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Speaker 2: Mom, Dad, I'm okay. I had a few scrapes and stuff,
Speaker 2: but they've washed them up and they're getting okay. And
Speaker 2: I've caught a cold, but they're giving me pills for it,
Speaker 2: and so I'm not being starved or beaten or unnecessarily frightened.
Speaker 2: I've heard some press reports, and so I know that
Speaker 2: Steve and all the neighbors are okay, that no one
Speaker 2: was really hurt. I'm with a combat unit that's armed
Speaker 2: with automatic weapons, and.
Speaker 3: And I'm ah, there's also a medical.
Speaker 2: Team here, and I'm there's no way that I will
Speaker 2: be released and let until they let me go. So
Speaker 2: it wouldn't do any good for somebody to come in
Speaker 2: here and try to get me out by force. These
Speaker 2: people aren't just a bunch of nuts, and they've been
Speaker 2: really honest with me, but they're perfectly willing to die
Speaker 2: for what they're doing. And I wanna get out of here,
Speaker 2: but I the only way I'm going to is if
Speaker 2: we do it their way. And I just hope that
Speaker 2: you'll do what they say, Dad, and just do it quickly.
Speaker 2: I mean, I feel pretty sure that that I'm gonna
Speaker 2: get out of here if everything goes the way they
Speaker 2: wanted to. And I think you should feel that way too,
Speaker 2: and and try not to worry so much. I mean,
Speaker 2: I know it's hard, but I heard that Mom was
Speaker 2: really upset and and that all everybody was at home,
Speaker 2: and and I mean, I hope that this puts you
Speaker 2: a little bit at ease, so that and that you
Speaker 2: know that I that I really but I really am
Speaker 2: all right. I just hope I can get back to
Speaker 2: everybody really soon.
Speaker 4: And I'm Mary Catherine Garrison, and this is rip current.
Speaker 5: Meetings. To the people and fellow comrade, brothers and sisters,
Speaker 5: my name is sin Q, and to my comrades, I
Speaker 5: am known as.
Speaker 4: Sin Episode six, Death to the Fascist insect that preys
Speaker 4: upon the life of the people. At just after nine
Speaker 4: pm on February fourth, nineteen seventy four, a woman and
Speaker 4: two men, all armed, burst into an apartment in the
Speaker 4: building near the University of California campus in Berkeley. The
Speaker 4: intruders beat and tied up a man named Stephen weed
Speaker 4: and a neighbor, Steve Suanaga, who had come to see
Speaker 4: what was causing the disturbance. The intruders then grabbed the
Speaker 4: young woman who lived in the apartment. She was nineteen
Speaker 4: years old and a sophomore at Berkeley. They dragged her
Speaker 4: down the stairs and bundled her into the trunk of
Speaker 4: a car. A witness described what he saw in the street.
Speaker 6: We heard a scream, two or three shots. So three
Speaker 6: of us that were in the house ran downstairs, and
Speaker 6: one of the guys the street said the guns are
Speaker 6: loaded and to get the hell off the street. So
Speaker 6: we got off the street, and we saw a second
Speaker 6: carpool up, and I ran out again, and the other
Speaker 6: fellow try to look at the license, and they started shooting,
Speaker 6: So I just fell on the ground.
Speaker 3: Did you have a feeling they were shooting at you
Speaker 3: or just shooting in any direction?
Speaker 6: They could seem to me they were just shooting, So
Speaker 6: everybody would get off the street and not look at
Speaker 6: the plates or give any positive identification.
Speaker 7: Were there a lot of people on the street at that.
Speaker 6: Time, Yeah, I'd say about twenty people were probably roused
Speaker 6: out of their house just by the shots and screams.
Speaker 4: This abduction and the fate of the victim would soon
Speaker 4: preoccupy the nation.
Speaker 8: There's been a big kidnapping on the West Coast. The
Speaker 8: victim is Patricia Hurst, the daughter of newspaper executive Randolph
Speaker 8: Hurst and a granddaughter of the legendary William Randolph Hurst.
