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You listen here, you mother. You

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mother grabber. You mother for

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3:59

listen here. Buster Brown It's

4:10

real it's real welcome to last podcast on the

4:12

left ladies and gentlemen my name is Marcus Parks

4:14

I'm here with I wish I was black And

4:19

I wish I was a woman And

4:25

we're covering the spinner liberation army

4:27

today So

4:32

When we last left Patty Hearst she'd finally

4:34

gotten out of the closet after 57

4:37

days in captivity at the hands of

4:39

the Symbionese Liberation Army But

4:41

by cleverly manipulating the SLA into

4:44

believing that she'd bought into their

4:46

half-baked philosophies completely Patty

4:48

had been let out of the closet and

4:50

welcomed into the ranks of the SLA and

4:52

was even issued her own gun Are

4:55

we excited? That's how you

4:57

know you're the best hostage of the group Additionally

5:01

like all the rest of them Patty

5:03

had been given a new name for

5:05

the revolution But while some of the

5:07

rest have been given pseudo-african names like

5:10

Tico Faheza and Zoya

5:12

Technically they are African names. They're just um

5:15

on white people Patty

5:19

was named after one of Che

5:21

Guevara's compatriots an East German-born Argentinian

5:23

named Tanya Bunka But this comes from

5:25

the idea of the remember there's many

5:28

different types of revolutionary. We're gonna cover

5:30

all of them today There's

5:32

many different types You got the real hardcore militant

5:34

ones and won't take no for an answer You

5:37

got the ones that are in it because of the hats Right,

5:39

which I think is actually we miss out a

5:41

lot of that a lot of guys like the

5:43

hats associated with various movements I was hoping I

5:45

had a beret stashed in my house somewhere. I

5:47

was gonna wear it today next week and find

5:49

one We go full

5:52

revolutionary because again, I'm looking at Marcus

5:54

I do feel like a

5:56

17 year old girl in a college

5:58

class outside of high school that's being

6:00

flirted with. But

6:03

on fair, I see myself as more of

6:05

a Berkeley professor. I guess, I'm teaching a

6:07

17 year old girl that it's worth a

6:09

lot of money. I

6:12

can't wait till you graduate. But there's

6:14

another strike. You're so mature. Has anyone

6:17

told you how mature you are? Unfortunately,

6:19

you're not mature enough to get out

6:21

of algebra 2. Just count

6:23

in the weeks till June. Yummy, yup.

6:26

I can smell your ferment. But

6:29

then, today, we're gonna get into

6:31

another special type of revolutionary. The

6:33

romantic revolutionary. Because that's how people view

6:36

Che Guevara and Tanya. They would

6:38

go and they'd fight by the Pueblo. And

6:41

they fight out in the pueblo. The Pueblo? They're

6:43

in fucking South Africa. Pueblo is southwestern United States.

6:46

You know what I'm saying? Thousands of miles away.

6:48

Where revolutions happen. They're there, right?

6:50

Mixing it up. In the jungle. But

6:52

then they go back to the safe part of Pueblo. Pueblos

6:54

are in the desert. But then they go to another place.

6:57

That is like, because you know what? It's a scene

6:59

from Braveheart. When they're at the Nice

7:01

River. You know what I mean? Where

7:04

it's the one scene where Che Guevara is there

7:06

and he's just going like, aye

7:08

aye aye. This revolution. It

7:11

will be Moimalo. Won't it be Tanya? And

7:14

she's there washing her German

7:16

hair in the river. It's going like, Si,

7:18

Che. Si. One

7:20

day, we will be able to kiss without

7:23

the sound of machine gun fire. And

7:25

he's just like, Si Si. When we are

7:28

all Liberado. It's that style

7:30

of romance. Side

7:35

note, Patty would being given the

7:37

name Tanya that burned both Yolanda

7:39

and her husband Tico's collective ass

7:41

because Tanya Bunka was a hero

7:44

of Yolanda's and Tico's wish to

7:46

be named Camillo after another Cuban

7:48

revolutionary had been vetoed by Sen.

7:50

He's like, no, fuck you. You're

7:53

Tico. She's like, she

7:55

just wants to be Patty. I

7:59

wanted the number one. one slot. I

8:01

wanted to be the ingenue. I'm supposed

8:03

to be the lead. I'm fucking what's

8:05

her name from Cabaret. But

8:08

soon after Patti was given her

8:10

new name, the infamous Polaroid of

8:12

Patti Hurst dressed as a revolutionary

8:14

aiming a gun in front of

8:17

the Symbianese Liberation Army flag. This

8:19

picture was sent to the media

8:21

along with Patti's declaration that she

8:23

joined the SLA. The ensuing media

8:25

frenzy was understandable given the seemingly

8:27

quick turnaround from kidnapping victim to

8:29

compatriot, but mostly the public jumped to

8:31

one of two sides. Either Patti

8:33

had forsaken her country and family for

8:36

radical political ideologies completely of her own

8:38

free will as it seemed many young

8:40

people in America had, or

8:43

she'd been brainwashed. Very

8:45

few thought that Patti might be playing

8:47

along just to survive, but those

8:49

numbers included her father, Randy

8:51

Hurst. Nobody liked the Hurst

8:54

family. There was nobody who

8:56

enjoyed even fellow billionaires. So

9:00

there was nobody there that wanted to give them any

9:02

shred of credit. I really do

9:04

think that especially when it comes to Patti,

9:06

everybody was like already had written her off

9:08

as soon as it happened. And so I

9:10

saw the picture. They couldn't wrap their minds

9:12

around that she might be in

9:14

on this because it was a very good piece

9:16

of propaganda by the SLA. It's almost like if

9:18

you grow up in a castle, it's hard to

9:21

relate to people. You

9:23

know what I heard? I actually forgot about

9:25

this. Do you know really, I guess this

9:27

is more rumor than anything of why William

9:29

Randolph Hurst was so maddened by Citizen Kane

9:32

because there was a rumor and I forgot

9:34

about this is that Rosebud was the nickname

9:36

he gave his mistress' clit. That

9:39

is completely true. That's not true at all. Look it

9:41

up. Look up the rumor. The rumor. So you're saying,

9:43

oh, the rumor is true. Rosebud

9:46

is Hurst's mistress' clit.

9:48

I would put glitters for this. No,

9:51

no, no, no, no. If

9:53

the computer doesn't know what a clit is, how am

9:55

I supposed to? Continue

9:58

to research. Now

10:01

the near 60 days between the kidnapping

10:03

and the photo had been a

10:05

hellish and strange journey for Randy

10:07

Hearst and his wife, Catherine. And

10:09

with that Polaroid, everything very suddenly

10:11

got even worse. And while

10:13

Patty certainly had the harder time, her

10:16

family went through their own bizarre ordeals

10:18

over the course of the nearly two

10:20

years that Patty was in captivity. I

10:23

cannot stress that enough. Almost two years,

10:25

over 500 days. Oh,

10:27

and so there is a rumor. It just types in

10:30

advance of what you type about whether or not

10:36

I said, Kurt Hearst, Rosebud

10:39

mistress, Klit. And some

10:41

say, Oh, it's not real, but some say

10:43

it is. I just think that while we're

10:45

doing the show, you shouldn't be Googling Klit.

10:47

This is my job. This is my job.

10:49

This is what I'm here to do. I

10:52

find the Klits. I report

10:55

the Klits. Well,

10:59

on the night that Patty was

11:01

kidnapped, Randy and Catherine Hearst were

11:04

in Washington, D.C., attending the Hearst

11:06

Foundation Senate Youth Program. I hope

11:08

when I grow up to be

11:10

a senator, I too can have

11:12

sex with a gay prostitute from

11:15

the money of the U.S. government

11:17

that they're giving me. Thank you.

11:19

He's going to grow up to

11:21

be a fine Republican, a fine

11:24

Republican. Well, they were asleep

11:26

in their hotel room when the phone rang at

11:28

1 15 a.m. It was

11:30

Ann, Patty's younger sister, and she told

11:32

them that she just got off the

11:34

phone with a member of the Berkeley

11:37

police department guy named Sergeant Dick Berger.

11:41

I bet you that didn't give him a bad attitude at

11:43

all. Everyone knows dicks are hot dogs.

11:48

Mama, why'd you do this to me?

11:50

Change our name to hot dog. My

11:53

name's a lie. Ann

11:56

told them what Sergeant Dick Berger had

11:58

just told the patty was

12:00

missing and Stephen Weed was in the hospital.

12:03

And hung up the burger and we just

12:06

try to focus on the information. Think

12:12

about the work. We just focus

12:15

on the information. Well,

12:20

and hung up the phone and no more

12:23

than 10 minutes later, the FBI was already

12:25

calling to say that they were coming over

12:27

to Randy Hurst's home to set up shop.

12:30

See, while Randy Hurst was more of a

12:32

family man than a business man, he was

12:34

still a Hurst. So after

12:36

Randy put in a call directly to

12:39

the head of the FBI, a 35

12:41

year veteran of the bureau named Dwayne

12:43

Eskridge was at Randy's house within just

12:45

three hours. He'd showed up

12:48

to bug all the phones and attach tape recorders

12:50

to each line in case the kidnappers called. But

12:52

if you could honestly, what I would ask for

12:54

you to do is delete all

12:56

the things I talk about. And

13:00

of course, no one should know the

13:02

secret of rose but one

13:08

fact about Dwayne proving further that the

13:10

Patty Hearst kidnapping is the forest gump

13:12

of true crime stories. Dwayne was the

13:15

first person to issue a May Day

13:17

warning when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

13:19

They got every so well as we

13:21

go through the story, you kind of

13:23

hear that Randy Hurst goes on. We'll

13:25

cover this more next episode, but he

13:27

goes on an adventure of all his

13:29

own. Some of

13:32

the top police officers in American

13:34

history as it should have. Yes.

13:36

But also, Randy Hurst becomes eventually

13:39

the first person to ever speak

13:41

to a poor person except for

13:43

Patty. Yes. So we'll get

13:45

to his adventure next week. But it's very

13:47

hilarious what he what he learns and he

13:50

expands the forest gump. I'm

13:52

going to make that call a little earlier. Actually,

13:56

he got in trouble for calling it too early.

13:59

Oh, yeah. He got in trouble.

14:01

They're like, you didn't use the code. And he's

14:03

like, what fucking code the planes are right

14:05

there. Even though Dwayne was working

14:08

with out of date equipment that

14:10

betrayed the public's image of the

14:12

FBI as a crap team super

14:14

cops, he was still damn good

14:16

at what he did and even

14:18

knew all the usual suspects when

14:21

it came to kidnapping cases. For

14:23

example, while monitoring calls to the Hearst residents

14:25

after the news broke, there was a call

14:28

from a woman claiming to be Patty Hearst.

14:30

But after hearing the voice, Dwayne told the

14:32

agent on the line to hang up. This

14:50

woman was a kidnapped groupie from Texas

14:52

who was known to call the families

14:55

of kidnap victims anytime they made the

14:57

news. And Dwayne knew exactly who this

14:59

was after just a couple of sentences.

