Susan Rosenberg

Susan Lisa Rosenberg (born 1955) is an American radical political activist, author and advocate for social justice and prisoners' rights. Rosenberg was active in many radical movements of the 1970s. After living as a fugitive for two years, she was arrested with an accomplice, Timothy Blunk, in 1984 while unloading 740 pounds of dynamite and weapons from a car into a storage locker in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. She had also been sought as an accomplice in the 1979 prison escape of Assata Shakur. She was accused, but never tried or convicted, of driving the getaway car in the Brinks robbery (1981) in which two police officers and an armored-car guard were killed.

Rosenberg was sentenced to 58 years in prison on the weapons and explosives charges. She spent 16 years in prison, during which she became a poet, author and AIDS activist. Her sentence was commuted by President Bill Clinton on January 20, 2001, his final day in office.

Rosenberg was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Manhattan. Her father was a dentist and her mother a theatrical producer. She attended the progressive Walden School and later went to Barnard College. She left Barnard and became a drug counselor at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, eventually becoming licensed in the practice of Chinese medicine and acupuncture. She also worked as an anti-drug counselor and acupuncturist at health centers in Harlem, including the Black Acupuncture Advisory of North America.

In an interview with the radio show Democracy Now, Rosenberg said that she was "totally and profoundly influenced by the revolutionary movements of the '60s and '70s." She became active in feminist causes, and worked in support of the Puerto Rican independence movement and the fight against the FBI's COINTELPRO program. She also joined the May 19th Communist Organization, which worked in support of the Black Liberation Army, the Weather Underground and other revolutionary organizations. Rosenberg was charged with a role in the 1983 bombing of the United States Capitol Building, the U.S. Naval War College and the New York Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, but the charges were dropped as part of a plea deal by other members of her group.

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