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Editorial

Editorial image Editorial image
Parent Issue
Day
31
Month
May
Year
1974
OCR Text

    The SUN has chosen to prominently feature the article on Donald De Freeze's history as a police agent because it raises a possibility that has not appeared in the mass media to date. To most Americans, the SLA is coming across as a basically incomprehensible, violence-prone, senseless and sensationalistic group of terrorists. This image of "revolutionaries" has been purposely fueled in the minds of most people by the capitalist media as a means of discrediting credible radical solutions and ideas.

    The information about Cinque, along with our own discussion of the SLA's impact, lead us to one of three inescapable conclusions;

    *That if the SLA isn't lead by government agents, at the very least their actions and resultant mass media imagery have played into the government's hand.

    *That the background of DeFreeze and the SLA in police counter-insurgency renders their motives and mentality highly  suspect.

    *And that the possibility cannot be dismissed that the SLA itself is a government/CIA plot designed, as the Black Panther Party has charged, to alienate the community at large from revolutionaries by branding them with the terrorism of the SLA. The Panthers are charging that the SLA was created by police in order to lay the groundwork for more attacks on the Panthers. who are on the verge of conducting another electoral campaign in Oakland which they have a good chance of winning. This is the real threat, the effective spread of legitimate radical programs and ideology.

   Consider how the SLA has been perceived by most people. First they executed a black superintendent of schools, Marcus Foster, who was respected by the black community and was cooperating with the Panthers and other activists. Second, consider the kidnapping of Patty by gun-toting people who dragged her off screaming while actually shooting witnesses in the street.

   Then the SLA senselessly sprayed  machine-gun fire into a sporting goods store when they were caught shoplifting, and allegedly stabbed a woman who refused to rent her apartment. Whether these incidents were distorted by the media or not. the fact remains that most people take them for reality and are basing their conclusions on stories like these. What has the SLA done to make them think differently?

     The SUN has been highly suspect of the SLA and at odds with its approach since they first emerged. To us, at a time when millions of people have lost faith in their government, when an inflationary economy is shaking their faith further, it is imperative that radicals communicate COMPREHENSIBLY to everyone at their level of awareness. We must come across as serious, dedicated people with an obviously positive and useful program and culture.

    We fail to see what useful practice has been exemplified by the SLA. We fail to see how their actions have helped to open the minds of most Americans, whose support is absolutely necessary if there's ever going to be revolutionary social change here, to the necessity of socialism and the possibility of a new society. If anything, the SLA's actions as dutifully exploited by the media, have convinced people more than ever that while the government may be fucked up, certainly these crazy radicals don't have anything to offer. This is precisely what the government and CIA must keep people thinking in order to retain their hegemony and control. The final irony is that the SLA's actions have helped to create sympathy for the Hearst family empire.

    The United States is not Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina or South Vietnam, where impoverished people recognize their real enemy and will support organized violent action. The conditions here in brainwash-tv land do not warrant actions like the SLA's, although many radicals tend to justify and romanticize the SLA as being in the tradition of third world revolutionaries who have used such tactics. With the police power of the internal United States what it is, no one can ever hope to succeed ín massive revolutionary change here without the active support of the vast majority of people, which we believe can be gained with time. To take such action without their support will inevitably end in a bloodbath for the radicals and their rnovement.

    There cannot be guerilla war or "armed struggle" without an army. An army that it is going to take years of communication, hard work and the concrete example of functioning alternative institutions to win over.

    The SLA may have forced the release of $2 million worth of food once (although they blew the other $4 million when Patty didn't come home), but what is needed is the creation of alternative institutions that can deliver people's food and other needs on a year round basis, while at the same time educating the community to the real nature of a society where, despite the most incredible affluence in history, people still go hungry.

    One final note has to be a condemnation of the government and police forces who may have helped to spawn the SLA for the unnecessary murder of those inside the Los Angeles hideout. As the ACLU has charged, the shootout could have been handled differently so that the SLA members could be captured alive. Perhaps the California and federal police forces were intent upon murdering their victims so they could never answer the questions raised in our cover story.

      --SUN Editorial Board