Kathy Boudin

Kathy Boudin (born May 19, 1943) is a former member of the radical left militant organization Weather Underground who was convicted of felony murder for her role in the Brink's robbery of 1981. The robbery resulted in the killing of two Nyack police officers and one security guard, and serious injury to another security guard.[1] Boudin was released from prison on parole in 2003 and became an adjunct professor at Columbia University.

Early life and family

Kathy Boudin was born on May 19, 1943, into a family with a long left-wing history. She was raised in Greenwich Village, New York City. Her family was Jewish and her paternal grandparents had emigrated from Russia and Austria.[2] Her great-uncle was Louis B. Boudin, a Marxist theorist. Her father, attorney Leonard Boudin, had represented controversial clients such as Judith Coplon,[3] the Cuban government,[4] and Paul Robeson.[5] A National Lawyers Guild attorney, Leonard Boudin was the law partner of Victor Rabinowitz, himself counsel to numerous left-wing organizations.[6] Kathy Boudin attended Bryn Mawr College and was valedictorian of the class of 1965.[7][8]

Boudin fell in love with David Gilbert in the 1970s and gave birth to their son Chesa in 1980.[9] When her son was 14 months old she was arrested and subsequently incarcerated for murder and bank robbery.[10] Her son was raised by former Weatherman leaders Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.[10][11][12][13]

Kathy Boudin FBI wanted poster issued 1 May 1970

1981 Brink's robbery
Main article: Brink's robbery (1981)

In the 1960s and 1970s, Boudin became heavily involved with the Weather Underground. In 1981, Boudin and several former members of the Weather Underground and the Black Liberation Army robbed a Brink's armored car at the Nanuet Mall, in Nanuet, New York. Boudin was the driver of the getaway vehicle and also acted as a decoy. The robbery severely wounded guard Joseph Trombino; killed his partner, Peter Paige; killed police officers Waverly Brown and Edward O'Grady; and injured two other police officers.

Guilty plea and incarceration

Boudin eventually pleaded guilty to felony murder and robbery in exchange for a sentence of 20 years to life in prison.

While incarcerated, Boudin published articles in the Harvard Educational Review ("Participatory Literacy Education Behind Bars: AIDS Opens the Door," Summer 1993, 63 (2)),[14] 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),[15] 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 Foundation.[16]

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.[17] She won an International PEN prize for her poetry in 1999.[18]

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.[19]

Boudin was granted parole on August 20, 2003, in her third parole hearing. She was released from Bedford Hills Correctional Facility on September 17, 2003.

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.[20]

In May 2004, after her parole, Boudin published in the Fellowship of Reconciliation's publication Fellowship.[21] Subsequently, she received an Ed. D. from Columbia University Teachers College. In addition to her work at St. Luke's-Roosevelt, Boudin has worked as a consultant to the Osborne Association in the development of a Longtermers Responsibility Project taking place in the New York State Correctional Facilities, utilizing a restorative practice approach. She has also consulted for Vermont Corrections and the Women's Prison Association and supervises social workers.[22]

Columbia University

Boudin was named an adjunct professor at the Columbia University School of Social Work, where she is now the co-director and co-founder of the Center for Justice at Columbia University.[22] 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.[23][24] However, an opinion piece in the Columbia Daily Spectator noted that she took responsibility for her crimes and successfully rehabilitated herself.[25] 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."[23] In 2013, she was Sheinberg Scholar-in-Residence at New York University School of Law. The School of Law maintains a video of her lecture.[26]

Boudin was a model for the title role in David Mamet's play The Anarchist (2012).[27] She also was a model for Willy Holtzman's Off-Broadway play Something You Did (2008). Boudin was also an inspiration for the character Mary in Philip Roth's American Pastoral.

