Biography
Tim Blunk was a New Jersey activist arrested with Susan Rosenberg on November 29, 1984 in Cherry Hill while moving 740 pounds of explosives and weapons into a rented storage locker. Convicted in May 1985 of weapons, explosives, and false-identification offenses and sentenced to 58 years — at the time the longest sentence ever imposed for those offenses. Named in the 1988 Resistance Conspiracy indictment, but charges were dropped in 1990 because he was already serving the 58-year sentence. He co-edited the 1990 anthology "Hauling Up the Morning" with Raymond Luc Levasseur and was paroled in the late 1990s. Blunk was part of a network of far-left underground activism in the early 1980s that framed bombings and other illegal actions as “armed struggle” against U.S. policy, including opposition to apartheid and U.S. military interventions. His arrest and prosecution grew out of weapons-and-explosives cases in the mid-1980s; he was convicted on charges involving possession of firearms, explosives, and false identification documents and received a long federal sentence.
He was later named as a defendant in the “Resistance Conspiracy” prosecution tied to the 1983 bombing inside a Senate chamber and related bombings; by the time of those indictments, he and Susan Rosenberg were already serving lengthy prison terms. Prosecutors ultimately dropped certain bombing charges in the plea-bargain resolution phase in part because of the substantial sentences already imposed for the weapons/explosives convictions.
Breakthrough Winter 1991 publishes Blunk’s coauthored article with Sally Thomas about Spanish political prisoners and identifies him as a North American anti-imperialist political prisoner most recently tried in the Resistance Conspiracy Case in Washington, D.C. It credits Blunk and Raymond Luc Levasseur, with the Jacobin Books editors, as editors of Hauling Up the Morning / Izando la Manana, an anthology of U.S. political-prisoner writing and art. This is prison-era writing and editorial activity; the issue’s press date is November 26, 1990, and the cover year is not a new arrest date. Source: https://www.freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC501_scans/Break/501.break.20.win.91.pdf#page=37
The Summer 1988 Insurgent’s biography explicitly states that Tim Blunk served one year after his 1981 arrest during anti-apartheid direct action against the South African Springbok rugby tour. This is a separate actual custody episode from his 1984 arrest with Susan Rosenberg; the issue gives neither the original jail admission nor the physical discharge. It also describes his later Leavenworth studies and Marion prison organizing. Its printed May 21, 1957 birth date conflicts with the stored January 19 date and is preserved as a research hold rather than overwritten.
The July 1986 Libertad reports Tim Blunk placed in solitary confinement on May 25, 1986 and subsequently held at Marion.
Evans’s 1999 parole memorandum reports Blunk’s March 1997 parole after 148 months served.
