The Revolution Was Televised the Television Coverage Was Live and Friends
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ROLLING STONE. JUNE 20. 1974 NEWS €r OPINION APOCALYPSE FOR THE SLA The Revolution Was Televised The television coverage was live and friends. In the / Ching there is some• in color throughout most of California, thing to be learned of Marxism and in and it came at a prime-time, dinner-hour the way she lived; Nancy Perry fell a period on a Friday evening. People sat certain safety in intrigue. People who in their living rooms, watching an epic knew her sensed a curious intellectual battle of American insanity, comment• loneliness about Nancy Perry. ing to each other about the cases of am• She dealt blackjack topless at one of munition being unloaded from the FBI the tourist joints in San Francisco's car, about the small grin on the cop's North Beach. Later she sold organic face as he threw the bolt home on his beverages from one of the sidewalk rifie before firing another round into stands clustered on the south edge Of the blazing little bungalow in south Los the Berkeley campus. A number of peo• Angeles. His baseball cap and clumsy ple also remembered her as someone flak jacket along with his bolt-action not only into dope, but also as a reliable rifle made him appear as a boy playing source from whom to buy a good lid. at a game in which all the battles are But nobody remembered Nancy Per• heroic spectacles — where jUSt the im• ry as a political heavy, at least not until aginary bad guys fall dead. she became Fahizah of the SLA. The camera pans closer, peering at It was the same with Mizmootl. She a window belching flames. Nothing can came from high school in Goleta, a sub• be seen of the Symbionese Liberation urb of Santa Barbara, as Patricia Solty- Army. The live sound had earlier picked Sik, the daughter of immigrant, separat• up the heavy fusillade from inside the ed parents. She was an honor student, house that police said "began" the gun active in high-school student govern• battle, and later the camera spotted ment, a member of 4H who trained what looked to be a gun barrel poking guide dogs for the blind. Like Nancy through the drapes at one window. But •iiiiiiliil Ling, she grew up in a comfortable only one human form from the house "I'Mijllll middle-class setting that doted on the was seen, and that was a terrified young "iiiiiiiil success of scholarship and making good black woman who ran from the house lllil||l>ii\ as the fire began and stumbled into the in life — yet she began to doubt those grip of police who threw her to the ilMinli III ideals really appHed to women. ground and handcuffed her hands behind lll'lltlllil nnin Arriving in Berkeley in 1967, Soltysik her back and then began shouting in found herself in the environment of her face: "How many? . Are they social change while majoring in letters white people?" tory chance to surrender. Long after the didn't just attend Richard Nixon's alma and science at UC Berkeley. She found They called it the greatest single holocaust had smothered the house in mater at Whittier College, she bummed herself in a community with a conscious• shootout in Los Angeles history and smoke and flame, the cops kept firing. out on Whittier College and found her- ness far apart from her hometown of probably the most spectacular shootout It was the way the SLA seemed des• way to Berkeley where at least she Goleta. The entire neighborhood around ever so intimately documented in all of tined to end — six against 400, the hope• could find stimulation, instead of stag• where she lived on Channing Way, America. less odds in a single battle — the end to nation, in the times. south of campus, was coming together "Federal and local police officials plot• a romantic fantasy. Three suspected Nancy Ling was a tiny woman, 98 like a tribe unto itself. The residents ted their moves during the day and, by members of the SLA, including kidnap• pounds and barely five feet. She was shared a feeling for each other, not only the time the operation peaked, 150 Los ped newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst, warm and introspective, avoiding groups in appreciating how their neighbors felt Angeles policemen, 100 FBI agents, were still at large. But Cinque, the soul of people, yet striking close relation• and hved, but in exchanging a sense of 100 sheriff's officers and about 15 Cali• of the SLA, was among the dead. His ships with individuals. Even in Berkeley, survival, both social and economic. fornia Highway Patrolmen were in the was a death like Lee Harvey Oswald's her closest friend was an old high-school Patricia Soltysik also found