[DEBATE] : RE: John Pape/James Kilgore freed

[Patrick Bond]

Below the NYT article is one from the period he was arrested, including 
a tribute from Trevor Ngwane.

David McDonald wrote:
> What a poorly written, reactionary article in the NY Times...
>   


http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/05/10/us/AP-US-SLA-Kilgore.html?_r=1

Former Member of ’70s Radical Group Is Freed

Filed at 7:16 p.m. ET

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- The last captured member of the Symbionese 
Liberation Army, the radical 1970s-era group notorious for bank 
robberies, killings and the kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patricia 
Hearst, was released from prison Sunday, a corrections official said.

James William Kilgore, 61, was paroled from High Desert State Prison 
after serving a six-year sentence for his role in the murder of 
housewife Myrna Opsahl during an April 1975 bank robbery.

The victim's son, Jon Opsahl, said Sunday it felt ''ironic'' and 
''strange'' that Kilgore was released on Mother's Day.

Kilgore was one of five SLA members to serve time for the murder of 
Opsahl's mother.

''I guess they did their time, paid their debts to society,'' he said. 
''Now I guess they can get back to their lives.''

State Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman Oscar 
Hidalgo said parole agents processed Kilgore's release at the Susanville 
prison.

Kilgore has been granted permission to join his wife in Illinois, where 
she moved after he was arrested in 2002 in Cape Town, South Africa, 
after nearly three decades on the run. He has two weeks to report to 
Illinois parole officials.

Kilgore had eluded arrest longer than any of his fellow SLA fugitives. 
His cover unraveled after the 1999 arrest of his former girlfriend, Sara 
Jane Olson, who had become a doctor's wife in St. Paul, Minn. Olson, 
formerly known as Kathleen Soliah, was paroled from a California prison 
in March.

His release marks ''the end of the SLA and the era,'' said Stuart 
Hanlon, a San Francisco attorney who represented several SLA members.

The gang of mostly white, privileged would-be revolutionaries led by a 
black ex-convict also was responsible for the murder of Oakland school 
superintendent Marcus Foster, bank robberies, and the attempted bombings 
of Los Angeles police cars. Joseph Remiro is serving a life sentence for 
Foster's 1973 murder.

Kilgore, a native of Portland, Ore., joined the SLA after graduating 
from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1969. He escaped 
the 1974 shootout with Los Angeles police in which six of the SLA's 
original members died.

He disappeared on Sept. 18, 1975, as the FBI arrested Hearst and other 
SLA members in San Francisco.

He resurfaced as University of Cape Town professor Charles William Pape, 
even writing a South Africa high school text book titled ''Making 
History'' under the alias.

Kilgore married an American woman, Teresa Barnes, and fathered two sons. 
Barnes, an associate professor of gender and women's studies at the 
University of Illinois in Champaign, declined to comment when reached by 
The Associated Press.

Susan B. Jordan, an attorney who represented another SLA member, said 
that some romanticized the group, despite the violence, after its 
members kidnapped Hearst and demanded her wealthy family distribute food 
to the poor of San Francisco.

''They were an extremely misguided group of idealists. They really 
believed they could make the world better by what they did,'' Jordan 
said. ''I just think they tapped into some mythological fairy story.''

New York attorney Louis Freeman, who represented Kilgore after his 
arrest, did not respond to messages left Sunday and in previous days.

Kilgore's pending parole had sparked far less controversy than Olson's 
release. Her return to Minnesota drew opposition from Minnesota Gov. Tim 
Pawlenty and the St. Paul police union and divided her neighbors.

The Los Angeles Police Protective League and the National Association of 
Police Organizations objected to letting Kilgore serve his year of 
parole in another state, but there has been little reaction in Illinois.

''Mr. Kilgore has never even lived in Illinois,'' Paul Weber, president 
of the Los Angeles police union, said in a statement. ''His last legal 
residence was in California, and this is where he committed his crimes. 
... The community he terrorized has the right and the duty to ensure Mr. 
Kilgore complies with all terms of his parole, including serving his 
full sentence here.''

Kilgore served his state sentence after finishing a 54-month federal 
prison term for using a dead baby's birth certificate to obtain a 
passport in Seattle and for possessing a pipe bomb in his apartment near 
San Francisco in 1975.

California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation officials called 
Kilgore a model prisoner who tutored other inmates.

***

GreenLeft Weekly
SOUTH AFRICA: Activists pay tribute to `fugitive' John Pape

27 November 2002

BY PATRICK BOND

JOHANNESBURG — On November 8, James Kilgore, the last fugitive member of 
the 1970s US terrorist group, the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), was 
arrested in Cape Town. He was known in South Africa as John Pape, the 
respected left and labour movement activist. Across the region, there 
has been an outpouring of support for Pape from comrades, friends and 
mainstream colleagues who worked with him during his Southern African 
sojourn.

A 55-year-old trade union and community educator, Pape is employed by 
the University of Cape Town and director of the influential 
International Labour Resource and Information Group (ILRIG). He is the 
author of many articles and books, including a highly regarded radical 
economics textbook. Most recently, he was co-editor of a book about 
grassroots struggles in black townships (see < 
http://196.4.93.10/compress/books/Cost_Recovery_and_the_Crisis_of_SerA 
HREF="mailto:vice_Delivery_in_South_Africa.html/"><vice_Delivery_in_South_Africa.html/>).

