Bill Harris's Death Revives Look at 12-Member SLA and 1974 Patty Hearst Kidnapping
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · Oct 6
Bill Harris's Death Revives Look at 12-Member SLA and 1974 Patty Hearst Kidnapping
1 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Oct 6
Summary
Bill Harris's death has renewed attention on the Symbionese Liberation Army, the small 1970s militant group tied to the kidnapping of heiress Patricia Hearst and the murder of an Oakland schools superintendent.
A 1973 six-page “declaration of revolutionary war” cast the SLA as an urban guerrilla movement, but the group collapsed within three years after a violent crime spree and intense police pursuit.
Six of the group’s roughly dozen members, including founder Donald DeFreeze, were killed in a shootout with Los Angeles police, while Harris and Emily Harris were later imprisoned.
The retrospective places the SLA in a darker post-1960s climate, when groups such as the Weather Underground embraced armed violence and the SLA became widely reviled as a terrorist organization.