Remember "Tanya" and the "SLA?" The last of the left wing "terrorist" threats.

[Mojeoux]

Way before Patty Hearst, became "Tanya," this poor woman was initially brutally kidnapped. On the first day of demands the SLA said her life was at stake if the Hearst Family did NOT give food to the poor. Bizarrely enough, at the time the SLA would only trust the Jim Jones Churches. The JJ churches were still in SF at the time and I had no idea who they were at all.

One of those churches was around the corner from my flat on 22nd. Way before they were scheduled to open up there were already about 100 people gathered outside and it was starting to drizzle. I walked over and asked if they needed help. I told them I had experience feeding large groups of people. I came in and helped them sort out bags with portions of all the different groceries that had been delivered. When they opened both doors at once it seemed to cause confusion and people began mobbing in, going through the bags and re-packing their own. I went to the back kitchen to let them know the situation and immediately realized that the kitchen was being robbed. The huge stack of big boxes of frozen chickens, 24 in a box was way down, and huffy guys were carrying them to a truck outside.
I jumped up on the last of the stack and appealed to them that people had been waiting in the rain for the chickens! They lifted the box and tipped me off like nothing and a nice guy who helped me from falling too hard, whispered to me, "Don't get knifed over chickens, man."

In a daze I went up the side stairs of the main church area. When the crowd in front found out about the robbery in the kitchen, things got really crazy. I watched below as people fought over canned goods while veggies and fruit were being squished underfoot and babies were crying. Then and there I knew, deep in my heart that it was all jacked up because of the evil energy of the "Blood Money." IMO most of the left had this same epiphany about the SLA and the futility of violence and threats as useful tools for positive change. I walked out of there without even a can of Dinty-Moore Stew.

Years later we found out how heinous Jim Jones and his church could be and it was discovered that they were the ones who had stolen all the chickens! Left wing ideologies were kind of janky at the time, but good people have given these ideas a great deal and many years of concentration and debate. it has all come down to.....non-violence and civil rights. We knew this all along.

One more time.................. Non Violence and Civil Rights.



Here is an old article about the SLA with the famous photo of "Tanya" with her guns in front of the SLA snake symbol, I guess.

[Mojeoux]

1. Wow, I'm sorry about the "illegal code."

It's about not publishing an entire article?

[begin_within]

2. Yes, I remember when that was breaking news... and there was a shootout on live TV.

[Mojeoux]

3. The demented saga of the SLA had only started.

They rampaged around for another year or so. The leader and a bunch of the SLA people were killed in the end in a nasty stand-off in L.A.

[paparush]

16. Hey Begin, do you have that graphic in a larger size?

the Assassination by Proxy img?

I'd like to have a larger version of that.

[Hannah Bell]

4. i don't think members of the general public have any idea what was really going on with the sla

or jones.

at least that was the conclusion i came to when i started looking through fbi transcripts of jones' bugged phone calls.

i stumbled across them when i was interested in the delancey street foundation, co-founded by mimi silbert a psychologist & john maher, an ex-heroin addict by way of synanon -- who were lovers at the time.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/20875262/Therapy-Delancey-Street-Style-No-Paycheck-SFMagazine-1981

this call between maher & jones shows them intensely involved in the nitty-gritty of san francisco, california & national politics, including the situation of Dennis Banks of the American Indian Movement, who was going to be extradited to S. Dakota but wasn't thanks to Jerry Brown.

http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/Tapes/Tapes/TapeSummaries/622.html

They also discuss the SLA:

Maher: Well, I’m convinced— I’m convinced, uh, Reverend Jones, that uh—

Jones: Call me Jim. Don’t ever call me that "Reverend," I can—

Maher: Okay. I’m— I convinced that half of the people who show up at all these rallies that me and you go to speak at, and all of this?

Jones: Yeah.

Maher: I don’t mean half, but a substantial number— I’m convinced we’re infiltrated everywhere with provocateurs, uh—

Jones: I believe we are.

Maher: The kinds of statements that are made in the name of doing good for human beings, uh, (pause) are uh, are so rash and so unthought out and so silly sometimes, that I can only believe that they are pumped into our environment by people who want us to destroy ourselves and other people.