Speaker 4: Before February nineteen seventy four, most of America probably hadn't
Speaker 4: heard of Patricia Hurst or even her father, Randolph, but
Speaker 4: people would have known the Hurst name, and certainly William
Speaker 4: Randolph Hurst.
Speaker 3: William Randolph Hurst, who invented the Hearst Publishing Empire, own
Speaker 3: the largest private residence in the United States, the Hearst
Speaker 3: Castle at San Simeon, which is now open to the public.
Speaker 3: I'm Jeffrey Tubin. I'm the chief legal analyst on CNN,
Speaker 3: and I'm the author of American Heiress, The kidnapping, Crimes
Speaker 3: and Trial of Patty Hurst. His life was the basis
Speaker 3: of perhaps the greatest American movie ever made, Citizen Kane
Speaker 3: by Arson Wells.
Speaker 9: He's that clearly your idea how to run a new paper.
Speaker 3: I don't know how to run a newspaper, mister Betcher.
Speaker 10: I just try everything I can think of.
Speaker 3: His family was among the richest in the United States,
Speaker 3: if not the world at that time. So the Hurst name,
Speaker 3: while still famous today, was really magical in the seventies.
Speaker 3: So if you wanted to get attention, you would try
Speaker 3: to do something with regard to the Hearsts, and that's
Speaker 3: what the SLA decided to do.
Speaker 4: This was, of course, well before the advent of twenty
Speaker 4: four hour news and the ending news cycle, but in
Speaker 4: the context of the news media at the time, Patty
Speaker 4: hurst kidnapping was a huge story. This was a product
Speaker 4: of both the Hearst fame and the novelty of a
Speaker 4: high profile kidnapping a rare occurrence in the US.
Speaker 3: There was a tremendous amount of attention, and there's no
Speaker 3: doubt it was a real kidnapping. She didn't know the SLA,
Speaker 3: she didn't have any connection to those people.
Speaker 4: Three days later, a plain, white envelope was delivered to
Speaker 4: KPFA radio in Berkeley. Inside was a communicate from something
Speaker 4: called the Symbionese Liberation Army West Regional Adult Unit. It
Speaker 4: claimed responsibility for kidnapping Patty. Here, Patty's father, Randolph Hurst,
Speaker 4: reads from the letter at a press conference.
Speaker 11: The United Federated Forces of the Cydianese Liberation Army armed
Speaker 11: with cyanide loaded weapons, served in a restward upon Patricia
Speaker 11: Campbell Herds. All communications in this court must be published
Speaker 11: in full in all newspapers and all other forms of
Speaker 11: the media. Figured to do so and danger the safety
Speaker 11: of the prisoner. See any attempt be made by authorities
Speaker 11: to rescue the prisoner or to arrest or harm any
Speaker 11: SLA elements. The prisoner is to be executed, and in
Speaker 11: capital letters under that is death to the fastest insect
Speaker 11: that praise upon the life of the people.
Speaker 4: The SLA promised further communications to follow. The country wanted
Speaker 4: to know what exactly was the Symbionese Liberation Army.
Speaker 3: The area south of San Francisco what is now known
Speaker 3: as Silicon Valley, but also over to Oakland and San Jose.
Speaker 3: That whole region was home to a tremendous number of
Speaker 3: really dangerous radical groups in the nineteen seventies. The Hell's
Speaker 3: Angels were there, the Black Panthers were but were started there,
Speaker 3: and the Symbionese Liberation Army was a very small offshoot
Speaker 3: of that radical world. It was started by an ex
Speaker 3: con named Donald de Friese, who thought of himself as
Speaker 3: the leader of a revolutionary group.
Speaker 4: Defriese had been imprisoned at the California Medical Facility at Vaccaville,
Speaker 4: a medium security prison. He'd been given a six to
Speaker 4: fourteen year sentence for stealing a one thousand dollars bankers check.