15:02

Unfortunately for Dwayne, though, the SLA would

15:04

never make a call to the Hearst

15:07

residents. Just

15:22

two days of the kidnapping news

15:24

had already leaked to all the

15:26

major outlets that something had happened

15:28

to the granddaughter of William Randolph

15:30

Hearst. And by that Thursday, a

15:32

dozen members of the press had

15:34

already set up their equipment outside

15:36

Randy Hearst's home just in case

15:38

this story turned out to be

15:40

something big. And indeed, when the

15:42

first SLA communique was issued three

15:44

days after Patty was kidnapped, the

15:46

press presence grew from a scrum

15:48

to an encampment. like

16:00

in each other's bars. Like in each other's scrums,

16:02

like when they fight each other. We eat your

16:04

scrum. I think eating your scrum was like licking

16:06

a guy's assholes. You got shit all over your

16:08

nose. Yeah, well, that's how you win in rugby.

16:11

I didn't know. They

16:14

should get some mints. Winnebago's

16:16

and TV trucks lined the streets,

16:18

and the press was in such

16:21

a state of constant frenzy that

16:23

journalists nailed portable telephones to trees

16:25

so they could call in stories

16:27

as fast as possible. Meanwhile,

16:29

authorities were also pumping Steven Weed for

16:31

information because he was in the hospital

16:34

for five days because of the brutal

16:36

assault he'd suffered during the kidnapping. Yeah,

16:38

man, there must have been like nine

16:40

of them, dude. They came from every

16:42

direction. They came from the ceiling. Listen,

16:45

if you could, if you could just top

16:48

my IV off with some some tank,

16:50

man. Okay, dude. I'm

16:53

fucking dying here, dude. It's harsh. It's

16:56

harsh as hell in here, man, without my

16:58

fucking stuff. I'm

17:01

tripping out here, man. I'm thinking I'm getting

17:03

sick. I think you die of weed withdrawal,

17:05

man. You

17:10

can be a TV dude. Is the price

17:12

right? Do

17:14

we know? From

17:18

Steven's description of a paramilitary style

17:20

assault perpetrated by a mix of

17:22

black and white assailants, along with

17:24

the neighbors descriptions of a well-coordinated

17:26

escape, the police and the FBI

17:28

were collectively having a bit of

17:30

an oh fuck moment. Oh yeah,

17:32

because right out the gate, it

17:34

seems like, oh man, we're dealing

17:36

with an elite paramilitary group that

17:38

is, we might actually have a

17:40

problem here. Big problem. Yeah. See,

17:43

along with the testimonies, police noticed that the

17:45

kidnapping shared a similar MO that had been

17:47

present at a murder that had occurred just

17:49

a few months before. See, the

17:51

bullets recovered at Patty's apartment building had a

17:54

distinct scent of almonds, indicating that they had

17:56

been packed with cyanide prior to being loaded

17:58

in the gun. Which

18:00

is fucking stupid because if you get hit

18:02

it's not gonna The fucking

18:04

powder is gonna burn away all the fucking cyanide

18:06

I think that it's it is I don't understand

18:09

where they even got the idea Because

18:12

what they did was that they

18:14

drilled a hole into each individual

18:16

bullet and filled it with cyanide

18:18

themselves Which is again

18:20

not? Smart, they're

18:23

not gonna do it worse It doesn't do

18:25

anything, it destroys the integrity of the bullet

18:27

and it also is like what are we

18:29

doing here? Yeah, also you just you know

18:31

use the cyanide as cyanide that

18:33

would require you becoming a master

18:35

poison Master poisoners are

18:37

hard. You can't just put cyanide on a pizza.

18:39

No dude Well

18:44

those same type of idiotic cyanide

18:47

bullets have been recovered from the

18:49

body of Oakland school superintendent Marcus

18:51

Foster the previous November so

18:54

before the Sun even came up on the

18:56

day after the kidnapping of Patty Hearst Authorities

18:59

were reasonably sure that the

19:01

people responsible with a Symbionese

19:03

Liberation Army only a specific kind

19:05

of idiot would do this Today's

19:09

episode will therefore be devoted

19:11

entirely to the SLA's almost accidental

19:14

formation Including the people who

19:16

made up its ranks and the

19:18

crimes they committed on the

19:20

way to kidnapping Patty Hearst

19:22

and we put together a large

19:25

amount of sources just to track

19:27

this story because what we've realized

19:29

is like not a lot of

19:31

people have fully tracked the actual

19:33

formation of the SLA and then

19:35

we realized oh The

19:37

Jeffrey Toobin book is all from

19:39

the perspective of the people inside

19:41

of the SLA mostly He's

19:44

telling their side of the story I mean

19:46

we did find some of our sources because

19:48

like Carolina did a hell of a lot

19:50

of work and like Finding these different disparate

19:53

sources and like and doing like yeah and

19:55

like reading all these books and you know Put in

19:57

and helping me put it all together But

19:59

yeah, I'm willing The Daily Wolf had a book

20:01

about him, you know, like Camilla Hall. There was a book

20:03

about her. Yes, there was just the formation of the S

20:06

in the life and death of the SLA. There

20:08

were two books on the SLA that

20:10

were written in the 70s, but had

20:12

gone out of print. Yeah, and we

20:14

got all of them. Even Camilla Hall

20:17

had a book about her. Yes. Like,

20:19

it's fucking, it's incredible. So we put together this

20:21

entire, like, you know, special fucking huge thing to

20:24

Carolina for helping us put all of this shit

20:26

together for the story that we

20:28

have today. A story that really hasn't been

20:30

told in 50 years. I

20:32

mean, it was a bunch of different, you know, not

20:34

our way. Not our

20:36

fucking way, dude. How were you able to determine, like,

20:39

what was bullshit and what was not? Well,

20:42

you can't, but you can cross reference and

20:44

you can see, like, if it shows up

20:46

a couple of times in each book, if

20:48

the same thing shows up in two different

20:50

books, then you can kind of see, like,

20:52

okay, that's probably closer to the truth. You

20:54

can look at, like, the character of these

20:56

people. Mark is. Don't you

20:58

dare give these people the tools to

21:00

properly research things. We can't allow these

21:02

people to know how to do this

21:05

on their own because it needs to

21:07

come from us. But what

21:09

we do here is we do try to

21:11

match up what everybody says about the same

21:13

fucking thing as much as we can, because

21:15

you find out there is literally no such

21:17

thing as objective truth. And

21:19

it's very difficult in a story like this. Yeah. The

21:22

only one who tells the truth is me. That's how you know it's

21:24

objective truth, as I'm saying it. Oh,

21:27

and if you want more of this fantastic

21:29

research, go ahead and check out No Dogs

21:31

in Space. We're back with

21:33

Can Part One. If you really want to

21:35

get some fucking top notch

21:37

research, especially if you particularly enjoyed

21:39

our Armamiva series, because

21:41

it's all about German, baby. It's all about

21:44

crop rock. You're in it. Yeah, man. I'm

21:46

fucking I've been in Germany for like a year.

21:48

Me and Carolina both has been awesome. I see

21:51

him in the office every day, though. Yeah, it

21:53

was not in Germany metaphorically. We're in Germany. The

21:55

Epcot version of Germany. It's in their heads. Which

21:57

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22:56

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22:58

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23:00

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day I fight to

25:02

set my child up for success Which

25:04

is why as I sit and

25:06

read car me and Wendy Dune Trying

25:10

to explain to them the concepts

25:12

of the savior complex not

25:14

working Doubling back

25:16

on itself the concept of what

25:18

does it mean to be a living God? What

25:21

are those limitations? What are

25:23

those expectations? And

25:26

honestly, I know they just want chicken, but

25:28

there are kids out there that need this

25:31

type of direct Help

25:34

and I Excel learning is an online

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effective learning program out there

26:28

at the best price. But

26:32

the people that made up the SLA weren't all

26:34

that different from a lot of the radicals that

26:36

were banging around Oakland and Berkeley in the early

26:38

to mid 70s. There were

26:40

a lot of white people talking about violent revolution,

26:42

but very few were willing to take it to

26:44

the next level. Dude, and I'll tell you what,

26:46

I was looking at some footage of like people

26:48

like rioting back in the 70s and the 60s

26:50

versus now. Do

26:53

you know that they were like they were like go

26:55

in like wearing like football helmets and shit. They were

26:57

ready to go. Well, now they know how to protest

27:00

better than ever because all the kids are being taught

27:02

how to avoid and obstruct

27:04

school shooters. So they're actually

27:06

using those skills against the

27:08

police. It's pretty awesome.

27:10

It is very. You militarize the

27:13

children. They become the child. There's

27:16

the child military, which we should think about

27:18

because they won't see it coming. We

27:21

dress up a bunch of military officers as

27:24

little orphans and we drop them a bunch

27:26

of places and everyone thinks they're like, oh,

27:28

let's help these lost children. And then the

27:30

kids go like, welcome to America. It's

27:33

just fucking light all these guys

27:35

up. That'd be fucking awesome. He's

27:37

turning into EDM. I mean, has

27:40

anyone ever thought about using kids

27:42

and soldiers? I can't believe I'm

27:44

just not coming up with this idea. I'm

27:46

saying everybody loves reboots. Well,

27:51

honestly, I don't think it's likely that

27:53

anyone in the SLA would have become

27:55

as violent as they did had they

27:57

not found someone to be violent for.

28:00

Just like how I doubt Susan Atkins would have

28:02

found herself writing the word pig in the house

28:04

of a murdered pregnant woman Using said

28:07

pregnant woman's blood had it not been for Charles

28:09

Manson But if she had Facebook then I definitely

28:11

could have seen of writing the word pig on

28:13

a pregnant woman's Facebook wall But

28:28

the difference between the Manson family and

28:30

the Symbionese Liberation Army is that while

28:32

Manson shaped his followers into what he

28:35

wanted them to be The members of

28:37

the SLA shaped their leader into who

28:39

they wanted to follow It's reading

28:42

this much material from the inside of

28:44

the SLA You can really see a

28:46

disparate group of idiots come together and

28:49

kind of create the perfect Idiot

28:52

evil soup for the

28:54

SLA to be itself. They really do all throw

28:56

stuff in together. Yeah See

28:58

these were people who had no real direction

29:00

in life But still wanted to do some

29:02

good in this world or at least their

29:04

idea of being good because no bad guy

29:06

in politics Ever thinks of

29:08

themselves as the bad guy. No, that's why

29:10

the best villains we have even now We

29:13

talk about like in fiction our favorite villains

29:15

are the ones that have like

29:17

a purpose, right? They believe that they are they're strong

29:19

of purpose and that's no one starts off as a

29:21

villain No one goes up wanting to be a junkie

29:25

I think a mangalah knew he was a villain But

29:37

these people needed a purpose But

29:40

as we'll see the SLA's political

29:42

philosophy demanded that a non-white person

29:44

lead the revolution But once they

29:46

found that person the revolution could

29:49

commence But the story

29:51

of how this loose Confederation of

29:53

activists some acquaintances some close friends

29:56

some ex-lovers this all starts in

29:58

the unlikeliest of places with

30:00

the unlikeliest of people. It's me.

30:04

This story starts in prison

30:06

with Willy Wolf, aka

30:09

Kaju. Although Willy Wolf was not himself

30:11

a prisoner, nor was he a prison

30:13

guard. But I wish I could have

30:15

been. That's all

30:17

I wanted to be. Kaju was just

30:19

some dumb college kid. And by dumb

30:22

college kid, I mean like, he was

30:24

very intelligent, but he had zero fucking

30:26

common sense. Honestly, I went to go

30:29

see that Dave Matthews band. And honestly,

30:31

the rhythms are a lot for me.

