To high school students who are going to be free and happy this Summer, remember the future; the Man will come in the Fall and lead you back to the zoo where he can watch you and work on you for another year.
With this in mind, high school students should leave school this year with a Fall perspective, so we can get our shit together and let it all hit the fan at the same time.
We want to see a militant active high school movement this fall. We want to turn this city inside out and let the Man know that we’re not on his side, that we won’t fight his wars and run his errands.
This takes preparation and study, and I am going to use this column during the Summer as a tool for such preparation and for activities that will take place before we return to our prisons.
We are planning classes and film showings this summer to educate brothers and sisters around the city. A list of publications and books for people to check out will appear in this column. We also want to organize and educate Summer School students about this society.
To keep activities and meetings coordinated, people from every area and school should be writing on what is coming down where they are.
The Fifth Estate can be used to spread the word. The first-hand information and the news from different schools can bring students together, when sold at hangouts and Summer School sessions.
We will need “reporters” in every school—or active people getting together and writing a report. This would set up a network of reporters, and would pave the way for our own newspaper. There has never been a city-wide high school newspaper in Detroit. But we can build one.
The Fifth Estate is also going to be used as a means of bringing news to Detroit students from schools in other parts of the country. Articles on the high schools from other radical newspapers will be reprinted.
Oak Park—Once again the forces of repression in the schools have attempted to crush the movement for liberation and the spirit of young people.
At Norup Junior High School in Oak Park, Brother Barry Weisz was sent home for distributing White Panther literature and leaflets about the trial of Brother John Sinclair. This angered the students, and they held a meeting on June 6 to plan action in answer to this fascist censorship.
It was decided that White Panther students would flood the area with literature and back issues of the Fifth Estate, especially during the last week of school-at Norup and at Lincoln Center in Oak Park.
Grosse Pointe—The following is the six-point program of the Student Union at Grosse Pointe North High School:
- Democracy in practice: school policy should be made by those affected. Both in the classroom and the school, the teachers should teach, not tyrannize.
- Stop harassment: and all expulsions, suspensions; and all other disciplinary actions. These are used by the administrators to get rid of “troublemakers” and political activists, not to help us.
- No dress code: appearance is a personal right. We, as students, should be able to wear what we see fit.
- Open campus: school should not be a prison. Students should be able to come and go as they please without passes or interrogation as to where they are going.
- Teacher evaluations: controlled by students, to be made public.
- No violations of privacy; no narcs or informers, no locker checks without student consent, or similar harassment.
“The world is yours, as well as ours, but in the last analysis, it is yours. You young people, full of vigour and vitality, are in the bloom of life, like the sun at eight or nine in the morning. Our hope is placed on you…The world belongs to you.—Mao Tse-Tung
“This generation, especially of our people, has a burden, more so than any other time in history. The most important thing that we can learn to do today is to think for ourselves.
—Malcolm X