Pape is the father of two young boys, husband to Terri Barnes (a noted 
feminist historian) and a model of commitment to the cause of social 
justice. His arrest came after 27 years of living underground, first in 
Australia, where he studied history and economics at Deakin University 
in the late 1970s, then in Zimbabwe in the 1980s, where he taught in a 
township high school and researched his doctorate on the plight of 
domestic workers, and finally in South Africa, where he has lived since 
the early 1990s. Pape became a widely respected radical intellectual and 
activist, notwithstanding his prominent position on the US FBI's most 
wanted list.

By all accounts a coincidence, Pape's arrest occurred a day after four 
fellow ex-SLA members in the US had plea-bargained various crimes, 
including an accidental murder during a 1976 bank robbery. According to 
a book by Patty Hearst, the newspaper heiress turned SLA supporter, Pape 
warned the group against taking the rifle on the bank job.

Pape had apparently instructed a US lawyer to negotiate his surrender 
several months ago, expecting to return to the US to face trial before 
the year's end. He may now receive a similar sentence to that agreed to 
by the other ex-SLA members: 6-8 years in prison.

Pape's arrest came at a time when the African National Congress 
government has been clamping down on political criticism. Pape remains 
in jail awaiting an extradition request from the US authorities. He will 
appear again in court on December 6.

Trevor Ngwane, secretary of the Johannesburg Anti-Privatisation Forum 
and chair of the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee, wrote the 
following tribute, which reflects the feelings of many on the South 
African left. It has been abridged:

“Comrade John Pape was respected by many on the left in South Africa. In 
hindsight, he tended to work `quietly' but he did not hide his politics 
nor stay in the shadows. I always thought he was a comrade who was 
averse to political grandstanding, big talk and theatrics. He seemed to 
prefer long-term spade work, working on research and on education.

“He certainly did solid work as principal and rector at Khanya College 
[in Johannesburg]. This left-wing institution has produced many leading 
activists and progressive left-leaning professionals in South Africa. 
Its work in the trade unions during Comrade John's time was outstanding. 
Recently, building on John's work, the college has been at the forefront 
of encouraging debate and discussion to find a working-class way forward 
following the disorganisation and disorientation of left forces here due 
to the ANC betrayal and capitulation to neo-liberalism.

“John's latest research and work at ILRIG has been outstanding. He 
edited a seminal book on the impact of globalisation on the working 
class in South Africa, which is arguably the clearest and most 
accessible academic commentary on the subject for working-class 
activists to date.

“I got to know Comrade John much better during a difficult time in my 
life when his support and willingness to go beyond the line of duty 
shone through and left a lasting positive impression on me... Comrade 
John's supportive actions were not, in my assessment, calculated as part 
of his `cover'...

“I don't feel betrayed, tricked or taken for a ride with the revelations 
about John Pape's real identity. Instead, and perhaps strangely, I feel 
more respect for him. He certainly was not in a position to tell me who 
he really was. If he had done so, he would of course have made me an 
accomplice which, knowing John, is the last thing he would want to do.

“As a Marxist, I do not agree with the use of terror as a political 
method. I think it is counter-productive because it plays into the hands 
of the enemy (look how Bush was able to get away with murder in 
Afghanistan and is still using the momentum of the September 11 terror 
attacks to whip up war fever in the USA against Iraq).

“But everything Comrade John did in South Africa showed that he had 
broken with terrorism as a method of struggle, preferring the hard 
patient slog of building among ordinary workers, in the trade unions and 
among working-class youth. He exchanged his guns and masks for pen and 
paper. He stopped living between the cracks and in the night; he built a 
new life, took care of his family and contributed to the struggle of the 
workers. He turned his back on terrorism, bank robberies and murder as a 
political method and embraced the Marxist method of mass education, mass 
mobilisation and mass action.

“Life could not have been easy for John. Living under cover is very 
strenuous. The emotional turmoil, the anxiety, the fabrications, the 
tension. But clearly, John was a strong person. He managed to excel in 
his day job and in political activism despite everything. Twenty-seven 
years on the run is a long time. This and the contribution he has made 
in the struggle of the South African working class is enough, in my 
opinion, atonement for his earlier follies and sins. I personally would 
support a call for pardon for John Pape.

“John always gave the impression of deep quiet strength, commitment and 
determination. His wife and children loved him because he was a good 
husband and father. If he spends his last days in prison, they will 
suffer the most. But we will suffer too, we on the left who regarded 
John as a comrade and a friend. So too will his colleagues and many 
other people who were touched and inspired by him, especially his former 
students at Khanya College. So will many shop stewards who studied the 
history of the liberation struggle in worker education programs 
organised by John.

“I never met James Kilgore but I know and respect John Pape. It is 
because of this that I want to be counted among those who will stand 
with Comrade John during his hour of greatest need.”

Messages of solidarity can be sent to John Pape c/- ILRIG at 
<ilrig at wn.apc.org>. Visit the ILRIG web site at 
<http://www.aidc.org.za/ilrig/>.

[Editor's note: When Green Left Weekly writer Norm Dixon visited South 
Africa last year, John Pape provided invaluable help by introducing many 
left and grassroots activists. Pape's stature on the left was prominent 
and he was in no way leading an “underground” existence. Pape was a 
regular reader of GLW. We offer our heartfelt solidarity.]

 From Green Left Weekly, November 27, 2002.