Screed 31: TAN1A HEARST
Before the bank robbery, many pundits and specialists had offered opinions to the effect that Miss Hearst could not have become a "sincere" member of the SLA. In the days immediately after the robbery, it was urged that she had entered the bank drugged, had entered it with her hands tied to an empty carbine, or had entered it under the ready guns of her SLA manipulators. By snarling out such commands as "Get down, Ot I'll blow your motherfucking heads off", Tania had seemed to take a stand even during the robbery. ln her part of the post-robbery tape, she attempted to put the question permanently to rest.
Not only the Hearsts, Weed, and other intimates, but also a host of outsiders, had gotten into the media by asking that Miss Hearst come in person, alone, to explain whether she was still a prisoner, or truly a member of the SLA. The new Tania now rejected all such appeals. The cruel language of her rejection reflects her new association with the Berkeley street people. But it remained difficult for people sensitive to language to believe that she could have gotten the Lib crudities of pig and agist and Adolf into her communicative system in so short a time.
Though Miss Hearst's voice on the tape was clear and strong, the situation it revealed did not inspire confidence. Many mature watchers of the SLA speculated that her life was more endangered now than ever before. By taking part in the bank robbery the had finished the process of identifying herself with the SLA. Her death by any violent means could now be laid with better color to the machinations of the long pre-accused FBI.
Greetings to the people. This is Tania.
On April 15, my comrades and I expropriated $ 10,660.02 from the Sunset branch of the Hibernia Bank. Casualties could have been avoided had the persons involved kept out of the way, and cooperated with the people's forces until after our departure.
I was positioned so that I could hold down customers and bank personnel who were on the floor. My gun was loaded, and at no time did any of my comrades intentionally point their guns at me.
Careful examination of the photographs which were published clearly shows that this was true.
Our action of April 15 forced the corporate fascist state to help finance the revolution. In the case of expropriation, the difference between a criminal act and a revolutionary act is shown by what the money is used for.
As for [ie, just as?] the money involved in my parents' bad faith gesture to aid the people, these funds are being used to aid the people and to insure the survival of the people's forces in their struggle with, and for, the people.
To the clowns who want a personal interview with me, Vincent Hallinan, Steven Weed, and the Pig Hearsts:
I prefer giving it to the people in the bank. It is absurd to think that I could surface to say what am I saying now, and still be allowed to freely return to my comrades The enemy still wants me dead.
I am obviously alive and well As for being brainwashed, the idea is ridiculous to the point of being beyond belief It is interesting the way earlier reports charactenzed me as a beautiful, intelh. gent liberal, while in more recent reports I am a common girl who has been brainwashed The contradictions are obvious.
Consciousness is terrifying to the ruling class; and they will do anything to discredit people who have realized that the only alternative to freedom is death; and that the only way we can free ourselves of this fascist dictatorship is by fighting, not with words but with guns.
As for my ex-fiance, I am amazed that he thinks that the first:
thing I would want to do, once freed [sic], would be to rush and see him. I don't care if I never see him again.
Dunng the last few months, Steven has shown himself to be a sexist, agist [ie, age prejudiced] pig Not that this is a sudden change from the way he always was. It merely became more blatant during the period when I was still a hostage.
Frankly, Steven is the one who sounds brainwashed I can't believe that those weird words [presumably his comments on the brainwashing theory] were from his heart They were a mixture of FBI rhetoric and Randy's [ie, her father's] simplicity.
I have no proof that Mr. DeBray's letter [about an interview] is authentic. The date and location he gave were confusing in terms of when the letter was published in the papers. How could it have been written in Paris and published in your newspapers on the same day, Adolf?
In any case, I hope that the last action[at the bank] has put his mind at ease. If it did not, further actions will.
To those people who still believe that I am brainwashed or dead, I see no reason to further defend my position. I am a good soldier in the people's army.
Patria o muerte! Venceremos!
