To the Editors:
John Watson and the Fifth Estate are revolutionaries and that’s why they support the Teamster workers. [See “The News Gets Ready,” FE #68, December 12-25, 1968.]
Revolutionaries remember 1937 when industrial workers in Flint fought the National Guard, just as students at San Francisco State College are fighting the Tactical Police.
San Francisco students, who are fighting one of the most courageous prolonged battles against racism in American history, are being supported by white workers who came on campus with baseball bats to support the strike. Those workers realize that racism is a tool used by the ruling class to divide people, keep wages low, and maintain their own order.
It is possible for working class people to see that it is their sons who are dying in Vietnam defending the interests of a small group called the Military-Industrial Complex. Similarly, it is the working class who gets the worst of the regressive taxing methods. We must remember that it is the same ruling class who give us Black Racism, also tells the middle class that the entire working class is reactionary.
So what happens when these workers, who are supposed to hate everything the Fifth Estate represents, see the Fifth Estate taking their side? For the first time they are provided with a realistic analysis of what is actually going on. We can not expect these workers to relate to contemporary music or the White Panthers but they can understand their own struggle. The working class is not and never has been the beneficiary of the great American Dream.
Presently, more than thirty million poor people exist in the “land of the free,” the majority white. We need allies to fight for a revolution against racism, imperialism, and corporate capitalism, which control everyone’s life.
John Daniels
Ann Arbor
Greetings,
Tony Reay would probably see an end to harassment over interviews if he supported the White Panthers; they will overcome.
His continuing exposure to America ought to help him see the light. Dig it, Tony.
Chris
Dear Friend,
After two and a half years in the U.S. Disciplinary barracks at Fort Leavenworth for refusing orders to fight in Vietnam, the Fort Hood Three have come home.
Despite the military’s attempt to break their will these three courageous men have returned more determined than ever to fight America’s brutal aggression in Vietnam. Since their release, Dennis Mora, James Johnson and David Samas have spoken before audiences in New York, at meetings in Puerto Rico and at the Western Hemispheric Conference to End the War in Vietnam held recently in Montreal. The Fort Hood Three now want to tell their story to millions of young Americans.
A national tour is being organized so that their message will be carried throughout the length and breadth of the nation. But Dennis, Jimmy and Dave will only be able to make this tour with your support. We must raise thousands of dollars to insure such an undertaking.
We are therefore, once again appealing to you for financial assistance. Your generous support in the past has helped the fight to free these men from imprisonment.
Your contribution today will insure that their decision to say NO! will not be lost to the conscience of the nation. Every dollar you send will bring the three in contact with more people. It all depends on you.
Won’t you please give this appeal your urgent attention? Checks should be made payable to the Fort Hood Three Defense Committee.
Dave Dellinger, Grace Mora Newman,
Ft. Hood Three Defense Committee
34 W. 17th St.
New York, New York 10011
Pax, Brothers,
And a pox on the morons rewriting unintelligible bullshit in an attempt to be somewhere. Hell, we’re all somewhere, ya just gotta relate. And relating includes change. More specifically—revolution.
A tip of my helmet to any revolutionist whose aims are realistic, whose basic weapons are intelligence, foresight, and balls. Weapons, though hardly necessary, must come much later, if at all.
I hope to be a part of the revolution, but without able and determined (and sensible) leaders, I’ll have to cut out.
Whoever told you 1968 was the year of the heroic guerrilla is full of shit. And all this is shit, too. Che’s biography and a black beret do not a guerrilla make.
If it makes one feel heroic, and look cool, more power to him, but it will hurt the movement more than help it.
The White Panther Party is beautiful. Ha! Old humor, but it seems fresh.
If I were black, I’d want nothing to do with them. They’re little more than punks. And, regardless of what that idiot Sinclair says, they are not “bad.” They’re just a disorganized crew of shit-heads.
