With the weather warming up, people will be into all kinds of radical activity and crazy shit. If you are into it or see it happening, give us a call at 831-6800 or send it in to us at 4403 Second, Detroit, 48201.
OCC FLASH
As we go to press, the news just came in that black students at the Orchard Ridge campus of Oakland Community College held a sit-in, trash-in today at the school.
Fifty to one-hundred black students led by members of the Association of Black Students (ABS) were having a demonstration in the cafeteria. At least three times they have demanded to meet with the administration and faculty of the school and have been ignored each time. During the demonstration they started yelling at some faculty members who came thru and then got into some trashing of furniture. They moved into the Recorders office, the campus newspaper, and trashed that also.
There were no pigs involved in the incidents and no arrests have resulted. The demands which they have been putting forward include the following:
- A review of all textbooks and an increase in black-oriented books.
- That the contract for catering at the school and school events be reopened and restrictions on it be eliminated.
- Any transferal or dismissal of black faculty result in the hiring of more black instructors to fill their post.
- That all rules of the school be published.
- that the freeze on the student activity budget be lifted.
- That there be a strong effort to recruit more black students from the inner city and that admission requirements be eased for black students who have been deprived of a decent education because of racist public schools.
This movement by the black students is one of several that are beginning on the college campuses this Spring. Observers are predicting that there will soon be a strike at the University of Detroit with the way the black students there are coming together.
Some people are initially turned off to the idea of opening colleges up to black students and a lot of racist bullshit comes down, like, “Why don’t they earn it.” What these people don’t realize is that the entire educational system in this country is racist. Black children are pushed into incredibly poor schools in the inner city where they have no chance at all to get a decent education and then go to college. The same thing is done to white people who don’t have the bread to live in one of the richer suburbs. This system which channels many black people and poor white people into the shit jobs and upper class whites into the colleges and better jobs is called tracking.
Women are channeled into homemaking and childcare and have few other opportunities to develop their talents or potential as people.
Equal educational opportunities at all levels is certainly a legitimate demand.
Allen Park
Massive dope searches and roundups in the public schools have become common practice this year. In the second week of February, the Allen Park High School administration decided that this gestapo tactic was in order for its students. Both the police and the administration seemed to be ignorant of the fact these searches were probably illegal.
Police were placed in the halls during the week and when one student named Paul started yelling in the office about getting his locker searched, one of the pigs smashed him in the face.
Rather than taking the situation passively and just complaining, as many other schools have done, the Allen Park people reacted with forceful moves against the repression.
One student beat up an assistant principal in an argument about a suspension. Other incidents of individual retaliation occurred. However the most important and effective responses came from a number of the students who organized themselves into the Allen Park Student Union. They got together, maybe six or eight of them, and held a series of meetings, in which they decided to put out a paper about the busts containing information on students rights, legal rights, and on the general repression that-the administration has been putting them through.
The paper, “The Muckraker,” came out Mon., Feb. 15 and received incredible support from the other students in the school. The meeting that was called for that day got a turnout of about 40 people with a lot of energy.
According to Chuck, one of the students involved with the Student Union, “The energy of that first night was terrific. We divided into three groups: one to put out more issues of the newspaper, one to get started on setting up a coffeehouse-drop-in center, and an action committee.
“After that first night the principal gave in to us and that sort of quieted down our energy, but now things are starting to move again.”
The young people are using the Back Door, a local drop-in crisis center for meetings.
Raps—Free
The Fifth Estate Speakers Bureau is in demand. Most of the speaking gigs are at high schools and concern the war in Indochina and women’s liberation.
The May Day Coalition is now participating by supplying speakers on the war and anti-war actions that are taking place this spring. Speakers are also available on communism, women’s liberation, underground newspapers, Cuba, Palestine, North Vietnam, communes, revolution, etc.
Also, Newsreel flicks are available.
For more information on this serving the people program, call 831-6800. For information on speakers and setting up teach-ins and rallies about the war, people should check-out the planning conference of the May Day Coalition on March 27 (see back cover).
Women
WOMEN’S RAP is a group of women from Warren that meet weekly to discuss our feelings as women, our problems and our relationships concerning love, marriage, friends, and education. We will also discuss what we can do as women to change conditions around us. For more information call Mary Jo at 751-5539 or Cindy at 751-4014.
MCCC
On March 17 and 18th, the arbitration proceedings will begin against Professor of Social Science Jim Jacobs. The administration is trying to fire him over the immediate reason of his support for the secretaries strike. The real reason, however, is that Jacobs is a revolutionary. In the past three years at Macomb he has continually supported the interests of the students, faculty and campus workers over those of the administration. He had worked to make Macomb a better place, not a place where corporations merely turn out fodder for their own purposes.
Students, faculty and secretaries have rallied to support Jacobs. The Macomb Liberation Front collected thousands of signatures from students and people from the community on a petition calling for the charges to be dropped. Secretaries, faculty, students and other campus workers have willingly provided information to bolster his defense.
St. Clair Shores
Pushing the Fifth Estate is not without its hassles. Maria Catalfio, 13, of Chipewa Jr. High in St. Clair Shores started selling papers in January in her school. In a letter she wrote to the Fifth Estate she said: “… I feel shitty about not being able to help the revolution as so many other youths are doing. But, in the words of the immortal Che, ‘One person does not make the revolution.’… I live in the heart of the motherfucking suburbs. No one here is willing to get themselves together. But this is truly not their fault. They have been always brought up to think that Amerika is super wonderful just the way it is.
“I’m selling Fifth Estates to make people aware of everything that’s coming down. I think that on an individual basis, I am doing a part of the revolutionary work that must be done but it is much more important that the mass of people get involved.”
On Thursday, March 10, Maria got set up for a bust at the school by some students who didn’t dig what she was doing. She was selling papers in the john in the morning and the principal called her down to the office. She was suspended for one day and the principal got her parents to bring down more pressure on her. Even so, she will still be selling this issue of the Fifth Estate.
Bombing
The daily media in Detroit made front-page news of the bombing of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. on March 1. The reason for this is obvious—the people who determine the policy of the media and the people who determine the policy of the way this country runs wanted everyone to know about it… and think about it.
To the people who made such a big deal about the bombing:
Why did you think that it was important enough to give front-page coverage in the daily media to the bombing and prime-time news coverage of it? Why did you try to give people the impression that it was an incredible crime—to actually set off a bomb in the hallowed halls of the Capitol?
To you same people… you who own GM, Dow Chemical, the Detroit News, etc.,… you who run this country. What about the thousands of tons of bombs you drop on the villages and fields of Indochina every week? What about the murder of Fred Hampton? What about the workers that are killed and maimed every day from poor working conditions that come about because it isn’t profitable for you to make those working conditions fit for humans? What about your destruction of our environment with your industries making huge profits?
The bombing didn’t end the war, nor did it end racism, nor did it end unemployment. A lot of people, when they heard about the bombing thought it was pretty far-out. In a passive way they could dig the symbolic attack on a symbolic American institution.
In reality, the bombing was no big deal, except to give the pig media and opportunist politicians a chance to try to attack the leftist movement in this country.