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Symbionese Liberation Organization Analysis

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In acquiring an accurate perspective of terrorist threats to the United States it is ease to forgo the concept of terrorist threats prior to September 11th, 2001, or that domestic terrorism exists. Prior to the current onslaught of religiously fanatical terrorist threats that the United States is facing a different form of terrorist threat existed in the form of political ideology. While some domestic terrorist groups are well known such as the KKK and the Black Panthers, other groups such as the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) and the Weather Underground Organization (WUO) terrorist organizations have faded with time. Due to the current turmoil and political divides facing the nation, a rejuvenated understanding of these less mainstream …show more content…

Founded by Russell Little and Robyn Steiner based on “rhetoric from Communists and South American revolutionaries” (Suellentrop, 2002), as a result original focus of the small group was on prison reform. In 1972, an African American and California penal inmate by the name of Donald DeFreeze escapes from prison and utilizes the SLA as a support network while evading recapture. By 1973 DeFreeze threatens the life of Steiner, causing her to flee the country, and subsequently garners the leading role of the SLA. DeFreeze steers the organization down a path of violence. “On November 6, 1973, the SLA shot and killed Marcus Foster, Oakland’s superintendent of schools, with bullets laced with cyanide”. (History.com Staff, 2009) In 1974 the SLA kidnapped Patty Hearst, during the kidnapping Hearst’s fiancé was beaten unconscious. Hearst is from an affluent family, a variable that the SLA capitalizes upon by ransoming Hearst for substantial food donations to the poor by Hearst’s family. Following the ransom being paid, in the sum of a $2 million food donation, Hearst declines her release and instead adopts the name Tania, “for Tania Burke, Che Guevara's lover”. (Suellentrop, 2002) Within two weeks, Hearst is captured on camera as an active participant in an SLA bank robbery. The following month, “Hearst fires at the store with a submachine gun and a carbine from the window of a van outside” (Suellentrop, 2002) in an attempt to aid the escape of two SLA members who were caught shop lifting. Members of the SLA then underwent a shootout with swat in which six members were killed including DeFreeze. Hearst plays an active role in relaunching the SLA in 1974. In 1975, the SLA robs the Crocker National Bank and unsuccessfully bombs two LAPD police cruisers. By September of 1975, Hearst and other members of the SLA are arrested for changes of bank robbery. At the time of her

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