Actually, I fudged this post’s title a bit. It’s true that my brother’s and my precedent-setting Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in the 1970’s was against the FBI, the Attorney General and other government agencies. However the “other Meeropol” I mention is my daughter Rachel, and the fudge is that she isn’t a plaintiff against the government.

Recently, I’ve seen several Op Ed pieces and letters to the editor by teachers expressing dismay at the extent of the hostility that has been directed at them during the course of the current debate over “reforming” public education. While I share their concern that a lot of these attacks appear unwarranted and camouflage a right-wing agenda to gut public education and destroy teachers’ unions, I am even more concerned that the teaching profession is far from the only one that has come in for such vilification.

Two weeks ago, just before I left for vacation, I received a book in the mail with the following inscription: “The author’s profits from this book will be given to the Rosenberg Fund for Children.”

The book, entitled, This American Family: Growing up as a Red Diaper Baby, is a memoir of the childhood of author Chris Christie. I read it last week, while taking a break from New England’s snow and cold in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

(En Español)

Luisa (a pseudonym) has been receiving Rosenberg Fund for Children (RFC) support since she was 15 years old. She’s now a student at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), the largest university in the Caribbean and the premier Spanish-speaking institution of higher learning under the control of the United States.

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.