Speaker 1: Rip Current is a production of iHeart Podcasts. The views
Speaker 1: and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect thirds of the host,
Speaker 1: producers or parent company. Listener discretion is it fines.
Speaker 2: This is a rip Current bonus episode.
Speaker 3: You don't need to listen to follow the rip Current storyline,
Speaker 3: but it provides more information, context, and analysis to enhance
Speaker 3: the main podcast.
Speaker 2: Enjoy.
Speaker 4: I want to start with a note about sources for
Speaker 4: this bonus episode. Tribal Thumb was one of a number
Speaker 4: of very small revolutionary groups in northern California in the
Speaker 4: nineteen seventies. For the most part, they flew under the radar.
Speaker 4: Because of this, there are not a lot of newspaper
Speaker 4: or other media stories about Tribal Thumb or its leader,
Speaker 4: Earl Satcher. There are some, though, chief among these is
Speaker 4: a four part series.
Speaker 2: Written by A.
Speaker 4: Mili Cabral and Bill Wallace.
Speaker 2: For the Berkeley Barb.
Speaker 4: I was unable to track down either of the authors.
Speaker 4: In that series, they raised the suspicion that Earl Satcher,
Speaker 4: either knowingly or unknowingly, was aiding in co intel prose
Speaker 4: campaign to disrupt revolutionary groups across the US and the
Speaker 4: radical movement in general. I'll talk about those suspicions when
Speaker 4: they come.
Speaker 2: Up in the story.
Speaker 4: One more note, I think, because some of these articles
Speaker 4: were written well after the events they cover, there are
Speaker 4: some contradictions and dates and even years in which things happened.
Speaker 4: I've tried to work out the timeline from the totality
Speaker 4: of the information available. Tribal Thumb was all but unknown
Speaker 4: outside of revolutionary circles until they became the focus of
Speaker 4: the investigation into the murder of Popeye Jackson. This incident
Speaker 4: is covered in episodes nine to ten of Rip Current.
Speaker 4: This murder began a period of activity that would end
Speaker 4: roughly eighteen months later with Earl Satcher's death during a
Speaker 4: shootout on a San Francisco street. Earl Satcher was born
Speaker 4: in nineteen forty two. He apparently lived mostly in Long Beach, California,
Speaker 4: where he began to accumulate a criminal record for auto
Speaker 4: theft and armed robbery beginning when he was eighteen. By
Speaker 4: the mid nineteen sixties, he'd become active in the Long
Speaker 4: Beach Black Panthers and eventually rose to the rank of captain.
Speaker 4: In nineteen sixty eight, Satcher was arrested for assaulting his
Speaker 4: sister's boyfriend with a pistol. He was found guilty of
Speaker 4: illegally possessing a firearm and spent three months in the
Speaker 4: county jail before being released in January of sixty nine.
Speaker 4: By October, according to an FBI letter, he was being
Speaker 4: watched by law enforcement. Also in sixty nine, Sacher met
Speaker 4: and joined forces with a white man named Benny Sargus. Sargus,
Speaker 4: who was in his forties, was the physical opposite of
Speaker 4: the powerful, imposing Satcher. Sargus was short and stocky, had
Speaker 4: greasy hair and a scraggly beard and mustache. He claimed
Speaker 4: to have been born into the mafia. The men hit
Speaker 4: it off. They both liked guns, neither had qualms with
Speaker 4: using violence. Satcher was back in prison in nineteen seventy
Speaker 4: for parole violations. During this stint, he asserted himself as
Speaker 4: a black militant leader within a prison group called the
Speaker 4: Alternative Group. He also corresponded with staff members of a
Speaker 4: radical magazine called Vocations for Social Change. On March fifth,
Speaker 4: nineteen seventy one, the Los Angeles Free Press published a
Speaker 4: number of letters from inmates at San Quentin, including two
Speaker 4: from Earl Satcher. Before and after a confrontation with a
Speaker 4: white supremacist inmate that had been set up by guards
Speaker 4: with the apparent intention of killing Sacher. Today, the fourteenth
Speaker 4: of September, and tomorrow the fifteenth, I will be released
Speaker 4: into the exercise tier with an inmate who just three
Speaker 4: days ago was hurling human feces and urine at me
Speaker 4: and other brothers here on max Row. I am to
Speaker 4: proceed to the tier with this said prisoner, even though
Speaker 4: I'm with the knowledge that officials have armed the said
Speaker 4: inmate in an effort to perpetrate my death. I have
Speaker 4: faith in my ability to defend myself, and I shall
Speaker 4: do so fully. Four days later, he wrote another letter,
Speaker 4: a summation of what happened on the exercise tier. At
Speaker 4: approximately eight fifteen, Officer Horton, the day Officer on max Row,
Speaker 4: approached my cell, unlocked it and ordered me to prepare
Speaker 4: to come onto the tier to work as a porter
Speaker 4: with inmate A, a racist Neo American Nazi. In an
Speaker 4: attempt to integrate max Row, Officer Horton opened both cell doors,
Speaker 4: and after a brief wait, Inmate A left his cell.
