SAN FRANCISCO — The Bay Area Regional Office of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was raided in the early hours last month by unknown parties. The office at 449 14th Street houses the SNCC office and the national office of THE MOVEMENT, the West Coast monthly newspaper affiliated with SNCC.
The raiders entered by an outside window and broke the lock on a door in order to enter the office. They stole the subscription list of the newspaper and escaped with confidential files containing SNCC reports and correspondence. During the raid they strewed the address. stencils of THE MOVEMENT over the floor. Also taken was a list of international contacts and the names and addresses of persons working for SNCC and THE MOVEMENT in the Bay Area.
On the previous Friday, two volunteers for a church group with offices in the same building reported that a “middle-aged man” had tried to enter the building through a window. Their screams drove him off.
We are sure,” said Terence Cannon, Field Secretary for SNCC and an editor of THE MOVEMENT, “That the same person waited until Sunday evening, when no one was around, to enter and raid our offices.”
“SNCC has come under extreme attack from the FBI and the House Armed Services Committee for its opposition to the Vietnamese War,” Cannon explained. “Rep. Mendel Rivers wants to do away with the First Amendment in order to put Stokely Carmichael in jail. J. Edgar Hoover is trying to link us with so called insurrectionary groups. This climate of oppression has led directly to this raid. It was clearly carried out by persons who want to know who we are, fear what we are doing, and wish to intimidate who we know.”
In later developments, THE MOVEMENT repudiated reports made in the New York Times and Atlanta Constitution that it severed connections with SNCC.
“These claims are false,” replied MOVEMENT editor Cannon. “We fully support everything that SNCC stands for: its programs and philosophy.
In a letter to the TIMES, May 22, signed by Stokely Carmichael and Terence Cannon, this relationship was reaffirmed. THE MOVEMENT supports fully the Black Power philosophy of SNCC,” the letter says.
“It is one of the few newspapers in the country that gives without distortion the views of the Black Liberation Movement. It is one of the few that SNCC respects enough to give information that it cannot trust with the American Press.”
The Bay Area Friends of SNCC, a predominantly white group, supports the statements of SNCC opposing the Vietnamese War and the draft. The group is planning action in the Bay Area to implement these SNCC programs.