Editor’s note: People: We have gotten only a few responses to our statement regarding the unclassified section and the possibility of dropping it. We would like to know how more of you feel about this. Please write if you have something to say on the matter.
Dear Fifth Estate,
I’m a GI stationed in the Nam. I’ve been here for 14 months and have 4 months left before finishing the green joke. I would appreciate receiving the Fifth Estate here in Nam for the propaganda received from the “government” is too much to stomach.
I would also appreciate any info on the GIs for Peace. Most of us are here against our wills and are fed-up and pissed off. Your paper will help us in keeping in touch with our world and fill up the lonely hours. It will give strength to us knowing there are people who care about us and believe there’s a better way to live.
Together we can make a better world.
Power to the People,
Peace thru Love, Revolution
Sp5 Wayne A. Smith, Vietnam
Dear Fifth Estate,
Dig people, my own brothers and sisters whom I share deep feelings of revolution with! I’m looked down on by many of you, which is just about to flip me out to the establishment. God forbid any of us that would swing a cat into pig-dom! Yet all of you almost have.
I work for Kroger’s, I’m a meat cutter. ZAMMIE! I’m supplying the culture with food. I feel pretty comfortable since I’m not working for war production or the oppression of people. Yet, I’m not allowed to grow my hair, so I picked up on a long-haired wig!
Dig, so like I’m a phony to you. I’m trying to relate my feelings with the brothers and sisters, yet I’m looked at like a damn phony. Whether or not it’s a wig, I wear it outside of work constantly. It’s a real hassle, but it’s better than not at all.
Last week I tripped into the Plum Pit on Plymouth Road, and the brothers and sisters gawked at me like I was a straight freak posing, or a damn phony, or even an undercover FBI man! If I’m all wet, man, I’d like some of the brothers and sisters to lay it on me. I’m proud to be among you, yet you’re ashamed of me.
Shit, what a hassle! Someone please write me and relay your opinions, so like I know what to do or WHERE I BELONG! I’m almost ready to give it up and go back to pigdom.
Frank Armstrong
P.O. Box 337
Garden City, MI 48135
Note: Although we hope a lot of people answer you, our opinion is to forget about your wig and try to relate to some people that are interested in what’s in your head, not on it.
Dear Fifth Estate:
An integral part of our culture is our music. It is one of the forces which strengthens the bond between all revolutionary brothers and sisters and keeps us ever moving and flowing in our changing lives. Life without it would certainly be dull, shallow, bland. Yet in this one area, music, it seems that more oppression goes down than in many others. Oppression? Against women.
Countless recordings exist which deserve the “This Insults Women” sticker. Many are so good that we buy them anyway, knowing full well what the lyrics say.
Our brothers continue to wail about how they’re gonna “ball my baby tonight,” “try to make some girl,” “take her to the roadhouse and roll, baby, roll,” tell her to “take off your clothes and I’ll love (?) you,” and “stick it deep inside.”
The sisters continue to sit back, dig the music, often singing the very words that spell their abuse. While I realize that not all groups so perpetuate the degradation of women through the media of good music, many are still spelling out via a funky beat and heavy music male supremacy and his quest for power and force over the sisters.
If we are to truly work and struggle together, there can be no equality and true trust until the musicians who are laying on the crud about women realize the injustice they are doing to the entire movement.
I close with a plea for unity and all power to the people!
Gail A.
Farmington
P.S. I’m a high school student, and am in favor of coverage of H.S. and continued community coverage.
Dear Fifth Estate,
Harvey Ovshinsky’s article on “Hair” was good, in the sense that it was very thought-provoking [FE #109, July 9-22, 1970].
I won’t try to defend “Hair,” partly because I can’t afford to go see it. But more than that, because the crux of the whole issue is that “Hair” is still into love. And the implication is that it’s naive and outdated. Harvey compares the Age of Aquarius to the Age of Revolution.
Has the Left completely given up on love? The only way any lasting good can ever come out of this mess, is to show them an alternative and leave it open for them to choose it. You cannot enlighten anyone by kicking their ass. We know for a fact that no Revolution in history has ever caused any lasting good, and we know why.
The Revolutionaries would lead us to believe that there is no other way. “We tried the love thing,” they say, “and all it got us was kicked in the teeth.” I agree, but that was four years ago.
Getting back to “Hair.” First, the money thing. True, they make a lot of money from it. But does that discredit everything that Hair is? You know that everything costs money, even the Fifth Estate. Their profit margin may be out of line, it probably is, but I don’t know where the money goes. I’ve heard that at least some of it goes for good things. It would be real nice if you could operate without money, but right now it just can’t be done.
The second, most important point, is the content. “Hair” talks about Love, Peace, and Brotherhood. Harvey is uptight because the cops aren’t uptight about “Hair.” Isn’t it possible that even the cops are beginning to understand what we’re saying four years ago?
We tried Love and they spit on us then. What would they do now? If the Left goes on with this insane reaction to all the insane reactions at the other end, we are screwed. What can we win, if indeed we can win?