Speaker 4: While he became radicalized in prison, Defrize was not a
Speaker 4: leader in the prison radical scene. In fact, his attempts
Speaker 4: to acquire some semblance of power were opposed by George Jackson,
Speaker 4: perhaps the most important prison radical in California, if not
Speaker 4: the country. But things changed for Defreese after he escaped
Speaker 4: from Solidad State Penitentiary on March fifth, nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 10: I'm Brian Burrow.
Speaker 7: I'm an author of I think seven books, including Days
Speaker 7: of Ray, which I think came out in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 7: which was a look at violent radical groups that went
Speaker 7: underground and started bombing things in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 10: He managed to escape from Solidad in seventy three, thinking
Speaker 10: that the texts that he'd read, whether Cleaver or Fan
Speaker 10: or George Jackson, thinking that that's the way the world
Speaker 10: was outside the prison wall, not realizing that it wasn't anymore.
Speaker 10: That the America that he escaped out into in nineteen
Speaker 10: seventy three and made his way to Berkeley was not
Speaker 10: primed for bloody revolution as perhaps it had been in
Speaker 10: nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 3: He recruited a very small handful of adherents, and they
Speaker 3: called themselves Symbionese because he thought of the word symbiosis
Speaker 3: as a bringing together, and so he made up the
Speaker 3: word Symbionese and liberation Army was in keeping with the
Speaker 3: sort of radical.
Speaker 11: Of that time.
Speaker 4: Some of Defries's recruits had either been a part of
Speaker 4: or associated with Vinceerramos, a radical organization that advocated armed struggle.
Speaker 4: It was run and mostly comprised of white radicals, but
Speaker 4: a central belief of the group was that former black prisoners,
Speaker 4: because of their alienation and training and violence, would play
Speaker 4: a leading role in this struggle. These former black prisoners
Speaker 4: were idealized for having survived in the prison system, which
Speaker 4: was perceived as the most extreme and violent example of
Speaker 4: society's racism and exploitation. This experience was the preparation that
Speaker 4: would allow them to be leaders in revolutionary groups. This
Speaker 4: is Britney Friedman, Assistant professor of sociology at the University
Speaker 4: of southern California. Talking about these former prisoners, she mentions
Speaker 4: political prisoners, which in this case doesn't mean people who
Speaker 4: are incarcerated because of their politics, but inmates who became
Speaker 4: political and social activists in prison and were often seen
Speaker 4: by the authorities for their activism.
Speaker 12: To survive is considered a badge when someone gets out
Speaker 12: because you have survived what it would be considered to
Speaker 12: be the worst of the worst, because you've survived what
Speaker 12: people know happens in society. Right, so we know that
Speaker 12: in society for over a century, we've had connections between
Speaker 12: law enforcement and the ku Klux Klan, often one and
Speaker 12: the same across the country, and that being a joint
Speaker 12: alliance to eradicate freedom movements and people you know, have
Speaker 12: survived that. I think with political prisoners, when they come out,
Speaker 12: people are thinking that someone was able to survive that
Speaker 12: in generate knowledge from that while being behind the.
Speaker 4: Cage, and when these prisoners were released or escaped, they
Speaker 4: held an authenticity, a certain authority that attracted young white radicals,
Speaker 4: people who.
Speaker 12: Might be coming from a white middle class or white
Speaker 12: upper middle class background, who might have an affinity for
Speaker 12: certain political ideals, but they've never put them in practice.
Speaker 12: They've never survived them in practice. They just read them
Speaker 12: in a book. They're not embodied. And I think having
Speaker 12: a close connection with someone where it is embodied, the
Speaker 12: where they live, the way they've survived, the way they talk,
Speaker 12: there is a charisma to that that draws people in.
Speaker 4: This dynamic between black ex convicts and young, middle and
Speaker 4: upper class white radicals would play out in the story
Speaker 4: of the SLA.
