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.Noam Chomsky recently wrote that “two dark clouds … hover over all consideration of [the] global order: nuclear war and environmental catastrophe, both literally threaten… the decent survival of the species.” (http://lists.portside.org/cgi-bin/listserv/wa?A2=PORTSIDE;b6d2f8ef.1202c).
Spring has come a month early to interior Southern New England, and that’s after the winter that wasn’t. In the Northeast several consecutive winters that included periods of intense cold and snow had lulled us into thinking that we were experiencing “old-fashioned weather” despite global warming. Many did not realize that the weather pattern of those winters concealed ongoing climatic warming. This year’s weather pattern maximized the impact of climate change and the vast majority of North America experienced the result. (I’m not surprised by this turn of events.
February 25th will mark the 60th anniversary of the United States Appeals Court’s affirmation of my parents’ conviction for Conspiracy to Commit Espionage. As I have explained before, my parents were convicted of conspiracy- not spying, espionage or treason as the mainstream media usually reports. Prosecutors like conspiracy charges because the law in this country holds everyone involved in the conspiracy responsible for all the acts of any of the conspirators in furtherance of the conspiracy.
Sometimes catch phrases become so commonplace that we lose sight of their meaning. Lincoln’s 203rd birthday a couple of days ago left me thinking about one of them. He concluded his Gettysburg address with the oft-repeated words that those who died fighting for the Union during that great battle fought so “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
I founded the RFC in 1990, and by the middle of that decade we had several thousand supporters. Although a number of them made inquiries about becoming monthly recurring donors or “sustainers,” out of fear of administrative complications I resisted the impulse to establish such a program. However, once we began accepting online contributions it became much easier to process recurring gifts, and in 2009 we began to promote the program in earnest.