Speaker 4: Inmate A then proceeded up the tier towards me at
Speaker 4: a distance of about three feet, he stopped and pulled
Speaker 4: from his pocket a makeshift knife. At this display, I
Speaker 4: settled into a Kung fu defensive stance and waited for
Speaker 4: the said inmate to launch his attack. Inmate A was
Speaker 4: apparently thrown off by this posture and tried to bait
Speaker 4: Sacher with a shower of dehumanizing names common to the
Speaker 4: racist mentality. Sacher stayed where he was, as in his
Speaker 4: telling eight to ten officials watch from behind a locked gate.
Speaker 4: According to Sacher's letter, this standoff lasted for about ten
Speaker 4: minutes before officials realized that inmate A had lost his
Speaker 4: enthusiasm for the fight and moved in.
Speaker 2: Sacher was parolled.
Speaker 4: In May of nineteen seventy two. The first public announcement
Speaker 4: using the Tribal Thumb was in a notice for a
Speaker 4: workshop to be held on August eighth, nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 4: in Long Beach.
Speaker 2: The event was.
Speaker 4: Sponsored by the Tribal Thumb Community and the Peace and
Speaker 4: Freedom Party, which was a communist political party. The announcement read,
Speaker 4: in part, we are the Tribal Thumb community and about
Speaker 4: creating progressive change in this society. Work, struggle and knowledge
Speaker 4: together with living in unity is what we know to
Speaker 4: be the foundation leading to a socio political victory over oppression. Clearly,
Speaker 4: because governments and societies are made up of people, people
Speaker 4: are made up of biological and social character structures, change
Speaker 4: the character structure of people, and people will in turn
Speaker 4: change the structure of societies and governments. A nineteen seventy
Speaker 4: two parole report on Satcher mentions finding a full garden
Speaker 4: of nine millimeters rounds and another garden with eight missing
Speaker 4: shells in Sacher's car. It states that the holster and
Speaker 4: revolutionary literature were found in his apartment. According to the
Speaker 4: Berkeley barb despite the parole violations involving firearms, the FBI
Speaker 4: asked the San Bernardino Sheriff's office not to use the
Speaker 4: evidence to revoke Sacher's parole. They said they were investigating
Speaker 4: Satcher and planned to charge him, but he was not
Speaker 4: arrested or charged. The bar points to this as an
Speaker 4: initial sign that he may have been working with the
Speaker 4: FBI in some capacity. Either that or he could be
Speaker 4: manipulated to the point where he might as well be
Speaker 4: working for the FBI. In late nineteen seventy three, Satcher
Speaker 4: and Sargeist moved Tribal thumbed north to the Bay Area.
Speaker 4: There were rumors about Satcher's activities during nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 4: that he was involved in running guns from Canada to
Speaker 4: the US, that he formed links to Vince Ramos group
Speaker 4: based in Palo Alto. In these early days up north,
Speaker 4: Tribal Thumb acquired guns and focused on revolutionary rhetoric and
Speaker 4: training for guerrilla warfare. One of the only contemporaneous insider
Speaker 4: accounts of life in Tribal Thumb comes from a woman
Speaker 4: named Hetty Sarney, the daughter of Romanian survivors of the Holocaust.
Speaker 4: Her story came to light after she was arrested for
Speaker 4: her part in a disastrous nineteen seventy three bank robbery.
Speaker 4: She lived alone on Channing Street in Berkeley. The street was,
Speaker 4: in her words, like a self contained community, like a
Speaker 4: commune in many ways. She attended Grove Street College, a
Speaker 4: radical school attended by, among others, future SLA members Joe
Speaker 4: Ramiro and Patricia Missmoon Sultizic. Sarny came to know Saltiesk
Speaker 4: along with Camilla Hall, another soon to be SLA member,
Speaker 4: so she was already a member of one part of
Speaker 4: the radical community. She met Earl Satcher at a bar
Speaker 4: on October nineteenth, nineteen seventy three. Satcher invited her to
Speaker 4: visit the Tribal Thumb home, which was a camper parked
Speaker 4: in the driveway of a house they hoped to eventually buy.
Speaker 4: Sarny was painting her apartment at the time, and Sacher
Speaker 4: offered to help. While they worked, Sacher talked about the
Speaker 4: eccentric doctor and psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich more on him later.
Speaker 4: By October twenty third, just four days after Sacher met
Speaker 4: Hetty Sarney, Tribal Thumb members had moved into her apartment
Speaker 4: and she was essentially a prisoner. They worked on indoctrinating
Speaker 4: her into their revolutionary ideology. Sarny had grown up in
Speaker 4: communists Romania, though, and was not inclined towards the political
Speaker 4: side of revolutionary groups. Her ambition was to go to
Speaker 4: medical school and open medical clinic in Mexico and Guatemala.
