On Febuary 4, 1974, the Symbionese Liberation Army, an American self-styled urban gurrilla warfare group kidnapped 19-year-old media heiress Patricia Hearst as she and her 26-year-old boyfriend, Steven Weed, sat relaxing in their Berkeley, California home.
Their goal was to negotiate the release of two of their members, Joseph Remiro and Russell Little, who were just convicted and given life sentences for assassinating a popular school superintendant over his support for what they considered to be a "facist" plan to introduce identification cards. This proved impossible to negotiate, and the F.B.I. searched unsuccessfully for the S.L.A. as they took refuge in "safehouses" and the kidnapping captured regional, then world attention.
What was so spectacular about this kidnapping was not so much the prominence of the victim, but her response. The S.L.A. released taped recordings of Hearst reading their demands, and with each tape they released, she voiced increasing support for her captors. Eventually, she firmly renounced her former life and family, and declared that when the S.L.A. offered her the choice of going free or joining them, she chose to join them. She would even take a new name: Tania.
On April 15, 1974, S.L.A. members burst into a branch of The Hibernia Bank at 1450 Noriega Street in San Francisco. Security camera footage of pictured Patricia Hearst, Tania, holding a rifle and yelling commands. Two civilians were shot, and the S.L.A. made off with over $10,000.
Unable to recruit any would-be revolutionaries in the Bay Area, the S.L.A. moved to Los Angeles in hopes of finding more supporters, but the move was sloppy, and the group resorted to commandeering housing and supplies from the people of Los Angeles, thus alienating the people they relied upon for secrecy and protection. Imprisoned S.L.A. member Russell Little declared that they had lost sight of their goals, and were entering a confrontation with the police rather than engaging in a dialogue with the people.
On 16 May 1974, S.L.A. codenames Teko and Yolanda entered Mel's Sporting Goods Store in Inglewood, California, to shop for supplies for their safehouse. While Yolanda made the purchases, Teko on a tried to shoplift, and was caught by a security guard. Following a brief confrontation, codename Tania, on lookout from across the street, opened fire on the store's sign, forcing everyone inside to take cover, and allowing the other members to escape.
Police tracked them to their safehouse, and they were forced to abandon it and commandeer a new one from unwilling occupants in the dead of the night, storming a home with massive amounts of guns and ammunition in tow. The next day, a woman called the police to tell them that people with guns were staying at her daughter's house. That afternoon, more than 400 L.A.P.D. officers, along with the F.B.I., California Highway Patrol, and Los Angeles Fire Department surrounded the neighborhood. After a two-hour gun battle between S.W.A.T. teams outside and the S.L.A. inside, the house caught fire and all six S.L.A. members inside were killed. Tania, Teko, and Yolanda were in hiding elsewhere, and were not among the dead.
The manhunt for Patricia Hearst and the remainder of the S.L.A. continued, and after over a year of continued movement and additional S.L.A. actions, she was captured. She claimed to have been drugged and brainwashed, and identified the remainder of the S.L.A. members. She was convicted for her part in the bank raid, and the the S.L.A. dissolved.
The revolution failed.
But that was then...
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Topic: Birth of the LCS (Read 1265 times)