M19 CAPITOL BOMBING

M19 was a domestic, far-left terrorist group active in the U.S. in the late 1970s and 80s. Despite the group’s lack of notoriety in comparison to the terrorist group The Weather Underground Organization, M19 was the first and only women-founded and women-led organization of its kind. Their actions grew increasingly violent over time, ranging from poster-making to the bombing of the U.S. Capitol in 1983, causing $1 million in damage. In 1979, M19 helped William Morales, an explosive expert in the Puerto Rican nationalist group FALN, and Assata Shakur, a member of the Black Liberation Army, escape from their prisons. Both Rican and Shakur remain on the FBI’s most-wanted lists. 

M19 were self-described “revolutionary anti-imperialists”. However, in contrast to the far-left group The Weather Underground, from which many of M19’s founding members came, M19 staunchly believed that their role was as supporters of the ‘real revolutionaries and revolutions’ occurring among Black and Indigenous people and countries outside of the U.S.. Although M19 had a novel and stronger emphasis on women and gay rights than other far-left terrorist groups, their primary focus was imperialism and political revolution. Following the bombing of the U.S. Capitol, M19 sent this message to the National Public Radio: “We purposely aimed our attack at the institutions of imperialist rule rather than at individual members of the ruling class and government. We did not choose to kill any of them at this time. But their lives are not sacred and their hands are stained with the blood of millions.” M19 asserted that imperialism was the root cause of injustice and that in dismantling imperialist structures other injustices would follow. 

Despite M19’s initial insistence on non-fatal attacks, as shown by the Capitol bombing, subsequently their inner papers showed evidence of a change in ideology. Members of M19 propounded that lethality was vital for anti-imperialism - “We believe that selective assassination of very clear targets is on the agenda now.”, including police and civic officers and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as potential subjects. However, before any escalation could occur, the FBI arrested many of the core members, ending the majority of M19’s actions in the late 1980s. In the process, the FBI found M19 in possession of hundreds of pounds of explosives and weaponry, leaving questions of what the group may have done had the arrests not occurred.