Susan Rosenberg

Susan Rosenberg’s youth was spent protesting the Vietnam War and racism in America. A member of the Weather Underground and other radical organizations which used violence as a tool for political change, Rosenberg was sentenced to 58 years in federal prison after being arrested for possession of explosives and weapons during the planning of a number of bombing operations. ³ She was also a suspect in a 1981 armored car robbery which left one guard and two officers dead. She was released in 2001 when then-President Bill Clinton commuted her sentence. ⁴

The commutation led to bipartisan criticism from then-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) and U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) as well as police officials. ⁵ Rosenberg continued her radical activism through the publication of her 2011 book, An American Radical, and through working as the vice chair of the fiscal sponsor group Thousand Currents. ^{6 7} She also spent 12 years working for the left-of-center social activism group American Jewish World Service and co-founded the anti-prison group National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls. ⁷

From 2016 to 2020, Thousand Currents became one of America’s most influential racial and social change organizations due to its one-time role as the Black Lives Matter Global Network’s fiscal sponsor. ⁸ As the group’s fiscal sponsor, Thousand Currents handled Black Lives Matter’s administrative and back-end work. ⁹

Early Life

In an excerpt from her 2011 book, An American Radical, Rosenberg described being raised by civil rights advocates. Her father ran a dental practice which focused on helping “Spanish Harlem” residents, and her mother helped struggling artists get on their feet. Both of her parents opposed America’s Cold War-era nuclear build-up, the Vietnam War, and racial inequality in the mid-20th century. ^{6  3}

As a child, Rosenberg participated in anti-war demonstrations in New York and, at 15 years old, went to Washington, D.C. with her school to oppose the Vietnam War. She described seeing police strike and arrest protesters who “raised a North Vietnamese flag on the Justice Department building,” and release tear gas. After the protest, she joined her school’s anti-war group and helped organize activism against the war. ^{6  3} Rosenberg’s description of the protest does not include mention of the rioting and property damage caused by activists who put the flag on the Department of Justice roof. This damage was cited by Wayne Thompson in his 2000 book, To Hanoi and Back, which is included in a number of official federal agencies’ historical records. ¹⁰Rosenberg’s high school group was part of the national Students for a Democratic Society. The group splintered due to factional interests, and at least one faction’s leadership led to the creation of the terrorist group Weather Underground. ¹¹

After college, Rosenberg worked as an anti-drug counselor and continued to be involved in anti-war and anti-racism movements. ¹²

In 1976, Rosenberg traveled to Cuba with the Venceremos Brigade, an organization that had been founded by members of Students for a Democratic Society in 1969 to enable sympathetic Americans to travel to Cuba in order to demonstrate their solidarity with the country’s revolutionary communist government.¹³

Radical-Left Activities

Rosenberg joined the Weather Underground and other radical left-wing groups which used bombings and other terrorist attacks to protest the Vietnam War and police brutality against minorities. The Underground was founded to overthrow the U.S. government through violent means, though its attacks on police and military resulted in no known deaths. ^{14  15}

She also helped found the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee, a radical group which looked to anti-slavery revolutionary John Brown for inspiration to oppose the Klu Klux Klan in the late 1970s and early 1980s. ^{12 16}

Rosenberg’s terrorism reached a peak when she and other radicals led the May 19^th Communist Organization (M19CO). The nation’s only female-led Communist terror group, it helped break a convicted cop killer out of prison in 1979 and organized a number of bombings around the country. The group also participated in a Rockland County, New York, armored car robbery which left a guard and two police officers dead. Rosenberg’s 1984 arrest was one of several arrests over a six-month period which led to the Organization’s collapse. ¹⁷