Speaker 3: Donald the Friese was black, but everyone else in the
Speaker 3: SLA was white, and they were all young, so they
Speaker 3: hadn't been involved in many things for very long. But
Speaker 3: they were an eclectic group from around the country who
Speaker 3: had sort of drifted west, like a lot of young
Speaker 3: people in that period, and they all got together and
Speaker 3: started planning to do what they thought of as revolutionary acts.
Speaker 4: As a symbol, the SLA adopted the image of a
Speaker 4: seven headed cobra. Each head represented an SLA value, self determination, unity,
Speaker 4: cooperative production, and so on. They introduced themselves to the
Speaker 4: public in November of nineteen seventy three with a crime
Speaker 4: that showed both their willingness to use horrific violence and
Speaker 4: the incoherence of their political philosophy. After the break.
Speaker 13: The kidnapping of Patty Hurst brought the SLA national attention
Speaker 13: for the first time, but people in the Bay Area
Speaker 13: had to look back only a few months to recall
Speaker 13: their initial act of violence.
Speaker 3: The bizarre and awful beginning of the SLA was the
Speaker 3: assassination of Marcus Foster, who was the Oakland School superintendent,
Speaker 3: an African American himself, who was really trying to improve
Speaker 3: Oakland school system, which was known as one of the worst,
Speaker 3: not just in California, but in the whole country.
Speaker 13: Foster, along with his deputy Robert Blackburn, were recruited from
Speaker 13: the Philadelphia public school system and we're a reason for
Speaker 13: optimism in the Oakland community. Here Foster appears on the
Speaker 13: Oakland radio show The Open Pulpit with Reverend Charles H. Belcher.
Speaker 14: I think that in everything we need to build the
Speaker 14: eagle strength of our young people, especially our damaged youngsters,
Speaker 14: where society shouts at them that this is too good
Speaker 14: for you. That's the second class. Citizenship is your natural lot.
Speaker 14: And you see that reflected in symbols of racism in
Speaker 14: terms of housing patterns and the quality of homes in
Speaker 14: certain sections of the city. This kind of symbolism tends
Speaker 14: to be degrading and debilitating and denigrating, and whatever you
Speaker 14: can do to offset that by giving a person a
Speaker 14: sense of his power, by helping him shape a positive
Speaker 14: image of himself, to help him develop a sense of
Speaker 14: belonging to a church or to a school, or to
Speaker 14: some institution that is pro social, and really building that
Speaker 14: so that he feels that when he opens his mouth
Speaker 14: to talk, someone is going to hear him. You're on
Speaker 14: your way to making that child a fine individual and
Speaker 14: pulling out of him the potential that's there.
Speaker 13: Jared Kobec, author of Motor Spirit and Where to Find Zodiac.
Speaker 15: If I'm not mistaken, I believe he was the first
Speaker 15: African American superintendent in Oakland. He was there specifically to
Speaker 15: just get poor kids, particularly poor black kids, a better education.
Speaker 13: But Defreese developed conspiratorial beliefs about some of Foster's new
Speaker 13: policies and decided that the SLA needed to assassinate Foster.
Speaker 15: This is the extent of their political thinking, right, that
Speaker 15: this person is somehow the fascist insect preying on the people,
Speaker 15: when clearly, by any possible measure, he's not.
Speaker 13: On November sixth, nineteen seventy three, After an uneventful school
Speaker 13: board meeting, Marcus Foster, along with the deputy superintendent Robert Blackburn,
Speaker 13: was ambushed in the parking lot at the Oakland School
Speaker 13: Administration Building. Three SLA soldiers Defriese. Nancy Ling and mis
Speaker 13: Moon Soltiesek opened fire as Foster and Blackburn approached Blackburn's
Speaker 13: Chevy Vega. Ling fired two shots with a Walther PP
Speaker 13: three eighty, missing once then hitting Foster in the leg.
