Fact Check: Did a Black Lives Matter Leader Bomb the U.S. Capitol in 1983?

[IceWizard]

Fact Check:
Did a Black Lives Matter Leader Bomb
the U.S. Capitol in 1983?




BY MARY ELLEN CAGNASSOLA
ON 2/10/21 AT 3:32 PM EST


Congressional impeachment managers
continue their arguments Wednesday in the trial of former President Donald Trump
on the basis that he incited an insurrection, leaving some Republicans eager to
highlight instances of violence by the left.

One alleged instance circulating on social media is the 1983 bombing of the
Capitol building by a woman whom right-wing allies are saying is now a leader
of a Black Lives Matter organization.

The Claim

Joel W. Berry, managing editor for the conservative satire website
The Babylon Bee, posted a meme stating that Susan Rosenberg, who
is identified as the "head" of the "Black Lives Matter Global Network,"
participated in a 1983 bombing of the U.S. Capitol Building.
The meme says that she served only 16 years of a 58-year sentence
for the crime.

"I had to check this because it seemed too wild-- but it's TRUE.
A Left-wing terrorist who bombed the Capitol Building was pardoned
by Clinton and now fundraises for BLM," Berry said and provided a meme.



The Facts

The 1960s, '70s and early '80s gave rise to a number of organizations
aligned with the Black Power Movement and Marxist-Leninism, including
a female-led group known as the May 19th Communist Organization (M19CO).

Founded in 1978, M19CO first gained national attention when it took two
guards hostage at the Clinton (now Edna Mahan) Correctional Facility for
Women in Union Township (Hunterdon), New Jersey, and in the process
freed Assata Shakur, a member of the Black Liberation Army.

Skakur's birth name is JoAnne Chesimard, a former member of the
Black Liberation Army, who was convicted of murdering New Jersey State Trooper
Werner Foerster during a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973.

But M19CO perhaps is most recognized for its participation in a plot to
bomb the U.S. Capitol.

Late in the evening of Nov. 7, 1983, members of M19CO called the U.S. Capitol
Switchboard and advised evacuation of the building prior to setting off an
explosion in the Capitol's North Wing. No one was harmed by the detonation,
which was in protest of the U.S. decision to invade socialist Grenada,
but about $1 million of damage was caused, according to Smithsonian Magazine.

During the following 20-month span, M19CO continued a pattern of resistance
bombings at the Israel Aircraft Industries building, the South African Consulate
in New York City, Fort McNair in Washington and the Washington Navy Yard.
Each time, the group called ahead to clear the area.

One of the members involved in these attacks was Rosenberg, who was arrested
by the FBI in 1984 and charged with possession of explosives. She was
convicted and sentenced to 58 years in prison but served only 16 after
being pardoned by President Bill Clinton on his final day in office.

While in prison, Rosenberg became a writer and activist, taking on multiple
leadership roles in the nonprofit sector and academia after her sentence.
Today, she is the vice chair of the board of directors of Thousand Currents,
which performed fundraising and administrative work for the Black Lives Matter
Global Network Project for several years.


Partially True.

Susan Rosenberg, formerly a member of a left-wing terrorist group known as
M19CO, did participate in the bombing of the U.S. Capitol's North Wing in 1983,
for which she served a 16-year sentence. But she is not the head of the
Black Lives Matter Global Network.

Rosenberg is on the board of directors for a nonprofit that sponsored the
BLM Global Network Project from 2016 to 2020. While Berry acknowledged
that in the context he provides, the meme he shared is misleading.