News & Events
From the Executive Director
As I wrote in my first guest blog last week, I’m filling in for my dad, Robert Meeropol, while he’s on an anti-death penalty trip to Asia. I expected that this would be a relatively quiet time at the RFC office. We’re past the rush of the 20th anniversary events in NYC and the commemoration of the June 19th anniversary of the execution. My colleague Amber and I planned to take a few vacation days while covering the office during my father’s absence.
My name is Jennifer Ethel Meeropol; I am Robert’s older daughter and the Grantmaking Coordinator at the Rosenberg Fund for Children. I’m filling in for my dad’s blog this week and next week while he’s on an anti-death penalty trip to the Far East.
With a couple of exceptions, I usually have spent June 19th, the anniversary of my parents’ execution, quietly. This year on the 19th, I’ll be leading a talk-back at Judson Memorial Church (55 Washington Sq. South, NYC, 4:00-6:00PM) after showing a film that, at first, I wanted no part of.
Although being the Executive Director of the Rosenberg Fund for Children is a full-time job, I engage in extra-curricular activities as well. In one such activity I am Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors of Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights (MVFHR). MVHFR is an anti-capital punishment organization composed of people who have had immediate family members murdered, executed or disappeared, and who view capital punishment not as a criminal justice issue, but as a human rights abuse.
Yesterday morning I was paging through the very slim first section of The Daily Hampshire Gazette, our local newspaper, when I came across a small news item that stopped me cold. It stated that, Peter Erlinder, a constitutional law professor at William Mitchell College of Law in St.