NEW TIMES APRIL 16, 1976 THE BIRTH AND DEATH OF THE SLA
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By Bill and Emily Harris,
Russell Little and Joseph
Remiro, as told to Susan
Lyne and Robert Scheer------------------------
How and why the group
that kidnapped Patty
Hearst came to be urban
guerrillas
Six are dead, pro tem member
Patricia Hearst is awaiting sentencing and
the four surviving comrades-in-arms are
now all in prison—Emily and Bill Harris.
Joe Remiro and Russell Little. Although
various acts of sabotage and terrorism are
still carried out in it's name, the SLA
ceased to exist the day the Harrises and
Patricia Hearst were arrested. All that is
left are a few nagging questions: How and
why did the SLA come together? Who
assassinated Oakland School Superin-
tendent Marcus Foster and why? What
sort of people were the members of the
SLA. and what do the survivors think of
their group and its actions now?
This story begins in the summer of
1972 By that time the future members of
the Svmbionese Liberation Army were
engaged in radical activities in Oakland.
Like millions of other young Americans,
they had undergone apolitical conversion
in the Sixties. Gradually, a racism that
they had never noticed seemed glaring, a
sexism that they had never questioned
seemed crippling and a war that they had
never challenged seemed monstrous. And
somehow it all fit together.
For Emily Harris, it was her
dependence as a woman which led her to
ask social questions; the antiwar move-
ment gave her political answers. Her hus-
band Bill discovered a virulent racism
when he went to Vietnam; for the first
time, he was associating largely with
blacks among his fellow Marines, and he
was being directed to wage war against
“gooks” and “slopes. “Six months after he
returned from Vietnam, already involved
in antiwar organizing, Bill met Emily at
Indiana University. where their political
education continued.
Like Bill. Joe Remiro changed in
Vietnam. He and his buddies in an elite
combat unit would call in artillery strikes
to blow up valleys “because we had
nothing better to do,” or they would
destroy the corner of a village to test the
accuracy of napalm. The senselessness of
it all didn’t hit Remiro until he returned
home and saw that his old neighbors were
still mowing their lawns and driving their
cars, oblivious to the horrors he had wit-
nessed.
like many other young radicals —
for comrades and inspiration in the
established leftist communities.
The following account picks up
the future members of the SLA as they
begin to involve themselves in the prison
organizing movement and in Ven-
ceremos, a Maoist-oriented political
group that stressed armed self-defense of
offices and members’ homes. It is a point
midway on the road from campus demon-
strations to armed guerrilla warfare.
Spring and Summer of 1972: The Ven-
ceremos Connection
Emily: We left Indiana for the Bay Area
in 1972 because we wanted to learn more
about what was happening in a place that
seemed to us Midwesterners to be the nu-
cleus of radical activity. By that time, one
of our good friends, Angela Atwood, had
already moved out and was living in
Berkeley.
Angela had been involved in anti-
war demonstrations in Indiana along with
Bill and me. and after she came to the
Bay Area she worked as a waitress and
later became active in trying to unionize a
lot of San Francisco’s restaurants.
We started working. with’ Vence-
remos mainly because Bill met Joe at a
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page missing?
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____________________________
but I do remember seeing him at a meet-
ing around Wounded Knee. He was slow-
ly getting to know people and make con-
tacts. One of these folks was Nancy Ling
Perry.
I did not get to know either Nancy
or Mizmoon well until after Russ and Joe
got busted, and then we never talked
about their backgrounds much because
we were struggling to survive. But I do
know that Nancy felt a lot of solidarity
with the black liberation struggle. She
had lived with Gilbert Perry. a black jazz
pianist and composer, and had visited
several brothers in prison. Mizmoon
worked as a janitor at the Berkeley Public
Library and had done a lot of organizing
with the city employees to get more
women hired to city jobs. Willie had been
on the periphery of Venceremos like
most of us. organizing around community
issues, teaching self-defense classes and
participating in study groups. His main
political work was in the prisons, provid-
ing a link between progressive convicts
and the movement on the streets.
Camilla Hall did not join that
original group until after the Foster oper-
ation. She was a beautiful artist and a
poet and was a close friend and lover of
Mizmoon. Because Camilla was a lesbian,
I think a lot of women wonder why she
would join a group like the SLA that was
made up of men as well as women, but
Camilla was not a separatist. She enjoyed
working with women and she felt that the
methods of the women’s struggle had to
be expanded. She didn’t feel that working
with men on that level would interfere
with her lesbian-feminist ideals because
she believed that women’s oppression did
not exist in isolation from the oppression
of other people.
June 1973: The Birth of the SLA
Bill: Nancy, Willie, Mizmoon and Cin de-
cided to try to draft a program of revo-
lutionary ideas and objectives for a multi-
national organization. They took the pro-
gram around and showed it to a lot of
community people and a few Bay Area
organizations. They got a really mixed re-
action to it—most people didn’t feel it
was practical to try to form multiracial
units. At this point, they developed the
concept of the Symbionese Federation—
autonomous combat units that would
operate underground (Symbionese Liber-
ation Army) and an aboveground
political support infrastructure. At the
same time they started training and get-
ting supplies and equipment.
Bill: They didn’t take the classical Marx-
ist-Leninist approach to revolutionary
struggle. The people who made up the
SLA were influenced by the interplay
between Marxism, revolutionary
nationalism and revolutionary feminism.
The SLA was based on the need to
develop a guerrilla front with the idea that
armed actions along with above ground
political organizing educates and
mobilizes people in support of revolution.
and on the belief that we don’t need to
wait for a vanguard party to lead us. The
SLA saw the idea of federation among
many diverse, autonomous groups as an
alternative form of organization to the
party.
Emily: You have to see urban guerrilla
warfare as a response. It doesn’t grow out
of a vacuum. It isn’t pulling straws and
saying, “Let’s try this and see if it works.”
It’s a build-up of things—people do not
believe in violence or in doing violent
things unless they are forced to do it in
one way or another.
Bill: The idea was that when a new com-
bat cell federated with the SLA, it would
function independently except in the case
of mutually agreed upon joint action. The
War Council was envisioned as consisting
of two representatives from each combat
unit who would be responsible for coor-
dinating joint operations. New units
would receive material support if it was
needed but would be encouraged to
develop their own support infrastructure.
Russ: The main difference between the
federation concept and the original idea
was that the federation took into account
the antagonisms and distrust that exist
among progressive people in this country,
and allowed each group to retain its
autonomy and self-reliance while still be-
ing able to coordinate activities with
other groups around common needs and
objectives. It leaves space for revolu-.
tionary nationalists to retain a separate
stance but still work with other units. The
same would apply for revolutionary
women separatists and also for groups
with different political philosophies—as
long as there was a basic belief in the
necessity to use armed force to destroy
U.S. corporate fascism. Each individual
unit was free to determine its particular
composition •and structure. In other
words, you could conceivably have units
composed of revolutionary blacks or Chi-
canos or native Americans or Puerto
Ricans or whites or women or men or
gays or Marxists or anarchists.
Bill: Cin went off to train with a group of
revolutionary Black Nationalists for a
while and considered staying with them.
He didn’t feel it was his responsibility to
work with white revolutionaries, but it
was a question of who was able to start
moving on a military-political level the
quickest—that’s why he went back to
Willie, Nancy and Mizmoon. Actually the
blacks he had stayed with became a part
of the Symbionese Federation later, and
were in the process of getting a black
SLA combat unit together. Cm intended
to join that unit once they got organized
and were ready to move. In the mean-
time, he was working with the original
group and with the support network they
were recruiting.
The situation was the exact oppo-
site of the usual relationship between
black and white activists. When the SLA
jumped off, the combat unit was com-
posed of mostly young whites from mid-
dle-class families, while a majority of the
support infrastructure was lower-class
blacks.
November 8, 1973: The Marcus Foster
Assassination
Emily: The conviction of Joe Remiro and
Russell Little for the killing of Marcus
Foster was a total frame-up. Neither Joe,
Russ, Angela, Bill nor I was even in the
SLA at the time of the Foster assassina-
tion. We first heard of the Foster shoot-
ing from reading daily newspaper ac-
counts. but after Joe and Russ’ capture,
members of the SLA told us what had
happened. It was the first public action by
the SLA. Marcus Foster and Robert
Blackburn were chosen as targets
because they were the main proponents
of a Law Enforcement Assistance Ad-
ministration (LEAA) pilot program to
link up educational institutions with
police agencies. It involved police units
patroling the Oakland schools with shot-
guns; a photo ID program where students
would be required to present their IDs on
request and could be detained for ques-
tioning if they refused; and a bio-
graphical-dossier program where in-
formation on students could be fed into
national computer banks in an attempt to
predict, categorize and remove any
“troublemakers.” The lives and well-
being of the students were at stake —the
program was really a means of herding
“problem kids” out of the schools and in-
to the prisons. No matter how you look at
it, an armed presence in the schools is just
the beginning in teaching conditioned ac-
ceptance to the occupation of whole
communities.
Russ: The program was supposed to be
implemented by setting up an extensive
spy system at each of seven pilot schools
under the command of a former police
lieutenant, with each school under the
supervision of a former police sergeant.
The system was to be coordinated with a
probation department. youth authority
(youth prison), juvenile hall and the Oak-
land Police Department—all of which
had a hand in training these informants
(they called them monitors) at each
school and in sharing and contributing to
the bio-dossiers (composite files) of each
student. In the LEAA documents that we
saw at our trial, these agencies, along
with the schools themselves, are eu-
phemistically called “youth-serving agen-
cies.” and it was explained that “centrali-
zation and coordination is necessary” in
order to maintain control.
