Read this article and see what you can remember. How about this historical tidbit:
Eventually cops lucked out: a Chicago guy robbing his new neighbors found shitloads of explosives, and tried to sell them to a police informant. Using building records, the Chicago PD and the FBI got a name: Carlos Torres, a Puerto Rican community organizer whose wife worked for the feds — she was an equal employment specialist at the EPA.
The FALN safehouse also yielded a copy of a business letter to one Maria Cueto, of the National Commission on Hispanic Affairs. The NCHA was a charitable organization affiliated with the Episcopal Church. When the FBI started looking into it, their hair stood on end. Basically, every. single. person of interest in the FBI’s FALN investigation was, or had been, on NCHA’s board of directors.
Maria Cueto was FALN. She had used her position to put a half-dozen FALN members, including chief bombmaker Guillermo Morales, on the NCHA board. Let me emphasize how amazing this was: these were *paid positions.* Puerto Rican terrorists were being paid thousands of dollars by the Episcopal Church. Like cannibalizing and repurposing a nonprofit. It may be the greatest Institution in American radical history. FALN was literally using a charity run by the Episcopal Church as a front.
A member of this violent terrorist organization was just pardoned by President Obama, even though he refused to renounce violence. Well, then.
How about this:
DeFreeze escaped prison and hooked up with a Berkeley, CA radical named Patricia “Mizmoon” Soltysik. DeFreeze and Mizmoon assembled a small cell of eight men and women. Say hello to the Symbionese Liberation Army. Slogan: “Death to the fascist insect that preys on the blood of the people!”
Calling your political enemies fascist - no way! Never happen today.
So their first target, of course, is Oakland’s first black school administrator, superintendent Marcus Foster!
I know. You’re thinking, “Wait, what?”
Foster had dared suggest ID cards for kids and using police to curb in-school violence. For this, the SLA murdered him, on November 6, 1973. In 1974, the SLA kidnapped 19yo heiress Patty Hearst, demanding her family do massive food giveaways (which they did). The food giveaways actually got the SLA some favorable attention in the radical press, for forcing the rich to give to the poor. Meanwhile, the SLA was indoctrinating Hearst and raping her repeatedly. Then the SLA offered her a choice: to join them, or be released.
Let me ask you a question: in the shoes of 19-year-old Patty Hearst, how much would you trust the assurances of Donald DeFreeze and the SLA? That’s exactly how much Hearst trusted them when they said they’d let her go. So she said of course she’d join them. Hearst famously robbed a bank with the SLA and went on the run with them.
The SLA’s darkest day came when they were busted for shoplifting in L.A. It turned into a gunfight. They split up: Hearst and a couple in one direction, DeFreeze & the rest in another.
Hearst’s party got away. DeFreeze’s took over a random house, and was indiscreet about it. Cops closed in. There was a massive gunfight and a fire. DeFreeze and his party died horrible deaths.
Hearst’s survivors sought the help of a radical named Kathy Soliah, who had championed the SLA at a rally that got newspaper attention. Literally, I think that’s it: they’d read her name in the newspaper, and looked her up. And of course she helped them. Soliah not only arranged shelter for them, she helped them re-recruit.
I clearly recall the SLA and the amazement of the middle class adults in the burbs where I lived that this insanity could really be happening right here.
This author's analysis of the institutions behind radical leftist violence, and predictions about what could happen in the next few years is also well worth the read.
