Kathy Boudin

Kathy Boudin (May 19, 1943 – May 1, 2022)<ref name=Haberman>Template:Cite news</ref> was an American radical leftist who served 23 years in prison for felony murder based on her role in the 1981 Brink's robbery. Boudin was a founding member of the militant Weather Underground organization, which engaged in bombings of government buildings to express opposition to U.S. foreign policy and racism. The 1981 robbery resulted in the killing of two Nyack, New York police officers and one security guard, and serious injury to another security guard; Boudin was arrested attempting to flee after the getaway vehicle she occupied was stopped by police.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> She was released on parole in 2003. After earning a doctorate, Boudin became an adjunct professor at Columbia University.<ref name="loss">Template:Cite web</ref>

Early life, family, and education

Kathy Boudin was born in Manhattan on May 19, 1943, into a Jewish family with a storied left-wing history.<ref name = Haberman/><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Boudin was raised in Greenwich Village, New York City. Her paternal grandparents had emigrated from Russia and Austria.<ref name = HuntMemo>Template:Cite news</ref> Her great-uncle was Marxist theorist Louis B. Boudin. Her mother was poet Jean (Roisman) Boudin, whose sister Esther was married to radical journalist I.F. Stone (making him Kathy's uncle).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Her father, attorney Leonard Boudin, had represented clients such as Judith Coplon,<ref name="HuntMemo"/> the Cuban government,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and Paul Robeson.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> A National Lawyers Guild attorney, Leonard Boudin was the law partner of Victor Rabinowitz, himself counsel to numerous left-wing organizations.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Her brother, Michael Boudin, became a conservative lawyer and served as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

Kathy Boudin graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1965 as valedictorian.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> After college, she attended the Case Western Reserve University School of Law for less than a year.<ref name="naked">Template:Cite magazine</ref>

Boudin met her romantic partner, David Gilbert, in the 1970s and gave birth to their son Chesa Boudin in 1980.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> When her son was 14 months old, she was arrested and subsequently convicted and incarcerated for felony murder based on her role in the 1981 Brink's robbery.<ref name="people-2002-12-13">Template:Cite web</ref> Her son was raised by former Weatherman leaders Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.<ref name="people-2002-12-13"/><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Weather Underground

Kathy Boudin FBI wanted poster issued May 1, 1970 with first name misspelled

In 1969, Boudin became a founding member of the Weatherman faction of Students for a Democratic Society; in 1970, this faction became known as the Weather Underground Organization (WUO). In 1970, she and Cathy Wilkerson were the only survivors of the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion; a bomb that their comrades were constructing in anticipation of an attack on U.S. Army personnel that evening exploded prematurely, killing three militants and demolishing the building that they were using as a hideout and bomb factory.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Boudin emerged from the wreckage naked<ref name = Haberman/><ref name="naked" /> and then disappeared.<ref name = Haberman/> The WUO soon after renounced actions that sought to inflict human casualties.<ref>The Weather Underground (film) (statement of Bill Ayers)</ref>Template:Better source Boudin remained a fugitive for more than a decade, engaging in multiple bombings (none of which resulted in injuries) and other actions.Template:Better source

In 1981, Boudin and several former members of the Weather Underground, along with current members of the May 19th Communist Organization and the Black Liberation Army, robbed a Brink's armored car at the Nanuet Mall in Nanuet, New York.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Boudin was in the front seat of a U-Haul truck used as a switchcar getaway vehicle and also acted as a decoy. Responding police testified that when they spotted and pulled her over, Boudin feigned innocence and encouraged the two responding officers put their guns down, whereupon her accomplices leaped from the back of the truck with automatic weapons and shot officers Edward O'Grady and Waverly Brown, killing them both. In addition to killing Grady and Brown, the robbers had already seriously wounded guard Joseph Trombino; killed his partner, Peter Paige; and injured two other police officers.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Guilty plea and incarceration

Boudin was arrested while attempting to flee the scene on foot. As part of a negotiated plea agreement to avoid three potential murder convictions that could have resulted in Boudin serving three consecutive 25-years-to-life sentences, she pleaded guilty to felony murder and robbery in exchange for an agreed-upon sentence of 20 years to life in prison.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

