Jennifer Meeropol is the granddaughter of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and the daughter of RFC Founder, Robert Meeropol. Jenn became the Executive Director of the RFC on September 1, 2013. Prior posts on this page were written by Robert (unless otherwise noted), and represent his opinions, which are not necessarily shared by the RFC.
As my father and I shared in the cover story of our spring 2020 newsletter, The RFC at 30, this year is the RFC’s 30th anniversary. That means it’s also the 25th anniversary of one of our signature granting programs, our Attica Prison Visits, which began in 1995. In its first 10 years, we awarded a total of just over $87,000 from this program. In the last decade and a half, we awarded more than three times that amount, bringing the total for these grants to over $300,000.
I’m writing this report at a time of great uncertainty and fear. We don’t know who the Democratic nominee for president will be in 2020, nor is there any certainty that the eventual candidate will face President Trump, who could be impeached before the election. We don’t know where the next deadly natural disaster will strike or what new repressive court decision or law might require resistance.
In the midst of this uncertainty, there ARE some constants.
(Guest blog by former RFC beneficiary Davíd Morales)
I remember the exact moment I received the email from school admin, a couple of days before my high school graduation, notifying me that I would not be participating in the commencement ceremony. My heart raced while reading it and then sank at the thought of my immigrant parents, who had sacrificed so much, not being able to see their first child walk across the stage.
The RFC turns 30 next year. Many of our supporters have been with us for most, if not all, of the past three decades but I bet even some of them may not know about a small but vital grant program: our group grants. The RFC has awarded over $7 million in our history. Of that, significant amounts went to support prison visits, young activists targeted for their own organizing efforts and Gathering programs.
30 March, 2010
"I'm in the hole down here in Coleman (USP#1) Florida, Hoping to be let out into general population soon, after being dragged through the SHU's (holes) of several prisons over the past few months. At my age, I don't travel as well, physically, as I once did. And it wears on one mentally and spiritually as well. So it was a nice surprise, and affirmation just now when the screw passed your 20th anniversary Carry it Forward, part 1, newsletter through the food port into this cell.
It reminds me that there are struggles happening on so many fronts, at so many levels, by so many people, all of whom are united by a common thread of humanity that, even when stretched as thin as a cobweb at times, it still binds us together with the strength of a steel cable."