After Death of Bill Harris, a Look Back at the Symbionese Liberation Army

In a six-page “declaration of revolutionary war” — issued in 1973 and rendered, like a church bulletin, in the standard Courier lettering of a typewriter — the newly formed Symbionese Liberation Army made its intentions clear.This band of professed urban guerrillas, however small in number, was immensely ambitious.“We of the People and not the ruling capitalist class will build a new world and system,” the missive read.

“Where there is really freedom and a true meaning to justice and equality.”But within three years, six of the group’s dozen or so members — including its architect, Donald DeFreeze, an escaped convict known as Cinque — were dead, killed in a shootout with Los Angeles police.Others, including Bill Harris and Emily Harris, were behind bars after a string of crimes that had made headlines worldwide, among them the murder of an Oakland schools superintendent and the kidnapping of the heiress Patricia Hearst.The recent death of Mr.

Harris, a half-century later, recalls a flashpoint in American history touched off by this ragtag group that was reviled as a terrorist organization by the mainstream as well as many in the counterculture.The Cultural SettingBy the time the S.L.A.emerged, the sunshine optimism that had seemed to bathe even foggy San Francisco, the Day-Glo hippie capital of the 1960s, had darkened.

The Weather Underground and countless other, more obscure groups had been preaching — and practicing — armed violence toward revolutionary ends.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe....