son of revolutionaries and new attorney of San Francisco

The lawyer, whose parents were members of the far-left group Weather Underground, belongs to a new generation of progressive prosecutors who are seeking to correct racial injustices in the criminal justice system.

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Chesa Boudin on the night of her election as city attorney, in the South Market district of San Francisco. SCOTT STRAZZANTE / AP

LETTER FROM SAN FRANCISCO

Chesa Boudin was fourteen months old when her parents dropped her off at the babysitter's house to attack an armored van. " They never came back "Says the candidate. The parents were far-left activists in the boiling New York of the 1970s. David Gilbert, the father, had founded the group of socialist students at Columbia University. Kathy Boudin, the mother, was from a family of Jewish intellectuals from Greenwich Village. Grandfather Leonard Boudin, was a lawyer who had represented Dashiell Hammett, Fidel Castro and Daniel Ellsberg. The great-uncle was the Marxist theorist Louis Boudin.

The parents of Chesa – first name of Swahili origin – were members of the anti-imperialist movement Weather Underground. A group born of the protest against the Vietnam War and increasingly tempted by violent action. The "Weather", as its members called it, meant to be the "White fighting force Fighting alongside the Black Liberation Army.

Trainee at Hugo Chavez

The adventure ended on October 20, 1981, in Nyak, northern New York, when the couple was arrested during the attack on a convoy of Brink's by the Black Liberation Army. The hold up went wrong and killed three people, a money coach and two policemen. David Gilbert was sentenced to 75 years in prison. Kathy Boudin, who was driving the van that was supposed to recover the booty, at 20 years old.

Their son Chesa has been adopted by the two leaders of the underground underground, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Two academics on the Chicago South Side who have been around for years but whose name continues to heckle conservatives (ex-law professor Barack Obama knows something about it) who was vilified during the 2008 election for having rubbed Bill Ayers at the University of Chicago). With four parents engaged in the struggle against US imperialism in the world, " Chesa could hardly follow in their footsteps, he explained in an interview at Los Angeles Times. Between his graduation from Yale and his Oxford Rhodes Scholarship, he was an intern with Venezula President Hugo Chavez, whose talks on Bolivarian revolution ".

With a narrow majority (2,825 votes), Chesa Boudin was declared the winner on November 9 of the election for the post of prosecutor of San Francisco, his adopted city since 2012. He will be in charge of politics. Criminal of the capital of Northern California. He learned of his victory as he was leaving the maximum security prison in Wende, New York, where his father is still incarcerated. Her mother, who was released in 2003, teaches at Columbia University, where she specialized in the sociology of women in prison.

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