Is it that lately activists are more under siege? Maybe I think so because I hear so many horror stories at the RFC. Yesterday I read about the Muslim students at UC Irvine in California being charged with criminal offenses because they heckled a speech on their campus given by the Israeli Ambassador.

Over the last four decades, I have traveled widely, speaking about reopening the Rosenberg case and about the RFC. Whenever possible my wife Elli has accompanied me; many of you have met her. Now we are turning the tables.

I recently received two very moving communications. The first was a letter from one of our younger donors and the second was an email about one of our oldest.

Bea, who faithfully supported the RFC since she first learned of our existence in the early 1990’s, passed away earlier this month at the age of 91. Her son emailed us a summary of her life, portions of which I quote below:

I’ve received such an overwhelming response to my 12/23/10 blog, Julian Assange, My Parents and the Espionage Act of 1917, that I feel compelled to revisit the issue.

Did you know that on December 9th thousands of inmates in at least six major prisons in Georgia simultaneously went on strike? Unless you receive news from progressive sources like Democracy Now!, the Center for Constitutional Rights or San Francisco Bay View, you’d be hard pressed to know that the largest prisoners’ strike in United States history took place for a week last month.