Bill: I found out much later that Nancy.
Mizmoon and Cm were the ones who
carried out the action. They had to sta-
tion themselves in a position where
Foster and Blackburn would pass them
going to their car after the school board
meeting on November 6. Cin stationed
himself of to the side in some bushes as
backup in case they needed help. Both
Nancy and Mizmoon had cyanide bullets
in their guns. and as soon as Foster and
Blackburn walked by. they fired at them.
Mizmoon shot Foster. but Nancy missed
almost completely and hit Blackburn in
the arm. As he ran out of the range of
their handguns. Gin seriously wounded
him with a shotgun blast.
Patty has testified that it was Miz-
moon. Nancy and Gin who shot Foster
and Blackburn. which supports Joe and
Russ’ innocence. But then she lied and
said that Joe and Russ were in a car out-
side as backup. It was real indicative of
the whole Hearst mentality the way Pa-
tricia threw Russ and Joe in as an after-
thought. We had talked with Patty for
over a year about how they were inno-
cent, especially when they were on trial in
Sacramento. It was as if Bailey couldn’t
allow her version to let Russ and Joe off
the hook. Bailey is operating as a defense
lawyer for the Hearsts with a prosecutor’s
mentality against all of us.
Willie and Gin really felt bad after
Joe and Russ were charged with the
Foster assassination, because Willie had
loaned the SLA one of Joe’s handguns to
use, and afterwards Gin had tried to
modify the identifying characteristics
before Willie returned it to Joe. It is ob-
vious now that any gun used in the Foster
thing should have been destroyed.
especially one that could implicate some-
one who wasn’t involved.
Emily: We first learned about the Foster
assassination in the Oakland Tribune.
When we heard it was done by revolu-
tionaries. we were really excited. We felt
that it was a broadening of revolutionary
tactics in this country. That night we
went out and bought all the Tribunes we
could get our hands on to send the com-
munique to our friends. R was only a lot
later, after we saw the community’s over-
whelmingly negative reaction, that we
stopped to seriously analyze it. It became
pretty obvious that the SLA had made a
serious error in using the tactic of assassi-
nation at all around the Foster program.
and they definitely misjudged the way the
community would respond to it.
Joe: At first I felt very supportive about
the whole thing, and from what I found
out during Russ’ and my trial, the Foster
program was far more vicious than the
SLA had even indicated in their
communiqué. Killing Foster put a quick stop
to the intended program. but. in effect, it
subverted the spontaneous opposition of
students, parents and teachers to the pro-
gram. There had been student strikes,
petitions, leaflets and a lot of hell raising
At school board meetings. At our trial,
there was testimony that the program was
being pushed through regardless of all the
community opposition. Even though the
action taken by the SLA temporarily
stopped the program, it didn’t aid in
building more opposition or in drawing
more attention to what was coming
down; the action scared people away.
People were not ready to support some-
thing like that. Those who had been pub-
licly calling Foster a fascist pig started
making statements about what a good guy
he had been, not because they believed it
but because they were afraid of being
identified with the people who shot him.
Before and during our trial,
neither Russ nor I wanted to publicly crit-
icize the action. The SLA was being at-
tacked by people on the Left who saw a
chance to legitimize themselves in the
eyes of the state. We didn’t care to
legitimize ourselves or in any way be
identified with those fools on the Left—
we certainly didn’t want to be used by
them to attack the SLA. No one making
any objective criticisms of the action
at the time. We threw people out of the
visiting room at the jail who wanted us to
denounce the assassination as a condition
for supporting our defense. We knew that
we could have filled the courtroom with
these jive leftists if we were willing to
mimic their opportunist politics, but we
were much happier with guerrilla support
and a few strong folks in the courtroom.
We were innocent of the charges without
attacking the SLA and only accepted sup-
port on that basis.
Russ: I think one of the main problems
that became clear with the Foster killing
was the “vanguard” mentality of the SLA:
the idea that revolutionaries have to take
action for people —lead them —whether
people understand it or not. It’s a pater-
nalistic attitude. People in the SLA knew
that Foster’s program was a prototype
and figured they could stop it by killing
him and Blackburn and scaring the
school board. But it would have been bet-
ter in the long run to have slowly inten-
sified action starting with broken office
windows, spray-painting the walls, fire-
bombing the school board offices and
then bombing the local LEAA office.
December 1973: A Second SLA Unit Is
Formed
Bill: After Willie had gotten a sense from
Emily. Angela, Russ, Joe and me that we
wanted to move in the same general
direction as the SLA and that we support-
ed the Foster action, he brought us the
SLA documents about the federation to
read and discuss. Then he asked us if we
wanted to meet with the SLA. He didn’t
say. “I’m in the SLA.” He just said, “I’m in
contact with the SLA.” It wasn’t till later
that we learned he was a member. We
were really kind of surprised because
before this Willie had never let on about
anything. I can even remember asking
him if he had read the Foster com-
munique and he answered me in such a
way that suggested he was as surprised by
the whole thing as we were.
