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.
Last month, we made our first grants of 2016. We added six new families and individuals to the RFC community and awarded more than $190,000 overall to both new and existing beneficiaries. This brings our total granted since our founding to over $6 million!
Our new recipients include:
In our spring newsletter we announced that Gina Belafonte is the latest addition to our Advisory Board. This group is comprised of artists, activists, public intellectuals, and others with valuable skills or expertise, who publicly endorse our work and take other actions to support us in special ways. Gina – an actor/director/producer and activist – co-directs Sankofa.org, the organization her father Harry started to encourage artists to use their visibility to further movements for social justice. Harry Belafonte also has been on our Advisory Board since 2003.
Many prominent individuals have been part of this group over the years, including in memoriam members Pete & Toshi Seeger, Studs Terkel, Adrienne Rich, Ossie Davis, Ronnie Gilbert, and Richie Havens. Well-known present members include Angela Davis, Susan Sarandon, Chuck D, Eve Ensler, Holly Near, Ed Asner, and Mandy Patinkin, among others.
But whether or not they’re household names, all members of the RFC’s Advisory Board have powerful credentials and do exciting work in different realms. Here are short profiles of several of them.
by Robert Meeropol
originally published on Robert Meeropol's blog, Still Out on a Limb
In March the Rosenberg Fund for Children launched an online petition campaign to exonerate my mother, Ethel. I urge everyone to sign the petition, and to spread the word throughout your communities.
It might be hard to imagine a music video that shows a young father singing about love and hopes for his toddler son, behind scenes of the family changing diapers, break dancing, and marching with the baby at a protest against the School of Americas torture training camp in Georgia. But Rodrigo Starz’s new single (see below) “Can You Call it Love” – that just dropped ahead of the March 10th release of his first solo album – has all that and more.
Last week I presented at the 2016 Rebellious Lawyering Conference at Yale University. The largest student-run public interest law conference in the country, RebLaw “seeks to build a community of law students, practitioners, and activists seeking to work in the service of social change movements.”