Jones: I— I thank you uh, for that comment. We— We had always considered the SLA, for instance, a provocateur. Uh, I don’t believe anybody that— of the left is that insane, uh, to do— to do this—

Maher: That’s right.

Jones: —and then with the background that we know from a police inspector, who’s a member of my Los Angeles congregation, that Cinque was palsy-walsy with everybody in the glass house, so I— I couldn’t agree more, I thought what you said, these rev— revolutionaries, rev— what’d you call them, revo— revolting, instead of revolutionaries.

Maher: (Laughs) Right.

http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/Tapes/Tapes/TapeTranscripts/Q622.html


Then, as it turns out, Jones had a confederate listening in to the conversation...


The SLA's 7-headed cobra symbol:

Although the SLA considered themselves leaders of the black revolution, DeFreeze was its only black member. His seven-headed SLA cobra symbol was based on seven principles, with each head representing a principle. They are: Umoja (Unity), Kujichagulia (self-determination), Ujima (collective work and responsibility), Ujamaa (cooperative economics), Nia (purpose), Kuumba (creativity) and Imani (faith).

are the 7 principles of Kwanzaa:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwanzaa

A holiday "invented" by Ron Karenga, head of US (Sometimes "United Slaves", a rival to the Panthers).

Karenga was in the California penal system at the same time DeFreeze was.

Both DeFreeze & Karenga are rumored to have been informants for the police or government.

Who knows.

I for one always thought there was something stinky about the SLA.

[Mojeoux]

5. By the end, Jones was thru the rabbit hole

With no bottom in sight, no hope, and twisted truth.

[Hannah Bell]

7. that's the impression one gets from news reports. but the news reports are not to be trusted.

in fact, the general public has no clue what was going on.

i'm not saying so by way of disparaging your first-hand experience. only that the public never knows the back-story.

[Raine]

6. I remember it very well, I live in Los Angeles and watched

the shoot out live on TV. I've always been interested in this bit of American history and have read every book I could find on it.

edit: added word

[Mojeoux]

8. This last Fiery SLA event was similar to what happened to M.O.V.E. in Philadelphia, .

And a lot like WACO.

[MadHound]

9. I guess you're forgetting the Unibomber

Among other incidents and groups along the way.

[Mojeoux]

11. The Unibomber was Uni-murderous. He hated the Left and the Right

And Please name other publicly declared left wing groups who rampaged around causing mayhem and threatening people?

Read The Uni-bomber Manifesto. He hated his left wing colleagues and all the right wing people who sat on the boards of Universities. And he was a LONER. No group followers, nothing organized.

[NoGOPZone]

13. The Unibomber was a leftist?

Read through paragraph twenty three and get back to us.

http://cyber.eserver.org/unabom.txt

Here an excerpt to get you started.

"Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong, good and successful. They hate America, they hate Western civilization, they hate white males, they hate rationality."

[Mojeoux]

14. Is it because he lived in the woods, or that he was a college proffesor?

Why do people assume the uni-bomber was some kind of lefty?
Must be MSM.

[NoGOPZone]

18. The media is certainly a factor

particularly when it is serving a public too lazy to do its own research, particularly on things they want to hear or believe.

Another factor is the Unibomber's environmental concerns, which were emphasized to depict him as liberal. although he's far closer to an ecoanarchist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_anarchism

[SpiralHawk]

10. "Free Squeaky now." - Chuckie Manson (R)

"This is like totally the wrong thread for that, Chuckie." - Squeaky

[Mojeoux]

12. Dear little Squeeky. She was busted the same year they arrested Patty Hearst

She is so pathetic. She is also an example of why the left wing of America looked at these violent dorks and rejected the concept of terrorist violence as a political or social tool for positive change.
This is why the attempts at a moral equivalence between the Right Wing and the Left Wing is soooooooo inane.

[Recursion]

15. MOVE, SLA, People's Temple.

The more or less simultaneous last hurrah of an armed, separatist left in America.

[Mojeoux]

17. That what I'm sayin'

These groups were an example of everything peace loving people were against and also cautionary tales of how powerful and merciless our law enforcement can be.

That's why the left wing never had a Timothy McVey.