Screed 17: A TAPE OF REVISION AND RAGE
By the middle of February it had become the habit of Randolph A. Hearst to come out of his mansion in Hillsborough daily for an exchange with the still-growing army of reporters and cameramen assembled on his lawn. On February 18, he began the interview by reading a statement bearing his conciliatory counter-offer to the SLA.
In this statement, Hearst said that he had completed arrangements to deliver two million dollars to a "tax-exempt charitable organization" which would "distribute food to the poor and needy". Half a million of this, "a substantial part of my personal assets", would come out of his own pocket. The remainder would come from the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, an independently managed public-service institution. Since Remiro and Little had some still-obscure but certainly important part in the transaction, he added that he had directed the prominent lawyer, William Coblentz, to see that they "get a fair trial and receive due process in all phases of the proceedings".
Coblentz subsequently visited the pair in San Quentin and reported that they were well treated and well represented by council. It was the food part of the statement that was to rankle the SLA, and, for one month, to control the media. An offer to administer the food program had been made by A. Ludlow Kramer, an energetic politician from the State of Washington. Kramer had successfully administered a free.food program in Seattle, catering especially to people who had become unemployed by the reduction of staff in the local Boeing plant.
There was to be an independent foundation with its own name, "People in Need", or PIN. PIN was to use the Hearst money as mere seed-money, meanwhile collecting many millions in cash, food, and services from well-meaning people and institutions all over America. It was to be "ongoing" or even "permanent", and in the first year of its life it would "feed", an uncertain term, "100,000 people per month". Kramer's Seattle plan, gotten up in years of great food surpluses, and designed for a stable and responsible working-class clientele, had been meant to help families who were also helping themselves. It was a "supplemental" program, and Kramer early introduced the name "supplemental" to the Hearst program as well.
Screed 17, the first attack on the plan, was read onto tape by Field Marshal Cinque on February 19, one day after Hearst's offer of two millions. It divides into five clear parts, all supposedly derived from a "hearing" in the SLA Court of the People. This time Cinque spoke with anger, even with rage. A one-line addendum by Miss Hearst established the date and made a sinister suggestion about her own future. Once more the tape was delivered by agency of Rev. Cecil Williams. Williams and his associates picked it up in the San Francisco Public Library, listened to it in their headquarters at Glide Church, and then "called Randy Hearst and reported to him".
Four of the five parts of the tape have the function of explaining and justifying Part 3, the action part at the center. In Part 1 Cinque, speaking for the Court, reviews his former communication about money, food, and good faith. In Part 2 he lists the enormous investments and holdings attributed to the Hearsts, and the imputedly criminal sources of this wealth. In Part 4, after the carefully specified demands in Part 3, the central part, he returns to the theories of cooperation and alliance between revolutionary and "people's" organizations which had been the burden of early SLA screeds. His intense concern about relations between the SLA and other radical, revolutionary, and social-fraction groups probably registers the SLA's sense of growing isolation. In the final movement, Part 5, departing from his formerly rational tones, Cinque indulges in a passionate diatribe, almost an ode, in which hate, rage, and vengefulness are openly exposed.
In the middle part, here named Part 3, Cinque and his SLA colleagues had meanwhile tacitly acknowledged some errors. The new screed asked for less. The open-ended first demand was reduced to a demand for six million dollars. The idea of giving each recipient a $70 bundle was abandoned; now each would get seventy dollars during the course of one month. The specification that no identification need be shown by recipients reflects the outraged rejection of all such benefits by organizations of the card-holders mentioned in the first demand. And the geographical scope of the program was reduced, so that all distribution would be in the Bay Area.
But new conditions were added, too. The specification that all food be "of good quality", and that no "surplus storage goods or government commodities" be distributed, effectively cut the heart out of Kramer's plans for an "ongoing" system of "supplemental" rations. Finally, the appointment of the Western Addition Project Area Committee, or WAPAC, as the chief overseer among the overseeing "coalition of the people's community organizations" provided a new star in the constellation that had formed around the food program. WAPAC was a government-supported agency operating through political means to better the lives of "the poor" in a predominantly Black neighborhood of San Francisco. It had earned its place at the head of the Coalition by virtue of some news conferences in which its leadership expressed sympathy for the SLA people. Its principal leader, Arnold Townsend, immediately replaced Rev. Cecil Williams as the media star of the food operation, and soon rivalled Kramer as its theoretician and director.
The Voice of Marshal Cinque
To those who bear the hopes and faith of our people, the voice of the guns expresses the words of freedom.