30:34

I went to see Dave. I

30:36

saw people, I was like, this is too much.

30:38

I have to leave. And I had to sit

30:40

with my white noise machine in my SUV for

30:43

several hours just to come down. Can we get

30:45

rid of the violin already? It

30:47

sounds like a woman screaming and I

30:49

hate that. Well

30:52

Willy Wolf was about the whitest kid

30:54

you can imagine. He came from Connecticut.

30:56

He was a Yale legacy and

30:58

he'd been both a varsity swimmer

31:00

and the editor of his school

31:03

newspaper at a fancy ass Massachusetts

31:05

prep school. So you're sick of it. You

31:10

know, honestly guys, I've

31:12

done being white at the top that I can

31:14

do it. I

31:16

was the number one white, my old

31:18

family. Now it's time for me

31:20

to be so good at being white, I

31:22

can make myself black. But

31:26

after a gap year in Europe,

31:28

Willie enrolled at the university of

31:30

California in Berkeley where he quickly

31:33

found that the revolutionary ideas of

31:35

people like Che Guevara, his eventual

31:37

hero were highly appealing. In

31:40

fact, Willie came to be such

31:42

a Che fan boy that he

31:44

began dressing like Che wearing a

31:46

beret, smoking big, dumb cigars. You

31:48

guys want any Maduros? You

31:53

guys like plantains? I

31:57

do too, a little sweet for me though. Wolf

32:00

also, like many young radicals, became heavily involved in

32:02

protesting for the rights of black people in America.

32:04

But let's be clear that this isn't why we're

32:06

making fun of these people. No, it's just the

32:09

slippery slope that led them to where they were,

32:11

but it's not because of their actual

32:13

beautiful leanings. No. Any fighting for black

32:15

people is nice. Yeah, there were plenty

32:17

of whites who valiantly fought and in

32:19

some cases died for the rights of

32:21

others. But while Willie would die, he

32:23

was in no way valiant. Now,

32:26

upon arrival and Berkeley, Willie soon found

32:28

his way to a loosely organized commune

32:30

called the Peeking Man

32:40

House. This commune was so

32:42

named partly as a tongue-in-cheek reference to

32:45

Maoist politics and partly as a nod

32:47

to the egg roll cart the residents

32:49

ran on the Berkeley campus. Marcus, what's

32:51

the difference between Maoism and Marxism? What

32:53

is the difference between Maoism and Marxism?

32:55

I think it's letters. I've

33:00

learned more about dialectical materialism and various things

33:02

inside the guy. I actually want to say

33:04

thank you to some of the people, some

33:06

very good emails, understanding some stuff, where how

33:08

like dialectical materialism is about the idea that

33:11

societies are driven by actions, not ideas

33:13

like a lot of people thought. And

33:15

I do think that, but luckily what's

33:17

great is that the SLA was wrong

33:19

about all of it. So I actually

33:21

then didn't have to know. Yeah, they

33:23

were just big on rhetoric and yes,

33:25

but then everything that they believed eventually

33:28

was wrong. He didn't do it right.

33:30

They did everything wrong. Now the

33:32

people who lived at Peeking

33:34

Man House were actually serious

33:36

revolutionaries who were associated with

33:38

the largest, most radical activist

33:40

group in Northern California at

33:42

the time, Vincerremos, which means

33:44

overcome. Yeah, cool. That happens

33:46

sometimes. Nothing's like that third,

33:48

just be like, now I'm

33:50

just disgusting. What am I

33:53

even chirping off

33:58

to? He's jerked off to like an

34:01

old picture of Nancy Pelosi just because it

34:03

was there. Just to do it. See

34:07

Vinceramos was a merger of two groups

34:09

who were splinter groups of other groups

34:11

that had splintered off from the splintering

34:13

of the Students for a Democratic Society

34:16

whose 30,000 members had

34:18

splintered in 1969 when everything was falling

34:20

apart. Got it? Got

34:22

it. They want to teach the Ninja Turtles. Yeah.

34:26

Perfect. Again, he's getting

34:28

some of the work. But

34:30

splintering aside, Vinceramos was an organization

34:32

of mostly white people that prided

34:34

itself on street fights with the

34:36

police. And they were not a

34:38

group that shied away from using

34:40

guns or at least shied away

34:42

from owning guns. Man,

34:44

street fight. That's it's such a different

34:46

time. Man. Yeah it is. Street

34:49

fights with the police? Because now it's actually more so. And they're

34:51

still a group? Sadly we kind of, we

34:53

see it on the other side. It kind of reminds me a

34:55

little bit of kind of what the Proud Boys do in a

34:57

way where they go to just fight people. In

35:00

other words, Vinceramos was willing to

35:02

use violence to achieve their goals.

35:04

But the kicker with Vinceramos was

35:06

that even though they were predominantly

35:08

white, their creed demanded that the

35:10

white members of the left should

35:12

submit to dominant black and minority

35:14

leadership. This idea would become

35:16

essential to the ethos of the Symbionese

35:19

Liberation Army. And it does make sense.

35:21

The idea is for white people to

35:23

use their privilege and their natural protections

35:25

and use it to kind

35:27

of safely harbor people of color within the

35:29

movement and move them forward and have it

35:31

about using that privilege to do it. But

35:34

they were focused on it. And

35:36

Khadjo. Khadjo? And Khadjo.

35:38

Let's just say Willie

35:40

Wolf for now. Willie.

35:43

Willie was not that. Yeah.

35:46

It's like, you know, it's okay to march in

35:48

a Black Lives Matters march, but not to speak.

35:54

Yeah, we sit there and hold space.

35:58

By the spring of 1972. who Vinceramos

36:00

was, you guessed it, starting a splinter.

36:02

It's hard to keep them together. Because

36:05

there were disagreements on whether they should

36:07

focus on mass organization or straight up

36:10

terrorism. One of the people

36:12

debating all this, leaning heavily towards terrorism,

36:14

was Willy Wolf aka Kaju. We'll come

36:16

from everywhere. We'll come from the Montagnas.

36:18

We'll come from the Jumbalos. We'll

36:21

come from everywhere and they won't see us coming

36:23

no matter what they think. Right boys? Come

36:25

on, let's get them. Yeah!

36:29

Now at this point, Willy Wolf was still

36:31

enrolled at UC Berkeley and was wanting to

36:34

do a school project on black men in

36:36

prison. Can I do one of black men

36:38

in prison? That scares me. Teacher, teacher, I

36:40

want to do one of black men in

36:42

prison. No, it is philosophical. It wasn't good.

36:44

You can see why that's happening. So, I'm

36:47

not going to do that. So,

36:58

a resident at Peking, in

37:00

one of those casual suggestions in history

37:02

that end up being extremely consequential, he

37:04

suggested that Willy Wolf attend one of

37:06

the cultural nights that were being held

37:08

at Vacaville Prison. Now, Vacaville was a

37:11

prison that often seemed more like a

37:13

hospital, or at least that's how it

37:15

was in the 70s. The

37:17

warden was a psychiatrist and most of

37:19

the inmates were there on good behavior

37:21

assignments. This was a prison

37:24

with a little more freedom for people who

37:26

do favors, which is why Vacaville is where

37:28

Ed Kemper still rests his

37:30

head every night at the age of

37:32

75. That's a big

37:35

head. I can smell the grill cream.

37:38

Man, if I could three

37:40

quarters of a century with old bumble butt. He's loving

37:42

it in there. But when

37:44

Willy Wolf started going to Vacaville, Ed Kemper

37:46

had not yet arrived. He was still about

37:48

a year away. Now,

37:51

Willy Wolf found his way into

37:53

Vacaville through a teaching assistant in

37:55

the Afro-American Division of Berkeley's Ethnic

37:57

Studies Department, a guy named Colton

38:00

Westbrook. He was signing up tutors

38:02

for a new self-help educational program

38:04

held in the prison library. Westbrook

38:06

was working with a black inmate

38:08

group called the Black Cultural Association,

38:11

the BCA, which was founded to

38:13

help black prisoners deal with the

38:15

unique problems that confronted them inside

38:17

and outside of prison. It was

38:20

like a friendlier environment for guys

38:22

who didn't necessarily fit into any

38:24

of the various associations that run

38:26

prison yards. Well, Vacaville

38:29

is also a different type of place. It's

38:31

still there. They still have, you know, the

38:33

fucking, was it AAN or the Aryan Nation,

38:35

where like they have that, they have different

38:37

groups. Like they have like various gangs,

38:40

essentially prison gangs that like normally

38:42

you try to fit into one.

38:44

But then the BCA was kind of created as

38:47

a prisoner-led educational system to kind of basically keep

38:49

their noses clean to help them kind of find

38:51

more intellectual pursuits that will help them outside of

38:53

prison. But this just seems like a place where

38:56

you're not going to get your ass kicked on

38:58

a daily basis. That's the idea. It's like for

39:00

people who want to learn. I actually think it's

39:02

a fantastic idea. I think more and

39:04

more prisons who can do stuff like that, it would

39:07

be great. Well, Vacaville, it was also, it was much

39:09

more possible there because if you fucked up in Vacaville,

39:11

like if you caused any disturbance, you were gone. Yeah.

39:13

Like if you fucked up, if you got into a

39:15

fight, you're fucking out. Like that's still prison gangs are

39:17

going to form no matter what you do. Of course.

39:20

Now, the BCA was not a

39:22

particularly militant or radical organization. It

39:24

was mostly about rehabilitation with the

39:26

idea of returning a more responsible

39:29

person to the community by establishing

39:31

communication between inmates and black communities

39:33

on the outside. In addition, they

39:35

held twice-weekly tutoring sessions to help

39:37

educate inmates. On the cultural

39:40

side of things, meetings opened with a

39:42

clenched fist salute to the flag of

39:44

the Republic of New Africa and a

39:46

chant in Swahili. Wow, this is exciting.

39:50

But the stylistic touches weren't really

39:52

the point of the BCA. The

39:55

BCA was about self-improvement, but those

39:57

ritual trappings were fascinating to white

40:00

visitors. like Willie Wolf. After attending

40:02

his first meeting with the BCA

40:04

as an observer, Willie found

40:17

a culture that would fascinate him for the

40:19

rest of his short life. He

40:21

soon became one of the

40:23

guys who tutored BCA members,

40:25

and before long, White Willie

40:27

was bringing the intense ideas

40:29

of Vinceramos to BCA members.

40:31

Hey, alright, so first

40:33

of all, so happy to meet you. Love meeting

40:36

your pros and nos, it's been honestly a big

40:38

deal for me. But I'm going to say right

40:40

now is the first thing you should have done

40:42

when you met me fella, punch

40:44

me in the face. Because

40:47

I'm the problem, right guys? It's me.