See also

References
  1. Quieter Lives for 60's Militants, but Intensity of Beliefs Hasn't Faded
  2. "A Background Paper on Leonard Boudin Prepared for White House by Hunt". The New York Times. Retrieved 2020-08-03.
  3. "A Background Paper on Leonard Boudin Prepared for White House by Hunt". The New York Times. July 19, 1974. Retrieved 15 November 2019.
  4. Leonard Boudin, Civil Liberties Lawyer, Dies at 77
  5. Powers, Thomas (November 2, 2003). "Underground Woman". New York Times. Retrieved 2008-07-21. Kathy Boudin was a child of privilege, but it was the glare of public attention – not money or status – that set her apart from the ordinary run of children of middle-class professionals. It began with her father's fame as a lawyer and his many celebrated, in some cases notorious, clients, including Paul Robeson, Rockwell Kent, Joan Baez and Fidel Castro.
  6. Victor Rabinowitz, 96, Leftist Lawyer, Dies
  7. Bryn Mawr Alumni Bulletin at the Wayback Machine (archived 2016-03-03)
  8. Johnson, Angela (April 29, 1987). "True, False, or Hearsay?". The College News. Retrieved February 18, 2020.
  9. Gilbert, David (2012). Love and Struggle. Oakland: PM Press. p. 198. ISBN 978-1-60486-319-2.
  10. Heyman, J.D. (December 23, 2002). "Free Thinker". People Magazine. Retrieved November 3, 2019.
  11. https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/Chesa-Boudin-son-of-imprisoned-radicals-looks-13533584.php
  12. Boudin, Chesa (2005). "Chapter 1: Letters to Our Parents". In Berger, Dan; Boudin, Chesa; Farrow, Kenyon (eds.). Letters from Young Activists. Today's Rebels Speak Out. Nation Books. pp. 3–8. ISBN 978-1-56025-747-9.
  13. Boudin, Chesa (2009). Gringo. New York: Scribner. p. 8. ISBN 978-1-4165-5912-2.
  14. Resources on Prisons
  15. Boudin, Kathy (1998). "Lessons from a mother's program in prison: a psychosocial approach supports women and their children". Women & Therapy. 21 (1): 103–125. doi:10.1300/J015v21n01_01. Pdf. Archived 2007-06-26 at the Wayback Machine
  16. Microsoft Word – Sp 05 Psy 312 Syllabus 011705.doc
  17. Wall tappings :an international anthology of women's prison writings, edited by Judith A. Scheffler (at Google books)
  18. PEN American Center – 1998–1999 Archived 2010-06-08 at the Wayback Machine
  19. "Library Resource Finder: Table of Contents for: Sisterhood is forever : the women's anth". Vufind.carli.illinois.edu. Retrieved 2015-10-15.
  20. Foderaro, Lisa W. (September 17, 2003). "Boudin Freed From Prison After Serving 22 Years". New York Times. Retrieved 2012-08-04. Kathy Boudin, the former 1960's radical and fugitive, walked out of prison into the brilliant September sunshine today, 22 years after her involvement in an armored-car robbery that left three dead. Appearing relaxed but unsmiling, Ms. Boudin turned around in the parking lot at 8:45 a.m. and spent a few minutes waving a slow farewell to her friends among the inmate population, who were watching her departure from inside the prison.
  21. Boudin, Kathy. "Making a Different Way of Life". Archived from the original on 2008-07-09. Retrieved 2008-10-12.
  22. Kathy Boudin, Assistant Professor, Columbia University School of Social Work
  23. Celona, Larry; Dan Mangan (April 2, 2013). "Outrage 101: Radical Jailed in Slay Now Columbia Prof". New York Post. Retrieved 2013-04-14. Former Weather Underground radical Kathy Boudin — who spent 22 years in prison for an armored-car robbery that killed two cops and a Brinks guard — now holds a prestigious adjunct professorship at Columbia University's School of Social Work, The Post has learned.
  24. Knight, Robert (April 11, 2013). "Hometown Outrage at Boudin Hiring". Rockland County Times. Retrieved 2013-04-14. Shocked at last week's Rockland County Times revelation that Columbia University has hired convicted, jailed and released Weather Underground terrorist Kathy Boudin as an adjunct professor, a furious Orangetown Town Board Tuesday unanimously approved a resolution of condemnation, and has demanded the university terminate Boudin immediately and send letters of apology to the families of the three officers killed during the infamous 1981 Brinks armored truck robbery in Nanuet and Nyack.
  25. Hawthorne, Julien. "A strange redemption". Columbia Daily Spectator. Spectator Publishing Company, Inc. Retrieved 27 October 2019.
  26. 19th Annual Rose Sheinberg Lecture on YouTube
  27. Lahr, John (10 December 2012). "Rough Justice". The New Yorker. Condé Nast. Retrieved 18 July 2016.

Further reading
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