New World Liberation Front (NWLF)

The New World Liberation Front (NWLF) was a tiny California-based militant anti-capitalist group terrorist group. New World Liberation Front claimed responsibility for approximately 70 bombings in the San Francisco Bay area between 1974 and 1978. In 1970, a small group of radicals joined together in San Francisco to form the New World Liberation Front (NWLF). The NWLF first appeared in the wake of the SLA drama, with a bombing in September, 1974, directed against a San Francisco stock brokerage firm.

According to John Wolf, the NWLF was responsible for 30 bombings over the course of the next 7 years. The NWLF claimed to be a "moral" revolutionary group, and it attacked only "legitimate" targets symbolized by corporate capitalism. Utility companies were a favorite, and the NWLF also bombed two sheriff’s vehicles in the San Francisco area. They were at war with the establishment.

IN an interview with Liberation news Service published on 03 October 1970s, Huey P. Newton stated that "The New World Liberation Front will really be a new International. It will be a coalition of many groups within this country -- many ethnic groups. The Black Panther Party will be a caucus within a broader front. The NWLF will represent all struggling people throughout the world. Actually, It's already been launched through the conference that was held in Korea.... so we have high hopes that this will be a structure that will be able to construct a viable revolutionary movement. ..."

New World Liberation Front was responsible for a series of bombings on the American West Coast. It bombed various sites on behalf of local political issues -- utility rates, low-income housing, local jail conditions. NWLF claimed to concentrate its activities on business offices and utilities associated with the " ruling class ". Other targets have included hotels and clubs. New World Liberation Front claimed responsibility for approximately 70 bombings in the San Francisco Bay area between 1974 and 1978 and was believed to be responsible for another 26 bombings in other Northern California cities.

In September 1975 Ralph Patrick Ford, age 23, was killed as he armed a pipe bomb planted at the Safeway Store at 15th and John in Seattle, WA. At the time, Safeway was stocking Coors beer and Gallo wine. The blast caused more than $3,000 damage. A fully armed pipe bomb was found in the federal building and a telephone call directed officials to a note in which "Unit 9 of the New World Liberation Front" claimed credit for placing the bomb in memory of comrades massacred in Attica and Chile. Two of the injured persons were taken across the street to Group Health Hospital, a spokesman for the hospital said. Both appeared in satisfactory condition.

The New World Liberation Front carried out scores of bombings, some of which targeted Dianne Feinstein and other members of the San Francisco board of supervisors. In a 1994 biography, “Dianne Feinstein: Never Let Them See You Cry,” former San Francisco Chronicle editorial page editor Jerry Roberts recounts that Feinstein had been a target of the New World Liberation Front in the middle 1970s, and that her daughter found a bomb at the family home. Feinstein began packing a .38 after the windows were shot out of her vacation house.

In 1992, she ran for the Senate against an incumbent Republican, John Seymour. In their biggest debate, Seymour charged that Feinstein, a strong advocate of gun control, had owned a handgun. Dianne explained that at one point the New World Liberation Front had planted a bomb in a flower box outside her daughter Katherine’s bedroom window. She had gotten a gun but, she said, after a while she realized it would do no good.

"I know the urge to arm yourself, because that's what I did," she told Senate colleagues in 1995. "I made the determination that if somebody was going to try to take me out, I was going to take them with me." She recalled in 1999 that " In 1976, I was president of the board of supervisors in San Francisco. There was a terrorist group by the name of the New World Liberation Front that was operating in the far west. They had blown up power stations throughout the West. They targeted me and placed a bomb in a flower box outside my house. The bomb had a construction-grade explosive which does not detonate below freezing. It never drops below freezing in San Francisco. It was set to detonate at 1:30 in the morning.

"It did detonate, but the explosive washed up the side of the building and it did not explode. The timer went out in the street, and the next morning, we found the explosive on the side of the house. It was a very sobering thing because it was right below my daughter's window. Then this same group shot out about 15 windows in a beach house my husband and I owned.

