Biography
David Gilbert is an American radical Marxist, author, and a member of The Weather Underground Organization. Inspired in his teens by the Greensboro sit-ins and other events of the American Civil Rights Movement, he joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) at 17. He became a student at Columbia University and funded the Independent Committee Against the War in Vietnam [ICV] and a chapter of Students for a Democratic Society.
In 1969, SDS split into different ideological factions and the Weathermen emerged, its purpose being to build up armed struggle amidst young white-Americans in support of the Black Panthers and other militant groups and also oppose the war in Vietnam via actions that “Bring the War Home”. Gilbert joined this group in 1969.
In the late 1970s or early 1980s Gilbert and other white activists took the name RATF (Revolutionary Armed Task Force), declaring their solidarity with the Black Liberation Army (BLA). RATF attempted to rob a Brink's armored cash handling car with Gilbert and his wife Kathy Boudin serving as getaway driver and lookout. A shootout ensured, leading to the death of a security guard and later two police officers. Gilbert fled the scene with other RATF and BLA members but was later caught by police, tried, and sentenced in 1983 to 75 years for three counts of felony manslaughter. While in prison, Gilbert co-founded an inmate peer education program on HIV and AIDS and published book reviews and essays in a number of small/independent newspapers.
Gilbert received a grant of clemency from Governor Andrew Cuomo on August 23, 2021, reducing his minimum term from 75 years to 40. He was granted parole on October 26, 2021 and released on November 4, 2021.
The October 8, 1982 Revolutionary Worker reports Gilbert challenging restrictions on political T-shirts at the September Brink’s pretrial hearings. He contrasted the ban on defendants’ political statements with the American flags worn by sheriff’s personnel. This adds contemporary political-defense context during existing custody, without changing any arrest, conviction or release date. Source: https://bannedthought.net/USA/RCP/RW/1982/RW175-English.pdf#page=13
The demonstration report prints a prison solidarity message identifying David Gilbert at Auburn. This is evidence of the institution at the time of the April 1986 report; it supplies no exact transfer day and does not change a later or earlier institution in the existing case. Source: Report on the Marion/Lexington demonstration, April 19, 1986, PDF page 21. https://freedomarchives.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/3.report.demo_.4.19.1986.pdf#page=21
A January 17, 1988 Prisoner Education Project on AIDS statement by Mujahid Farid says he, David Gilbert and Angel Nieves proposed the Auburn peer-education project in June 1987. It reports Gilbert’s selection to coordinate prisoner participation on August 27 and his physical transfer from Auburn to Clinton on December 22, 1987. Farid characterized the transfer as retaliation; that causal claim is attributed to him. The source supplies prison organizing and transfer history, not a new jail admission or additional sentence.
Breakthrough’s Spring 1982 prisoner correspondence directory groups Solomon Brown, Kathy Boudin, Judy Clark and David Gilbert under the shared mailing address Pouch 1, Woodbourne, New York 12788. The original does not identify this as Woodbourne State Prison or individually establish where those four people were physically housed. This is retained solely as a historical correspondence reference; no institution, admission, transfer, release or duration is inferred from that shared postal address.
The bulletin individually names this defendant among four captured after the October 20, 1981 Nyack Brinks action and prints the committee’s solidarity declaration. The editorial presents the arrests as repression of the revolutionary movement. This is contemporary capture and defense context, without a new prosecution row, imposed sentence or completed custody total. The source prints Kathy Coudin in one passage; the known Nyack four and other explicit Boudin spelling resolve that typo.
Tip of the Iceberg, December 1981 (surviving twelve-page scan), PDF page 2.
The author notice identifies Gilbert at Wende, public number 83A6158, born October 6, 1944, captured October 20, 1981, with a seventy-five-years-to-life sentence. His book and cross-class organizing webinar document political writing during imprisonment. The nominal term is not actual completed service.
The Dragons Fire, National Jericho Movement Newsletter, vol. 6, July–August 2018, PDF page 18.
The Wende prison address and reproduced political autobiography describe felony-murder conviction, seventy-five years to life, prison writing and peer AIDS education after Kuwasi Balagoon’s December 13, 1986 death. The old forecast of no parole consideration before 2056 is retained as the statement’s contemporary expectation, not a later actual release endpoint.
The state policy report individually confirms arrest on October 20, 1981 and actual pretrial confinement in the Brink’s prosecution. Its security discussion distinguishes Rockland, Orange and Westchester trial arrangements and later prison custody from release. The body gives June 23, 1983 for transfer to Orange County while its chronology gives June 19; no exact transfer day is selected from this internal conflict. Transfers and court appearances are not discharges to freedom. The report gives the September 14, 1983 verdict and three consecutive twenty-five-years-to-life terms, but dates sentencing October 7 in the narrative and October 6 in the chronology. This discrepancy is preserved; the nominal sentence is not actual time served.
Report of the New York State Policy Study Group on Terrorism, November 1985, PDF page 41.