Speaker 13: Defree shot Blackburn twice with a shotgun, seriously wounding him
Speaker 13: but not killing him. Soltiesik then advanced the wounded Foster,
Speaker 13: firing at him with the thirty eight the fatal shots.
Speaker 13: The police would later find that the bullets that killed
Speaker 13: Foster were tipped with cyanide. They fled two blocks to
Speaker 13: where two other SLA members, Joe Ramiro and Russell Little
Speaker 13: waited with a getaway car. They escaped late on the
Speaker 13: night of November seventh, barely twenty four hours after the attack,
Speaker 13: Radio station KPFA received a letter from the SLA detailing
Speaker 13: the reasons for the Foster assassination. Two newspapers also received
Speaker 13: copies of the letter. The letter was immediately recognized as
Speaker 13: authentic because it referenced the use of cyanide laced bullets,
Speaker 13: a detail that had not been made public. The contents
Speaker 13: of the letter revolved around the proposed placement of armed
Speaker 13: guards in Oakland schools and the implementation of a student
Speaker 13: I D system, which they believed would allow information to
Speaker 13: be entered into a clearly fictitious federal initiative called the
Speaker 13: Internal Warfare Identification Computer System. If they thought this was
Speaker 13: going to win them supporters, they were wrong.
Speaker 15: It gives you a sense of what Patty Hurst was
Speaker 15: brought into, which is just a group that is senselessly violent,
Speaker 15: and she gives over.
Speaker 13: To it again. Author Brian Burrow.
Speaker 14: I mean, they.
Speaker 10: Literally thought that they could overthrow the government and change
Speaker 10: the world. Twelve of these nobodies in Berkeley, and you know,
Speaker 10: for every person that they recruited in Berkeley, I'm sure
Speaker 10: there were fifteen that laughed at them. I mean, nobody
Speaker 10: took this group seriously until a faithful night when they
Speaker 10: managed to kidnap Pettyhurst, and that changed everything, that made
Speaker 10: them into a joke that it actually done something noteworthy,
Speaker 10: that it had actually done something that no radical group
Speaker 10: up until that point had done, had executed an action
Speaker 10: in this case of kidnapping of a very wealthy person
Speaker 10: that resurrected the entire underground radical movement. The SLA erupts
Speaker 10: out of nowhere to give a second and entirely unexpected
Speaker 10: birth to the underground movement.
Speaker 13: And it all happened right there in Berkeley. The SLA
Speaker 13: had pulled off an action that drew intense national attention.
Speaker 13: The question was, now that they had their hostage, what
Speaker 13: would be their demands. The demands arrived on February twelfth,
Speaker 13: in the form of a letter and an audio tape.
Speaker 13: All the SLA members took on new revolutionary names. We
Speaker 13: don't need to go through them, ma, all but Defreese's
Speaker 13: SLA name was sinqter to the leader of a revolt
Speaker 13: on the Spanish slaveship Amistad in eighteen thirty nine.
Speaker 5: Greetings to the people and fellow comrade, brothers and sisters.
Speaker 5: My name is sin Q, and to my comrades, I
Speaker 5: am known as Sin. I am a black man and
Speaker 5: a representative of black people. I hold the rank of
Speaker 5: General Phield Marshall in the United Federated Forces of the
Speaker 5: Symbonese Liberation Army. Today I have received in order from
Speaker 5: the Symbonese war counsul the Court of the People, to
Speaker 5: the effect that I am ordered to convey the following
Speaker 5: message in behalf of the SLA, and to insert a
Speaker 5: tape word of comfort and verification that Patricia Campbell Hurst
Speaker 5: is alive and safe. That an action of good faith
Speaker 5: be shown the part of the Hurst family to allow
Speaker 5: the Court and the oppressed people of this world and
Speaker 5: this nation to ascertain as to the real interests and
Speaker 5: cooperative attitude of the Hearst family, and in so doing
Speaker 5: show some form of repentance for the murder and suffering
Speaker 5: they have aided and profited from. And this good faith
Speaker 5: gesture is to be in the form of a token
Speaker 5: gesture to the oppressed people that they aid the corporate
Speaker 5: state in robbing and removing their rights to freedom and liberty.
