Like so many other historical instances of state persecution, such as the Sacco and Vanzetti and the Rosenberg cases, the 1886 Haymarket Affair continues to haunt the present with its injustices. It is almost universally accepted in the Haymarket case …
“A serious error is being made in Latin America: Where the inhabitants depend almost exclusively on the products of the soil for their livelihood, the educational stress, contradictorily, is on urban rather than farm life; and the happiest people are …
Harry Hay, Father of the Gay rights movement, died this October at the age of 90. Harry founded the Mattachine Society in 1950, the first gay rights organization in the United States. He was kicked out a few years later …
The art of Ricardo Levins Morales is rooted in the soil of the struggles that shape our lives. Inspiring, empowering and validating, his images both document and embody collective visions of unity in the face of power.
Despite years of dictatorship and no-holds-barred neoliberal economics, Chile has proved to be fertile ground for anarchism in recent years. What has emerged is a socially-engaged class-conscious movement, active in both student and worker struggles that is determined to remake …
Reality, grown so thick with itself, became a fungus years ago with inbred spores and long reaching strands that have become the vampiric architecture of experience on every street in town. Thriving on dampened spirits in the totally human swamp, …
a review of Wartime Strikes: The Struggle Against the No-Strike Pledge in the UAW During World War II by Martin Glaberman, 1980, Bewick Editions, Detroit, 158 pp., $6 (Available from Fifth Estate Books).
As a follow-up to the Nov. 8 elections in Alabama, and as a result of black people voting in those elections for the first time in their lives, the white landowners are retaliating by evicting large numbers of black farm …
“Wobblies & Work”, FE 370 Fall 2005
In the Southwest, “U.S. Out of North America” is not just another pretty slogan. In 1680, when Spain presided over the Four Corners Area, Indian ‘runners ran from village to village, launching the Pueblo Revolt, in which Pueblo, Navajo and …
President Reagan came into office with an understanding apparently lacking in the two previous administrations which had been still reeling from the egregious defeat of the U.S. imperial forces in Vietnam: If U.S. capital was to continue to function successfully …
not since I was seventeen have I been in a similar state of lockdown . back then it was beaming home with the early light with complete disregard for any promises of minding a curfew or sobriety jeep a degenerate …
If there’s any idea promoted by the Wobblies that needs revision, it’s their concept of “One Big Union.” Even if one big union were doable, it may not be desirable. If I had to bet on it, I’d predict it …
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 …
For the first time since I got here, people are openly and seriously comparing this to the pre-Civil War situation in 1936. –Basque Diplomat, October 1975
The role of technology in social and class struggles has long been debated among opponents of capitalism and the state.
Although Wernher Von Braun is still alive, though bed-ridden with a terminal case of cancer, we feel that this is the appropriate time to wish him a speedy death.
A review of Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, Alexander Berkman, Pittsburgh: Frontier Press, 1970 [available from FE Books, see page 44 for information).
On the one hand, fighting solely for reforms has historically had the function of affirming and extending the system’s power; while on the other, waiting only for the final revolutionary conflagration can dictate an isolated existence confined to issuing angry …
ROCK ISLAND, IL—For 3 hours beginning at 4 a.m. Monday morning, October 21, 1985, 400 or so activists attempted to shut down the Rock Island Arsenal by blockading workers trying to drive onto the island. The five-month—organizing campaign by Project …
The Daily Barbarian is loose again after almost a year’s absence. The large, 8-page broadsheet filled with libertarian news, poetry, an essay on S & M, a great back-page Reagan poster, irreverent humor and imaginative layout makes one wish for …
Fifty years ago France was on the verge of social revolution, with millions of workers on strike, factories occupied, and students striking and occupying universities and high schools all over the country. Anarchists and anti-authoritarians were deeply involved in this …
Energies of the West Central Organization, since its formal emergence on the Detroit scene in June,1965, have exploded the myth of “apathy” inherent in the behavior of “poor folks.” Human beings—Negro, white, Mexican, Maltes, and Puerto Rican—who have never fully …
Motor City Labor News is a regular feature of the Fifth Estate. In this column we want to provide a space for people from different parts of the Detroit labor scene to exchange their experiences—experiences of the struggle to gain …
FE Note. The December 1976 Fifth Estate carried a critique by Charles Reeve (see “The Revolt Against Work or Fight for the Right to Be Lazy,” p. 9) of the contentions of John and Paula Zerzan that the crisis point …
Police are always complaining about what dangerous jobs they have. Some of this is justified; some of it is of their own making. When you are part of an occupying army, the people do tend to get a little uptight …
This year marks the 30th anniversary of publication of the pamphlet Wildcat: Dodge Truck, June 1974, written and produced by several of the people who became the core of the Fifth Estate collective the next year when it was transformed …
FE Note: The following is taken from the El Libertario web site. See the above article on this page for their URL.
Last March in Canton, China, an unnamed Peking official replied to questions by the New York-Times, on the subject of political prisoners in China, by stating, “A few intellectuals deprived of free speech is only a minor question. In the …
FE Moves It might seem self-indulgent, in the face of mounting worldwide horror, to call what has occurred around the FE the past several months a “crisis,” but a more precise word fails to come to mind. In August we …
Peoples (sic) Republic (sic) of China Despite the change of bureaucracy in China and attempts by the new rulers to make peace with the workers by offering them meager wage increases, it seems that political and social unrest continues. According …
To the Editor: After reading an article in the FIFTH ESTATE entitled “Detroit’s Shameless Old Lady, the Eastern Market” [FE #27, April 1-15, 1967], I was a bit pissed off at all the lies. I was very interested in the …
ITALY Since the kidnapping of Aldo Moro in Rome last month, newspapers around the world-have been covering the story of the abduction of this “poor man” while attacks by fascist groups in Italy go unreported, and in fact condoned by …
The factories of Detroit are the guts of the city. They are a central, common reality in the lives of Detroit people, whether people are working a 10-hour day on the line or just watching from their office windows as …
Note: The following is an excerpt from an article, “The Regime and the Working Class in the USSR,” by Viktor Zaslaysky which appeared in Telos No. 42, Winter 1979-80. Telos, “a quarterly journal of radical thought,” is available at Box …
Dear Fifth Estate, Due to a surprising thing to come, I wish to cancel my subscription. I’m on a heavy cruiser off the DMZ (Vietnam) coast. On 18 Jan. 1969 the ship returns to the United States and I …
The author is editor-in-chief of Wayne University’s South End newspaper, former editor of the Inner City Voice and is an employee of the Detroit News. Within the last four months, the management of the Detroit News has turned the News …
A hundred years ago, in September 1918, more than a hundred leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) were convicted of conspiracy to obstruct World War I. The trial marked a critical turning point for the union and …
100 Years Later, Government Repression Has Not Stopped the IWW Read More »
Not if you want to succeed in business today. In the modern international marketplace, competition is tough. If the corporations which have brought us the standard of living we have recently come to enjoy are to continue doing so against …
Would You Let this Man Stand in the Way of Your Bottom Line? Read More »
In attempts to find new markets in which to extract more profit, drug companies are trying to find new ways to keep workers feeling well and on the job.