While incarcerated, Boudin published articles in the Harvard Educational Review ("Participatory Literacy Education Behind Bars: AIDS Opens the Door," Summer 1993, 63 (2)),<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> in Breaking the Rules: Women in Prison and Feminist Therapy by Judy Harden and Marcia Hill ("Lessons from a Mother's Program in Prison: A Psychosocial Approach Supports Women and Their Children," published simultaneously in Women & Therapy, 21),<ref name=autogenerated1>Template:Cite journal Pdf. Template:Webarchive</ref> and in Breaking the Walls of Silence: AIDS and Women in a New York State Maximum-Security Prison. She co-authored The Foster Care Handbook for Incarcerated Parents published by Bedford Hills in 1993. She also co-edited Parenting from inside/out: Voices of mothers in prison, jointly published by correctional institutions and the Osborne Association.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>Template:Deadlink Boudin also co-founded AIDS Committee for Education (ACE) inside the prison in 1988 with other incarcerated women including Katrina Haslip and Judith Alice Clark to provide accurate education on living with HIV.<ref name="Day">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> During this time, she earned a master's in adult education from Vermont College, then the women's college of Norwich University.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Boudin also wrote and published poetry while incarcerated, publishing in books and journals including the PEN Center Prize Anthology Doing Time, Concrete Garden, and Aliens at the Border.<ref>Wall tappings :an international anthology of women's prison writings, edited by Judith A. Scheffler (at Google books)</ref>Template:Better source She won an International PEN prize for her poetry in 1999.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>Template:Better source

Boudin and Roslyn D. Smith contributed the piece "Alive Behind the Labels: Women in Prison" to the 2003 anthology Sisterhood Is Forever: The Women's Anthology for a New Millennium, edited by Robin Morgan.<ref name="illinois1">Template:Cite web</ref>Template:Better source

After almost 23 years' imprisonment, Boudin was granted parole on August 20, 2003, in her third parole hearing. She was released from the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility on September 18, 2003.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Life after prison

After her release from prison, Boudin accepted a job in the HIV/AIDS Clinic at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center, meeting the work provisions of parole that required active job prospects.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Later, she founded the Coming Home Program at the Spencer Cox Center for Health at Mt. Sinai/St.Luke’s Hospital in Morningside Heights, which provides health care for people returning from incarceration.<ref name="loss" />Template:Better source

In May 2004 Boudin published an essay in the Fellowship of Reconciliation's publication Fellowship, expressing remorse for her participation in the Brink's robbery, which she described as "horrific."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> She received an EdD degree from Columbia University Teachers College in 2007.<ref name="Columbia" /><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Columbia University

Boudin was named an adjunct professor at the Columbia University School of Social Work, where she was the co-director and co-founder of the Center for Justice at Columbia University.<ref name="Columbia">Template:Cite web</ref> Her appointment was controversial due to her guilty plea to a felony murder charge and her past participation in a group which carried out terrorist attacks in the United States.<ref name="NYPost">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="RCT">Template:Cite news</ref> However, an opinion piece in the Columbia Daily Spectator noted that she took responsibility for her crimes and successfully rehabilitated herself.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Columbia School of Social Work Associate Dean Marianne Yoshioka, who hired Boudin for the adjunct-professor post in 2008, was quoted as saying that Boudin has been "an excellent teacher who gets incredible evaluations from her students each year."<ref name="NYPost" /> In 2013, she was Sheinberg Scholar-in-Residence at New York University School of Law. The law school has maintained a video of her lecture.<ref>Template:YouTube</ref>

In popular culture

Boudin was a model for the title role in David Mamet's play The Anarchist (2012).<ref name=Lahr>Template:Cite magazine</ref> She also was a model for Willy Holtzman's Off-Broadway play Something You Did (2008).<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Boudin was an inspiration for the character Merry in Philip Roth's American Pastoral.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Death

On May 1, 2022, Boudin died in New York City at the age of 78.<ref name=Haberman /><ref name=boudindies>Template:Cite news</ref> According to her son Chesa Boudin, who was serving as District Attorney of San Francisco, Boudin had been battling cancer for seven years.<ref name=boudindies />

Further reading

• "A Family Circle From Hell". 26 Thomas Jefferson Law Review 409 (2004), a review written by Arthur Austin.
• Template:Cite web Castellucci, J. (1986).
• Family Circle: The Boudins and the Aristocracy of the Left. Susan Braudy, Anchor, 2004, Template:ISBN.
• Template:Webarchive.
• "Housing Complicates Boudin's Release". The New York Times, September 6, 2003. "When Kathy Boudin was granted parole last month after 22 years in prison for her role in a 1981 armored-car robbery and shootout that left three dead, her supporters thought it would be just a matter of days before she gained freedom".
• "Kathy Boudin's Impact". Abby Luby, Bedford Record-Review, September 2005.
• Letter from Kathy Boudin '65. Bryn Mawr alumnae bulletin, letter written in 2001 after Boudin had been incarcerated for 19 years.
• "New Trial for Woman in 1981 Brink’s Case Is Reopening Old Wounds". The New York Times, October 1, 2006. "It has been a quarter-century since a group of self-styled freedom fighters, including Judith A. Clark, carried out an armored-car robbery in Rockland County, New York. The holdup was a final eruption of Vietnam-era extremism and a shattering event for Rockland County, which lost two local police officers and a Brinks guard".
• Review of Family Circle. Template:Webarchive The Nation, January 5, 2004.
• The New York Times – Topics: Kathy Boudin. Collected news stories including commentary and archival articles since 1983.