40:49

So come on, first up, alright, right

40:52

here. Some sweet chin music, come

40:55

on, come on, hit me, hit me. Can I hold your

40:57

pocket? Well,

40:59

let's say these prisoners were also using Willie for

41:01

their own purposes. In effect, he was like a

41:03

mascot. He was a fool. They used him as

41:06

a tool. Like he was like, he was the

41:08

first one and they're all like, oh, this guy

41:10

will get us anything we want. And he'll bring

41:12

it over. And I don't feel like everybody in

41:15

the BCA was trying to like milk other people

41:17

for shit. No, it's just what happens. You're in

41:19

prison. That guy can get me stuff outside of

41:21

prison and he's going to and he's super excited

41:23

to do it. Yeah. But while

41:25

most people rejected the ideas that Willie

41:27

Wolf was bringing in, one in particular

41:29

was very interested in what Willie had

41:31

to say. That member

41:33

was Donald DeFries, whom the

41:36

world would come to know

41:38

as Cinque Mtube, aka SIN,

41:40

leader of the Symbionese Liberation

41:42

Army. Now, one thing

41:44

that SIN did share with Charles Manson

41:46

was that they were both lifelong criminals,

41:49

starting in his teenage years with breaking

41:51

into parking meters and stealing cars. SIN

41:53

would spend much of his life either

41:55

in jail, on probation or on the

41:57

run. And much of his crimes would

42:00

involved weapon possession. In 1964, for example,

42:02

Sin was hitchhiking along the San Bernardino

42:04

freeway but was arrested after police found

42:06

a sharpened butter knife, a sawed-off rifle,

42:08

and a tear gas pencil bomb in

42:11

his suitcase. That was the one thing

42:13

about him that I found interesting. If

42:15

you read the book, The Life and

42:17

Death of the SLA, he does kind

42:19

of start off like, how do you

42:22

put it, life never went right

42:24

for him. He was always

42:26

kind of messed up and kind of

42:28

involved in various criminal associations. But the

42:30

worst part, honestly, was his fascination with

42:32

bombs. And that he did have an

42:35

immediate fascination with bombs. And I feel

42:37

like the cops will work with many

42:39

things but not bombs. Yeah.

42:41

Especially when you're just so willy-nilly with them, they're

42:43

just in your pocket. Yeah, they're just out in

42:46

a bag, dude. That's the thing. Three years later,

42:48

he ran a red light on a bicycle and

42:50

when he was searched, cops found a homemade bomb

42:52

in his pocket as well as a second bomb

42:54

and a pistol in the bike's basket. His story

42:56

was that he just found all this shit and

42:59

was trying to sell all of it to help

43:01

out his family. Oh, I'm just trying to sell

43:03

these bombs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's no big deal.

43:05

Oh no, these bombs aren't for me. They're for

43:07

sale. They're for my customers. No,

43:10

I'm distributing bombs.

43:12

That's it. I'm like

43:14

a dealer for bombs.

43:17

But that's not illegal. I never saw that anywhere. Well,

43:20

the bombs and the gun got him three years

43:22

probation. But six months later, Sin was

43:24

arrested for his first violent crime. After

43:26

paying a sex worker 10 bucks, Sin

43:28

engaged in her services, then pulled out

43:31

a pistol demanding the money he just

43:33

paid her in addition to everything else

43:35

she had. Rude. Now,

43:39

Sin was banking on this woman not going

43:41

to the cops, but she immediately went to

43:43

the cops. And when the authorities caught up

43:46

to Sin, they found both the pistol, which

43:48

was stolen and a cache of more stolen

43:50

weapons in the trunk of his car. That's

43:53

when Sin turned snitch and let police

43:55

do an accomplice who had 200 stolen

43:58

guns in his possession. It's

44:00

rumored that sin remained an informant because

44:03

he did not go to jail for

44:05

robbing the sex worker Nor did he

44:07

do time for the veritable crime spree

44:09

that immediately followed my take is that

44:12

he was Absolutely a police

44:14

informant. Yeah, and that he would then that

44:16

followed him to jail. It's the only thing

44:18

that makes sense Yes. Yeah, otherwise they would

44:20

have just beat him. Yes. I

44:22

think that he flipped and I think that he Again

44:25

unlike his hero George Jackson

44:27

sin cue was very Morally

44:31

weak. Yes between 1968

44:33

and 1969 sin was arrested for burglary He

44:37

kidnapped a rabbi and demanded a

44:40

$5,000 ransom from his synagogue He

44:42

was caught on top of a bank with two

44:44

pistols an eight-inch dagger and a hand grenade I'm

44:46

just hanging out And

44:50

he was wounded in a gun battle outside of

44:52

a Bank of America branch in Los Angeles might

44:54

have been one right around here It might have

44:56

been that I bet you the Bank of America

44:58

over here. Yeah big shooting in the 80s.

45:00

I feel like that's No,

45:04

this is 1968 whoa there had have been

45:06

multiple Yeah What finally sent sent

45:09

to prison was when he pistol whipped a

45:11

Hawaiian tourist and stole a check from her

45:13

purse Angry even thinking about it. Yeah, then

45:15

got arrested when he tried cashing the check

45:18

leave our tourists alone. Yeah, man

45:21

Yeah, taking everything into account sin

45:23

was given five years to life

45:26

But since he was probably an informant he

45:28

was sent to the relatively cushy Vacaville prison

45:30

at the age of 30. So

45:33

he's about Eight to

45:35

ten years older than most of the rest of

45:37

the people like he's the oldest person in the

45:39

SLA and remember that because remember I do feel

45:41

like this is as you Why

45:44

did this for these kids they

45:46

are like I know we don't like

45:48

we object to the term kids because

45:50

legally they are Adults, but they're college kids.

45:53

Yeah, they really don't know their ass

45:55

from their elbow They're deeply ensconced in

45:57

reading which makes a lot of sense

45:59

and they're very very Inspired when

46:01

they go to meet sin cue you got to

46:03

remember what we looked I think about that sometimes

46:05

too Natalie and I was looking a picture of

46:07

her at 30 years old yesterday And I looked at it, and

46:09

I was like oh when you were a

46:11

baby. She's like yep at 30 Like

46:16

at that point I'm at that point where

46:18

the 10-year gap is real Yeah, a 30

46:20

year old to a 20 year old looks

46:22

like a fucking dub like you're

46:24

on Mount Rushmore You know

46:27

Now sin was a model prisoner at

46:29

vocaville because you had to be to

46:31

stay there and he soon became active

46:33

in the black cultural Association the BCA

46:35

where Willie Wolf thought he'd finally found

46:38

his end to black culture Now

46:40

just like a lot of guys in the BCA

46:42

did and as all members of the SLA would

46:44

later do Donald the freeze changed

46:46

his name and took sin cue from the

46:49

man who led the revolt aboard the slave

46:51

ship Amistad After shortening sin

46:53

cue to sin for his day to day He

46:56

began giving lecture type speeches during the

46:58

Friday night meetings of the BCA and when

47:00

it came time to elect a new chairman

47:02

Sin volunteered himself as a candidate now Just

47:05

a little bit a couple dynamics here sin

47:07

cue also when he started coming through one

47:09

of the identities He tried for a while

47:11

was like a pastor like so he went

47:14

through various identities coming up But so we

47:16

know that he was in search of a

47:18

place that he belonged Yeah And when he

47:21

got to jail he first started and he

47:23

kind of sent the lay of the land

47:25

and then he started hearing these This the

47:27

what do you call like the theory about

47:30

like leftist concepts and he had a real

47:32

hard time Digesting marks like a lot

47:34

of people do but then when he found George

47:36

Jackson He was like, oh, this is kind of

47:38

like a simplified thing Like it's more simplified his

47:40

direct his passion blood in my eye is a

47:42

beautiful book and we'll get to blood and I

47:44

hear in Yes, but he was like, you know,

47:46

he kind of like this was like or I'll

47:48

get into this but Imagine this you show up

47:50

at the BCA. These are guys that have been

47:52

in jail a lot of them for years Yeah,

47:54

they've been running this BCA thing for a long

47:56

time the phrase rolls up

47:58

and he's immediately like y'all

48:01

been waiting for me. Like

48:03

you guys don't know what you

48:05

got here. The guys showed

48:07

up everybody be ready for

48:09

Cinq and they wait he starts to

48:11

go like you get really really involved

48:13

but he's doing the classic Anders

48:16

Breivik style not can I'm not I

48:18

can't just be a member of this

48:21

group. I have to be the leader. I have to

48:23

be the leader. Now from what

48:25

we can tell it's during these elections

48:27

that Willie Wolf first became aware of

48:29

Sen because in Willie's journals he jotted

48:31

down that one of the candidates was

48:33

a con named DeFries that's Sen's real

48:35

last name. Sen however not

48:38

only lost the election but came

48:40

in third. That's the second loser.

48:44

This was partly because Sen rubbed a

48:46

lot of people the wrong way not

48:48

least the black women visitors who also

48:51

attended BCA meetings they were just fucking

48:53

creeped out by Sen. Well it's because he was

48:55

an extremely abusive man to every woman that was

48:57

in his life. Yes. Also I know that you're

49:00

like taking on the name of this great person

49:02

but like Sen is like a bad

49:04

thing to call yourself. Yeah a lot of people would

49:06

tell well it's also cool because it's

49:08

the opposite. But

49:11

like any sore loser Sen actually threatened

49:13

to sue the BCA because the outgoing

49:16

chairman had spread the rumor that Sen

49:18

was a snitch. Definitely was a snitch.

49:20

Yeah I'm pretty certain that he was.

49:22

I'm almost positive. I mean it's he

49:25

was definitely a snitch when he turned

49:28

over that guy that had the 200

49:30

guns. Let's just say it don't stop.

49:32

You know like once it works for

49:35

you once. Yeah. And then you kind

49:37

of are in a situation where now

49:39

unfortunately because like then the cops what

49:41

they are what's fun about them is

49:43

they catch you in a trap too.

49:45

Yeah. So now you're sort of also

49:47

kind of forced to stay and inform

49:50

it. And so it yeah he's fucked.

49:52

Yep. He admitted to selling bombs. Yeah.

49:54

The only other person we know who

49:56

admits to sell bombs is Eddie Toons

49:58

at edytoons.com. That's right, baby.

50:00

That's right. I'll write a joke about nothing Well

50:05

the compromise to avoid the so-called

50:08

lawsuit sin was given his own

50:11

Discussion group called uni site. Thank

50:13

you Which would bizarrely

50:15

focus study on the dynamics of the

50:17

black family even though he was a

50:19

fucking the absentee father and a bad

50:21

Just an all-around bad person. Yeah, the

50:23

first outsider sin asked to join his

50:26

group was the very white Willie wool

50:28

You got it mister Where

50:32

do I tie the doo rag? Oh? I'm

50:36

sorry is that offensive? I'm

50:38

extremely sorry Did

50:48

you know that rosebud was Mistress

50:51

clit Well

50:57

will he he had just begun to bring in other

50:59

young white revolutionaries to vocaville

51:01

prison to quote-unquote Tudor black

51:03

inmates These would be

51:05

the members of the SLA The

51:08

first white brought to vocaville was Willie's friend

51:10

from the peeking manhouse Russ little who would

51:13

come to be known in the SLA as

51:15

OC yeah, everybody put your hands together here. We got OC

51:18

in the house Like

51:21

most of the white members of the SLA You know

51:23

eight point five out of ten Russ

51:25

little came from a boring middle-class

51:27

background and found his identity in

51:29

radical left-wing politics That was pretty

51:31

much every single one of these

51:34

people that they made radical left-wing

51:36

politics their Entire

51:38

identity yeah, of course because again, it's it's

51:40

really exciting a lot of it's very very

51:42

interesting and compelling And I think that old

51:44

date it does open your mind, and they're

51:47

also very young yeah, and it's also it's

51:50

1972 1970 very fresh It's

51:53

cool very cool. Yeah, but it's also, but that's

51:55

the things that this is yeah This

51:58

is when it gets dirty cuz like every It's

52:00

in 1969 a lot of like the legitimate groups

52:02

like fall apart and then once you get into

52:04

the 70s It starts getting a lot

52:06

more violent It starts getting a lot stranger and

52:08

it starts getting a lot more serious So it

52:11

really is like it's dangerous to be into this

52:13

shit in 1972 to 1975 cool and sexy Yes,

52:17

because they're so liberal but yet they're also

52:20

like down with the Hell's Angels. Yeah, well,

52:22

it's cuz they don't understand Yeah, but

52:24

although Russ little that well, that's the thing I

52:26

just I think they just didn't stay late enough

52:28

at the Hell's Angels I

52:33

think we got like you get that feeling I

52:36

think it might be time to go

52:38

Mm-hmm, but although Russ little was already

52:41

radicalized by the time he arrived in

52:43

California from Florida He became even more

52:45

so while living at Peking Manhouse and

52:48

soon became laser focused on the plight

52:50

of prisoners Thanks to Willie Wolf See

52:53

it was their belief that all prisoners were

52:55

inherently Political prisoners and that every prisoner

52:57

in the system no matter what the

52:59

crime was a potential soldier in the

53:01

revolution to come And I think it's

53:04

really about that. It's a potential soldier.