Greetings to the people, comrades, sisters and brothers. This is General Field Marshal Cinque speaking.
The Symbionese War Council has just finished hearing tapes and hearing some of the news reports and statements made by the Hearst Family concerning the arrest of Patricia Campbell Hearst.
In the Court's second tape by Patricia, [ie, Screed 16] it was said that any good faith gesture on the part of the Hearst empire would be "basically OK."
We, however, uriderstand that Patricia wants to come home as soon as possible, and that this statement was clearly misinterpreted as meaning that an untrue gesture of good faith and regret would be accepted by the people.
This is not the case and, therefore, at the end of that tape stated by Patricia, I myself, by the direction of the court, stated the feeling of the court and thereby clarifying the request of the people.
That statement reads as follows:
We wish to clarify what your daughter has said about our request by a good faith gesture on your part. The people are awaiting your gesture. You may rest assured that we are quite able to assess the extent of your sincerity in this matter. And we will accept a sincere effort on your part.
We are quite able and aware of the extent of your capabilities, as we are also aware of the needs of the people.
The Hearst empire has attempted to mislead the people and to deceive them by claiming to put forth a good faith gesture of $2 million. This amount is not at all a good faith gesture but rather is an act of throwing a few crumbs to the people, forcing them to fight over it [sic] amongst themselves.
We have had a court hearing concerning both the actions of the enemy Hearst family and the Hearst empire as a whole, and the media, and the combined responsible gesture of good faith.
We have chosen first to expose a sampling of the extent of the Hearst empire, which includes the Hearst Foundation, the Hearst Corporation empire, and Mr. and Mrs. Hearst's personal assets. The assets of the Hearsts' wealth include the following:
1.
A silver mine and thousands of acres of land in Mexico, acreage in Hawaii, and 70,000 acres of timberland in Northern California valued at millions of dollars. A cattle ranch near San Luis Obispo, orange groves in Florida, a duck club and rice paddies outside of Marysville, Calif. Small land holdings and homes in Hillsborough, New York and San Diego. Each valued at well over one-half million dollars.
2. Personal stocks. Large interests in IBM, Beatrice Foods, Exxon, the Sugar Bowl Corps., and Safeway stores, United Airlines, and Hughes Airways. And huge holdings in drug companies, ore industries, paper companies, lumber companies and cattle ranches.
3. Miscellaneous personal items. A collection of antique paintings, Chinese screens and Greek vases. Twenty-four vases each valued at $1 0.000 each. A collection of Oriental rugs given to him by his personal friend, the Shah of Iran. The family has also received numerous gifts over the years from other long-time personal friends such as Howard Hughes.
The Hearst Foundation is a front for the Hearst fortune. The foundation serves as a tax loophole for that fortune. The founclation donates $3 million a year to established charities to maintain its status as a foundation. The $1 ,5 million proposed to be coming from the foundation is nothing more than half of what that foundation is legally required to donate annually in order to maintain its foundation status.
The assets of the Hearst Corp have been stated many times However, I will restate them again as some specific factors. As we all know, the Hearst Corp. is composed of a chain of magazines and newspapers. However, I wish to point out two specific ones as examples Cosmopolitan magazine reaps profits of $7 millions to $8 millions per year. Another is House Beautiful, which reaps
profits of $3 million to $4 million a year. The Hearst Corp. is also composed of, as mentioned before, a chain of TV stations and feature film industries and also ownership of lumber companies and partnership in large stockholdings in General Motors, as well as land holdings in each of the cities where the newspaper chains operate: for example, ownership of one square block in New York City, with the land alone valued in hundreds of millions of dollars, as well as land and buildings in England and Australia and Europe.
[II]
In total, the Hearst empire along with Mr and Mrs Hearst's personal wealth does in fact go into the hundreds and hundreds of millions.
Even if Mr. Hearst was to give all that to the people, with personal friends such as the Shah of Iran and Howard Hughes he would suffer no losses.
However, even if Mr. Hearst were to give all of that to the people, he could never pay the people back for the past losses of their children and freedom, nor for the current suffering they are now under.
We also wish to point out that when necessary the enemy cannot adjust its losses to correspond to its interest at any given time.
It is in the direct interest of Mr. Hearst to comply with the demand for food. Not because he finds it necessary to feed the people but rather because he must secure and protect one of his possessions, his daughter, Patricia. Thus, he finds a way to change the proposal in unacceptable ways [or laws] which allow him to distribute charitable rather than ransom goods.
