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- THE WEEK, Page 23SOCIETYOutlaws on the Left and Right
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- Two disparate radicals battle what they see as an oppressive
- society
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- Urban, leftist, academic Berkeley, California, and remote
- northern Idaho don't share a lot. But both places have become
- havens for Americans who have dropped out of the workaday
- culture, who have a paranoid streak, and who view the very
- concept of government as oppressive.
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- --In Berkeley police said Rosebud Abigail Denovo, 19,
- broke into the mansion of University of California chancellor
- Chang-Lin Tien intending to kill him. Part of a self-styled
- "People's Will Direct Action Committee," Denovo took part in
- protests over plans by the university and the city of Berkeley
- to build volleyball courts at People's Park, long a refuge of
- the homeless. She had a history of psychiatric treatment and was
- arrested last year for stashing explosives at a bivouac in the
- Berkeley hills.
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- Denovo was shot dead by an officer who said she lunged at
- him with a machete when she was cornered in the chancellor's
- residence. A note found inside her duffel bag bore the message,
- "We are willing to die for this land. Are you?"
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- -- In Idaho white separatist Randy Weaver seemed willing
- to die for his piece of land too, as he holed up in his cabin
- near the hamlet of Naples, surrounded by FBI agents, federal
- marshals and local police officers. Authorities put his
- mountaintop redoubt under surveillance after he failed to appear
- for a February 1991 trial on charges of selling two sawed-off
- shotguns to an undercover agent. Two weeks ago, Weaver's
- 13-year-old son Samuel and federal marshal William Degan were
- killed in a gun battle as lawmen approached the cabin.
- Prosecutors charged Weaver's comrade Kevin Harris, 24, with
- murdering Degan. Weaver's wife Vicki was killed in a second
- gunfight.
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- Weaver, 44, has ties to the racist Aryan Nations sect
- based in Hayden Lake, 60 miles to the south. Some neighbors,
- saying Weaver simply wants the government to leave him alone,
- brought food and mail to the cabin after Weaver retreated there
- last year. After the shoot-out, as officers cordoned off the
- mountain, local sympathizers shouted obscenities at police
- manning the roadblock and vowed, "We'll get you!" At week's end
- Weaver, his remaining three children and Harris continued to
- hunker down as lawmen used loudspeakers to broadcast appeals
- from family members and friends urging the outlaw to surrender.
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