53:06

Yeah, it's like these because

53:08

I do think that there were many people

53:10

in the prison System as now we know

53:12

that it's now a political politicized environment and

53:15

it's always been no I mean we worked

53:17

with the last prisoner project for you know

53:19

with our weed for forever An

53:22

ally with them. Yeah. Yeah Eddie's done shit with

53:24

a lot of shit with prisons. That's right. I love them

53:32

The walkouts just go to the mess hall

53:37

Well, yeah any prisoner child molester

53:40

That's a fucking soldier Bestiality,

53:43

there's your soldier. How long

53:46

could you really go away for bestiality? Man

53:48

long enough to join a colt in jail

53:50

ask it for a friend Well

53:58

these ideas were discussed in talks that Willy

54:00

Wolf would give at Peeking House in

54:02

between screenings of anti-war films. These

54:05

films were supplied by his roommate and

54:07

an actual black guy. I know one.

54:10

Here he is. He's right here. We

54:12

have to live together. His name was

54:15

Chris Thompson. But one night

54:17

Chris screened a propaganda film from Hanoy.

54:19

These fucking nerds. Yeah. They're

54:21

just watching propaganda films and they're like, this

54:23

is amazing. It's like, which are

54:25

you fine? I do understand. It looks like you were in

54:27

contact with the desert. I

54:31

know all these people. Well,

54:34

the climax featured a Vietnamese woman shooting

54:36

down an American bomber single-handedly after

54:39

her baby was blown to bits

54:41

by American bombs. Excellent. The whole

54:43

room erupted into cheers as the

54:46

plane went down. But

54:48

the loudest voice belonged to Chris

54:50

Thompson's casual girlfriend. Her

54:52

name was Patricia Soltizik,

54:55

aka Ms. Moon, aka

54:57

Zoya. In less

54:59

than a year, she would co-found

55:02

the Symbionese Liberation Army while holed

55:04

up in her apartment with Donald

55:06

DeFries, aka Sin Q and

55:09

2B. Oh yeah, man. Zoya's the scary

55:11

one. Yeah. Now Patty Hearst

55:13

described Ms. Moon as difficult to know and

55:15

even more difficult to like once you knew

55:17

her. And everything she did

55:19

was aimed at her personal goal of proving

55:22

that women could be just as horrible and

55:24

violent as men. Awesome.

55:27

By 1972, she dropped out of

55:29

Berkeley completely, telling her friends that

55:32

no one is free until everyone

55:34

is free. Wherever

55:36

there is injustice, you will find her.

55:39

Wherever there is suffering, she'll be

55:41

there. Wherever liberty

55:44

is threatened, you'll find Ms.

55:46

Moon. The

55:51

Ms. Moon was a pet name given

55:53

to her by her ex-girlfriend Camilla Hall,

55:55

who would one day be known in

55:57

the SLA as Gabby. And also

55:59

she She legally changed her name to Ms.

56:01

Moon. She did. Well, Ms. Moon,

56:04

to be difficult. Well,

56:06

it's one word, right? Yeah. One

56:09

word. It's not, no, it's

56:11

Ms. Moon. Ms. Moon. Ms. Moon.

56:13

M-I-Z-M-O-O-N. Yeah. Ms. Moon

56:15

sounds like the lady who runs the bodega. While

56:19

Ms. Moon was bisexual, Camilla was gay.

56:21

And the only time she knew happiness

56:23

was when she was living as an

56:25

openly gay woman with Ms. Moon in

56:27

Berkeley. Now their relationship eventually

56:29

ended, but even though Camilla did believe

56:31

in revolution and justice and everything that

56:33

went with it. Well, that works, you

56:36

know. She

56:38

chose to join the SLA simply because

56:40

that was the only way to stay

56:42

close to Ms. Moon. Oh, yes. This

56:45

inability to let go would only lead

56:47

to more misery and eventually a horrible

56:50

death. And I think a lot of people could

56:52

learn from that. Yeah, let go. In relationships, let

56:54

go. You know? Just pull onto a

56:56

revolutionary. All right, if

56:58

they're choosing the revolution, they're not choosing you. If

57:01

they're not choosing the cat in the eel hole,

57:03

they're not choosing it. You gotta go with them

57:05

to the revolution. You can't

57:07

change a revolution into

57:09

a Subaru nation. Revolution

57:12

is not leading that. There's plenty fish

57:15

in the sea. That's not a

57:18

bad joke about vagina. You're disgusting. You're a

57:20

bad person. I said it's not. You're a

57:22

bad man. I said the play fish is

57:24

sweet. And you're not an ally. Now,

57:26

Ms. Moon was introduced to another friend of

57:29

Willie Wolf's named Nancy Ling Perry, who had

57:34

come to be known as Faheza in the

57:36

SLA. Nancy was working

57:39

part time at an orange juice

57:41

stand called Fruity Rudy's on Telegraph

57:43

Avenue. Okay. It's Telegraph's sort

57:45

of the St. Mark's place of Berkeley. You got a

57:47

lot of stands, a lot of booths. And

57:50

Willie Wolf was selling homemade bread

57:52

in the booth next to Fruity

57:54

Rudy's. Guess what color? That's

58:02

one thing we're keeping white. The

58:06

two talked and found they had common

58:09

interests, but Nancy's background was much rougher

58:11

than the other members of the SLA.

58:13

While she'd grown up in Orange

58:15

County as a straight-A cheerleader, she

58:17

turned Maoist when she attended Berkeley

58:20

and she subsequently married a black

58:22

jazz musician. But even

58:24

after the marriage fell apart, Nancy would

58:26

hold on to certain affectations, like she'd

58:28

call everyone brother and she'd talk in

58:30

a black accent. Her accent,

58:33

however, was pretty good because if you'll

58:35

remember, Nancy was the only person in

58:37

the SLA that Patty Hearst thought was

58:40

actually black besides Sen before the blindfold

58:42

came up.

58:44

But during her dark times before the

58:46

SLA, Nancy worked as a blackjack dealer

58:48

in a gentleman's club where she wore

58:50

a see-through blouse while the waitresses went

58:52

fully topless. She soon fell into drug

58:54

abuse and high-risk sex work, but after

58:56

meeting Willy Wolf, Nancy found

59:08

her purpose again and was eventually

59:10

reborn as Faheza. Nancy

59:13

and Ms. Moon became fast friends, and

59:15

they were soon going together to the

59:17

Kabat Gun Range. It's spelled C-H-A-B-O-T, have

59:19

no idea how it's pronounced. I'm sure

59:21

they're still in business. Oh yeah, it's

59:24

in Oakland. And they went

59:26

there to learn their way around a weapon

59:28

for when the inevitable revolution came. There,

59:30

they met a Vietnam veteran named Joe Ramiro,

59:33

who took the name Bo when he joined

59:35

the SLA. I really feel like they needed

59:37

to really pull this all together, and I

59:39

think what made them successful is the music

59:41

of Sia. Because

59:43

they think these women need to feel strong

59:46

enough in order to put

59:48

it all together, man. The pair is

59:50

bringing black and white together. Yeah, wow. That's

59:53

a Sia joke. Very specific, eddytoons.com.

59:55

Soon, it's a very specific. Now,

59:58

Joe had truly been in the show.

1:00:00

in Vietnam. He'd been a member of

1:00:02

one of the war's long-range reconnaissance units.

1:00:04

These are the guys who went behind

1:00:07

enemy lines to try and out Viet

1:00:09

Cong the Viet Cong. And let me

1:00:11

tell you something, man, it's fucking hard

1:00:13

to do. I'm not enjoying out Viet

1:00:16

Conging the Viet Cong. I

1:00:18

really honestly kind of wish that we weren't.

1:00:21

You know, and we do this traditional with muskets

1:00:23

and trenches. This sucks. There's

1:00:25

a lot of bugs. Well,

1:00:29

as a result, Joe Romero was riddled

1:00:31

with PTSD when he got back and

1:00:33

he joined an organization called Vietnam Veterans

1:00:35

Against the War. Yeah, he was legit.

1:00:38

Yeah. But at the same time, he

1:00:40

thought that an armed revolution in America

1:00:42

was inevitable and the left was going

1:00:44

to need an organized military. So

1:00:47

he began giving classes on how to

1:00:49

use weapons at the Chabot gun range

1:00:51

for anyone who is willing to learn.

1:00:53

And soon after Nancy Ling Perry and

1:00:55

Ms. Moon started attending, Russ

1:00:57

Little and Willie Wolf were acting as

1:01:00

Joe Romero's assistants during these paramilitary classes.

1:01:02

And it really was Willie Wolf's like

1:01:04

group cuckism that drove this whole thing.

1:01:06

Really, he really was just like, I

1:01:08

just want to help everybody. I don't

1:01:10

want everybody to just feel like they're

1:01:12

a part of a fun army. We're

1:01:14

in an army together. Yeah. Well, they

1:01:17

said that Willie Wolf was very affable

1:01:19

and you just kind of wanted to

1:01:21

hang around like he was just a

1:01:23

friendly guy to be around. He's the

1:01:25

Lionel Richie of the SLF. He brought

1:01:27

them all together. Now,

1:01:30

all while Willie Wolf was, I think,

1:01:32

unknowingly collecting this Motley crew. He didn't

1:01:34

know that he was doing that. No

1:01:36

idea at all. Many of them were

1:01:38

traveling to Vacaville under the guise of

1:01:40

tutoring, but really they were smuggling revolutionary

1:01:42

literature to prisoners. And also drugs and

1:01:45

alcohol and money. Yeah. The stuff that

1:01:47

makes it all worth it. Yeah. Chief

1:01:49

among their texts was the book Blood

1:01:51

in My Eye, which was a series

1:01:53

of letters written by a prominent member

1:01:55

of the Black Panther Party named George

1:01:57

Jackson. Of course, he wrote these before

1:02:00

he was killed in a... prison break

1:02:02

at San Quentin. George Jackson is legit.

