“I am so grateful to the Parole Board and to everyone who has supported my father during his more than 40 years in prison.”
By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News
The father of progressive San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin was granted parole on Tuesday, after spending more than four decades behind bars in a New York prison.
Boudin’s parents, Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, who grew up in middle-class, Jewish homes, were both members of the left-wing domestic terror group the Weather Underground.
Over the course of several years, the group declared war against the American government and committed multiple bombings, arson attacks, and a bank robbery which left three people dead.
The Weather Underground also held that all white people are “tainted with the original sin of skin privilege,” telling journalists that “all white babies are pigs.”
For their involvement in the deadly bank robbery, Boudin’s parents were sentenced to lengthy prison terms. His mother was released in 2003 after serving 22 years behind bars.
Despite her conviction for felony murder, she was appointed as an adjunct professor at Columbia University in 2008.
Chesa Boudin, who was 14 months old at the time of his parents’ arrests, was raised by family friends and has implemented lenient prosecutorial policies during his tenure as District Attorney of San Francisco.
He has been the subject of several recall campaigns focused on his anti-carceral attitude, as crime in the city skyrockets.
“I am so grateful to the Parole Board and to everyone who has supported my father during his more than 40 years in prison,” Boudin told San Francisco TV station ABC 7.
“I’m thinking about the other children affected by this crime and want to make sure that nothing I do or say further upsets the victims’ families. Their loved ones will never be forgotten. And I am thinking of the other people inside who have worked so hard to transform their lives and hope one day to return home.”
In a September 2021 interview with the Atlantic, Boudin maintained that police officers who criticized his soft-on-crime policies were fighting to maintain a racist system aimed at oppressing minorities.
“We’ve seen the police union not just spend millions attacking me and other like-minded reformers—they also went after my predecessors,” said Boudin.
“[It has] nothing to do with me or my policies and everything to do with a retrograde, reactionary, racist police-union leadership determined to exploit tragedies, undermine criminal-justice reform, and ensure impunity for even those police officers who shoot and kill unarmed black men.”