Biography
Susan Rosenberg was a New York-born radical who joined the May 19th Communist Organization in the late 1970s and went underground after being implicated as an accessory in the 1979 prison escape of Assata Shakur and the 1981 Brink's robbery. On November 29, 1984 she and Tim Blunk were arrested in Cherry Hill, New Jersey while unloading 740 pounds of dynamite, weapons, and false-identity documents at a storage locker. Sentenced to 58 years for weapons and explosives possession — an unprecedented sentence widely condemned by legal observers — she pled guilty in 1990 to conspiracy in the Resistance Conspiracy Case with no additional time. President Clinton commuted her sentence on January 20, 2001 and she was released after 16 years; she has since worked in HIV/AIDS advocacy and prisoner rights. Rosenberg became involved in radical left politics in the late 1970s and 1980s, aligning herself with anti-imperialist causes and prisoner advocacy. She was associated with networks connected to the May 19 Communist Organization and was sought by the Federal Bureau of Investigation during a period when underground groups carried out bombings and robberies framed as political action. She also had associations with the Weather Underground milieu.
In 1984 she was arrested in New Jersey after authorities discovered a large cache of weapons, explosives, and false identification. She was convicted on weapons/explosives-related charges and sentenced to 58 years in federal prison; in 2001, Bill Clinton commuted her sentence to time served. After release, she remained active in social-justice work and continued advocacy related to incarceration and political repression.
