{"id":26590,"date":"2023-10-22T11:45:51","date_gmt":"2023-10-22T19:45:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fifthestate.org\/?page_id=26590"},"modified":"2023-10-22T11:45:51","modified_gmt":"2023-10-22T19:45:51","slug":"rip-off","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.fifthestate.org\/archive\/98-february-4-18-1970\/rip-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Rip-Off!"},"content":{"rendered":"
Youth capitalism is proving to be as repressive to its people as Nixon’s solution to Black Liberation, black capitalism. The young are being systematically robbed by the capitalists who get rich dealing the products and services of the alternate culture.<\/p>\n
The black ghetto feels the bite of the businessman much worse because he robs the black community by selling high-priced, poor quality goods to low-income families. The less you got the more it hurts to get it.<\/p>\n
Both capitalists fail to respond to the needs of either the black people or the youth culture, both viable communities, by supplying them the necessary means to exist and the tools of a culture at an equitable price. They also fail to rechannel funds back into the communities.<\/p>\n
In distributing the Fifth Estate, we have experienced the assault of these youth capitalists who operate head shops, boutiques and newsstands and their respective city governments.<\/p>\n
The youth movement provides the market for the youth capitalists. They realize that youth culture can co-exist with the straight society and that it would be a profitable relationship.<\/p>\n
City governments have become more permissive with head shops and boutiques because-of the profit involved. Kids walk out smiling instead of trashing the store because they think they are getting what they want, the materials of their culture. The problem for the youth capitalists occurs when the young realize that politics and culture are one and the same and that they are being screwed out of what is theirs to begin with. The capitalist being profit and not community oriented will exploit youth as long as the inherent politics of their culture is not seen.<\/p>\n
John Sinclair was harmless to the establishment until he made the necessary connections between politics and culture and started organizing the young to aid in the legalization of dope. He united the culture in putting the establishment up against the wall for prohibiting a humane style of life. He was put away for inciting the young to struggle for their life style. He became dangerous to them and a cultural hero for us.<\/p>\n
The Black Panther Party, a community based organization, is facing incredible repression because it offers an alternative to black capitalism. Their Breakfast for Children program offers the young survival and their ten-point program offers self-determination for adults. They are dangerous to the establishment because they address themselves to the real problems of the community and not the monetary gains of the black capitalist.<\/p>\n
The youth capitalist is facing a clear and present danger when the young see how he is exploiting them as they unify as a community in struggle. In order to avoid kids making the necessary connections about their community, cultural, rip-off stores only wish to carry relatively apolitical\/rock\/culture media like the Rolling Stone<\/em> and Creem Magazine<\/em> instead of the Fifth Estate<\/em>. They would also carry papers that return a higher profit margin, like the Rolling Stone<\/em> and Creem<\/em>, at the risk of selling the political truth of the culture.<\/p>\n