Joe: We were taken to the Concord house
for this meeting. Russ came over to Bill
and Emily’s house about 8:00 in the
morning. We all walked around the cor-
ner to the Safeway supermarket and got
into a van that was waiting in the parking
lot. Bill, Emily, Angela and I got into the
back of the van because, as a security
procedure, we had no need to know
where the meeting was being held. Russ
got into the front with the woman who
was driving. I later found out that she was
Nancy Ling Perry. When we got to the
house, there were three SLA members—
Ci Fahizah (Nancy) and Zoya (Miz-
moon)—those were the only names we
were given. Willie had gone back East to
see his family, so Russ was acting as our
liaison.
At the initial meeting. we were asked
to think about how we wanted to partici-
pate. We basically considered two alter-
natives—to continue as an above ground
collective and provide money, infor-
mation. technical support and criticism
to the SLA; or we could form another
combat unit. We talked about it a lot and
decided we were too hot to be a support
group. We had all been associated, one
way or another, with Venceremos. And
we were all visiting prisoners whom the
state considered a threat because of their
political beliefs. We felt that we would
just bring heat down on the SLA, and pos-
sibly get them busted. So we decided to
form another combat unit.
The Last SLA Meeting at the Concord
Safe House
Russ: Our last meeting was on New
Year’s Eve. We sat around drinking beer
and wine, talking one-to-one, listening to
records and just generally getting to know
one another. The next day we had a se-
rious discussion about our plans. Before
coming to the meeting. we had decided
amongst ourselves that it would be best
for our unit to move out of Oakland and
use the IDs we had gotten to change our
identities completely. We thought San
Jose might be a good place to go.
Between that meeting and Joe’s and my
bust on January 10. 1974, we were mak-
ing plans to split. Bill and Emily were still
working at the time. Emily was a sec-
retary and Bill worked in the post office.
They were making good money —about
$900 a month —so Angela and Joe were
going to make the move first. We wanted
to rent a house with a garage because Joe
was a mechanic and he wanted to work
on cars out of the garage-you know,
kind of a “people’s” repair service. When
they had everything set up. Emily, Bill
and I would go down and join them.
January 10, 1974: Russ and. Joe’s
Bust
Joe: Russ and I had to go back to the
house in Concord one more time to tell
the other folks our final plans. They had
showed us all a carbine that had been
converted into a fully automatic machine
gun. and they were going to give us draw-
ings and an explanation of how to do that.
When I got in the van. Russ told me to
reach in back and check out what was
there. I pulled out a bag with leaflets in
it —multicolored SLA leaflets. We had
talked about how if we were going to be
two autonomous units, we needed some-
thing to identify ourselves besides a
name. We decided we’d have a leaflet
made up that could not be easily dupli-
cated that we would use for authen-
tication of our actions.
Russ: There was no excuse for the bust.
The SLA should never have had a safe
house in Concord, because we didn’t fit
into that middle-class suburban com-
munity. There were nosy neighbors with
nine to five jobs who were really sus-
picious of anyone who wasn‘t exactly
like them. The thought that went into get-
ting a house there was wrong—people
figured that with all the drug raids and
police harassment in places like Berkeley
and Oakland, a community like Concord
would be safer.
Joe and I had never lived in the
suburbs, so we didn’t realize that driving
around at 1:30 a.m. on a week night
would look suspicious—in the city we
were used to coming home late. The cop
who stopped us wasn’t particularly look-
ing for the SLA. he just liked to fuck with
young. hip-looking people. The lights and
everything on the car were in proper
working order, and the irony of the whole
thing is that in our trial the cop said that
was why he pulled us over—it was sus-
picious to him that everything on a van
that old would be working! After he
checked our licenses, the cop ordered Joe
out of the van. He started to pull his gun
as Joe was getting out, so Joe pulled his
too. The cop got off the first two shots,
but luckily Joe wasn’t hit and was able to
fire back.
Joe: After our bust the Concord house
was set on fire because Cin, Nancy and
Mizmoon were worried that someone
would connect the van with the house
before they had time to move everything
out. They poured gasoline over every-
thing, but the ventilation was so bad that
ihe fire went out. The fire department re-
port we saw at our trial says that if one
window had been left open the house
would have been destroyed in minutes.
Emily: Almost immediately after the bust
the people in both cells were identified—
the van that Joe and Russ were busted in
was registered in Nancy’s real name and
she was identified as the person who had
rented the house. Willie, Angela, Bill and
I were suspected because of our friend-
ship with Russ and Joe—all of us had
lived with Joe at one time or
another, plus Russ had shown Duge his
fake ID and we all had IDs sent to that
same address—which was really stupid in
retrospect. Mizmoon and Cin were then
linked up when Chris Thompson
snitched on them. So right from the get-
go we each lost our anonymity.