In the same vein with the stated enemy, corporations wish to aid such countries such as South Africa, the Philippines, South Vietnam, or Ireland in securing brutal dictatorships which rob and murder the people. No existing laws are honored and no one
responsible goes to prison for the rest of their lives. This is typified in the Watergate scheme and the U.S. deliberate violation of the United Nations sanctioned international embargo of Rhodesian goods.
On the other hand, any time the interests of the people are at hand there is an enemy law to counteract those interests, and of course the people are forced to abide by them. In understanding this, we come to understand why the U.S. has more prisons, and the largest numbers of laws to control the people, that has ever been recorded in the history of humans on this earth. These laws are created to imprison the people, and by that protect the rich from the poor.
[Ill]
The plan proposed by Mr. Hearst is not at all acceptable as a gesture of good faith in its present fonn. It shall be acceptable only in so far as it totally meets the specifications as listed in the following:
1. That an additional $4 million be added to the $2 million already allotted, making a total of $6 million to be used for the purchase of food. We recognize that at wholesale prices available to Mr. Hearst in his designated "Peoples In Need" charity organization, he will be able to feed all who come to receive food. We specify wholesale prices here because we did not intend for Safeway or any other supermarket to make a profit from feeding the poor. Nor do we intend for this to be another program which subsidizes the food industry.
2. That this total $6 million figure be disbursed to the cities of San Francisco, Oakland, and East Palo Alto. That an adequate number of distribution centers be made available to various communities in these cities. San Francisco: Mission District; Chinatown, Hunters Point, the Western Addition, Oakland: East and West. Palo Alto: East Palo Alto.
3. That all foods distributed be of top quality. And that all canned goods and dry foods be matched with their equal amounts of top quality fresh meats, dairy products and produce. And that no attempt be made to distribute garbage, or clothes, or surplus storage foods or government commodities to the people.
4. That $70 be given over a one-month period to each family coming to receive food. That is, by the end of one month's time, a total of $70 of food will have been given to each family. This is to be done during the first month of operation of the program. If this means problems of the storage of food at the distribution center, there is the necessity to have an expansion of the number of centers as well as the number of days and hours that the centers are open.
It has always been the intention of the SLA and the Court of the People that a substantial number of families in at least several communities be able to receive their amount of food during this one-month period that would meet some of their needs, in addition to assuring that the people get something more than another extended program which could be abandoned by the Hearsts at any time without the people having ever really received anything. For we have no basis on which to formulate a trust than [sic] an enemy of the people could surely extend a gesture for one year or for any on-going process. Further it is the decision of this Court that $6 per month for a year is in no way [as] beneficial as $70 a month.
5. No names shall be taken or any other form of identification or any addresses of any people who come to receive food. Any people who come to receive food shall get it. There shall be absolutely no questionnaires, forms, or any other type of program processing, which people coming to get food should have to go through. And no form of identification or verification of need other than a simple verbal request for food shall be required.
6. That members of the coalition of the peoples' community organizers and groups be made up of not only the six example organizations named, but any peoples' organizations who wish to participate with the San Francisco Western Addition Project Area Committee known as WAPAC acting as chairman if they so desire. And that this coalition act solely in the capacity as observers and coordinators, and not negotiators between the SLA combat forces and Mr. Hearst, to see to it that the aged and disabled receive their food, and ways to transport it and shop for it. And to see to it that no police agents in or out of uniform are allowed to be in the areas of food distribution, or photograph or harass the people. And that is to be the leadership of the coalition who should see to it that the distribution centers are run in the true spirit of revolutionary cooperatives, with no bureaucratic overseers or hirelings in the peoples' distribution centers.
7. That we hereby request that the San Francisco Western Addition Project Areas Committee known as WAPAC is hereby designated (if they accept this request) as chairman of the coalition, and has full veto power in the actions and activities of the coalition. We request this and ask this because of that organization's example of showing the people that they serve only the interest of the people, and that they desire to feed the people by any means necessary, and that they did not compromise the needs of the people for the sake of their leadership positions or for the sake of their organization. Rather, without being requested, they stepped forward to show themselves to be in interest of the people.
8. That this tape and a transcript be published and printed in full, omitting nothing, in all forms of the media.
9. That the total amount of $6 million be allotted to your designated "Peoples in Need" or charity organizations within 24 hours of receipt of this order and that the food be available to the people within one week of receipt of this order.
Should this order be rejected, all further communications shall be suspended and the prisoner will be maintained according to the terms of the international codes of war concerning prisoners of war and will be maintained in that status until such time as the status of our captive soldiers is changed.
