San Francisco (UPS) The Underground Press Syndicate, of which the Fifth Estate is a member, was founded more than a year ago in order to facilitate the communication of information which the Establishment press ignores, suppresses, or never dreamed of.
Today, the UPS has member papers growing in almost all the glorious subterranean gardens across the country and in Canada and England as well. Recently the first national UPS conference was held in San Francisco, with representatives from the East Village Other (N.Y.), the L.A. Free Press, and The Oracle, The Communication Company (San Francisco), The Rag (Austin, Texas), Seed (Chicago), the Washington Independent (Washington, D.C. ), and The Illustrated Paper (Mendecino, Calif.)
The following editorial proposal, expressing the attitude and common aims of the majority of UPS papers, was drafted by Walter Bowart and endorsed by publishers Max Scheer of the Berkeley Barb, Art Kunkin of the L.A. Free Press, and Alan Cohen of the Oracle:
1. To warn the “Civilized World” of its impending collapse.
a. To set up communications among aware communities outside the establishment.
b. To reinstate reality-responsibility to mass media.
2. To note and chronicle events leading to the collapse.
a. To observe facts which reflect, and unveil in advance, the undercurrents dangerous to freedom.
b. To provide an accurate history of the rapid changes coming about thru technological acceleration.
3. To advise intelligently to prevent rapid collapse and make transition possible.
a. To offer as many possible alternatives to current problems as the mind can bear.
b. To consciously lay the foundation for the 21st Century.
4. To prepare the American people for the wilderness.
a. To instruct in survival techniques.
b. To seek out others of like thoughts and to recognize each tribe.
c. To prepare ways of living should the machine stop.
5. To fight a holding action in the dying cities.
a. Advise how to reinstate balance to the ecology.
b. Public programs for conservation and reclamation.
There was one who attended the conference who was not a member of the UPS, but who told of ancient prophesies written in cave petroglyphs and confirmed by many visions; that one was Rolling Thunder, an emissary from the Shoshone and Hopi nations, who told the conference how “after the gourd of ashes fell from the sky” it was written that “man would enter a time of great trial.”
At that time, he explained the Hopi nation would recognize that Indians had been reincarnated as white men. It is those “longhaired gypsies” who are now taking part in the retribalisation, Rolling Thunder said, who are those reincarnated Indians.
In Detroit, the Fifth Estate has shared in the phenomenal growth of the underground papers. Our circulation has almost doubled from its 3,500 last July. Despite lootings and vandalism of our newsstands, threatened advertisers, and attempts at repression from paranoid police, prosecutors, parents, and principals we continue to grow every day.
The area of conflict revolves around the values we represent and the ones the people that control this society do. The Fifth Estate affirms loving, peace, the use of harmless consciousness expanding substances, and brotherhood. So, it is no wonder that this paper receives scorn and attempts at repression from the representatives of a society that affirms hatred, war, alcohol, racism and greed.
Will you help the Fifth Estate grow bigger and get its message out to thousands more? We need salesmen in schools, on the block, in the shop, in your office or store. Salesmen can make money by just going downtown or to a shopping center and hawking the paper. If you can help, call us at 9629336 or write 923 Plum St.