Speaker 4: She became increasingly concerned the next day. According to her
Speaker 4: deposition given for an appeal to her bank robbery conviction,
Speaker 4: she stated then he said that they were going to
Speaker 4: rob a bank in order to buy a house for
Speaker 4: their commune.
Speaker 2: In Berkeley.
Speaker 4: I was stunned and didn't know what to say. The
Speaker 4: next day was Tuesday, and I got up to go
Speaker 4: to school. Earl stopped me. He said that school was
Speaker 4: a waste of time and that I would learn what
Speaker 4: I needed to know from them. I spent the whole
Speaker 4: day walking around in a daze. They never left me
Speaker 4: alone for a minute.
Speaker 2: I felt like I was in prison.
Speaker 4: Satcher was upset with Sarny's resistance to joining their revolutionary cause.
Speaker 4: He called her a reactionary and began to beat her.
Speaker 4: He called a tribal Thumb member named Joe Monico and
Speaker 4: told him to come over and bring a gun. The
Speaker 4: two men talked about killing Sarny, who knew too much.
Speaker 4: They considered stabbing her to death and dumping her on
Speaker 4: the street. There was a spade of murders committed by
Speaker 4: someone known as the machete Man at the time, and
Speaker 4: they figured her death would be added to his tally.
Speaker 4: Then they thought she should write a suicide note, which
Speaker 4: she refused to do.
Speaker 2: They put a knife to.
Speaker 4: Her throat, but she still refused. Then they wrapped her
Speaker 4: in a blanket and set the blanket on fire. Again
Speaker 4: from her deposition I was too frightened to move or
Speaker 4: say a word. But they must have thought I was
Speaker 4: very brave, because they put the fire out. A Tribal
Speaker 4: Thumb member named Janet Hashemi embraced her and called her
Speaker 4: a comrade. Sacher said he would stay with her, but
Speaker 4: that at the end of the month, if she wanted
Speaker 4: to leave, she could. Sarny from her deposition. On Friday,
Speaker 4: November ninth, we robbed the Bank of America. The Tribal
Speaker 4: Thumb considered themselves a well drilled guerrilla unit. The bank
Speaker 4: robbery should have put an end to that. It was
Speaker 4: a fiasco. The robbery took place at the Bank of
Speaker 4: America in Berkeley, near the University of California campus. Several
Speaker 4: members of Tribal Thumb entered the bank armed. Sarny was
Speaker 4: with them unarmed. Her job was to get behind the
Speaker 4: bank counter and fill bags with cash. Satra was driving
Speaker 4: a getaway van. The robbers emerged from the bank with
Speaker 4: sixteen thousand dollars worth of bills stuffed into bags, only
Speaker 4: to find that the van was not there. They dispersed,
Speaker 4: fleeing the scene and eventually finding the van blocks away
Speaker 4: from the bank.
Speaker 2: From Sarney's deposition.
Speaker 4: After leaving the bank, I went back to the van
Speaker 4: undressed and got under the covers. A few minutes later,
Speaker 4: the police entered the van and arrested us. In all,
Speaker 4: six Tribal Thumb members were rested, including Sacher. This was
Speaker 4: the same day that the SLA sent its communica about
Speaker 4: the murder of Oakland Schools Superintendent Marcus Foster. That moment,
Speaker 4: when Earl Satcher, Hetty Sarney, and four others were in
Speaker 4: jail in the wake of their failed bank robbery, became
Speaker 4: very important in Tribal Thumb's trajectory because Benny Sargus contacted
Speaker 4: the United Prisoners Union or UPU, the organization run by
Speaker 4: Popeye Jackson, to see about getting help to fund Sacher's defense.
Speaker 4: The funding didn't come through, but this was the critical
Speaker 4: beginning of Tribal Thumb's relationship with the UPU. Sacher's defense
Speaker 4: didn't require funding because of what may have been ludicrous
Speaker 4: in competence by the FBI or further indication of Sacher
Speaker 4: being an FBI asset. To put it succinctly, the FBI
Speaker 4: lost most of the evidence before trial, including the bank,
Speaker 4: while the other five were sentenced to some jail time. Satcher,
Speaker 4: the leader, walked free soon after. In nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 4: Tribal Thumb members began to attend UPU meetings, events and
Speaker 4: Saturday study sessions. Among those attending were Benny Sargus and
Speaker 4: a small time burglar and drug offender named Richard London
Speaker 4: who went by Ricardo London. Tribal Thumb enjoyed good relations
Speaker 4: with UPU during the People in Need.
Speaker 2: Effort or PIN.