Should any attempt be made to rescue the subject prisoner or to injure or capture our captive soldiers, the subject is to be executed immediately.
10. Once we see compliance with these specifications and the program well under way, then, as we have previously stated, we will begin negotiations for the release of your daughter. The Court of the People also wishes to state that we understand the position of different political organizations requested by the court to oversee distribution of food. We understand that refusal to participate is partially due to the inherent dangers based upon leadership or the organization as a whole as affiliation with the SLA is stated.
We also feel that it is partially due to lack of understanding of the common enemy as well as a desire to accept reform and revisionism, which are pacifiers against true change in revolution. But for those who do see the necessity to participate in this action and who do recognize the needs of the people, we again state that we are asking only that you function as coordinators and observers for the distribution of food, and that you are not to serve as liaisons, spokesmans, or negotiators for the SLA unless clearly defined as such by writing or by tape.
[IV]
In our previous communiques, we called upon all community groups, including certain specific ones, to act as observers and coordinators. There are basically three stances that these groups can show to the people:
1. Some stand with the people and actively accept the responsibility of working and fighting for the people.
2. Others don't stand at all.
3. Some stand and then slide up next to the enemy's power, serves with the individual organizations instead of the people.
Through this we grow to understand that where an organization or a group of organizations is presented to the enemy as in this case, the enemy will attempt to only negotiate with the political leadership that is most willing to compromise the need and interest of the people and who have the most willingness to call for reform rather than freedom for all people.
This is not to condemn these organizations or their leadership but rather to suggest the people work with these groups and organizations, and educate them and their leaders to serve the interest of the people at all cost and at all times.
We also wish to express to the people how important it is to recognize the meaning of the enemy strategy. We must recognize that enemy propaganda and psychological warfare will be used throughout the struggle for freedom. We must combat enemy attempts to demoralize us, for in the face of failure to achieve military solutions against the people's army, the enemy has to then step up its efforts in the propaganda war.
Their aim is to (1) prevent a liberation movement to get under way by destroying it at its source. That is, by undermining the will to fight. And (2) where revolutionary warfare has actually begun, to conquer it by political means. That is to say by granting just sufficient political economic and social reform for the moment, to encourage all but the so called extremists to abandon the struggle and then kill off the leadership of the people as in the period of King and Malcolm, and then reinstate as a deity oppression and murder of the then defenseless people.
In stating these facts we wish to say that the collective leadership ofi the SLA would not under any circumstances or under any terms compromise our position or that of the peoples' freedom. And no one should attempt to speak for us or assume that they, by word or action, can compromise any request made on behalf of the people by the SLA.
At this time we wish to state that the organizations who [sic] wish to take part in feeding the people should also cry out for the thousands of children of all colors who have been murdered and starved by the enemy state. They should cry out for the millions of children of all races who are starving and dying now, and not just cry out for the safety of only one human being, who just happens to be the daughter of the enemy of the people.
Fight and cry out in defense of millions and save the children. And by this action you will save also the life of one who has never seen the robbed, or knew [sic] that the riches of her life were the spoils of a robber and a murderer.
[V]
It is in the judgment of this Court that the Hearst family and the Hearst Corp. seems to be more foolishly concerned with the identities of supposed SLA elements rather than with the admission to the people of the crimes committed against the people by the Hearst empire. That by acts of good faith, in [tape hiatus] showing to the people, not to the SLA, the Hearst empire should demonstrate a change of interest, regret for his crimes against the people and a firm decision that they will no longer be a party to such actions in the future.
They should also demonstrate that they are not only concerned with freeing and making a better life for Patricia, but also [with] freeing and making a better life for all of the people.
However, they have seemingly said by their actions that they know me, and therefore do not have to repent for their crimes.
However, to this I would say yes. You do, indeed, know me. You have always known me. I'm that nigger you have hunted and feared night and day. I'm that nigger you have killed hundreds of my people in a vain hope of finding. I'm that nigger that is no longer just hunted, robbed and murdered. I'm the nigger that hunts you now.
Yes, you know me You know me, I'm the wetback You know me, I'm the gook, the broad, the servant, the spik.
Yes indeed, you know us all, and we know you, the oppressor, murderer and robber. And you have hunted and robbed and exploited us all. Now we are the hunters that will give you no rest. And we will not compromise the freedom of our children.
Death to the Fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people.
The Voice of Patricia Hearst
Today is the 19th of February and yesterday the Shah of Iran had two people executed at dawn.