a way of neighborhood and positioned for the — an unsatisfactory conclusion that left classmate. Gradually, in the hyper- loving and being loved that she had not battle. (Later 25 motorcycle officers were unanswered the key questions about his sociopathy of the Bay Area, Nancy Ling discovered back in Goleta. On Chan• called in to control traffic.) character and motives. Cinque, like the grew out of her Santa Rosa roots. She ning Way in 1971, she was living with One policeman rushed to the flaming rest, was an ultimate victim, whether of married a black piano player, Gilbert another woman four years older than building but was driven back by the in• his own fantasies or of police fanaticism Perry, who is regarded as a composer herself, a winsome gentle person named tense heat. But he did get a look inside or of both. of significant talent, but who has yet to Camilla Hall. It was Hall who, in a po• and spotted two persons — their clothes When it finally happened, the SLA be discovered or even to find a full- em to her lover, christened Patricia Sol• on fire — in the rear of the house. When was still alone, still isolated from the time gig. Their marriage, friends remem• tysik "Mizmoon." For almost the rest he returned, he told other policemen body of revolution they hoped to encour• bered, was a stormy one. of her life, even to her family back in that the people inside were wearing age by their terrorist acts. And in the "It was love-hate, maybe," one of Goleta, her name was simply Mizmoon. bullet-studded bandoliers crisscrossed end, they died because one of their mem• their friends said, "but it was real love. In the SLA, she took the code name over their hacks and chests. bers tried to steal 49c worth of socks. It just couldn't hold together for long. "Zona." She died under a blazing house Bursts of gunfire. Tear gas. Auto• They'd break up and get back together on her 24th birthday. matic rifles. Machine guns. Pistols. "I've Friends of Nancy Ling Perry in San and then break up again." never seen this much ammunition con• Francisco remembered that she reveled Nancy Ling Perry slowly but easily If, as friends and her family remem• centrated in a single area in Los An• in her exploits as a petty shoplifter. became a "street person." Her politics ber her, Mizmoon was given to sharp geles," one police official said. Small, meaningless things — a garden were vaguely left, but unlike some oth• feelings of anger and jealousy express• Surveying the aftermath of battle, a sprayer or a book, a trinket or two — but ers', they had not solidified into sec• ed through icy stares and staccato bursts federal agent said, "The biggest mis• to Nancy, friends said, the things seem• tarian lines. She drifted on the periphery, of rhetoric, then her hard mood was take these people ever made was com• ed to carry more value if they were avoiding the tedium of theory and the made more apparent when contrasted ing to L.A., because the police down stolen. For her it was the thrill of getting jubilant anarchy of confrontation. with the sensitive touch of Camilla Hall. here don't fool around." away with it. "It was like she had a feeling for pol• Camilla Hall was the daughter of a Later, police said at least 1000 rounds Much is being made of Nancy Ling itics and even an anger over politics, but Lutheran minister. Her blonde hair and were fired. The figure was probably having been a school cheerleader in the she really didn't have any politics," a fair complexion caused people to remark closer to 5000. Not one of the army of rural suburb of Santa Rosa and later of friend said. "She liked the freedom of of her Scandinavian ancestors. Back in police and federal agents was hit. One her supporting Barry Goldwater in 1964. the streets; she liked hitchhiking, and Minneapolis, she had been nicknamed cop fell off a roof and broke his leg. Ex• To her generation, it is nothing but a she liked just appearing as if with no "Candy." Two brothers and a sister had cept for those first few thunderous min• transparent myth about her personality past at all. She was living to be an im• died young of congenital diseases. Her utes, it was not really a shootout at all; and beliefs. She was a cheerleader in mediate self, a person who happened mother had died while she was still a it was a police shoot-in. junior-high school, not high school. Her just now." child. If those tragedies left scars, they Despite the use of a bullhorn at the opinion of Barry Goldwater in high She was deeply into astrology and, in were somewhere well behind the smile beginning, and the tear-gas shells that school was based on the politics of her fact, paced her life by the planets.