There is a Hebrew idiomatic expression, K’ninah Houra, which Joel Altus explained to me as sort of being equivalent to saying knock on wood after telling of some good fortune you have incurred and you want it not to change. …
FE Author: Peter Werbe
“Get the big stuff”
by Peter Werbe
Fifth Estate # 35, August 1-15, 1967
“The chickens are coming home to roost” —Malcolm X, Nov. 22, 1963 Malcolm was right, of course, and the chickens have come home so many ways since that grim day four years ago. Vietnam, Malcolm’s own death, riots across the …
[Cuba] The Train to Matanzas
by Peter Werbe
Fifth Estate # 396, Summer, 2016
On March 15, our last day in Cuba, my wife and I boarded the Hershey Electric Railway in Casablanca, across the harbor from Old Havana, for a 57-mile trip to the town of Matanzas. We were flying back to Toronto …
How I Stopped Recycling
by Peter Werbe
Fifth Estate # 351, Summer 1998
Recycling is a classic case of co-optation. The title of this article is somewhat misleading since I continue to recycle a portion of the waste produced daily by my household. What has changed is my previous diligence in making certain …
Will Success Spoil Chumbawamba?
by Peter Werbe
Fifth Estate # 351, Summer 1998
I arrived early at Clutch Cargo’s, once an imposing church, but now a trendy rock joint in yuppified downtown Pontiac, a gritty, predominantly black, industrial Detroit suburb. The occasion was a concert by Chumbawamba, the anarchist pop group from Leeds, …
Two Posters
by Peter Werbe
Fifth Estate # 395, Winter 2016 - 50th Anniversary
Just as in other periods of contestation with the ruling order, not only did the Vietnam era resistance create its own periodicals, but it also published an enormous number of posters and flyers. Their subject matter didn’t only call for …
An Anarchist Cookbook That Actually Has Recipes!
by Peter Werbe
Fifth Estate # 395, Winter 2016 - 50th Anniversary
a review of The Anarchist Cookbook Keith McHenry, with Chaz Bufe Introduction by Chris Hedges, 2015 See Sharp Press, 154 pp.
Marxism: Obscuring more than it reveals
by Peter Werbe
Fifth Estate # 393, Spring 2015
“… [I]n my view, anarchism has no significant contribution to socialist theory to make.” —Eric Hobsbawm, “Reflections on Anarchism,” 1969 Hobsbawm, the late British Marxist historian, in his snobbery, unintentionally poses the question as to the function of theory of …
Marx: Good-Bye To All That
by Peter Werbe
Fifth Estate # 281, March, 1977
Inside the walled compound of a Buddhist monastery on the outskirts of Kyoto, Japan, the monks who reside there have created a meditation garden consisting of raked sand and about a dozen large stones. The stones are adroitly arranged so …
Riots Revisited
by Peter Werbe, T. Fulano (David Watson)
Fifth Estate # 376, Halloween, 2007
“July1967” by T. Fulano, from FE 326, Summer 1987 It was a full scale beggar’s banquet, the return of the repressed, a surprise party. The city people, young and old, black and white, went through the pawnshop windows like meteorites. …