Monday, September 4th, 1990 was the first day I spent as the Executive Director of the Rosenberg Fund for Children. As September 4th approaches each year, I find myself reflecting on one of the biggest turning points of my life.

At the time it seemed like a leap into the unknown. And it also felt like a terrifying responsibility. A small group of financial backers, a portion of whom were also friends had placed their faith in my ability to build a progressive public foundation that would provide for the educational and emotional needs of the children of targeted activists.

I was too young to remember the first time I met David and Emily Alman, but I know that by the time I was five years old they were two of my favorite people. Emily died in 2004 at the age of 86, after a distinguished career that led her first to Chair the Sociology Department at Douglass College of Rutgers University, before “retiring” to practice law for 25 more years. David, a novelist, businessman and social activist is still with us at 91.

I first wrote about the case of the San Francisco 8 in my Executive Director’s report in the Summer/Fall, 2007 issue of Carry It Forward, the RFC’s newsletter. In 1975 a judge dismissed all charges against three Black Panthers because they had been tortured into “confessing” to slaying a San Francisco police officer in 1971.

I spent the fall of 2007 in frenetic travel. I flew to the West Coast four times and attended more RFC events than I can recall. My goal was to build up as big a war chest as we could because I saw the storm clouds building on the horizon. In our Spring 2008 newsletter I wrote about a “perfect storm” brewing. That’s the way I described the Obama campaign coupled with the gathering recession, that together were sucking many dollars away from the RFC and other progressive organizations.

Over the last six months I’ve discussed the progress of the Obama administration with hundreds of friends and RFC community members. The views I’ve encountered fall into two general categories.