Brink’s Robbery

On October 20, 1981, Rosenberg’s May 19th Communist Organization and members of the Black Liberation Army carried out a robbery attack against a Brink’s armored car in Nanuet, New York. 18 The attack left Brink’s guard Peter Paige and Nyack police officers Waverly “Chipper” Brown and Sgt. Edward J. O’Grady Jr. dead, and seriously wounded Brink’s guard Joseph Trombino, who later died in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. ^{18  19} According to CIA documents, this criminal coalition, known as “The Family,” was organized by Mutulu Shakur, stepfather of the late hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur. ²⁰

While Rosenberg maintained her innocence in the Brink’s robbery, a report by the New York State Criminal Justice Institute placed Rosenberg at the Mount Vernon safe-house that served as a staging location for the assault. ²¹ The $1.6 million stolen in the raid was intended to be used to fund the “New Afrika Movement.” ²²

Conviction and Parole Request

Rosenberg managed to evade arrest for three years following the Brink’s robbery. During this time, M19CO orchestrated a series of bombings against federal government targets, ^{17 23} including a bomb at the National War College building at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C., on April 25, 1983; a bomb at a computer center at the Washington Navy Yard on April 20, 1984; and the November 7, 1983 bombing outside the Senate Chamber of the U.S. Capitol, which the group claimed under the cover name “Armed Resistance Unit.” These attacks caused extensive property damage but no deaths. ^{24  25 26}

Law enforcement caught up to Rosenberg in November 1984 after she used stolen identification to rent a storage unit in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, to stash away guns and bomb-making materials. After the facility manager discovered the stolen identification and alerted police, officers were waiting when Rosenberg and an accomplice returned to the storage unit on November 29, 1984. They were both arrested and investigators found approximately 740 pounds of explosives, along with multiple firearms and thousands of false ID cards.  ^{27  28}

Rosenberg was convicted on federal explosives and firearms charges and sentenced to 58 years in prison, the longest conviction for such charges in American history. ^{29 5}

Though she was indicted for planning and participating in the Rockland County Brink’s robbery, Rudy Giuliani, at the time a U.S. Attorney, declined to pursue prosecution because of the long sentence Rosenberg received on the other charges. ^{4 30} Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, who convinced a federal judge to oppose Rosenberg’s request for parole in 1999, wrote that Giuliani also did not want to put the public and robbery victims through a second trial. ³¹

Rosenberg’s attorneys sought parole on the basis that Rosenberg had been a model prisoner and had rejected her previous terrorist activities and beliefs. ⁴ They also argued that her sentence was extreme compared to the charges upon which she was convicted, and that McCarthy’s use of the robbery to argue against parole was invalid because Giuliani had dismissed the charges. ³⁰ McCarthy maintained that it was Rosenberg’s radical declarations during her trial and her regret that “she hadn’t had the courage to shoot it out with police” when she was arrested that led to the lengthy sentence. He also argued that the robbery rightly played a role in the parole rejection because “it has long been the law that sentencing courts and the Parole Commission may take into account any conduct, even if the defendant has been acquitted — which Rosenberg, of course, had not been.” ⁴

Commutation

See also: “Other Controversies” section of the Bill Clinton profile.

After Rosenberg’s parole request was denied, President Bill Clinton commuted her sentence on his last day in office. She was one of 176 people protected by Clinton that day, including indicted fugitive Marc Rich and former Clinton Whitewater associate Susan McDougal. McDougal was convicted of bank fraud in the Clinton Whitewater scandal investigation. ³² Clinton also commuted the 40-year sentence of Rosenberg co-conspirator Linda Sue Evans. ³³ Evans was imprisoned for 11 counts of false identification used to purchase firearms and for harboring a fugitive related to the armored car murders. ³⁴ She was also convicted in 1990 for participating in a number of terrorist bombings, including at the U.S. Capitol Building. ³⁵

Rosenberg’s commutation brought bipartisan condemnation from Giuliani, Schumer, and at least two police officials. Officials cited by The New York Times at the time of the commutation included then-New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik, who had escorted Rosenberg to and from her trial, and Rockland County union police official David Trois. Trois said he believed Rosenberg participated in the armored car robbery, a claim she denied. ⁵ Kerik said the commutation “sickened” him. ³⁶

