which exchanges names and files collected by the intelligence units of over 200 member police agencies.

This clearinghouse is the Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit (LEIU). It was created in 1956 in California as a voluntary “club” of police intelligence agencies in seven Western states. Over the years it has grown to include over 200 agencies-in Michigan its affiliates include the Department of the Attorney General, the Detroit, Flint and Warren Police Departments and the State Police.

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When we put out the calls for this issue, we sought lists and commentaries on books that changed people’s lives. Apparently, many were too busy with summer reading to respond. Others may be too busy with life to read--or to write about what they might be reading if they’re reading. For me, I’ve decided to name writers more than books, and the shortlist is rather long, heavily populated by poets. Allen Ginsberg’s influence on me might always overshadow other writers, and to learn more about that, please see my article on him in a few pages. My world view has been so widely shaped by all of these visionaries that I would feel remiss not giving them their due in this issue.

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a review of

Pets DC: Rise of the Pets by Ramon Dines and Kit Brixton. A.B.O. Comix, 2022

A.B.O. Comix describes themselves as “a collective of creators and activists who work to amplify the voices of LGBTQ prisoners through art. By working closely with prison abolitionist and queer advocacy organizations, we aim to keep queer prisoners connected to outside community and help them fight towards liberation.”

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an hour east of Nashville

(615) 536–5999

FifthEstate@pumpkinhollow.net

To order, send check, money order, or well-concealed cash to:

Fifth Estate Books

PO Box 6

Liberty, TN 37095

Please add $2 shipping/handling for first item ($1 for the 2^nd, $.50 for the third, & so on)

NEW

Franklin Rosemont

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LA Free Press — First of all, please forget everything you’ve heard about the Diggers, because it’s mostly a bunch of crap.

To begin with, the Diggers are what happened when the Hell’s Angels met LSD and got turned off violence to psychedelic love.

The central cadre running the hippie hostels day by day is made up of guys with names like Motorcycle Richie, Tobacco, Little Wolf, Apache and Tiny.

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I wonder if anyone else feels the same nausea and despair I experience when reading missives like R. Tate’s [see in this issue “More Debate on the Balkans,” FE #360, Spring, 2003]. Apparently, such jumbled, simple-minded invective, with its breathless disregard for the requirement to present serious evidence to support an argument, is what now passes for debate, for reasoning, in the so-called anti-authoritarian milieu. Was it always like this? Do any of these people even bother to learn anything about a subject anymore before applying their one-size-fits-all template?

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In his foreword to Clifford Harper’s Designs for Anarchist Postage Stamps: Postage Stamps for After the Revolution, Colin Ward reminds us that some public institutions are worth saving. No radical activist could deny the immense importance of sending and receiving mail, and what this international public institution has meant to us.

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The stage is set, houselights go out, curtain opens and a poignant silence reigns as actors hit the stage. Always the audience looks at the skin; arms and legs, usually attractive faces. The audience licks its lips. Honest observation must concede that beyond the facade of cultural awareness the real reason mass audiences attend the theatre or cinema lurks the haunting spectacle of cannibalism.

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