"I went to the police department and asked for protection, and I asked if I could learn to carry a weapon. So I received, in 1976, a concealed weapon permit to carry a weapon. I was trained at the police range. The weapon I carried was a chief's special 38, five shots. I practiced regularly."

The only attack on any of the Rancho Corral de Tierra military sites occurred on February 3, 1975, when the radical New World Liberation Front bombed the Air Force’s Pillar Point station. During a stormy night, members of the group entered the base through an opening in a fence and planted two, two-inch diameter pipe bombs under a diesel-fuel tank. The bombs were intended to ignite the tank but failed to do so. Instead, 400 gallons of diesel-fuel drained into the ground. Afterwards, the Air Force upgraded security of the installation.

The Bay Area Research Collective [BARC] appeared in May 1974, as the organizer of a rally in support of six Symbionese Liber- ation Army - SLA - "comrades" killed in a May 17, 1974, Los Angeles gun battle with police. BARC described its mission as the building of unity among "the aboveground, the underground and the locked down" who hold that "support for guerrilla struggles is a necessary part of mass revolutionary work".

"The state's stake in reactionary ideology wlll not allow them to "give in to terrorists." For corporations on the other hand, ideology may be of less importance than the almighty buck. It may be possible to force them to bend somewhat to the force of the movement. " [Dragon No. 9, June, 1976] The Bay Area Research Collective stated in its newsletter, Dragon, in analyzing a successful extortion campaign by the terrorist New World Liberation Front against the Bayview Federal Savings and Loan.

The NWLF outraged many potential sympathizerswith a series of statements in mid-1976 on the role of feminism and homosexuality in the revolutionary movement. These edicts, from the Central Command, relegated feminism and the struggle against sexism to a position subordinate to the economic struggles of poor and working people. The gay movement was denounced as being entirely reactionary, the outgrowth of a petit-bourgeois sexual perversion.

The NWLF got itself into more trouble with a communique in August, 1976, on the “Zionist-American ruling class” which postulated the usual Jewish conspiracy of bankers and capitalists familiar from Hitler’s anti-Jewish propaganda. The statement was accompanied by a cartoon depicting a board meeting of Jewish bankers, complete with yarmulkes and caricatured hooked noses.

As the NWLF attempted to expand its operations, its leadership may have come to see the irony of its campaign. Even though the NWLF had hoped to be the vanguard of a revolutionary movement, few people were willing to join the revolution. In an attempt to compensate, the NWLF "expanded" its operations by forming a number of revolutionary brigades. In reality, these brigades represented nothing more than the same few radicals operating under a variety of new names.

In frustration, the NWLF turned to a final ploy to obtain support. Linking up with another small band of militants, the group joined the prison reform movement and allied itself with a group of militant ex-convicts called the Tribal Thumb. Groups which were first exposed to revolutionary dogma in prison and later coordinated their activities there, included the Islamic guerrillas in the United States; the New World Liberation Front, a California-based terrorist group; and West Germany's Baader-Meinhof gang.

The Black Guerrilla Family was originated in the mid-1960s by the former Black Panther Party member George Lester Jackson while serving time in San Quentin as well. After Jackson was killed, James "Doc" Holiday, a former member of the central committee of the Symbionese Liberation Army, took command and formed additional alliances between his group and the New World Liberation Front, and the Weather Underground.

This sealed the fate of the NWLF; whatever chance it had had to obtain even the slightest political support was lost through the alliance. Its association with violent felons cemented public opinion against the group. The NWLF was denounced and alienated. Aside from improving corporate security and law enforcement investigative techniques, the NWLF was a dismal failure.

A member of the radical New World Liberation Front was indicted 07 June 1983 for conspiring to commit 16 bombings against politicians, electric power stations and oil companies from 1973 through 1978. Included in the federal indictment were charges Ronald Huffman, 43, conspired to bomb the home of San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein and sent candy box bombs to Supervisor Quentin Kopp and former Supervisor John Barbagelata.