Russ: Unfortunately, the folks in the
house had to split so quick they weren’t
sure if they had left any materials that
could have linked up other people in the
federation, so the SLA was forced to cut
loose the infrastructure of support people
they had developed. It just happened too
soon. We were two months away from
having it together—in two months the or-
ganization would have been a lot
stronger. Instead, after our bust. the SLA
was in the most insecure position it had
ever been in. and yet the group jumped
Into the heaviest action this country has
ever seen.
February 4, 1974: Patricia Hearst Is
Kidnapped from her Apartment in
Berkeley
Russ: At first we were surprised that they
would do anything like the kidnapping
because we figured they would just be try-
ing to survive and regroup. Sure, we were
high off the action. The dudes we were
with in San Quentin’s Adjustment Center
got off on it. They stayed up all that night
celebrating—singing and yelling and
beating on the walls and bars.
But as far as kidnappings go, it’s
always better to snatch someone who is a
righteous pig. In that sense, it would have
been better to get Randy or Catherine,
but, at the time, an action of that type
was beyond what the SLA could have
realistically pulled off. I mean, Patricia
just lived in Berkeley like any other stu-
dent, while her parents lived in a fancy
suburb, surrounded by security.
Joe: If they had just hidden out and kept
track of what was happening for a few
months, they would have realized that the
whole SLA support infrastructure was
still secure and together. Things had been
growing rapidly from right after the
Foster assassination until we got busted.
They could have rebuilt their ties with
the federation, gotten some new IDs and
safe houses and had things back together
in six months time. I think they let their
impatience get the best of them.
Emily: Looking back I think many of the
problems and shortcomings of the SLA
arose out of the failure to build an ade-
quate infrastructure before jumping off
into a major action like the Hearst kid-
napping. That overall weakness was what
caused the group to always be on the
run—a very unsettled and dangerous
position to be in. The police agencies
were pursuing with a vengeance because
of the terrific impact of the kidnapping
and food giveaway, and the SLA wasn’t
capable of dealing with the aftermath.
Th~isolation that resulted led to some of
the dther errors. The SLA really suffered
frolil a lack of feedback from outside the
group.
Self-Criticism
Emily: One of the main criticisms that I
have was how the SLA got caught up in a
sensationalized portrayal of the organi-
zation through the media. Revolution-
aries can’t do that—they have to keep
their ideas and their actions grounded in
reality. I think in some ways the drama of
the whole thing even discouraged people.
They began to see the SLA as such a f an-
tasy that the group lost its potential for
motivating other people to act and par-
ticipate in some form of revolutionary
struggle.
The SLA put out this image of
themselves as much more sophisticated,
much more powerful than they actually
were. There was a serious discussion of
all this within the group because of a
communique that Joe and Russ put out
from prison. It said that they thought the
whole idea of Nancy calling Cinque a pro-
phet was really ridiculous and that the
SLA was getting too arrogant. That in-
itiated a lot of self-criticism within the
SLA. But the SLA never gave other peo-
ple a sense that they were learning any-
thing from these errors.
Joe: We were principled and comradely,
but we had to point out that although
we loved them, we were revolutionaries
before we were members of the SLA.
What we saw bothered us because it was
leading in a direction that we had seen
destroy other groups in the past. What
was maybe the most self-destructive error
made by the SLA was that although they
initially meant to use the media for revo-
lutionary ends, they underestimated its
controlling power and eventually became
so completely tied up by it that they lost
all contact with reality outside of an arti-
ficially staged media context. Working
within the context of the corporate media
can be as overpowering and destructive
as working within the system. The media
subtly turned the SLA into a performing
act that could be depended upon for reg-
ular bits of sensationalism. They got to
the point of performing with less and less
regard for political content or personal
safety.
Emily: It became clear that in the Bay
Area the black community was overall
the most supportive of the food program
and that many folks on the streets were
talking about Cin as some sort of hero.
The SLA sensed this and instead of keep-
ing their good sense of what leadership
means—leadership by example—they
responded by trying to give people their
hero.
Bill: Revolutions need direction and ex-
mplary leadership. but not heroes.
Heros subvert the fact that change comes
about by lots of people taking action.
What good is a hero if that makes every-
fne to do everything for them?
The idea of doing tape recordings instead
ofwritten communiques came
from a desire to project the members of
the SLA as real people—to humanize the
whole process and make it less abstract.
That was the initial intention, but it def-
initely got turned around, mostly by the
SLA members themselves. They began to
project a kind of cold militarism with all
the military titles and the release of cer-
tain aspects of the program, especially
the Codes of War. It’s especially weird
that this happened because, as revo-
lutionaries. we stood against author-
itarianism and hierarchy and the mili-
taristic orientation toward discipline for
discipline’s sake. Yet, for the effects of
propaganda, the SLA projected some of
the very qualities that the group, as revo-
lutionaries. opposed.