Speaker 4: Remember, this was Randolph Hurst's attempt to respond to the
Speaker 4: Symbionese Liberation Army's demands to feed the poor of California
Speaker 4: as a requirement for Patty Hurst's release. It was around
Speaker 4: this time that Sarah Jane Moore also became involved in
Speaker 4: PIN and UPU. After People in Need ended, tension developed
Speaker 4: between UPU and Tribal Thumb members. D Sargists had collected
Speaker 4: money at some UPU benefits and was suspected of keeping
Speaker 4: some of the proceeds. Popeye Jackson confronted Sargist about this
Speaker 4: and things became heated. After that, Tribal Thumb no longer
Speaker 4: associated with UPO. Sarah Jane Moore left it around the
Speaker 4: same time and began associating to an unknown degree with
Speaker 4: Tribal Thumb. Even in the context of radical and revolutionary groups,
Speaker 4: Tribal Thumb had some strange beliefs and tenets. First among
Speaker 4: them was their adherence to the teachings of Austrian doctor
Speaker 4: and psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich. SATR focused primarily on Reich's ideas
Speaker 4: around orgone energy. Orgone was a word coined by Reich
Speaker 4: that was a combination of organism and orgasm. He theorized
Speaker 4: that orgone was an omnipresent and essential substance, and that
Speaker 4: a lack of organ in the body could cause problems
Speaker 4: ranging from neuroses to cancer. Sex was apparently the remedy
Speaker 4: for this, and was encouraged and at times forced among
Speaker 4: Tribal Thumb members. Monogamy was bourgeois. Tribal Thumb owned a
Speaker 4: property called the Honeydew Ranch north of San Francisco in
Speaker 4: Mendocino County, where they raised Arabian horses. Here, the activities
Speaker 4: veered between the colt like and revolutionary. Like many radical groups,
Speaker 4: Tribal Thumb performed a type of brutal group therapy that
Speaker 4: could include browbeating, interrogation, isolation, sleep, deprivation, violence, and other
Speaker 4: techniques often used by colts to instill competence in revolutionary action.
Speaker 4: A Tribal Thumb member named Walter Hunsacker trained the group
Speaker 4: in the use of firearms and allegedly arranged for the
Speaker 4: purchase of guns as well. He taught techniques to make
Speaker 4: guns untraceable. Huntsacker pushed the group towards action. He talked
Speaker 4: about revolutionary subjects, and in January of nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 4: was present when Benny Sargis told Ricardo London that Popeye
Speaker 4: Jackson was a snitch and that they had to lean
Speaker 4: on him. But Huntsacker was not a true believer. He
Speaker 4: was an infiltrator working for the FBI, a provocateur, and
Speaker 4: there are questions about whether he was the driving force
Speaker 4: behind violent actions that would have fallen under the aims
Speaker 4: of the FBI's co intel pro initiative, actions such as
Speaker 4: the murder of Popeye Jackson. Sacher's strange political and philosophical
Speaker 4: teachings alienated some followers, and Tribal Thumb evolved into a
Speaker 4: small group dedicated to Sacher. The consequences for leaving the
Speaker 4: group or not adhering to Sacher's beliefs were in Benny
Speaker 4: Sargus's weird mafia speak to take their air. Here's an
Speaker 4: example of Satri's bizarre activities. He brought several Tribal Thumb
Speaker 4: members to an isolated house in Pacific Grove, a town
Speaker 4: on the Monterey Peninsula south of San Francisco. The house
Speaker 4: was owned by a single woman, and SATR thought it
Speaker 4: could serve as a headquarters. Sacher apparently wanted to show
Speaker 4: her how completely he controlled his followers. To do this,
Speaker 4: he had a child dive off a table toward a
Speaker 4: stone floor, making no attempt to break his own fall.
Speaker 4: Sacher grabbed him just before he landed. There's no account
Speaker 4: of the woman's reaction, but the group left when Sacher
Speaker 4: saw just how many people regularly visited the house. It
Speaker 4: didn't have the privacy that he'd anticipated. We cover the
Speaker 4: Popeye Jackson assassination in the main podcast, so I won't
Speaker 4: go into it again here other than to mention that
Speaker 4: the Berkeley barb found plenty of reason to believe that
Speaker 4: the FBI was at best indifferent to Popeye's murder. They
Speaker 4: pointed to the fact that the only witness to the
Speaker 4: crime described two people involved in the murder, but the
Speaker 4: investigation essentially stopped with the arrest of a single person,
Speaker 4: Ricardo London. Allegedly, thirty eight caliber bullets were found at
Speaker 4: the assassination scene, in addition to the bullets from the
Speaker 4: nine millimeter handgun used by Ricardo London. This was never explained,
Speaker 4: and despite his dominant control over Tribal Thumb, Sacher was
Speaker 4: only questioned once in association with Popeye's murder. The FBI
Speaker 4: had not only placed Walter Huntsacker in Tribal Thumb, but
Speaker 4: had another informant, Gary Johnson, in the group. Both were
Speaker 4: in position to know about the plans to assassinate Popeye,
Speaker 4: but they didn't try to stop it. Ricardo London gave
Speaker 4: Huntsacker the nine millimeter pistol he used, minus the barrel
Speaker 4: on July second, nineteen seventy five, less than a month
Speaker 4: after the June seventh assassination. San Francisco police detective Frank
Speaker 4: Falzan had found the gun's barrel on June eighth. Clearly,
Speaker 4: the evidence that Huntsacker possessed the barrelless gun and his
Speaker 4: knowledge from inside Tribal Thumb, could have led to an
Speaker 4: early resolution of the investigation, but Falzon did not even
Speaker 4: get that part of the gun until March of seventy six,
Speaker 4: nine months later. Finally, Popeye's murder was in keeping with
Speaker 4: the methods of co intel Pro, which had been officially
Speaker 4: ended in nineteen seventy one, but whose tactics continued on
Speaker 4: informally provoking. The murder of one revolutionary figure by a
Speaker 4: separate revolutionary group was exactly the type of operation that
Speaker 4: would have fallen under.