1:02:04

Yeah. His death was actually what inspired

1:02:06

the Attica prison riots, which

1:02:08

also kicked off the prison abolition

1:02:10

movement, the prison reform movement. George

1:02:13

Jackson is a very important person in

1:02:15

American, 20th century American history. And

1:02:18

this book would be more or less the foundational

1:02:20

text of the SLA. See

1:02:22

it was George Jackson's view that the only

1:02:24

way to affect change in America was through

1:02:27

violent revolution against both the state and the

1:02:29

corporations that propped up the American fascist regime.

1:02:31

Because that's the idea. You're trying to take

1:02:33

the mode of production, right? You're trying to

1:02:35

take the means of production. That's the idea.

1:02:37

And the people who have the means of

1:02:40

production are the state and the corporatocracy that

1:02:42

runs the country. Jackson

1:02:44

also claimed that the sheer number of

1:02:46

prisoners in America could provide the infrastructure

1:02:48

of the revolutionary armies. And it makes

1:02:50

a lot of sense because he kept

1:02:52

saying again, like the main issue with

1:02:54

what's with kind of what communist and

1:02:56

communist thought is kind of really talking

1:02:58

about is there are

1:03:01

so many people that are not in charge

1:03:03

underneath the people that are in charge. And

1:03:05

it's kind of crazy that you got one

1:03:07

guard for every 1000 criminals or 1000 prisoners

1:03:10

in the thing and they you just got to get them all

1:03:13

together to fight against the

1:03:15

top. Yeah. You know, the problem though

1:03:17

with an army of us than them

1:03:19

always prisoners is they're in

1:03:21

prison. Well, they had got to break them out. Well,

1:03:23

there was also many people in the revolution that

1:03:25

were like so and you guys got money to

1:03:27

buy a tank. Anybody got a

1:03:30

nuclear weapon? Yeah. Like that. That was I

1:03:32

mean, it was I I'm not

1:03:34

quite sure. But I think like George Jackson, it was a

1:03:37

kind of a thought exercise. It's a concept. Yeah,

1:03:39

it's a concept. It's not you're not literally supposed

1:03:41

to do this shit unless you do do it.

1:03:43

And then when you do do it, you have

1:03:45

to do it right. Yeah, certainly didn't

1:03:48

work in Attica. No, no. Well,

1:03:50

it also wasn't a coincidence that George

1:03:52

Jackson had quite a few choice words

1:03:54

to say about the families that ran

1:03:56

America, which included the Rockefellers and who

1:03:58

else but the decision. a sentence of

1:04:00

William Randolph Hearst. I don't want them

1:04:02

to know. Oh, no. That

1:04:04

Rosebud is the name of the cl... No.

1:04:08

No. About the chocolate starfish. I

1:04:11

don't want anybody to know about my

1:04:13

favorite little starfish in so well. Oh,

1:04:17

my little brown-eyed... brown-eyed

1:04:19

wonder. No.

1:04:24

No. Now

1:04:28

at this point, this group had coalesced around

1:04:30

Willie Wolfe simply because he was affable. But

1:04:33

there was nobody on the outside who could

1:04:35

be their leader. By their own

1:04:37

ethos, they could not be part of a group that was led

1:04:39

by a white person. And Joe Romero

1:04:41

didn't count because he was only half

1:04:43

Mexican. That all changed, however,

1:04:45

when sin escaped from prison in the

1:04:47

easiest prison break I've ever heard of.

1:04:50

Well, this is... can I... why, I think?

1:04:52

Again, points to why he's a prison informant

1:04:55

and what he knew. So he was talking

1:04:57

throughout the prison. And for a while, as

1:05:00

he read George Jackson, he was like, yes, I

1:05:02

want to be George Jackson. This guy means a

1:05:04

lot to me. And he

1:05:06

says that essentially, one of

1:05:08

the terms... one of the

1:05:10

kind of thoughts that they have is that,

1:05:12

essentially, getting let out on bail, you might

1:05:15

as well crawl out of jail on your

1:05:17

belly. That's what he said. It was like

1:05:19

the idea that you... that means you gave

1:05:21

in. You gave into

1:05:23

the system. And you're probably going back. Well,

1:05:25

you know, this idea that you played

1:05:28

along. You played along and you should

1:05:30

always be obstructing the system. And

1:05:32

what he realized is like, I don't want to be

1:05:34

in jail anymore. I never want to be in jail.

1:05:36

And I feel like there's stuff out there. So during

1:05:38

this time period, he's building these contacts with the

1:05:40

BCA. And they're like, I'm

1:05:42

talking about it. And he's kind of floating

1:05:44

this concept of, you know, what if I'm

1:05:47

not here no more? Right? What

1:05:49

if I'm not in this jail? And

1:05:51

so what he started doing, that's why he

1:05:53

was on his best behavior, is because he

1:05:55

knew that when he got the detail, there

1:05:58

was one work detail that took them out the door. outside

1:06:00

of the prison gates. And so he spent all

1:06:02

of this time. And I think he only even

1:06:04

knew about the job because he was an informant.

1:06:06

And he talked about it and he got the job because

1:06:09

he was an informant. Maybe. We don't know if

1:06:11

he was an informant. That's just

1:06:13

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of home. On

1:08:21

December 11, 1972, sin was

1:08:24

transferred from Vocaville to Soledad Prison

1:08:26

and was reclassified as a minimum

1:08:28

security prisoner. That meant that

1:08:31

he could be entrusted with jobs that

1:08:33

had more freedom, and as a result,

1:08:35

he'd been assigned to work on the

1:08:37

boiler in the CO training school outside

1:08:39

of the main prison walls. So

1:08:41

while the guard was taking the second

1:08:44

shift worker back to the prison so

1:08:46

sin could start the graveyard shift, sin

1:08:48

simply walked out of an unlocked door

1:08:50

and climbed a chain-link fence to freedom.

1:08:52

Boom. Done. Out. Well, the guard- No

1:08:55

razor wire or nothing? I mean,

1:08:57

that's the thing. They're outside the main walls.

1:08:59

Yeah, they were in the safe area. Yeah.

1:09:01

Now, the guard almost lazily sounded the alarm

1:09:03

because this happened a lot, and the prisoners

1:09:05

were usually picked up within a day or

1:09:07

so. But before sin could

1:09:09

be recaptured, he talked a Mexican family

1:09:11

into giving him a change of clothes

1:09:13

and subsequently caught a ride to the

1:09:16

Bay Area. Once he arrived

1:09:18

in Oakland, sin found a young

1:09:20

black radical who'd served as an

1:09:22

outside coordinator for the BCA at

1:09:24

Vocaville. Now, there are different accounts

1:09:26

of this story. Oh, yes. Because this is

1:09:28

one of those. This is one of those

1:09:30

times in history where there are some versions

1:09:33

of this story where sin queue was this

1:09:35

Che Guevara leader, where this was a big

1:09:37

deal. And then there are also some of

1:09:39

these which we believe

1:09:42

in that there's a little bit more

1:09:44

hesitancy. The only people

1:09:46

who thought that sin was a Che Guevara

1:09:48

type leader were the people in the SLA.

1:09:51

Yes. And Jeffrey just literally. So

1:09:55

now Jeffrey Dubin also like fuck

1:09:57

it. He also like slit, sink, use throat.

1:10:00

every chance he can. Oh, okay. But

1:10:02

he just liked all the rest of them? Yeah, he likes Bill Harris

1:10:04

because Bill Harris talked to him. Yes, that's what he's saying. If he

1:10:06

could have talked to Cinque, he would have loved Cinque. The

1:10:09

racist. Jeffrey Toome. Well, he,

1:10:11

I think that there was a lot. So this guy

1:10:14

is an example of a guy that was

1:10:16

a connect to, uh, to freeze while

1:10:18

he was inside of jail. And he was

1:10:20

super happy and super intense. And they got really

1:10:22

intense conversations about how the revolution was going to

1:10:24

go fucking go down and all this kind of

1:10:27

shit when he got out. Right? And

1:10:29

then he gets out and he shows

1:10:31

up at your house and you're like, whoa,

1:10:33

buddy. Oh,

1:10:35

you're here at my house. And he's

1:10:37

like, yeah, revolution time. And he says, like,

1:10:40

I've got a wife and kid. I can't

1:10:42

do that. Yeah.

1:10:44

This guy, this dude had a wife and three

1:10:46

kids, so there's no way sin's going to

1:10:48

stay with him. Yeah. He's

1:10:51

like, oh shit, you broke out of jail and you're here at my home. Yeah. But

1:10:54

he was willing to drive sin around town

1:10:56

to find someone to take him in, dump

1:10:58

him on that. Yes. Only

1:11:01

problem was that this friend needed gas money. So he asked

1:11:03

another friend if he could borrow some cash.

1:11:05

But when that friend found out the money

1:11:07

was for sin and this friend just happened

1:11:09

to know sin, she said, fuck no. I'm

1:11:12

not giving a fucking dime to that shithead.

1:11:14

Yeah. And finally, Mayfield talked

1:11:16

her into lending him 20 bucks, but she made

1:11:18

sure that he knew that she was doing it

1:11:20

for him, not for sin. Yeah. You

1:11:23

owe me this money. Yes. Sin

1:11:25

was driven around the Bay area with his address

1:11:27

book, telling his friend how he was going to

1:11:29

quote, get our, I'm going to get our brothers

1:11:31

and sisters. We're going to get them together. Yep.

1:11:34

Door after door was slammed in sin's face.

1:11:36

Come on, my brothers and sisters. Come

1:11:39

on, everybody. By the end of

1:11:41

the night, after sin had worked his way through

1:11:43

every black person he knew in the Bay area,

1:11:45

he finally said, take me

1:11:47

to the white people's house. It's

1:11:51

really true. All of

1:11:54

his actual black friends were like,

1:11:56

no, I'm going to fucking prison

1:11:58

for you. No, dude,

1:12:01

like yeah, I want a revolution, but you're

1:12:03

now like you have any idea how much

1:12:05

but honestly It's like how much heat is

1:12:08

on you is gonna fuck us up It's

1:12:10

not only that but everyone thought sin was

1:12:12

crazy. They were like he doesn't know what

1:12:14

he's talking about He doesn't read the theory.

1:12:17

He couldn't understand theory. Yeah, he doesn't know

1:12:19

what he's talking about He's fucking unpredictable like

1:12:21

get this fucker out of here. I'm also

1:12:23

gonna go ahead and guess that he's stinky

1:12:27

How dare you? And

1:12:29

that was how sin showed up unannounced at

1:12:32

peeking house looking for Willy Wolf and Russ

1:12:34

Little just here peeking Now

1:12:38

everyone else at the commune was extremely

1:12:40

nervous about sin being there but to

1:12:43

deny him sanctuary would be to go

1:12:45

against their revolutionary principles We

1:12:48

get this black man out of

1:12:50

here The

1:12:52

compromise was that sin could hide in the basement

1:12:55

Now sources vary as to whether sin was down there

1:12:57

for a day or a week But

1:13:00

what got him kicked out was when he came

1:13:02

up from the basement during a house party dressed

1:13:04

fly as fuck But acting like

1:13:06

he wasn't a dangerous fugitive. You're guessing

1:13:08

a week if he did that the first day, that'd

1:13:10

be wild Don't be stupid

1:13:12

for throwing a party. No, you have a Well,

1:13:16

I don't know man's college like man we can't

1:13:18

cancel the fucking party tonight we've been planning this

1:13:20

shit for a week I've been given up fliers

1:13:25

Well as a result the majority of

1:13:27

peeking house decided that hiding sin was

1:13:29

too risky of a venture So

1:13:32

after scouting around Russ Little found

1:13:34

that Miss Moon was more than

1:13:36

willing to take sin into her

1:13:38

apartment Oh, yeah The two soon

1:13:40

became lovers and it was obvious

1:13:42

to Willie and everyone else that

1:13:45

their leader had finally arrived The

1:13:56

other chick now they've met they broke up.