The New York Times published an editorial criticizing Clinton’s pardons on his last day in office, including the ones for Rosenberg and Evans. ³⁷

In an interview three days after her “executive clemency,” Rosenberg said in an interview with left-wing political group Democracy Now that “the whole issue with my case was a question of due process…” She called Clinton’s action “an important statement…” Her attorney said that Rosenberg desired to go to trial over the armored car robbery to prove innocence, but Giuliani and his office declined to do so. “…[T]heir evidence was flimsy at best,” said the attorney. ³⁶

During a 2008 Democratic presidential primary debate, then-candidate Barack Obama criticized President Clinton’s decision to grant Rosenberg clemency. ³⁸

Post-Release Activities

Left-of-center groups like the PEN American Center have praised Rosenberg for her HIV/AIDS advocacy while in prison. ¹²

Advocacy Work

Immediately following her release, Rosenberg became the communications director at the left-of-center American Jewish World Service (AJWS) organization, a position she held for nearly 12 years. ^{39 40}AJWS is an advocacy, grantmaking and issue-oriented organization which promotes both human rights like freedom from sex slavery as well as left-of-center social change priorities like greater access to abortion and advocacy for transgenderism. ⁴¹

Rosenberg co-founded the anti-prison group National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls. ⁷ According to the group’s 2017 tax return, she was listed as “former treasurer” and received $20,000 in compensation that year, but does not appear as an officer or key employee in later filings. The National Council’s revenue has grown from $286,533 in 2017 to more than $6.4 million in contributions in 2023, and it reported over $10.1 million in total assets in 2023. ^{42  43} In December 2016, Rosenberg and National Council executive director Andrea James attended Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights’ Ripple of Hope Awards gala in New York City, where then–Vice President Joe Biden was among the honorees. ⁴⁴ The organization advocates for fewer women and girls in prison and for a change in America’s prison system from punishment to criminal reform efforts. ⁴⁵

Rosenberg has taught as an adjunct professor at the City University of New York and Hunter College. ³⁹ In 2004, she was offered a teaching position at Hamilton College that was pulled after protests by faculty and students. ⁴⁶ Rosenberg has widely lectured on prominent college campuses about her prison experience and her political views. ²⁹

Thousand Currents

Formerly known as the International Development Exchange (IDEX), Thousand Currents is a left-of-center grantmaking organization. ⁴⁷ Thousand Currents’ 2019 tax return listed Rosenberg as vice chair of the board of directors, but she no longer appeared among the organization’s directors in more recent tax returns, indicating that she left the board sometime after 2019. ⁴⁸

While still known as IDEX in 2016, Thousand Currents began a sponsorship of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. ⁴⁹ In 2019, financial documents showed the group held over $3.3 million in assets earmarked for BLM. ^{50 51} Thousand Currents’ consolidated financial statements for the year ending June 30, 2020, described the group as fiscal sponsor for the Black Lives Matter Global Network Project and reported that all assets associated with that sponsorship were transferred to the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation on June 30, 2020, when Thousand Currents decided to end its fiscal sponsorship work and focus on grantmaking. ^{52  53  54}With assistance from Thousand Currents, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation established a $12 million fund in the months following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. ⁵⁵ News coverage at the time reported that Thousand Currents, as fiscal sponsor, received donations on BLM’s behalf and then released money to the network. ^{56  57} Thousand Currents has voiced support for BLM’s mission “to eradicate White supremacy and build power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes through its educational and charitable activities.” ⁵⁸

Alliance of Families for Justice

As of 2024, Rosenberg sat on the advisory board for Alliance of Families for Justice, a criminal justice advocacy group that claims it aims to “end mass incarceration.” 47 The group previously labeled Rosenberg as a “political prisoner,” who spoke at an event marking their launch in 2016. ⁵⁹