ENCYCLOPEDIA OF GRAPHICS
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HEARST, PATTY "TANIA" Newspaper heiress, member Symbionese Liberation Army, 1954 -
Nobody gave much thought to the Hearsts in those days, a rich newspaper mogul most famous for Hearst Castle, of course, down the Coast, and to most of us he was Orson Wells in "Citizen Cane." And we certainly didn't give a hoot about his daughter, Patricia, of the society pages, below, with her fiance Stephen Weed.
Then in February, 1974, all Hell broke loose! She was violently kidnapped from her Berkeley digs by some unknown thugs and her boyfriend was roughed up.
Everyone assumed it was a ransom job for money from her rich daddy, until a ranting manefesto appeared, demanding her father give out free food to the poor and signing herself "Tania" member of the then-unknown Symbionese Liberation Army, with a photo of her holding a gun in front of a seven-headed serpent, below.
Suddenly we were all following "Tania" and the SLA throughout the Bay Area, below.
Her next appearance came from video surveillance cameras of the SLA's bank robbery in the Sunset district of San Francisco, and Tania's role as sharp-shooter covering her comrads in arms.
The FBI issued Wanted posters of the SLA members.
Tania even got her own Wanted poster, for bank robbery!
After a fiery shoot-out in the Berkeley hills, Tania was arrested.
The defiant Tania raised a clenched-fist salute in her hand-cuffs.
Nearly a year and a half later, her father was able to get Tania out on 1.5 million dollars bails.
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The image of Tania and the Symbionese Libertion Army, of resistance fighters around the world, of the injustice of the capitalistic imperial, will stay with us forever. As a recent rock band, below, reminds us.
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