Emily: The militarism was macho and
alienating. It’s ironic that this propaganda
ploy, used to project a false strength to
the police, actually undercut the real
strengths and leadership that was being
shown by the women in the group and fed
into the ridiculous line that Cin was a
tyrant who was followed obediently by
the women.
Joe: We weren’t into any kind of
leadership bag before Russ and I were
busted. Then all of a sudden Angela
becomes a general and after the L.A.
shootout Patty says Bill is “in charge.” Of
three people? That shocked us! Before.
we all just exercised leadership in areas
where we had the most practical under-
standing, and we didn’t feel any need to
call anyone the “leader.”
Russ: We felt the whole taped communi-
que—the one where Hearst an-
nounced that she was joining—showed an
unbelievable amount of arrogance. It re-
ally bothered us much more than we let
on—we felt it was the culmination ofalot
of negative trends that had developed and
hoped our criticisms would bring them
back to reality. We knew they were tem-
porarily high off Patty’s decision to join.
but we were hoping they would just kick
back and reflect.
Bill: That whole business with the death
warrants that came out in that tape was
totally screwed up. The worst thing about
it was that the SLA called Robyn Steiner
a police agent based on some misinfor-
mation. when in fact she hadn’t done any-
thing and she actually knew nothing to
give away anyway. There just wasn’t any
investigation before putting out some-
thing as serious as that, and that was inex-
cusable. considering that a woman’s life
was put in jeopardy. And even after Russ
and Joe criticized the SLA for this serious
error, the charge was never publicly
retracted — another mistake. People
shouldn’t be denounced as police agents
unless it has been proven conclusively.
Russ: We really freaked out when we
heard that Robyn had been named as an
informer—shit. she didn’t even have the
knowledge they said she did and we knew
she was under all kinds of harassment
from the pigs and that she was being very
cool. Picture this—here’s this woman that
I had lived with over two years and loved
with all my heart and my best friends put
out a death warrant on her. It was like a
nightmare!
Joe: Letting Hearst stay was another ex-
ample of the media effect taking pre-
cedence over more important consider-
ations. Everyone realized her decision
was a real propaganda coup for the
SLA —here she was joining all these so-
called terrorists who had kidnapped her
out of the arms of her lover: But we re-
membered when we had joined—the SLA
was real careful about how solid our
political commitment and understanding
was. You’d have to look a long way to
find any more dedicated folks. There
were a lot of people who would have
joined the SLA if we had approached
them—people whom we met through the
aboveground political work we w,ere do-
ing, but we never dealt with them because
we knew they were flaky (they’ve proved
it since our bust). The SLA would go to
great pains to make sure someone’s com-
mitment was not based on romanjicism
or adventurism—we had. talked about
that a lot.
Russ: They had a big session before our
cell decided to join—questioning, par-
ticularly. the couple in the group. You
know, if they were joining.just to be able
to stay with their partner and whether if
one of them decided to leave or got cap-
tured or killed, what would they do. It’s
obvious now and should have been ob-
vious then that there’s no way in hell
Hearst was ready to become a guerrilla.
She was basically an apolitical person
from a ruling class background entering a
fugitive, guerrilla-type existence, and her
decision could not have been based on a
full knowledge of what that meant. What
they should have done was send her home
and let her tell her story to the press. We
never expected her parents to cough up
that other $4 million if she went back
home, and that would. have been very
educational for her and a lot of other
folks too.
Bill: The SLA wanted to project what a
relatively small group of people can do—
that we are not as powerless as we are led
to believe. The impact of SLA actions
proved this point, but it would have been
driven home even more if the whole
mystique of the SLA had been dealt with.
The SLA was not an army. but they chose
that name because they anticipated the
need to build the nucleus of a future
people’s army. Things like that should
have been explained and put into per-
spective. If there was no people’s court.
then the SLA shouldn’t have referred to
one. The SLA should have placed the un-
derground in its proper context as one
facet of a prolonged struggle waged on
many levels, legal and illegal.
The SLA also started directing too
much of their language at the pigs and at
the Left. Distinvtions were not clearly
made, so a couple of times white folks in
general were denounced when in fact the
SLA meant to direct their criticisms at
the opportunistic whites in the Left.
Sexism and the SLA
Emily: Certain segments of the Left tend
to box in and minimize the importance of
struggling against sexism—it’s seen as a
side issue or a separate issue or something
that can be dealt with at some future
date. But for me. sexism is the form of op-
pression that I’ve felt the most directly.
