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.
The RFC is a proud sponsor of the first-ever Abel Meeropol Social Justice Writing Award, which will be presented by Straw Dog Writers Guild to poet Patricia Smith on Sunday, November 12 at Gateway City Arts in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Guild co-founder and Board President Ellen Meeropol (also a member of the RFC’s Advisory Board) shares the story behind the award.
This summer marks my 10th year as a staff member at the Rosenberg Fund for Children. While I no longer feel like a new employee, it’s hard to believe I’ve worked here for a decade. I joined the RFC as the Granting Coordinator in 2007. I stayed in that role until the fall of 2011, when I became the Associate Director. I spent the next 18 months working closely with my father, Robert Meeropol, as he prepared to retire as Executive Director (a position he’d held since he started the organization in the fall of 1990). In September of 2013, I became the second Executive Director of the RFC.
The RFC held our ninth Gathering the first weekend in August. Twenty current beneficiaries ages 18 to 24 and three peer leaders (former beneficiaries in their late 20s and 30s who have attended prior Gatherings) joined RFC staff and Board for four days of cultural workshops along with recreational and social activities (learn more about previous Gatherings here).
Most members of the RFC Board of Directors live in western Massachusetts and have strong ties to local, regional and/or national activist communities. They are teachers, community organizers, lawyers, artists, therapists and college professors who are committed to our work supporting the children of targeted activists and targeted activist youth. As Board members they make all granting decisions, help staff our Gatherings and public performances, and are responsible for oversight of the organization.
(guest blog by RFC Communications Director, Amber Black)
It’s large, the monument. It resides on a nondescript corner of an intersection in Havana, Cuba. The striking portrait in stone honors a young couple, killed by the U.S. government on June 19, 1953. They’re viewed as traitors by some, heroes by others. In this country where a tank rests on the lawn of the university in the capital, the legacy of the Cold War affects citizens’ lives in a visceral way. There’s tremendous irony involved, but it makes perfect sense that there would be a memorial to Ethel and Julius Rosenberg in Havana, and that I would go and find it.