Speaker 5: This gesture is to be in the form of food
Speaker 5: to the needy and the unemployed, and to which the
Speaker 5: following instructions are directed to be followed to the letter.
Speaker 13: It ended in the way that all of the essla's
Speaker 13: communicates ended with this phrase, death.
Speaker 5: Of the fascist insect that praised upon the life of
Speaker 5: the people.
Speaker 13: This audiotape included Patty Hurst explaining that she was as
Speaker 13: yet unharmed in her understanding of the situation. You heard
Speaker 13: a part of this at the beginning of this episode.
Speaker 13: The tape also included the piece you just heard with
Speaker 13: Donald de Frees. Using his nom de guerre Sinq, he
Speaker 13: demanded that Patty's father, Randolph Hurst, feed the poor in
Speaker 13: the Bay area. The specifics were daunting. The token gesture
Speaker 13: that Sinq mentions, in fact, is to provide seventy dollars
Speaker 13: worth of food to everyone in the state on welfare
Speaker 13: or Social Security or several other programs. Experts believe that
Speaker 13: the costs would run to about three hundred million dollars.
Speaker 13: This was far beyond Randolph Hurst's means. Again, author Jeffrey Tubin.
Speaker 3: The Hurst family decided to try to meet the demand,
Speaker 3: at least somewhat, and they set up an organization very
Speaker 3: much on the spur of the moment called People in Need,
Speaker 3: which was a shoe string operation to try to spend
Speaker 3: really a great deal of money of feeding the poor
Speaker 3: of the San Francisco area.
Speaker 13: Hurst contributed five hundred thousand dollars to the effort, and
Speaker 13: the Hurst Foundation added another one point five million. This
Speaker 13: is what they had to work with. The initiative was
Speaker 13: called People in Need or PEN.
Speaker 3: In fairness to the Hurst family, no, it was difficult
Speaker 3: to set up something like this on the fly since
Speaker 3: it had literally never been done before, especially under the
Speaker 3: pressure of this kidnapping. But even by that standards, it
Speaker 3: was kind.
Speaker 13: Of nuts to run this spur of the moment program.
Speaker 13: Hirst brought a man named Ludlow Kramer down from Washington State,
Speaker 13: where he had served as Secretary of State. Kramer had
Speaker 13: previously run a successful private program called Neighbors in Need,
Speaker 13: providing food and basic staples to unemployed aerospace workers in
Speaker 13: his state. His work in Washington, though, was dealing mostly
Speaker 13: with middle class families who had suffered a sudden employment emergency.
Speaker 13: This would be an entirely different challenge here. At a
Speaker 13: press conference outside the Hearst residence, Creamer asked for donations
Speaker 13: to augment the food purchased through the PIN funds.
Speaker 8: We are asking today that any producer of any commodities
Speaker 8: that wants to donate to the People in Need program
Speaker 8: to contact us. We have been given thirty two trucks
Speaker 8: to date, and we'll be able to pick that food
Speaker 8: up tomorrow. We have sixteen phones in operation as of now, and.
Speaker 5: We believe we'll be able to.
Speaker 11: Take care of the calls that take place.
Speaker 8: The only thing that we have to pay for under
Speaker 8: the laws of this country is the telephone system. If
Speaker 8: anyone want to donate what that cost, we would gladly
Speaker 8: accept that.
Speaker 3: They did set up an operation in a very short
Speaker 3: period of time in a warehouse down by the water,
Speaker 3: very close to where the San Francisco Giants Ballpark is today,
Speaker 3: and they did start these food distributions.
Speaker 10: That's up.
Speaker 5: How are you give me a one shot.
Speaker 8: Of the black guy when you can't.
Speaker 13: Here's Loudlow Kreamer at the Pin warehouse addressing the press
Speaker 13: about plans for the first food distribution.
