Fun and Games

...at the 1980 Convention

by

Fifth Estate # 301, February 26, 1980

1980 is an election year and we here in the Detroit area have the honor of housing the Republican convention.

This meeting of thieves and con-men will be held at the Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit and promises to be one of the more creepy sideshows of this new decade. To ensure this, these political traveling salesmen are bringing with them an army of FBI, CIA, Secret Service, State and County police; Detroit is already considered the “largest armed camp in the world.”

Well, since we live here and are going to be affected by this travesty, whether we like it or not, we thought we’d try and bring a little fun back into our lives and fuck with them.

For that reason, several of us living in the Detroit/Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area have gotten together to invite any and all libertarians in the U.S., Canada and everywhere (it would be nice for this to be an international event), to come join us in the second week of July for acts of madness, insanity and a good time.

We’re not going to make any demands of the Republicans, except “get out of town,” since we’ve got nothing to say to them or their trained watch dogs, but what we are hoping to do is to take advantage of the situation as much as possible for as much as possible.

If you’re interested and would like to join us in a game with no rules, drop us a line at either of the two addresses below so we can see just what our possibilities can be.

FIFTH ESTATE, 4403 Second Ave., Detroit, Michigan 48201

NAMELESS ANARCHIST GROUP, P.O. Box “K”, Ypsilanti, Michigan 48197

Sidebar

You may have missed the above poster if you normally buy your Fifth Estate in a store or reside in Europe. Vol. 14, No. 5 was published Dec. 4 as a large broadside and featured the poster on one side and textual material concerning the Iran situation on the other.

Because of what we thought was the timeliness of the issue at that moment (who knew the hostage situation was going to become a permanent part of the landscape?) we only mailed it out to subscribers and some domestic bookstores outside of Detroit.

The response to it was extremely good with our entire press run disappearing so quickly that we now have not a single issue left for distribution. Of course, we are banging our heads for our shortsightedness in not increasing the number printed, but thankfully several groups have reprinted the poster side. If you want to contact them, they may still have copies left.

None of the groups have mentioned charging for the poster, but donations are always helpful. Contact: Nameless Anarchist Group, Box K, Ypsilanti MI 48197; Partisan Press, Box 2193, Seattle WA 98111; or the Columbia Anarchist League, Box 380, Columbia MO 65201.

The Columbia group even managed to get part of the text read over a local radio station thus treating the audience to a rap about “spitting on all flags!” Also, each of the groups listed has considerable amount of its own literature available upon request.

* * *

The phony Iran and Afghanistan situations along with the threat of the draft has brought with them the desire for self-expression greater than usual. Printing was once a highly mystified undertaking, but now is relatively easy to accomplish with nothing really needed other than a typewriter, scissors, glue and access to a quickie printer. Advancing to more sophisticated techniques is also relatively cheap and easy. If you live in the Detroit area and need assistance with a libertarian printing project, several of us here at the Fifth Estate are willing to offer assistance and the use of some of our machinery. Also, we are always willing to provide to-size copy or graphics to persons in other parts of the country for doing reprints of Fifth Estate material. No stalinists, trotskyists or liberals need apply, thank you.

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