May 19 Communist Organization

The May 19 Communist Organization, a clandestine Marxist revolutionary group with roots in the Weather Underground, participated in a 1981 armored car robbery that renewed interest in the remnants of the new left terrorism.

By the mid-1970s, the infamous group of armed white revolutionaries known as the Weather Underground had split into bickering factions. One faction advocated a return to more traditional forms of political protest, while the other faction, which eventually took the name Weather Underground Organization (WUO), continued to advocate terrorist activity in the name of black liberation and anti-imperialism. This struggle included bombings and potential assassinations of political figures.

On November 20, 1977, after infiltrating the WUO, the FBI sent several members to jail for plotting to bomb the offices of California State senator John Briggs. Those who remained, including Kathy Boudin, a founder of Weatherman, came together to form the May 19 Communist Organization, named in honor of the birthday of both Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh. In New York, the May 19 Communist Organization, comprising mostly white, middle-class women, joined forces with the Black Liberation Army (BLA), the violent offshoot of the New York Black Panther Party. Their mutual goal was the establishment of a “New Afrika” in the southern United States, and the socialist overthrow of the U.S. government. BLA planned to partly fund its mission by “expropriation of funds”—robbing rich American institutions, such as banks, and giving the money to Third World peoples. The women of the May 19 Communist Organization functioned as the effort's public face, renting and driving the getaway cars, securing safe houses, and purchasing weapons, while the BLA took care of the violence.

On October 20, 1981, the two groups robbed a Brinks armored car in Nanuet, New York. Several BLA members, led by Mutulu Shakur (Jeral Wayne Williams), seized $1.6 million and killed one guard before escaping in a rented truck driven by Boudin and David Gilbert, another ex-Weatherman. When police stopped the truck, the armed BLA members in the back opened fire, killing two police officers. Boudin, Gilbert, ex-Weatherman Judy Clark, and BLA member Samuel Brown were immediately apprehended.

The investigation into the Brinks robbery revealed the link between May 19 and the BLA, as well alliances with other radical groups, including the Republic of New Africa and, subsequently, the FALN, the radical Puerto Rican independence group. May 19 members were suspected and later charged with assisting the prison escapes of two prominent [Page 224]revolutionaries: Assata Shakur (Joanne Chesimard), the BLA radical serving a life sentence for killing a New Jersey state trooper in 1973, and Willie Morales, a leader of the FALN. These unique collaborations triggered new concerns about “urban terrorism,” which led the administration of U.S. president Ronald Reagan to reopen investigations, dormant since the mid-1970s, of the radical left.

In February 1983, May 19 members Silvia Baraldini and Michelle Miller were jailed for refusing to testify against the FALN. That September, three more May 19 members, Linda Evans, Marilyn Buck, and Laura Jane Whitehorn, pleaded guilty to charges relating the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Capitol and other Washington, D.C., targets. In 1985, Elizabeth Duke, the head of May 19 in Austin, Texas, was indicted on federal charges for her suspected involvement in several bombings, including a 1982 New Year's Eve bombing in New York City that injured two police officers. These May 19 members are still considered political prisoners by those who share their beliefs.