Comrades in Ink: The Fifth Estate celebrates 50 years of radical thought, and keeps its eye firmly on the future.
Story by Jeff Lilly & Derek Lindamood
Photos by Fifth Estate
It was 1965, two years before the Summer of Love, but the cultural revolution was already in full swing. 17-year-old Harvey Ovshinsky took a summer trip to California that year, and worked at a little radical underground paper called the L.A. Free Press.
“It talked about the people and things the straight press ignored.” He recalls. Personal freedom, anti-war, anti-establishment. When he returned to Detroit, Harvey decided to start his own underground paper, and named it after the coffee shop above the L.A. Free Press’s offices. Thus was born the Fifth Estate. The first issue, all of eight pages, rolled off the press in November of 1965.
The strain of attending college and publishing soon wore Harvey out, and he enlisted the help of similar-minded radicals. Among them was Peter Werbe, at the time a 20-something college dropout and already a seasoned agitator.
“I started it, Peter saved it.” Harvey explains. “I was burning the candle at both ends.”
The late ‘60s were a heady and fruitful time for radical publishing. Around 500 underground papers were in print. The Fifth Estate boasted a circulation in the tens of thousands, sold in head shops and on street corners by dedicated youth. The struggle against authority was real and visceral. Copies were sent to GIs serving in Vietnam, calling for them to desert. During the chaos of the 1967 Detroit Black Rebellion, the Fifth Estate office, then located on Warren Avenue near Wayne State University, was attacked and gassed by the National Guard.
“We had a situation, there in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, where we thought we might achieve both worldwide revolution and the Age of Aquarius.” Werbe explains. But trouble was coming. Ovshinsky had left the paper in April of 1968 for his alternative service as a conscientious objector after being drafted, leaving Werbe and the others to soldier on. Things fell apart in 1972, after “The re-election of the war-criminal, Nixon.” Underground papers, bereft of direction, folded one by one.
By 1975, nearly alone, the Fifth Estate took a sharp turn toward anarchism. While revolution and struggle were always themes, anarchy became more central to the paper’s identity.
Just what is anarchism? You might picture bomb-tossers in silent films, but in Werbe’s words, it is a “Utopian sense that society could move beyond its negative aspects: violence, war, poverty. The Spanish and Italians talked about ‘the ideal.’ Anarchism is a personal code of conduct to uphold while you’re trying to bring about a different society. Neither side of the current political groups are very admirable.”
The word anarchism comes from ancient Greek, meaning “the absence of a master.” And although anarchism is commonly misunderstood as something violent, it actually aims to create a society within which individuals freely cooperate together, as equals, peacefully, opposing all forms of hierarchical control. Anarchists thus believe that without the artificial restrictions of the State and government, without the coercion of imposed authority, a harmony of interests amongst human beings will emerge.
Werbe says the magazine, now with a Ferndale address, “writes itself,” and continues to pour out articles scrutinizing issues such as expropriations of native people from their land, the role of television as a subjugation mechanism in society, and the existence of capitalism, government, and even money itself. Then, as now, it’s “published by a volunteer collective of friends and comrades. We don’t pay salaries, but we also don’t take ads.” The paper is entirely supported through subscriptions and donations.
But the field, so to speak, has shrunk considerably. The Fifth Estate continues on with a fraction of its 1960s circulation numbers. But the dream, Werbe says, is still alive.
“When you talk about preaching to the choir… there’s a real use for that.” Werbe explains. “You want to keep the congregation together. Right now, a voice within the worldwide anarchist movement that maintains its ideas and vision.”
We’re in Werbe’s office, a little room on one side of his house, the walls covered with framed posters and other memorabilia of Fifth Estate’s long run. Once the target of establishment attacks and scrutiny (the FBI held extensive files on the paper and its crew,) the Fifth Estate has found itself in the unusual position of now being honored by that same establishment. The Detroit Historical Museum and Museum of Contemprary Art Detroit (MOCAD) hosted exhibits honoring the 50th anniversary of the Fifth Estate (the DHM exhibit is still running until August 2016.) Werbe welcomes the ironic honor, even as it amazes him. He shakes his head gently, perhaps perplexedly, as he clicks through photos of the museum exhibits. Still, his collectivist ideals shine through. “Peter refused to take credit in the exhibits.” Harvey explains. “His name is nowhere.”
In the beginning, did Werbe imagine being here fifty years later, still in print, last paper standing?
“I couldn’t even imagine being fifty years older.” Werbe says with a chuckle. Still, he has his eyes on the future. “We’re looking for the next generation… writers to help continue the magazine’s publication for the next 50 years, and also to expand its readership.”
“I think the existence of the Fifth Estate, and Ferndale Friends, puts lie to the idea that print is dead.” Werbe says in closing. “They’re touchable, palpable, real.”
Fifty years of struggle, and many more to come. Utopia is still out there, somewhere over the horizon, and the hope has never wavered that someday, it may yet be reached.
Harvey Ovshinsky is a writer, story consultant, producer, and teacher. He is currently contributing to a biography of his father, Stanford Ovshinsky, a prolific inventor whose accomplishments include the nickelhydride battery. Read more at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Ovshinsky
Peter Werbe, not content with a fifty-year run publishing a paper, has also hosted Nightcall on WRIF for the last four decades (Sundays at 11:00 P.M.) as well as the Peter Werbe Show, featuring interviews, at 1:00 A.M. on Mondays on WRIF and at 6:00 A.M. Sundays on WCSX.
His website is www.peterwerbe.com
The Fifth Estate: www.fifthestate.org
If slightly happened with our health, we believe there is a solution to any maladies in a medicament. What medicines do patients purchase online? Viagra which is used to treat impotency and other states connected to erectile dysfunction. Learn more about “sildenafil“. What men talk about “viagra stories“? The most vital aspect you should look for is “sildenafil citrate“. Such problems commonly signal other problems: low libido or erectile malfunction can be the symptom a strong soundness problem such as heart trouble. Causes of sexual dysfunction include injury to the penis. Chronic disease, several medicaments, and a status called Peyronie’s disease can also cause sexual dysfunction. Even though this medicine is not for use in women, it is not known whether this treatment passes into breast milk.
