{"id":31323,"date":"2022-05-02T01:33:50","date_gmt":"2022-05-02T01:33:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/?p=31323"},"modified":"2022-05-02T01:33:50","modified_gmt":"2022-05-02T01:33:50","slug":"kathy-boudin-formerly-imprisoned-radical-leftist-and-mother-of-san-francisco-d-a-chesa-boudin-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/2022\/05\/02\/kathy-boudin-formerly-imprisoned-radical-leftist-and-mother-of-san-francisco-d-a-chesa-boudin-dies\/","title":{"rendered":"Kathy Boudin, formerly imprisoned radical leftist and mother of San Francisco D.A. Chesa Boudin, dies"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Kathy Boudin, a former member of the radical Weather Underground who took part in a robbery that killed three people, an act that sent her to prison for 22 years and left behind a young son who would become the district attorney of San Francisco, died Sunday at 78.<\/p>\n

Her son, Chesa Boudin, speaking to The Chronicle on Sunday, said he took a red-eye flight to New York overnight and was able to say his final goodbyes. In a statement, he said that \u201cmy mom fought cancer for seven years in her unshakably optimistic and courageous way. She made it long enough to meet her grandson, and welcome my father home from prison after 40 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Kathy Boudin was released from prison in 2003 and went on to earn her doctoral degree and become a Columbia University professor of social work who focused on criminal justice reform.<\/p>\n

Kathy Boudin, along with Chesa\u2019s father, David Gilbert, were members of the Weather Underground, a violent militant group that coalesced around Black Power causes and opposition to the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n

On Oct. 20, 1981, the pair joined members of the Black Liberation Army in the botched robbery of a Brink\u2019s armored truck in New York. A Washington Post article<\/a> from the time described the crime as part of an effort to create a new \u201cRepublic of New Afrika\u201d in the southern United States.<\/p>\n

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Other members of the group shot and killed a Brink\u2019s guard, Peter Paige, before killing two Nyack, N.Y. police officers, Waverly Brown and Edward O\u2019Grady.<\/p>\n

Gilbert and Kathy Boudin, acting as the unarmed driver and passenger in the getaway van, were each charged and convicted under New York\u2019s felony murder law, which allows all participants in a felony that leads to a death to be charged with murder, even if they were not directly responsible for the killings.<\/p>\n

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Chesa Boudin, who was 14 months old at the time of the fatal robbery and was left with a babysitter, was raised in Chicago by the leaders of the Weather Underground, Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers.<\/p>\n

While Kathy Boudin took a plea deal that allowed her to be paroled in 2003, Gilbert refused counsel, took the case to trial and was sentenced to 75 years to life in prison.<\/p>\n

During her parole hearing, Kathy Boudin told commissioners that she had a \u201ccompletely distorted and disturbed view\u201d when she agreed to take part in the robbery, according to a 2003 piece in the New York Times.<\/a> Her actions, she said, were motivated by guilt for being white and from a privileged background, and because she felt she hadn\u2019t done enough to help support poor Black neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

Kathy Boudin told the commissioners she accepted full responsibility for the deaths.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that I was completely out of touch with what were ways to help communities and people. I think it was completely wrong,\u201d Kathy Boudin said in a WNYC interview shortly before her parole.<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

Kathy Boudin was a fugitive when she was arrested for the Brinks robbery. She\u2019d fled from an explosion in 1970 at a Manhattan town house where the Weathermen made bombs. The daughter of left-wing civil liberties lawyer Leonard Boudin, Kathy Boudin had grown up in a home in which law and politics were debated.<\/p>\n

While imprisoned, she taught literacy programs, helped gather funding for college programming in the jail, worked with fellow inmates who were HIV-positive, and earned her master\u2019s degree in adult education.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe always ended phone calls with a laugh, a habit acquired during the 22 years of her incarceration, when she wanted to leave every person she spoke with, especially me, with joy and hope,\u201d Chesa Boudin said. \u201cShe lived redemption, constantly finding ways to give back to those around her.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Supporters argued for her release, saying she had expressed remorse and worked to give back to society. Letty Cottin Pogrebin, a founding editor of Ms. magazine, told the New York Times in 2003 when Kathy Boudin was released that \u201cshe paid a very heavy price for a very foolish move when she was young and idealistic, and she had deep remorse. … She has suffered enormously and has been a model prisoner.\u201d<\/p>\n

But others, including law enforcement groups and the relatives of those who were killed, fought her release over the years.<\/p>\n

Former state Assembly Member Alexander Gromack, a Rockland County Republican, said in 2001<\/a> after she was denied parole, \u201cWhile she may not have pulled the trigger herself, the blood of those three men still stains her hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

Edward O\u2019Grady\u2019s widow, Diane, told the New York Post in 2003,<\/a> after Kathy Boudin was denied parole earlier, that \u201cjustice prevailed,\u201d adding \u201cshe played a very pivotal part in that crime. Nine children were left without their fathers. We want her to serve life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Upon her release, Kathy Boudin accepted a job with the St. Luke\u2019s Hospital HIV\/AIDS Center, where she helped create programs for women.<\/p>\n

\nGilbert was granted clemency<\/a> last year by outgoing New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and was released from prison on parole in November.<\/p>\n

Kathy Boudin and Gilbert reunited immediately after Gilbert\u2019s release, Chesa Boudin said.<\/p>\n

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