1:13:58

Oh, yeah. Okay. Yep Sin,

1:14:01

of course, was all too happy to

1:14:03

accept this role. Oh, okay. I'll be

1:14:05

in charge. He just

1:14:07

knew immediately. This is kind of

1:14:09

one of those things we talk about with Colts is did the

1:14:11

Colt find the guy? Does the guy

1:14:13

pull it all together? Sin Q, when he got

1:14:16

Unisite, he realized how

1:14:19

much he enjoyed telling people what to do.

1:14:22

And then when this happened, he found

1:14:24

this group of extremely pliable human beings.

1:14:27

It was, I mean, this is probably one of the happiest

1:14:29

days of his life. I'm sure we finally found someone to

1:14:31

follow him. Oh yeah. Now, whether

1:14:33

they knew it or not, the Symbionese

1:14:35

liberation army was quite an apt name

1:14:37

for what was going down here. Stupidly,

1:14:39

the word Symbionese was the group's attempt

1:14:41

at turning the word symbiosis into an

1:14:44

adjective. There's already a word for that.

1:14:46

It's symbiotic. Symbionese

1:14:49

would again sound like, I guess when

1:14:51

I first heard that word, I always

1:14:53

kind of assumed that it was like

1:14:55

some fake country. Yeah. I

1:14:57

was like a language. Yeah. Was

1:15:00

there an African nation called Symbia that I'd never heard

1:15:02

of? Yeah. Very confusing. No,

1:15:05

no, no, no. It's very stupid. But

1:15:07

the name was perfect. Oh yeah. In

1:15:10

the Berkeley. Can't fucking

1:15:12

find a real word. It's just

1:15:14

a man, too much confidence in

1:15:16

one room. By the

1:15:19

way, the name was perfect, but not in the way

1:15:21

they thought. See Sin found that

1:15:23

in Berkeley, all these white kids would listen

1:15:25

to whatever he had to say and would

1:15:27

do whatever he wanted them to do simply

1:15:30

because he was black. That's the only

1:15:32

credential he needed. In return,

1:15:34

the white kids finally got to be

1:15:36

revolutionaries while still following their principles

1:15:38

that a white person cannot lead them.

1:15:41

And Sin reinforced that by repeatedly

1:15:43

telling them that he was doing

1:15:45

them a favor by training them

1:15:47

to be black revolutionaries, even though

1:15:49

they were all white. But

1:15:51

the SLA didn't really get going until May of 1973

1:15:54

when Ms. Moon, Natty Ling Perry and

1:15:58

Sin started putting together the SLA's

1:16:00

goals and codes of war down

1:16:02

on paper, as well as their

1:16:04

constitution and their ever important logo

1:16:07

about their seven-headed Cobra symbol, which

1:16:09

admittedly is the only cool thing

1:16:11

about the SLA. They wrote, The

1:16:14

Symbionese Liberation Army has selected the

1:16:16

seven-headed Cobra as our emblem, because

1:16:19

we realize that an army is a

1:16:21

mass that needs unity in order to

1:16:23

become a fighting force. It

1:16:25

is a revolutionary unit of all people

1:16:28

against a common oppressor, and

1:16:30

with the venom of our seven heads,

1:16:32

we will destroy the fascist insect who

1:16:34

preys upon the life of the people.

1:16:37

See, I imagine a seven-headed Cobra would

1:16:39

just die a horrible death. Yeah, how

1:16:41

could you? How many dicks is it?

1:16:45

The SLA did try to reach

1:16:47

out to other black community and

1:16:49

revolutionary groups, but they were turned

1:16:51

down again and again when these

1:16:53

groups reviewed the SLA's ultra-radical proposals,

1:16:55

which always involved violence. Most of

1:16:57

these groups just saw Sin as

1:16:59

fucking crazy. Dude, it's the truth,

1:17:01

which is he was a bad

1:17:04

salesman for the group, and what

1:17:06

he couldn't understand that, yes,

1:17:09

this concept of the escaped prisoner leading

1:17:11

the revolutionary group, it makes a lot

1:17:13

of sense in a novel, it makes

1:17:15

a lot of sense in concept, but

1:17:17

the heat that it begins

1:17:19

with makes it almost

1:17:21

impossible to get off the ground. And I

1:17:23

think there's a lot of these guys are

1:17:26

saying, it's not even just that, you're the

1:17:28

wrong guy right now. It's

1:17:30

not practical. You're not the guy. You're not the

1:17:32

guy. You're not the guy. Yeah, we don't need,

1:17:34

technically we need another Malcolm X. That's not you.

1:17:37

Yeah. But perhaps because

1:17:39

they were rejected, the SLA went

1:17:41

full sour grapes and decided that

1:17:44

they hated the Black Panthers. They hated

1:17:46

the Black Panthers. Because they believed that

1:17:49

the Panthers had sold out and given

1:17:51

up their guns to embrace social activities,

1:17:53

the SLA saw as counter-revolutionary, free breakfast

1:17:55

programs, education, community outreach.

1:17:58

Yeah, dumb stuff. But

1:18:00

they did that! That's dumb! And

1:18:02

when they... Didn't have any hearse!

1:18:04

And they tried to get it...

1:18:07

They ran the hearse! We had been... We had been...

1:18:09

They tried to get it all back because of how

1:18:11

much they had already fucked up. Yeah. Well,

1:18:13

additionally, the SLA thought that other violent

1:18:15

revolutionary groups, like the Weather Underground, those

1:18:18

are the guys that had carried out

1:18:20

numerous bombings by 1973, they

1:18:23

thought that the Weather Underground were

1:18:25

phony revolutionaries because the only fatalities

1:18:27

incurred during the Weather Underground's many

1:18:29

bombings was when two of their

1:18:31

members accidentally blew themselves up in their Greenwich

1:18:33

Village apartment. I like revolutionaries who don't

1:18:35

blow themselves up. But isn't it like

1:18:37

kind of good to not blow up

1:18:39

people? No, they blow up the places.

1:18:41

They wanted death. They wanted chaos. It's

1:18:43

the SLA... They want people to die.

1:18:45

They think that the only way that

1:18:47

the revolution is going to work is

1:18:49

if people are killed mercilessly. But the

1:18:51

thing is, is they also sort of

1:18:53

believe this idea of a kickoff event.

1:18:55

Like that's what we're leading towards. This

1:18:57

idea that we will spark

1:19:01

the revolution, which is very similar to Charles Manson's

1:19:03

view of like, our actions are going to start

1:19:05

the race war that's going to bring the next

1:19:07

era. Like that's what he thought. Like we're going

1:19:10

to do a bunch of stuff and it's just

1:19:12

going to kick off. And then everybody's going to

1:19:14

be so happy with me as Cinque.

1:19:16

Like I'm going to be the leader. Everyone's going to love

1:19:18

it. Now, by this point, the

1:19:20

SLA had taken on three more recruits

1:19:22

who had all moved together from Indiana

1:19:24

to California in 1972. These

1:19:28

were the theater kids. Oh yeah. And

1:19:30

every revolutionary group needs them. Phil

1:19:33

Harris, AKA Tico. You can call

1:19:35

me Mr. Tico. His

1:19:39

wife, Emily Harris, AKA Yolanda. Some

1:19:41

people call me Yolanda, but some

1:19:43

people don't call me late for

1:19:45

dinner. Everybody. And

1:19:47

there was the most theatrical of all, Angela

1:19:50

Atwood, AKA Jelena. Me?

1:19:53

You talking to me? Me? Yes. I'll

1:19:56

join your army. Let's

1:19:59

go, boys. Yeah! Now

1:20:06

Angela and her husband Gary

1:20:08

Atwood, they were Indiana University's

1:20:10

star drama couple. Oh wow.

1:20:13

But instead of going to Los Angeles

1:20:16

after graduation. Don't waste your talents on

1:20:18

LA. Angela

1:20:20

and Gary went to San Francisco because

1:20:23

Gary, who was reportedly the talented one,

1:20:25

he got a job at a small

1:20:27

theater in Berkeley. I'm doing this amazing

1:20:29

production where it is normally for,

1:20:32

it's very, very hyper specific. It's for one

1:20:34

person at a time. What they do is

1:20:36

they face this wall and

1:20:38

I place my bare buttocks

1:20:41

against a hole in this

1:20:43

wall and then the audience, in

1:20:45

a way of kind of a,

1:20:48

it's an immersion, an immersion experience,

1:20:50

they stick their wrecked penis through

1:20:52

the wall and

1:20:55

I buck ever so violently against

1:20:57

the hole until they come inside

1:20:59

of them. And that's how

1:21:02

you know the show was over. Neither

1:21:07

Gary nor Angela made a living acting,

1:21:09

but Angela did win the leading role

1:21:11

in a production of a play called

1:21:14

Hedda Gabler. Oh, very fancy old school

1:21:16

play. Is it? Oh

1:21:18

yeah. You're a theater man. Hedda Gabler is

1:21:20

like one of those. It's like, it's, it's,

1:21:22

it's one of the classics. It's like the,

1:21:24

they bird with it after every other lot

1:21:26

of these fucking bullshit. Like,

1:21:28

do tigers wear neckties? You

1:21:30

know what? That description is still more than

1:21:33

we know. It's fucking horseshit.

1:21:35

Hedda Gabler is dumb man. I

1:21:37

hate that fucking shit. This production

1:21:39

of Hedda Gabler was produced by

1:21:41

the company theater of Berkeley and

1:21:44

at this production, Angela

1:21:47

made friends and she was soon taking

1:21:49

a night course in radical politics at

1:21:51

UC. As Angela got more

1:21:53

involved in women's lib and Marxism, Gary from

1:21:56

Indiana was no longer doing it for her.

1:21:58

But what about my Gabe show? So

1:22:02

she left him in August of 1973. It's

1:22:04

simply not enough, Gary. I

1:22:07

need more. And sometime

1:22:09

after, she began dating Russ

1:22:11

Little of the SLA. Russ

1:22:14

Little introduced her to Joe Romero and Willie

1:22:16

Wolf, and Angela soon found that she too

1:22:19

wanted to be on the front lines of

1:22:21

the coming revolution. Yes, and I'll know all

1:22:23

the words, and I'll know all the steps.