All freaks know, deep down inside, that this violent bullshit is immoral and futile. We are frustrated and this looks like our only answer. It ain’t no answer. We had the answer. Maybe now the world is ready to listen. Don’t give up the ship.
Jeffrey Ward
Jackson, Mich.
To Local Board No. 192
Dear Sirs:
Having read the enclosed article about Fort Wayne’s illegal physicals from the Detroit newspaper The Fifth Estate just this previous evening, and having set my alarm clock for 6 a.m. to get down to Ft. Wayne for my physical at 7 a.m., I went to bed, though not to sleep, thinking that the American people would allow me to go through such a “sick” and “unjust” physical in the name of the U.S military service.
[See “Brass Boiling over Fort Wayne Exposé: Spec. Brown Transferred As More Irregularities Charged,” FE #106, May 28-June 10, 1970.]
This letter is being written to duly inform you that if the allegations in the aforementioned article be true, my constitutional rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness would be violated should I allow myself to be subjected to such an “examination;” and that furthermore, I know you agree with me that such an examination would be illegal and void. Therefore I shall not present myself for examination until I am assured, in writing, that the allegations in the article be false or if they be true, they have been corrected.
A copy of this letter is being mailed to President Nixon, Governor Milliken, Senator Hart, State Rep. Ogonowski, Michigan Selective Service Head Arthur Holmes, Local Board No. 192, THE DETROIT NEWS and The Fifth Estate.
Thank you for taking the time to hear the request from one lone American youth. I await your response.
Respectfully,
Denis C. Bloch
Detroit
S.S. No. 20-192-46-834
Dear Fifth Estate:
I recently had the privilege(?) of seeing the SRC up at Cold Springs, Indiana. First, let me say that musically I enjoyed them; the show was great. However, afterwards I tried to rap with a couple of them and was disappointed by their reaction.
All I asked was, ” Are you members of the STP coalition?” The drummer replied coldly that he had never heard of it. I said that I read that the SRC was a member in the Fifth Estate and he said he never read the paper.
I just have a small suggestion to make to the people to whom it may concern—If you call a group a member of your coalition wouldn’t it be nice if you told the group about it?
Power to the People
Linda Connolly
Note: The participation of the SRC has mainly been through the work of the band’s manager, Pete Andrews. Maybe he hasn’t told them.
The Fifth Estate:
In your May 14-27 issue a Sgt. Phillip D. Bullaboy, who wrote in response to a Rita N’s letter, [FE #105, May 14-27, 1970] said “We fight because we think it’s worth fighting for.” In my two years of serving in Vietnam I have yet to meet anyone, besides a lifer pig, who would say the same.
This is a lost cause; I am here only because I cannot put up with the lifers in the States. These pigs are just a bunch of ignorant, incompetent people who cannot make it on the outside. They can only survive in an organization as unjust and Communistic as the United States Army.
Peace, Stay Stoned,
Sgt. Klus
P.S. We dig your paper, keep up the good work.
Dear Sir:
I am enclosing a copy of a letter I have written to the editor of Liberation News Service calling for a retraction of their story regarding Rand, which you carried in your newspaper on June 11 [“Old Brass Never Die: They Get Rich!,” FE #109, July 9-22, 1970].
Editor
Liberation News Service
160 Claremont Avenue
New York, NY 10027
Dear Sir:
On June 13, 1970, in an article in THE GREATER MILWAUKEE STAR carrying your logotype, a number of false and damaging statements are made about the Rand Corporation.
We ask that you help us set the record straight by distributing to each of your subscribers which carried the LNS story the following information, with the request that it be given the same prominence in their publications as the original story was given.
1. The Rand Corp. has not been asked by President Nixon or anyone else to “investigate the possibility that disruption by ‘radical elements’ may make it ‘unsafe’ to hold national elections in 1972.”
2. The Newhouse National News Service, which originally circulated the false rumor on April 5, has since published the statement that Rand has not undertaken such a study; it does not contemplate making such a study, nor has it been approached by anyone with a proposal for such a study.
3. Mr. William Howard, of the Newhouse National News Service, who wrote the original false rumor story, has since stated that, “We have not been able to substantiate the story since we printed it,” that the column in which the rumor first appeared was usually reserved for “speculative stuff,” and that if he had it to do again, he would not have printed the item.
The WALL STREET JOURNAL, the LOS ANGELES FREE PRESS, NATION Magazine and others which carried the false rumor also have since carried Rand’s statement of the rumor’s untruth.
Paul R. Weeks, Communications
The Rand Corporation
Santa Monica, California
Note: Two things strike us about Week’s letter. (1) Given that the Rand Corp. has functioned as a research institute for the last 20 years in the service of U.S. imperialism abroad and racism at home, there seems to be no real reason to accept their word that such a study was not undertaken. (2) If their denial is correct, it still remains as an interesting point that so many papers, including those from the ruling class itself; believed that Nixon would, in fact, order such a study.