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.
(This guest post by RFC founder and former executive director, Robert Meeropol, originally appeared on his Still Out on a Limb blog at www.robertmeeropol.com/blog.)
In her final hours my mother, Ethel Rosenberg, wrote, for her and Julius: “[W]e were comforted in the sure knowledge that others would carry on after us.” Many years later, these words sparked the creation of the Rosenberg Fund for Children (RFC).
Last weekend I spoke in Toronto at a reception to re-launch the Mary Pitawanakwat Fund (MPF). The MPF is similar to the Rosenberg Fund and was, for a number of years, an RFC Canadian sub-fund. Now, after being taken under the tax-exempt wing of the Toronto-based Winchevsky Centre of the United Jewish People's Order, it was finally 100% Canadian.
(guest post by Students for a Democratic Society)
Student activists from across the country convened on the campus of Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee on the weekend of Oct. 11-13 for Students for a Democratic Society’s (SDS) 8th annual National Convention. SDS is the largest anti-war, education rights, and international solidarity student activist organization active in the U.S. today.
We’re in the midst of making our fall grants. During my six-plus years as granting coordinator this was both a favorite and difficult time of the year. I enjoyed hearing from the families we support, especially since many of them include updates about both their situations and their children with their requests for funding. But it’s also difficult to read the stories of hardship and on going trauma to children and families.
In my first blog as executive director of the RFC I reflected on Michelle Alexander’s commitment to “getting out of [her] lane” and broadening her focus from mass incarceration to the systems (racism, classism, militarization, etc.) that support and sustain the growth of the prison industrial complex.
I was struck by a column I read in the Sept. 23 issue of The Nation. In it, Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, discusses her dissatisfaction with the narrowness of her focus on mass incarceration. In reflecting on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington she finds powerful inspiration in the fact that in the aftermath of that historic event, “Dr. King ignored all those who told him to stay in his lane, just stick to talking about civil rights.” Dr.