Speaker 2: Co intel Pro.
Speaker 4: This was, not, however, the only Tribal Thumb action that
Speaker 4: appeared to the Berkeley Bar to be consistent with co
Speaker 4: intel Pro methods. After the break, the next chapter in
Speaker 4: the Tribal Thumb story involved moving into the food business.
Speaker 4: This played out in two ways, one of which ended
Speaker 4: up in disaster. The move that was not disastrous was
Speaker 4: the takeover in August of nineteen seventy six of a
Speaker 4: vegetarian restaurant called The Communion. The Communion was a unique place.
Speaker 4: Conversation was forbidden, no music was played, the walls were bare.
Speaker 4: The idea was that the food was the sole focus
Speaker 4: of diners. Then Tribal Thumb arrived. According to the owner
Speaker 4: at the time, he was promised lots of sex from
Speaker 4: the women members of Tribal Thumb if he let the
Speaker 4: group move in. He would later assert in Small Claims
Speaker 4: Court that this abundant sex was not provided, but Tribal
Speaker 4: Thumb had already moved in, changing the name of the
Speaker 4: restaurant and eventually their group to the Well Springs Communion,
Speaker 4: they made the building their headquarters. Among other changes, the
Speaker 4: restaurant began to hold jazz concerts, including saxophone duets with Satcher,
Speaker 4: who is considered a very accomplished saxophonist, and Sunny Stitt,
Speaker 4: considered one of the great jazz saxophonists of his generation.
Speaker 4: A restaurant review in nineteen seventy nine stead of Well
Speaker 4: Springs Communion. It regards the restaurant as a service to
Speaker 4: the community wholesome fare at bedrock cost, but it is
Speaker 4: also a source of income for the group, whose primary
Speaker 4: effort is to provide alternative patterns of work and life
Speaker 4: for its members. The review is not great, emphasizing that
Speaker 4: the food, usually curried, was generally cold. It concludes, given
Speaker 4: hot food, I'm sure more would attend. It's not entirely
Speaker 4: clear when Tribal Thumb began calling themselves the Well Springs Communion,
Speaker 4: but I'll continue to refer to the group as Tribal
Speaker 4: Thumb to keep things from getting confusing. The second move
Speaker 4: they made was to infiltrate what was called the People's
Speaker 4: Food System. This was a loose network of Bay Area
Speaker 4: food co ops, households, and communes that banded together to
Speaker 4: provide an alternative to the large grocery store chains. They
Speaker 4: would pool money to purchase large amounts of organic foods
Speaker 4: and then meet to divvy.
Speaker 2: Up the supplies.
Speaker 4: These meetings themselves became social and political events. The system
Speaker 4: comprised a mix of ideologies. Among the system's members was
Speaker 4: a Berkeley food co op called Ma Revolutions, which employed
Speaker 4: a number of black activists, including a man named Willie Tait,
Speaker 4: who was a close friend of George Jackson's and one
Speaker 4: of the san Quentins six. Another system member was an
Speaker 4: organic food distributor called the Veritable Vegetable. Two Tribal Thumb
Speaker 4: members worked at the Veritable Vegetable. Benny Sargis, second only
Speaker 4: to Sacher in the Tribal Thumb hierarchy, and a former
Speaker 4: San quentin inmate known as Red, who may or may
Speaker 4: not have been a member of the Aryan Brotherhood. It
Speaker 4: was Tribal Thumb's association with the Veritable Vegetable that would
Speaker 4: eventually lead.
Speaker 2: To Earl Sacher's death.
Speaker 4: There was a sense among some people, particularly those involved
Speaker 4: with Ma revolutions, that Tribal Thumb was trying to take
Speaker 4: over the people's food system. It does make some sense
Speaker 4: from Tribal Thumb's perspective. It would provide a legitimate power
Speaker 4: base for the group, having control over the distribution of
Speaker 4: the communally purchased food. It would also be a place
Speaker 4: where they could employ associates, especially ex cons who might
Speaker 4: have trouble securing employment elsewhere, and it would supply a
Speaker 4: stream of money for a group that was poor and
Speaker 4: were incompetent bank robbers. In the spring of nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 4: suspicions arose that Sargus and Red were diverting goods from
Speaker 4: the Veritable Vegetable to the Well.