Speaker 16: We hope to open those sites at approximately ten AM
Speaker 16: and we hope to within those eleven sites have between
Speaker 16: twenty and twenty four thousand bags of groceries to distribute.
Speaker 16: We believe that the type of food meets the demands
Speaker 16: of the SLA. We have meat, poultry, fresh vegetables, fruit.
Speaker 13: The first PIN food distribution was a disaster. Veteran San
Speaker 13: Francisco community organizer Calvin Welch.
Speaker 9: The successful food distribution happened as a result of the
Speaker 9: activities of a community coalition, the People in Need Program
Speaker 9: created a mess, and these people had no idea how
Speaker 9: to distribute food. They actually threw it off the back
Speaker 9: of a truck. It was a joke and it was
Speaker 9: humiliating to our people. There were community based organizations in
Speaker 9: Bayview that could have very effectively distributed that food that
Speaker 9: the People in Need Program didn't even know exist.
Speaker 13: Four distribution sites had been designated around the Bay area.
Speaker 13: At one of the sites in Oakland, the Shabbaz Bakery,
Speaker 13: which was run by the Nation of Islam, a food
Speaker 13: riot broke out. People climbed into the trucks and threw
Speaker 13: food into the surrounding crowd. Chaos ensued, people were injured.
Speaker 9: Hey, man, I was fucked up.
Speaker 7: What they did.
Speaker 14: Man doing the food out the talk they should have
Speaker 14: done that.
Speaker 8: That was found.
Speaker 9: I was upsetting.
Speaker 14: It was really found.
Speaker 13: When the trucks were empty, a crowd moved on Shabba's Bakery.
Speaker 13: There was no more food to distribute, but they were
Speaker 13: demanding their share, and the bakery workers apparently felt as
Speaker 13: though they had to distribute food from their own supplies.
Speaker 13: The Black Muslims who owned the bakery sent Pinnabill for
Speaker 13: one hundred and fifty four thousand dollars to compensate them
Speaker 13: for supposedly giving away seventy five tons of fish and
Speaker 13: eight hundred and twenty cartons of eggs. Pinn eventually wrote
Speaker 13: a check for ninety nine thousand and twenty six dollars,
Speaker 13: though it wasn't clear that this food had actually been
Speaker 13: given out. These are difficult days, Louvelo Kramer commented. The
Speaker 13: PIN operation itself verged on spinning out of control. Different
Speaker 13: groups tried to take command of the food distribution, including
Speaker 13: the Black Panthers and the People's Temple, led by the
Speaker 13: Reverend Jim Jones, who in nineteen seventy eight would lead
Speaker 13: more than nine hundred of his followers to commit mass
Speaker 13: suicide in Jonestown. Guyana. Volunteers also came from other radical
Speaker 13: organizations and from the ranks of idealists who wanted to
Speaker 13: help feed the poor. A reporter for the Los Angeles
Speaker 13: Times described visiting the PIN headquarters.
Speaker 1: The dominant impression is of a paranoid security consciousness, a
Speaker 1: vast concern for favorable public relations image, and the confusion
Speaker 1: of a dozen petty officers and aging radicals who wander
Speaker 1: about with plastic cups of coffee in one hand and
Speaker 1: clipboards in the other, issuing mutually disregarded orders and declarations
Speaker 1: of policy emanating apparently from some unknown source.
Speaker 4: And into this arrived a suburban divorcee in her mid
Speaker 4: forties who would twenty months later take a shot at
Speaker 4: the President. Her name was Sarah Jane Moore. She was,
Speaker 4: according to Patty Hirst fiance Stephen Weed, shrill, abrasive, and
Speaker 4: totally unpredictable. She had arrived at Penn to volunteer her
Speaker 4: services as a bookkeeper. She said, God sent me next
Speaker 4: time on Rip Current.
Speaker 1: Rip Current was created and written by Toby Ball and
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