Other women may see this differently
because of their different experiences,
but the fact remains that sex, race and
class are intertwined—to understand and
fight against one we’ve got to fight all
three. Any group of men and women has
macho tendencies and will place only
token importance on women’s needs and
interests unless the women themselves
make them a priority and move the group
in that positive direction. Failure to do
this was clearly a weakness among the
folks I worked with in Venceremos. and it
was carried over into the SLA. After the
Hearst kidnapping the SLA was putting
most of its time and energy into just try-
ing to survive. The shared experience
made all of us incredibly close, but we
never really had the opportunity to refine
our ideas together— in particular, how
we collectively weighted the importance
of women’s oppression in relation to race
and class oppression. Therefore, our role
as women within the group was somewhat
unclear. We came from very diverse ex-
periences. Nancy was mistrustful of any
focus on women’s liberation. She was
very aware of the resentments and frus-
trations of black women who felt that
many feminists ignored the problems of
being black and poor. Mizmoon and
Camilla shared a belief that the develop-
ment of revolutionary strategy necessi-
tated a focus by women on women’s liber-
ation. Angela and I were more ambi-
valent about how we felt at the time. All
of us struggled against the internal sexism
of the group and we all agreed that
women must play active roles in every-
thing we did—that our leadership capa-
bilities were crucial to the overall strength
of the group. We felt that the examples
women set through the SLA’s actions
could help break down the narrowness of
women’s roles in society. But because we
had not yet developed a unified per-
spective about the special goals of the
women’s struggle. this was an obvious gap
in the SLA’s propaganda.
From knowing those four sisters.
I’m sure if they were still alive their
political evolution would have progressed
in the way mine has, and we could all
work together. For women to be free, to
be themselves, and play whatever role
they choose in rebuilding a new society,
the struggle against sexism can’t progress
just within the narrow framework of one-
to-one struggles between men and women
or by a few women achieving token lead-
ership. It’s got to be fought by developing
a strategy to expose and destroy all forces
that use sexism to divide us and pacify us.
From Marxism to Anarchism
Russ: I think it’s fair to say that the SLA
generated more spontaneous support
because of the Hearst kidnapping/food
giveaway—propaganda of the deed—
than any revolutionary organization in
this country. The demand for free food
underlined the polarization between the
rich and the poor and drew over 30.000
people into the action. Poor and hungry
people everywhere identified with the
SLA. Millions of people read and heard
what the SLA had to say and were
politicized in varying degrees.
The SLA actions presented white
revolutionaries, especially women, in a
positive role. It’s very important to give
white folks a positive example—
revolution can’t be viewed as something
only for blacks and other non-white
peoples.
When thinking about what the
SLA accomplished, we’ve also got to re-
member that it was only 10 guer-
rillas— 10 people who took the most
powerful state in the world to task. What
if it had been 100 guerrillas or 1.000?
The fact that our six comrades were
killed and the four of us are captives is
not due to the invincibility of the state,
but to our own mistakes and impatience.
There’s no doubt in my mind that the
SLA proved the validity of urban guerrilla
warfare as a military/political strategy for
furthering the revolutionary struggle.
Joe: Those who allowed subjective
political prejudices to blind them from
seeing the SLA s victories.as well as their
mistakes in an objective light have missed
a valuable learning experience. People
who act like they’ve never made a mistake
are either lying or sitting on their
pompous_theoretical asses.
Emily: The four of us are the last remain-
ing members of the SLA. But this isn’t
really demoralizing to us because the
number of underground revolutionary
groups has grown and many of these
groups are operating in a way that will in-
sure their continued survival. Mistak~s
are unavoidable at this stage. but it’s inex-
cusable not to learn from your mistakes.
Many of the principles of the SLA are
shared by other groups. and in that sense
the spirit of the SLA will always be car-
ried on. no matter what the name of the
group or organization.
A lot of people in the Left feel
that the underground is premature—that
there are still legal options open to people
and that an underground isn’t necessary
all these options have been subverted.
But we have seen that people’s op-
tions are being continually undermined.
When their efforts become a threat to the
status quo. they’re wiped out, locked up.
neutralized and/oil bought off the way the
early women’s movement was after the
turn of the century. the way a lot of labor
struggles were during the Thirties, and
the way the Civil Rights movement, the
antiwar movement and the Black Panthers
were in the Sixties. We feel that the un-
derground needs to be developed as a
force —to be building its skills and refin-
ing its political perspective so that as
legal methods for change are cut off, we
won’t be caught off guard and unpre-
pared. Violence. in this country isn’t
unique to the revolutionary underground.
There’s been state-initiated and sanc-
tioned violence against people in the
United States ever since this country was
first colonized, and people have been
forced to turn to their own forms of
violence to counter that throughout his-
tory. Revolutionary violence is simply a
response—an extreme measure to
counter extreme conditions. But I don’t
think that people will fully accept the use
of violence until they’ve seen, through
their own experience, the nature of the
force against them, and realize there’s
something we can do about it.
