Screed 2:
COBRA HEADS
The plate on the facing page reproduces the main Symbionese visual symbol, complete with its listing of values purportedly underlying activities of the SLA. The chart was put together by means of scissors, paste, and Xerox at some unknown time, but probably in the early summer of 1973, at the Berkeley Public Libraiy.
In consideration of the Black emphasis of the SLA, the pride of place, and of large print, was given to Swahili terms culled from a dictionary. The likelihood that any member of the SLA understood Swahili is small indeed, but "courses" in Swahili were a much-advertised feature of the California educational scene in the 1960's, and some Blacks retain a vague belief in the concept that Blacks, like Germans or Russians, ought to have a traditional mother-tongue. The Chinese characters painstakingly cut out and pasted on are a salute to the large and still growing Chinese population of California. The semantics of the seven terms, and the rational use of them, belong wholly to Western languages and the Western revolutionary dialectic.
It was intended by the Symbionese leadership that the symbol and headings become part of the collective consciousness of "the poor" or "the people." Significantly, one of the first demands of Patricia Hearst's kidnappers was that "the document... shall be placed in newspapers and other forms of the media in its exact form, not omitting any area." The symbol was also to be displayed wherever the Hearst free food was distributed. During February 1974, the symbol was sprayed on walls in Black areas of many Bay Area cities. But it is a hard symbol for untrained hands to draw successfully, and soon gave way to the mere initials SLA, or slogans such as "Right On, Sin Cue," and "SLA is OK."
