As published in Townhall.com.

https://townhall.com/columnists/joeconnor/2020/07/07/sound-familiar-n2572011

My father Frank Connor was murdered by the terrorists from whom the organization (not the truism), Black Lives Matter (BLM) descends. 

On January 24, 1975, the Marxist Puerto Rican terrorist group Armed Forces for National Liberation (“FALN”) blew up New York’s historic Fraunces Tavern during a crowded lunchtime. The FALN appointed themselves my 33 year old father’s judge, jury, and executioner, profiling, targeting, and savagely murdering so-called “reactionary corporate executives.” The Connor family had planned to celebrate my 9th and my brother’s 11th birthday that very night.

Fraunces was targeted by the FALN — who, like BLM for the US, sought to impose a Cuban-style socialist regime in Puerto Rico — for its proximity to Wall Street and for its history as the birthplace of American liberty.  Alexander Hamilton and the Sons of Liberty met there. General George Washington bade farewell to his officers at Fraunces after the Revolutionary War.

Links between these FALN terrorists and today’s BLM Organization include BLM fundraiser Susan Rosenberg, Marxist Cuba and then VP Joe Biden.

As retired FBI agent Rick Hahn puts it,

“Susan Rosenberg was a member of the May 19 Communist Organization, a splinter group supporting the more well known, Weather Underground who bombed, trained and encouraged select minorities to engage in terrorism.  These included the FALN (who the Weather Underground materially helped) and a group of thugs and radical females known as “The Family” or the “Revolutionary Armed Task Force.”

Rosenberg’s Family engaged in a series of terrorist prison escapes and armored car robberies:

William Morales, chief FALN bomb-maker, likely built the deadly devices used to murder my father at Fraunces.  On July 12, 1978, which would have been my dad’s 37th birthday, Morales blew off part of his face and nine of his fingers when a bomb he was crafting exploded in his Queens, NY bomb factory. The apartment contained explosives, incendiary mixtures, tools, FALN communiqués, and even the copy machine used to make those communiqués, including the January 24, 1975, communiqué found after the Fraunces bombing.

Morales was captured, tried, convicted, and sentenced in 1979 to up to 99 years in prison  but was broken out of Bellevue hospital prison by The Family.

Morales was located by the FBI in Puebla, Mexico, in 1983. When the Mexican police closed in, he and an accomplice killed a Mexican police officer. Morales was arrested, charged with being an accessory to murder, and imprisoned in Mexico.

In 1988, ignoring President Reagan’s extradition demands, the sympathetic Mexican government allowed Morales to travel to Cuba, where he remains a guest of the Castro regime along with scores of murderous and felonious fugitives such as Victor Gerena and Black Liberation Army cop killer Joanne Chesimard (Assata Shakur).  According to Politico, the May 19th women also participated in Chesimard’s escape from a New Jersey Prison.

The Morales / Chesimard connections remained on US college campuses well into the 21st century.   City College of New York (CCNY) incredibly maintained the Morales / Shakur Center honoring these two Marxist terrorists until it was finally shut down in 2013.  My father went to CCNY.  CCNY honored a leader of a terrorist group who murdered one of their students!  Photos I took of a clinched fist painted on the door of the center are uncannily familiar to the BLM logo itself.

Only days after Fidel Castro’s death in 2016, BLM paid tribute to this murderous Marxist by issuing a statement, “Although no leader is free from shortcomings, we must respond to right-wing rhetoric and defend El Comandante,” Fidel vive!” (Fidel lives!)

Further, The Family pulled off one of the most infamous armored car robberies in US history at the Nanuet, NY mall where they shot and killed Brinks guard Peter Paige.  After escaping, Family members were stopped in Nyack, NY at a police roadblock.  There members leapt from the back of a U-Haul truck and fired on police, killing officers Waverly Brown and Sgt. Edward O’Grady. 

Several of the terrorists escaped with the help of Susan Rosenberg and other May 19th members.  Rosenberg was subsequently caught in Cherry Hill, New Jersey with weapons and hundreds of pounds of dynamite and other explosives. Despite being sentenced to 58 years in prison, Rosenberg’s sentence was commuted by Bill Clinton in 2001 after only 16 years. 

Today, Rosenberg is listed as Vice Chairwoman of Thousand Currents, the organization that handles funding for a Black Lives Matter organization.

Obama / Biden clemency to FALN terrorist

Between 1974 and 1983, the aforementioned FALN claimed responsibility for over 130 bombings in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Though never prosecuted specifically for the Fraunces bombing, the unrepentant terrorists served only 18 years of prison sentences ranging from 55 to 70 years. As Hillary Clinton geared up for her 2000 New York Senate run and was looking to connect with New York’s Hispanic community, in August 1999 Bill Clinton granted clemency to the FALN, a blatant political gesture orchestrated by then deputy attorney general Eric Holder.

One terrorist, FALN leader Oscar Lopez Rivera, was so dedicated to his cause and his comrades that he refused the 1999 Clinton clemency.   However in 2017 he accepted an unprecedented and astonishing second clemency from Obama / Biden.  Granting a second clemency to this unrepentant terrorist was one of the Obama / Biden Administration’s last acts in office. 

Equally astonishing was the Left’s plan (including NY Governor Cuomo, Mayor Deblasio and many New York, and Chicago Democrats) to bestow at the 2017 Puerto Rican Day Parade a “Freedom Hero” award on this Marxist terrorist who sought to enslave Puerto Ricans in a Cuba like state. 

Fortunately a group of justice minded Americans proved that We the People still have power by convincing corporates like Goya Foods, Coca Cola, Jet Blue, Telemundo, the New York Yankees and others to withdraw sponsorship.

Unlike the Marxist groups from the past who clearly identified their intentions through their names, ie. “Armed Forces, Communist Organization, Underground and Liberation Army” today’s Marxists are more, clever, sublime and covert, using names like “Black Lives Matter” and “Anti-Fascist.”  While their names are euphemistic, their intentions are clear and all too familiar.

As Bryan Burrough quoted in his book, Days of Rage connecting these Leftist terror groups, “They appointed themselves my father’s (Frank Connor) judge, jury, and executioner. He represented something they didn’t like, so they decided they had the right to kill him.”

Sound familiar?