We all know that 2020 was a very difficult year. It featured a raging pandemic fueled by inept leadership, endless police brutality directed at Black and Indigenous people and other people of color, and violent attacks on those protesting these assaults. It also included increasing economic inequality, environmental destruction, and much more, which combined to make many of us look to 2021 for relief.

Guest blog by RFC Founder Robert Meeropol

Six years ago I posted a blog on the RFC website entitled “Strange Convergence” (available here). In it I compared details of the life of my mother, Ethel Rosenberg, to that of Billie Holiday, the singer who made Abel Meeropol’s song, “Strange Fruit,” famous. Ethel and Billie appeared to be an unlikely couple. However, they were both born in poverty in 1915, had excellent singing voices, although Billie’s surpassed Ethel’s, and were precocious.  Ethel graduated high school at 15 and helped lead a victorious strike at 19, while Billie sang in Harlem clubs at 17, and was a successful recording artist by 20. And they both got in trouble with the law, which led to their untimely deaths. Finally, there’s the Abel Meeropol connection; Abel adopted Ethel’s children and wrote Billie’s most famous song.

This has felt like the longest, most monumental election of my lifetime. While I am enormously grateful that Trump was defeated, the level of support for him and his hateful, racist, homophobic, xenophobic, misogynistic, anti-science policies shows how much remains to be done to create a more just and equitable society. The impact of these policies will linger into 2021 and beyond despite the election results.
 

My wife’s fourth novel, Her Sister’s Tattoo, was published in April. It’s the story of Esther and Rosa, whose arrests during an anti-Vietnam War protest tear the sisters apart. It’s fiction, but it hits close to home.