Julius Lester’s column (FE 12-25 Dec.) brings out strong points that many so-called revolutionaries have ignored. It will be people like him that lead the revolution and morons like Sinclair who will be crushed by it.
Best wishes for continued success.
John Tidyman
I Corps Vietnam
Dear People,
In your last issue you carried a story about my friend and co-worker. Dave Dixon, the WABX Nightripper. In this same article was a reference to why I stopped using Terry King and started using Dan Carlisle. I have not been able to understand how such a juvenile piece of journalism ever got into the Fifth Estate. Now that I have gotten that off my mind I think I should get down to the main source of my bitch.
“It is doubtful that Terry King would have changed his name…” When I came to WABX my main concern was to do an honest show with music that I wasn’t familiar with. So my first job was to learn—the library, and what I could do with it six nights a week. Then I realized and not until then that my name, which I had used in Top Forty radio, had to go. personal motivations.
I hope that in the future anyone who has to use the word doubtful in an article concerning me or WABX in any way, they call here or come up since we have made ourselves available to anyone who wishes to ask any question or just drop in.
Dan Carlisle
WABX
Friends,
I’ve been reading the Fifth Estate off and on for a year. I too have noticed the change from “peace and love to violent (?) revolution.”
I’d just like to comment that it’s a change for the better,
A few words to Miss Bordin: I’ve been down to the Grande on a few occasions and I must agree with you, it’s beautiful. Too bad you and I can’t agree on other things. Dig?
Melinda Gask
Dear Editors,
I would like to use your column to explain what it means to be a freak and I am addressing this to the people who look down upon our great culture.
To be a freak is to become aware of man’s search for himself. If you’re going to ignore your existence, then you’re not living.
What freaks try to do is find themselves. While doing this we find that your plastic world isn’t fun. You’re putting all that gook and shit on ya and trying to look like society’s child, what is exactly what is expected of you by the status quo in this country.
You get Hung Up in your bullshit, eat it up, and do exactly what the establishment dictates.
They make wars for you, and they make racism, and laws that prohibit fun and being the way you are, and loving people, and smoking dope.
You got to get hip to what’s happening! You got to learn that life can be fun, being plastic isn’t fun, neither is drinking beer and getting sick, or playing child bullshit ego games. Cuz you know you’re not being yourself!
Education can be fun too…Administrators and teachers better get their minds together and learn that we want to learn and not memorize some 500 pages of bullshit every semester. We want involvement of ourselves in our education.
Education should be an educational experience in one’s life, and not a tool used by our capitalistic system to place people in the system’s desired place.
Students, teachers, and people, get yourself together. Be crazy, have fun, and be yourself. Be free. Demand all power to the people.
UP AGAINST THE WALL!
LOVE AND PEACE,
Ken Brown
To the Editors:
In the Detroit News, Dec. 28, there was a letter by a dumb-ass named Lauren R. Janus. He was bitching about the four-letter words used in college newspapers. His argument included general statements on communism and pornography.
We know why he was so up-tight about so-called obscenity. He sees a reflection of the ugliness of our theoretically sinless nation. Look at any radical publication (Mr. Janus didn’t mention any names) to find innumerable criticisms of racism, greed, war, imperialism, etc.
Replying to Mr. Janus’ charge of communism and to the articles by the racist Redford Record (“The South End, Pipeline for Commies”) I will represent the majority of radicals.
We are not Communists. I classify Communism as the epitome of the capitalism-greed syndrome; in other words, state-capitalism. The struggle between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. is a fight for world power. Our struggle is for people.
Going back to obscenities, no four-letter word is strong enough to criticize the SHIT that’s going on. The two sides to each question deal with ethical responsibilities; that is, law and order vs. human rights.
This can answer Mr. Janus’ last question: “…did the Great (?) Society let it (good old-fashioned law, order and morality) be murdered?” No, the Great Society killed law and order by negating the essential moral duty to be humane.
White Panther brother, Charlie Miesel