Bill: We never had the sense that the SLA
was the vanguard of revolutionary strug-
gle in this country. Ain’t no way that a
handful of people are going to make a rev-
olution by themselves. But we had a
strong feeling that we were contributing
to the process of revolution, trying to put
ideas into practice so that people (includ-
ing ourselves) could learn from the pro-
cess, criticize and evaluate it so it could
be better in the future. We felt that cer-
tain tactics had to be tested and de-
veloped and their potentials for success
be demonstrated.
Joe: When Russ and I joined the SLA we
were going through some political
changes based on our experiences work-
ing with different factions of the Left. We
were as alienated from party centralism
as from the state control we experienced
in our everyday lives. In reviewing the in-
ternal political documents of the SLA, we
now see that they contain two contradic-
tory tendencies between authoritarian
and anti-authoritarian perspectives. The
SLA has been criticized for making a
poor attempt at Marxist-Leninist politics
when, in fact, they were consciously mov-
ing away from those politics.
Russ: We were originally attracted to re-
volutionary politics because of our desire
for a truly classless communist society.
where people control all aspects of their
own lives and where “from each accord-
ing to their abilities, to all according to
their needs” is a reality on all levels—
socially. sexually. emotionally. as well as
economically.
For quite a while we were fully dis-
illusioned with the Marxist parties and
their sectarian political lines, but none of
us had been exposed to anarcho-com-
munist theory and practice. After our
capture and imprisonment, Joe and I
began to reexamine our relationship to
Marxist politics. For the last year we have
been reading everything on anarchism
that we could get past the prison censors.
Joe: We now feel that all forms of revolu-
tionary organization should act as a
catalyst within the popular movement
and should be structured in such a way
that eventually they can. be completely
absorbed by the popular movement. We
not only believe that people have the
ability to create a new society but also
that they have the ability to lead
themselves. The idea of a “new” dic-
tatorship (even if it’s of the proletariat) or
of using an assembly line as the model for
a ‘new” society doesn’t come close to
what we’re fighting for. Actually it bears
more than a slight resemblance to the
kind of oppressive society we intend to
change. We want a revolutionary change.
not a shift of power—our struggle is for
social revolution.
Serving Time
Russ: It’s not really a question of time—
of being able to stand being confined for
a certain number of years. Bill and Emily
haven’t actually been confined in prison
yet. There’s a world of difference
between county jail and state prison. In
the Adjustment Center at San Quentin.
where I’m held, and at Folsom where Joe
is, the question is really one of survival.
The guards at San Quentin tried to
set us up right after we were busted by
trying to agitate the black prisoners
against us, but we had so much support
from the convicts in the AC that the
guards got pissed and moved us to the
strip cells on Death Row. After we were
convicted and I was sent back to San
Quentin. they put me in a cell between a
bunch of blacks and told them “He’s one
of the guys that killed Foster.” When
nothing happened, they tried to goad the
blacks by saying, “I thought you were a
black militant. What’s wrong, are you
scared of Little?” But the convicts told
them to kiss off. Still. with all the mad-
ness and violence of prison, I can’t ima-
gine being anything but a revolutionary.
Bill: We’ve been asked a lot if we were
ever afraid. Hell, yes. There are a lot of
things that are scary to anybody . but a
fool. I can’t imagine anyone knowing
they could be captured. Ikilled or
whatever and not have that wired-up feel-
ing where your adrenalin is flowing,
where you feel that anxiety. You can get
freaked out in jail too if you let them put
you on the defensive. You have to be on
the offensive and have a more long-run
view to survive in jail and even more so in
prison.
Emily: I don’t plan on spending my life in
prison. Since we got busted, there have
been some hours and days when I felt
really down, and kind of isolated—I get
discouraged. but it never lasts long. We
can’t waste our lives being bitter. There
are just certain things we can do now and
a.lot we can’t do, but our objectives are
the same.
Bill: There are so many people like me in
these god-damned places. these prisons.
so many people that have been killed.
that we’re just like a pebble in a quarry, in
terms of the whole historical way of look-
ing at this thing. Another way to look at it
is that we spent a long time, over a year
and a half. under a whole lot of pres-
sure—nearly two years. about as much
pressure as you can be under. This situa-
tion doesn’t seem hard after that, it just
isn’t that hard to take. After the Marine
Corps. after Vietnam, being in this coun-
ty jail is not such a big deal. I was ten
times more lonely in Vietnam than I have
ever been here. It’s one thing to be 9,000
miles from home engaged in something
you can’t relate to, and realize that you
are a prisoner, and another to be im-
prisoned for what you believe in. I felt
like a prisoner in Vietnam anyway, and I
would have done anything to get out of
that place. I don’t think this is going to be
a bed of roses, I expect things to get
worse, I have my bad days, but we can
handle it.
Note: This article shares many similarities with The Last Statement of the SLA
LAST UPDATE APRIL 23, 2002