Susan Rosenberg

In 2011, Rosenberg published a memoir of her time in prison called, An American Radical: A Political Prisoner In My Own Country. Kirkus Reviews said of the book, "Articulate and clear-eyed, Rosenberg's memoir memorably records the struggles of a woman determined to be the agent of her own life".

Rosenberg was transferred to various prisons around the country, in Florida, California and, finally, in Danbury, Connecticut. While in prison, she devoted herself to writing and to activism around AIDS, and obtained a master's degree from Antioch University. Speaking at a 2007 forum, Rosenberg said that writing "became the mechanism by which to save my own sanity." She added that she began writing partly because the intense isolation of prison was threatening to cut her off completely from the real world and that she did not want to lose her connection to that world.

In 2004 Hamilton College offered her a position to teach a for-credit month-long seminar, "Resistance Memoirs: Writing, Identity and Change." Some professors, alumni and parents of students objected and as a result of the ongoing protests, she declined the offer.

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's sentence was commuted by President Bill Clinton on January 20, 2001, his last day in office. Her commutation produced a wave of criticism by police and New York elected officials.

Rosenberg was one of the first two inmates of the High Security Unit (HSU), a high-security isolation unit in the basement of the Federal Correctional Institution (currently the Federal Medical Center) in Lexington, Kentucky. Allegations were made that the unit was an experimental underground political prison that practiced isolation and sensory deprivation . The women were subject to 24-hour camera surveillance and constant strip searches, and were given only limited access to visitors or to exercise. After touring the unit, the American Civil Liberties Union denounced it as a "living tomb," and Amnesty International called it "deliberately and gratuitously oppressive." After a lawsuit was brought by the ACLU and other organizations, the unit was ordered closed by a federal judge in 1988 and the prisoners transferred to regular cells.

Convicted of explosives possession in 1984, she received a 58-year-sentence, which was sixteen times the national average for such offenses. Her lawyers contend that, had the case not been politically charged, Rosenberg would have received a five-year sentence.

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.

Susan Lisa Rosenberg (born 1955) is an American far-left revolutionary, 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.