Speaker 2: Springs Communion restaurant. This crisis led.
Speaker 4: To a meeting on April seventeenth with the aim of
Speaker 4: discussing principles of unity for the network. The Veritable Vegetable
Speaker 4: sent several observers, including Sacher. Sacher brought chaos he demanded
Speaker 4: to be allowed to participate in the meeting. The chair
Speaker 4: refused him twice, but Sacher forced his.
Speaker 2: Way into the proceedings.
Speaker 4: When it was brought to a vote, the overwhelming majority
Speaker 4: of workers present voted to expel the Veritable Vegetable Contingent
Speaker 4: from the system meeting. An argument broke out between Sacher
Speaker 4: and his group and the opposition, who had voted them out.
Speaker 4: One worker, believing that Sacher and company were actually police
Speaker 4: plants whose purpose was to disrupt the system's functioning, took photos.
Speaker 4: Sacher confronted him, telling the photographer that he'd pay.
Speaker 2: Him for the film.
Speaker 4: The man refused and was surrounded by Sacher's contingent. He
Speaker 4: made a move toward the door, and a fight broke
Speaker 4: out between Tribal Thumb and the system workers at the meeting.
Speaker 2: As Sacher tried.
Speaker 4: To get the camera, The photographer passed the camera to
Speaker 4: a female worker who tried to run away but was
Speaker 4: tackled by Red. Red pulled the film from the camera
Speaker 4: and yelled to Earl that he had it. Upon hearing this,
Speaker 4: both sides stopped fighting, and the Veritable Vegetable Contingent left.
Speaker 4: Four days later, on April twenty first, a vote of
Speaker 4: the People's Food System suspended Benny Sargus. The Veritable Vegetable
Speaker 4: initially supported the decision, but then refused to cooperate with
Speaker 4: the investigation. Five days later, on April twenty sixth, a
Speaker 4: special representative body met at the People's Food System warehouse
Speaker 4: one fifty five Barnevelt Street in San Francisco. The meeting
Speaker 4: was to determine whether, in the wake of their refusal
Speaker 4: to cooperate with the Benny Sargents investigation, the Veritable Vegetable
Speaker 4: would be expelled from the People's Food System. Earl Sacher
Speaker 4: arrived uninvited with two leashed Dobermans. He wasn't allowed into
Speaker 4: the meeting, but waited downstairs instead. Upstairs, the Veritable Vegetable
Speaker 4: contingent tried to disrupt the proceedings, refusing to recognize the
Speaker 4: chair and generally making a formal meeting impossible. Eventually, a
Speaker 4: break was called to give the Veritable Vegetable group a
Speaker 4: chance to caucus and figure out their next steps.
Speaker 2: The Veritable Vegetable.
Speaker 4: Group went downstairs to consult with Satcher. At this point,
Speaker 4: a Volkswagen Rabbit pulled up near the warehouse door. Willie
Speaker 4: Tait and two other MA Revolutions workers, along with a
Speaker 4: fourth person, approached the door. According to an account in
Speaker 4: the Berkeley barb Satcher, seeing Tate, said what's happening, pulled
Speaker 4: a gun and started shooting at Tate. Tate, unarmed, fell
Speaker 4: to the ground critically wounded. Satcher and an unidentified partner
Speaker 4: continued to fire. Shots came back at them from unknown shooters,
Speaker 4: and there was briefly chaos. A witness named Frank Vlahovich
Speaker 4: said that there were a couple of initial shots and
Speaker 4: then they took a break, then another barrage. They were
Speaker 4: just out to waste each other when the shooting stopped.
Speaker 4: Tate was badly but not fatally injured. Sacher was dead.
Speaker 4: His body was found between two cars. His twenty two
Speaker 4: lay nearby, along with six spent shells. The unidentified partner
Speaker 4: had fled with the shootout over A new kind of
Speaker 4: chaos ensued. Benny Sargis attacked a system employee. Other Tribal
Speaker 4: Thumb member ran upstairs to the meeting room waving a
Speaker 4: gun in each hand. The outnumbered, Veritable Vegetable and Tribal
Speaker 4: Thumb contingent were forced out of the building, and that
Speaker 4: essentially was the end of the night and the beginning
Speaker 4: of the end for the people's food system. In the
Speaker 4: wake of the shootout, workers at Mob Revolutions issued a
Speaker 4: statement that said, in part that Sacher and his people
Speaker 4: had been known in the past to use violence and
Speaker 4: intimidation against innocent people for personal and political gain. The
Speaker 4: Black Guerrilla Family, who had earlier been asked to weigh
Speaker 4: in on the murder of Popeye Jackson, also issued a
Speaker 4: statement co signed by the Black Liberation Army, another underground
Speaker 4: prison group. It began its analysis by stating that no
Speaker 4: organization could use the threat of violence to force other
Speaker 4: organizations to reject group decisions. It went on Earl Satcher did,
Speaker 4: in fact violate these principles by threatening Willie Tait and
Speaker 4: others a week before the fatal incident. Tribal Thumb did
Speaker 4: in fact arrive at the meeting armed and with the
Speaker 4: intention of a physical assault. It noted that Tribal Thumb
Speaker 4: had threatened the lives of the people had identified as
Speaker 4: being responsible for Sature's death. It then said, if you
Speaker 4: think the co intel pro era has ended, look around you.