1:22:26

Man, Gary really dodged a bullet. Yeah,

1:22:29

he's watching the news two years

1:22:31

later and be like, Oh man,

1:22:34

wow, thank God I stuck

1:22:36

to distributing child pornography. All

1:22:39

right, zip-chaps on everybody. He

1:22:43

did get it. That's what they all did. But

1:22:46

Angela was not the only transplant

1:22:48

from Indiana. Soon after she and

1:22:50

Gary moved to Berkeley, they were

1:22:52

followed by their drama club friends,

1:22:54

Bill and Emily Harris. Yeah, these

1:22:56

two. Now, Bill was another Vietnam

1:22:58

vet like Joe Romero, but despite

1:23:00

all the bluster Bill displayed on

1:23:02

that horrendous CNN documentary, the first

1:23:04

thing he says is, My first

1:23:06

day in Vietnam, I saw a

1:23:08

man get tortured to death. He

1:23:11

never even unholstered his fucking gun. Yeah, I think

1:23:13

what he meant was like the guy who couldn't

1:23:15

get his uniform on right or whatever. I'm

1:23:18

just so fat. And

1:23:22

he's just like, No, bro, you fucking look exactly

1:23:24

like you should. You look like

1:23:26

in my eyes, you're perfect. You're not going

1:23:28

to see someone get tortured to death on

1:23:30

your first day. Yeah, that's like two years

1:23:32

in. Yeah, you get what you're in a

1:23:34

prison camp. Yeah. Where is it happening? At

1:23:36

the mess holes happening where everybody's playing and

1:23:38

like hanging out where Jimi Hendrix is playing

1:23:40

on the radio. The smoke and weed,

1:23:43

the fucking rifles. McCain saw that. Yeah,

1:23:45

yes, exactly. Now this guy's on the

1:23:47

base. Like he's another reason why you

1:23:49

never saw combat is because he tore

1:23:51

a ligament playing a game of touch

1:23:54

football. In Vietnam? In

1:23:56

Vietnam. That's the best way to get out of

1:23:58

Vietnam, dude. Everyone was so

1:24:01

fucking jealous. He's just like, oh,

1:24:03

my fucking taint. I ripped

1:24:06

my fucking taint. Oh,

1:24:09

yeah. He's just like, look at my

1:24:11

ripped taint. I can't go in the

1:24:13

jungle. Yep. And he paints himself as

1:24:15

a big, tough motherfucker. And he is

1:24:17

not. He was shipped out to Okinawa

1:24:19

after just six months in Vietnam. He

1:24:21

got to go to a blue zone?

1:24:23

Yeah, he got to go to the

1:24:25

beach. Yeah, this beautiful island nation. Yeah,

1:24:27

he spent much of the rest of

1:24:29

his time in service staffing the officers'

1:24:31

club. After that, he was

1:24:34

stationed at Camp Lejeune. No! And

1:24:37

according to the terms of the class

1:24:39

action lawsuit, he may, in fact, be

1:24:41

entitled to compensation. He may be. Or

1:24:44

may be good for him. Wow. Maybe

1:24:46

he'd hurt his attitude. This

1:24:48

time, oh, the bad water hurt his attitude. That's what happened

1:24:50

to him. Maybe that is. It's the Camp Lejeune water. It

1:24:53

might be. Maybe that made him an asshole. Now,

1:24:56

this time, the SLA was split between

1:24:58

two groups, above ground and underground. Bill

1:25:00

and Emily Harris, as well as Camilla

1:25:02

Hall and Angela Atwood, they were still

1:25:04

working day jobs and living amongst the

1:25:07

people. Nancy Ling Perry, Ms.

1:25:09

Moon, and Russ Little, however, they had

1:25:11

secluded themselves with sin in a white

1:25:13

middle class suburb in the East Bay

1:25:15

in a house they called the Liberated

1:25:17

Zone. Oh my god. It's

1:25:20

so funny, because no matter what they do, it

1:25:22

sounds like fucking right wing podcasts. Also,

1:25:25

you don't have to name everything. You

1:25:27

really do. That is a left

1:25:29

wing thing. Yeah. That's a very left wing

1:25:31

thing. You got to get everything's got names

1:25:33

and broken. Everything's got broke down. It's like,

1:25:35

oh, everything needs organizations and groups and knowledge.

1:25:38

I bet they argued for six hours about what

1:25:40

they were going to call it. Oh my god.

1:25:42

I hate when I'm on a group text chain

1:25:44

and people keep changing the name of our group.

1:25:48

Nobody cares. They don't need a name. Yeah,

1:25:50

let's go. Here we go. It's the place

1:25:52

else. But

1:25:55

now that they had the name, the

1:25:57

logo, a little safe house, and the

1:25:59

codes of war. the SLA decided

1:26:01

that they weren't gonna be all talk nor

1:26:03

would they stoop to community service like the

1:26:05

Black Panthers Yeah, cuz you know, we all

1:26:07

know how much of a pussy the Black

1:26:09

Panther Instead

1:26:15

Sen felt that they needed to

1:26:17

act and act violently The

1:26:36

people who found themselves in their

1:26:38

crosshairs was Oakland's superintendent of schools

1:26:41

Marcus Foster and his deputy Robert

1:26:43

Blackburn Now Foster had

1:26:45

proposed a plan for student IDs in

1:26:47

schools that were experiencing particularly bad problems

1:26:50

with violence and vandalism This is so

1:26:52

they could keep out non-student criminals and

1:26:54

drug dealers Additionally Foster had

1:26:57

suggested they play security guards at

1:26:59

these same schools Now

1:27:01

Willie Wolf was at the meeting where all

1:27:04

this was proposed and he reported what Foster

1:27:06

had said back to sin and sin Immediately

1:27:08

became incense cuz you remember he believed the

1:27:10

conspiracy theory theory view of this He thought

1:27:12

they meant the kids were being tracked and

1:27:14

they were gonna like come they were gonna

1:27:16

let police and the Intel

1:27:18

everybody completes will like teaching classes Yeah

1:27:20

And that they would fingerprint all the

1:27:22

kids and put them into a huge

1:27:24

database And it was like the first

1:27:26

step towards like a police state Yes,

1:27:28

so they decided that the public unveiling

1:27:30

of the Symbionese Liberation Army would be

1:27:32

the murder of Marcus Foster They

1:27:35

believed that this was gonna be

1:27:37

the only way to stop the

1:27:39

ID program and the occupation of

1:27:41

the schools by the pigs And

1:27:43

they also believed without evidence that

1:27:45

both Foster and his deputy were

1:27:47

CIA agents Sounds like somebody's talking

1:27:50

about themselves There

1:27:52

is a whole conspiracy theory about

1:27:54

the CIA forming like in doing

1:27:56

all of this operation chaos, it's not No,

1:28:00

no, these are all just fucking morons. Sounds like

1:28:02

something but a CA. I would

1:28:04

say. But

1:28:08

in both these assumptions, the SLA

1:28:10

was dead wrong. Soon

1:28:12

after that October meeting attended by Willie

1:28:14

Wolf, Foster walked back the proposals after

1:28:16

the community opposed them. And Foster had

1:28:19

always been opposed to armed security in

1:28:21

schools. He just wanted guys around to

1:28:23

help out. We have violence in the

1:28:25

schools. I'm trying to figure out what

1:28:27

the fuck to do. Meanwhile,

1:28:29

today, every school has a cop with a

1:28:32

gun. Oh yeah, with an assault rifle. Yeah,

1:28:34

yeah, no, no, it's Marcus Foster was a

1:28:36

good man legitimately trying to

1:28:38

do his best at an extraordinarily

1:28:40

difficult job. The SLA,

1:28:42

of course, they never

1:28:45

noticed the update. They never saw

1:28:47

the walk back. And they continued

1:28:49

on with their plan in the

1:28:51

hopes that it would rally every

1:28:53

revolutionary group around their cause. The

1:28:56

effect, of course, was the exact opposite.

1:28:58

Uh oh. Now,

1:29:01

if you'll remember, one of the reasons why

1:29:03

the SLA had kidnapped Patty Hearst was because

1:29:05

they wanted a traitor for the two comrades

1:29:07

who'd been arrested for the murder of Marcus

1:29:09

Foster. Those comrades were Russ

1:29:11

Little and Joe Romero. But

1:29:14

as it went down that

1:29:16

fateful night, neither Romero nor

1:29:18

Little pulled the many triggers

1:29:20

that killed Oakland's superintendent. Really?

1:29:23

Yes. On March 6,

1:29:25

1973, at 7 p.m., Marcus Foster

1:29:27

and Robert Blackburn had just attended

1:29:29

a city council meeting and were

1:29:31

walking to their cars to attend

1:29:33

another meeting. These are hard-working motherfuckers.

1:29:35

Yeah, dude, that sucks. Yes. They

1:29:38

were approached by three people. The

1:29:40

assailants were Sin, Nancy

1:29:42

Ling Perry, and Ms. Moon. Sin

1:29:45

had a 12-gauge shotgun, Nancy Ling Perry had

1:29:48

a .380 automatic pistol, and

1:29:50

Ms. Moon had a .38 special. Tell

1:29:53

me, are you ready to dance with

1:29:55

the devil in the pale

1:29:57

moonlight? first

1:30:00

and hit Foster in the leg. She

1:30:02

was followed by Sin, who fired two

1:30:04

shots which hit Robert Blackburn in the

1:30:06

back. Finally, Ms. Moon

1:30:09

walked up to Foster and fired

1:30:11

bullet after bullet into his body,

1:30:13

then fired the final shot into

1:30:15

the back of his neck. They

1:30:18

then fled to the getaway car, and

1:30:20

that was where Joe Romero and Russ

1:30:22

Little were waiting. In all,

1:30:24

Foster had been shot eight times, any

1:30:27

one of which would have been fatal.

1:30:29

And while the SLA fled, Blackburn

1:30:31

staggered towards the nearest doorway and collapsed

1:30:34

just inside the Board of Education building.

1:30:36

But he did survive. That

1:30:38

means that Sin did not kill anybody. The

1:30:41

murderer was Ms. Moon and Nancy Lane.

1:30:43

Oh yeah, dude. And Ms. Moon would go...

1:30:45

I mean, that's again, this is what she's

1:30:47

going to use for the rest of

1:30:49

her time. Because Zoya is the real

1:30:51

scary one. Yes. Also, it was

1:30:54

just, they were proved in

1:30:56

that moment that the cyanide bullets don't

1:30:58

work. It's very, very

1:31:01

stupid. It's extremely, extremely stupid. The

1:31:04

Blackburn got hit with shotgun pellets. Well,

1:31:06

he read... Didn't they read about the

1:31:08

cyanide bullets somewhere? I don't know. I

1:31:10

looked that up, and I remember seeing

1:31:12

somewhere why they did that. I know

1:31:14

it's dumb. Yeah, and it doesn't work.

1:31:16

Yeah. I've heard of this kind of

1:31:18

stuff from... People always talk about the

1:31:20

cyanide bullets, and the guys who dip bullets and

1:31:23

shit and stuff like that. Yeah. I think it's

1:31:25

mostly just to tell your friends. Upon

1:31:27

inspecting the bullets, the cops smelled the distinct

1:31:30

aroma of almonds. Wait, let me see this.

1:31:34

No, let me try it some more. Throw

1:31:38

in the bullet and wrap it down like...

1:31:41

Yeah, that's cyanide. The

1:31:46

bullets have been packed with cyanide, which

1:31:48

would, as we know, become a calling

1:31:50

card for the Symbionese Liberation Army. Now,

1:31:53

later, Nancy Ling Perry would justify the

1:31:55

murder by saying that Robert Blackburn had

1:31:57

immediately ducked into a crouch and tried to escape...