Word: sla
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Unfortunately, the SLA fails on both counts. The Oakland community's overwhelming satisfaction with Foster belied any attempt to claim mass support for his assassination. Though not a radical, he enjoyed the endorsement of black and white community organizers alike. Indeed, the behavior of the SLA in killing Foster and kidnaping Hearst led at least one black spokesman in California to question whether the SLA was not simply exploiting DeFreeze as a figurehead. Colston Westbrook, a Berkeley linguistics instructor who met DeFreeze through the Vacaville Black Culture Association, said in April, "I think the honkies are calling the shots. [DeFreeze...
...SLA's political analysis, events proved sadly the Army's lack of revealed political consciousness. A kidnaping which made the "corporate criminal" look good, demands for a good program actually less sensible than Hearst's counter-offer, gratuitous insults against Hearst which further alienated the media, and a failure to consult with any of the leftist organizations on whose behalf the SLA was supposedly struggling, practically guaranteed the SLA's political isolation. Its crimes would have invited violent reprisals in any case, but more so in California where several series of mysterious killings this year have left police authorities--especially...
...simply inevitable given the SLA's political objectives and the state of California and national politics that their strategy would not only fail but jeopardize the political position of the Left, in general. Such gross political aad moral miscalculation--especially for a group supposedly committed to the SLA's announced ideals--totally undermines any claim that might be made for the moral legitimacy of their activities. If we take the SLA's program seriously and acknowledge, in some sense, the righteousness of its discontent, the sincerity and personal suffering of the SLA's members still do not justify their adventurism...
...there is no justification for the way six members of the SLA were ultimately destroyed by police--even if it can be argued that such a dramatic death may have served their political purposes more eloquently than any planned action. It is impossible to believe that the Los Angeles police and the FBI needed 400 men equipped with helicopters, tear gas, bullets, and fragmentation grenades to overcome six amateur gunmen trapped in a single house. Nor is there any excuse for the police to have totally ignore the safety of the community. A crippled woman sitting on the porch next...
Finally, it's easy to guess whether the police would have so cavalierly destroyed the SLA's hideout had its members fled to a stucco mansion like the Hearsts' in Hillsborough rather than to the modest home of a black family living on the edges of a southeast Los Angeles ghetto. That the police should have appeared "the good guys" on television was ironic, all the more so because California authorities are using SLA activities as an excuse for rounding up dozens of Bay area radicals on unverified charges...