Speaker 4: It concluded any attempted acts of revenge on the part
Speaker 4: of Tribal Thumb for Sacher's death will be an unprincipled,
Speaker 4: unpolitical act which will not be tolerated by the movement period.
Speaker 4: And then the movement, in his attempt to unite around
Speaker 4: a common strategy, is watching Tribal Thumb and his organizational affiliates.
Speaker 4: Do you bury your vengeance and adhere to and respect
Speaker 4: the principles of democratic centralism, or do you aid the
Speaker 4: counterinsurgency machinery by unleashing forces which you cannot control. Willie
Speaker 4: Tait recovered, but the People's Food System didn't. After the shootout,
Speaker 4: law enforcement cracked down on the system. They hassled workers
Speaker 4: and cited system members for health code violations. In just
Speaker 4: a few months, Mob Revolutions was shuddered, the system diminished significantly.
Speaker 4: Tribal Thumb two.
Speaker 2: Struggled in the aftermath.
Speaker 4: Benny Sargus went back to jail for parole violations. Without
Speaker 4: Satcher to galvanize the group, some members drifted away.
Speaker 2: From this point.
Speaker 4: Tribal Thumb or Well Springs Communion only occasionally rises to
Speaker 4: the notice of the media. One occasion was the story
Speaker 4: of a man named Ardie Ray Baker, who had murdered
Speaker 4: an elderly couple in their home when he was eighteen
Speaker 4: sentenced to life in prison. He briefly escaped once and
Speaker 4: then escaped the second time, remaining at.
Speaker 2: Large for almost two years.
Speaker 4: During this time, he and his wife were reportedly active
Speaker 4: in Tribal Thumb. He was recaptured after killing a US
Speaker 4: Customs officer when he was stopped at a border station
Speaker 4: in northern Washington State. At Baker's trial, the prosecutor claimed
Speaker 4: that Tribal Thumb supported themselves financially through burglaries and car thefts.
Speaker 4: He claimed that Baker was recruited to provide weapons training
Speaker 4: to members and had become a hitman for the group.
Speaker 4: In October nineteen seventy nine, while Baker was being held
Speaker 4: in the King County Jail in Seattle in connection with
Speaker 4: the custom agent killing, Tribal Thumb provided support for yet
Speaker 4: another escape. This was a bloody affair involving seven escapees
Speaker 4: and no fewer than four separate shootouts. One escapee was
Speaker 4: killed and three escapees and.
Speaker 2: One officer wounded.
Speaker 4: One of the escapees, a murderer named William desat Done,
Speaker 4: gave his name as William Crest, and while the authorities
Speaker 4: knew this wasn't his real name. They were unable to
Speaker 4: identify him using fingerprints for several days because his hands
Speaker 4: had been badly mangled by a police dog during his arrest.
Speaker 4: The last major incident to be covered by the media
Speaker 4: concerning Tribal Thumb, now known as Well Springs Communion, was
Speaker 4: the murder of a former member named Roseanne Goston. Goston
Speaker 4: and another woman had recently left the Honeydew Ranch commune,
Speaker 4: and on June second, nineteen eighty had returned to collect
Speaker 4: property that they considered theirs. Two women were sent to
Speaker 4: the ranch to stop them. These events took place decades ago,
Speaker 4: and the two women involved have established lives separate from
Speaker 4: these actions. Because of this, I won't use their real names.
Speaker 4: I'll call them Tracy and Brenda.
Speaker 2: According to the.
Speaker 4: Police filing, what followed was an ambush. Goston's companion fled
Speaker 4: in and then returned with a male friend. A witness,
Speaker 4: Goston's companion most likely claimed to see Tracy hold Goston
Speaker 4: pin to the ground and Brenda shooter in the head
Speaker 4: with a thirty two caliber automatic pistol. Later, during Brenda's trial,
Speaker 4: the presiding judge had a different view.
Speaker 2: Of the event.
Speaker 4: He believed that there was a struggle during which the
Speaker 4: gun went off, killing Goston. This killing, in his judgment,
Speaker 4: was more or less an accident. Regardless, Tracy and Brenda
Speaker 4: went underground. On June sixth, four days after the murder,
Speaker 4: police conducted a raid on a two story wood framed
Speaker 4: house at eleven to twenty five Fulsome Street in San Francisco.
Speaker 4: They received a tip that Tracy and Brenda were there,
Speaker 4: but that turned out not to be the case. They
Speaker 4: arrested five people at the house and released one after questioning.
Speaker 4: The police described the house as a fortress. The front
Speaker 4: door had a quarter inch steel plating on the front
Speaker 4: and eye iron bars on the back. They found weapons,
Speaker 4: a printing press, Marxist literature, and a trapdoor in the basement.
Speaker 2: That led to the city sewer system.
Speaker 4: Police fired tear gas grenades into the tunnel because they
Speaker 4: believed that someone might be hiding down there, but when
Speaker 4: the tear gas cleared, the tunnel was empty. Tracy and
Speaker 4: Brenda remained at large for about two years. Brenda was
Speaker 4: arrested first in North Carolina. She'd used an alias in
Speaker 4: a written request for a birth certificate in the name
Speaker 4: of a girl who had died in infancy. This was
Speaker 4: likely the first step in obtaining a fake ID. Tracy
Speaker 4: was arrested in New Orleans while walking with her ten
Speaker 4: month old daughter. When she was picked up, she was
Speaker 4: carrying a fake ID and a list of four armored
Speaker 4: car companies along with their pickup schedule. Both women were
Speaker 4: charged with first degree murder with special circumstances. Lying in wait,
Speaker 4: their charge would have brought the death penalty or life
Speaker 4: in prison without the possibility of parole. They were allowed
Speaker 4: to plead the voluntary manslaughter. When the county prosecutor, a
Speaker 4: man named Barry Brown, determined that witnesses had lied or
Speaker 4: were unwilling to give testimony that evidence had been destroyed,
Speaker 4: they were each sentenced to three years in prison. In
Speaker 4: a New York Times article about the case, the Well
Speaker 4: Springs Communion seems a much different organization than in the
Speaker 4: early days of tribal thumb. The Times article ends with
Speaker 4: the following sentence describing the commune, which drew members from
Speaker 4: a variety of groups, including the Black Gorilla Family, the
Speaker 4: Black Panthers, and the Charles Manson family. Barry Brown says
Speaker 4: there were a few who were very politically aware and
Speaker 4: were true revolutionaries, but the organization was inundated with people
Speaker 4: whose motives were not politically directed. I asked Rick Riley,
Speaker 4: who was a former member of Tribal Thumb, to tell
Speaker 4: me what he wanted people to know about the group
Speaker 4: and the people in it.
Speaker 2: This is what he said.
Speaker 3: These people were intelligent people. There were not a bunch
Speaker 3: of dummies. They were intelligent. Most of the women that
Speaker 3: were involved came from good families. Even the guys pretty
Speaker 3: much came from decent, good American families. But they wanted change.
Speaker 3: They believe a change was necessary. And the people who
Speaker 3: manipulated that got in at the top and manipulated their
Speaker 3: desire for change, which is what leaders do. We manipulate.
Speaker 3: They were intelligent, good people, they just got used. And
Speaker 3: those who of us who believed that we could make
Speaker 3: a change, we couldn't. In the end, we realized all
Speaker 3: we could do is cause anarchy, and out of anarchy
Speaker 3: gained power because we knew that it was what the
Speaker 3: elite did. Out of chaos is power. So I liked
Speaker 3: it role, I really did. He could be deadly, yes,
Speaker 3: but he could be kind to you know. He was
Speaker 3: just very charismatic man. I don't follow just anybody, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, he had my loyalty right from the start.
Speaker 3: I loved him as a brother, and he was a
Speaker 3: good man. He actually believed in what he was doing.
Speaker 2: He really did.
Speaker 3: He believed that he could cause a change. And what
Speaker 3: we realized was that maybe we can't change the world,
Speaker 3: but we could cause a change for hours. And what
Speaker 3: ours was is what consisted of our group. You know,
Speaker 3: whatever our group is, we could make it better for us,
Speaker 3: and we could be ready for what was coming. We
Speaker 3: could train, we could be ready for the war that
Speaker 3: was coming, you know, the civil war that was going
Speaker 3: to be coming eventually in America that we thought was
Speaker 3: going to be coming.
Speaker 2: The revolution. He believed it, He actually did. He believed
Speaker 2: in what he.
Speaker 3: Was doing with tribal thumb and wellspring communion lasting is
Speaker 3: us those of us who went through that, Where was
Speaker 3: lasting of it? Wellspring communion is over? Did we accomplish anything?
Speaker 3: I don't regret my pard in any of it, other
Speaker 3: than that Roseanne would end up being killed. Other than that,
Speaker 3: because Roseanne was my friend. You know, nothing lasting out
Speaker 3: of that came out of that other than us us,
Speaker 3: those of us who survived it.
Speaker 4: Thank you to Rick sundown Riley, author of Thief on
Speaker 4: the Cross, I'm Toby Ball. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 4: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 2: Or wherever you listen to your favorite show.
Speaker 4: For more information on Rip Current, visit the show website
Speaker 4: at ripcurrentpod dot com.
Speaker 1: Two