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.
 

This spring the RFC awarded:

• 67 grants totaling $149,610 to support 151 kids from 75 families, including a group grant for a music therapy program

• An additional, special grant of up to $18,400 for$200 individual grocery gift cards to all current families who are eligible for our grant funding. So far, we’ve sent cards to 57 families to help support 116 kids.

• That brings to total granted by the RFC to over $7.5 million!

Everyone at the RFC sends their love and sympathy to those of you who are experiencing hardship or loss related to the current crisis. I also want to thank the many of you who have sent us messages of solidarity and concern or continued to donate to support our work. I’m so grateful to you for being part of the remarkable community we have relied on for three decades.

I want to provide an update on the RFC, our plans for our 30th anniversary, our spring grants, and our general operations.

On today’s anniversary of my grandparents’ execution, I’m thinking about two-year-old Angel and his big brother Bryan, who don’t understand why they can’t live with both parents anymore.

We’re in the midst of awarding our fall 2017 grants. To date, six new grantees have joined the RFC community and additional new applications are pending. So far, the new grantees include:

On this 64th anniversary of the execution of my grandparents, I’m struck by a related milestone that passed without fanfare a few months ago: the 60th anniversary of my dad and uncle’s adoption by Anne and Abel Meeropol. Taken together, these events capture the spirit of the Rosenberg Fund for Children. My father founded the RFC to honor his birth parents’ resistance and to repay the community which allowed him and his older brother to flourish despite the devastation visited on their family.

We just finished awarding over $190,000 in grants for the first half of 2017. In addition to the four new beneficiaries discussed in my previous blog , three more new families have joined the RFC community this spring. These new grantees include:

We’re in the midst of awarding our first grants of 2017 at the RFC. To date, four new grantees have joined the RFC community this spring and additional new applications are pending. So far, the new grantees include:

Today is the anniversary of my grandparents’ executions. As it approached, I prepared the statement below reflecting on the date’s significance. Many members of the Rosenberg Fund for Children network have firsthand memories of the grief and fear the executions elicited among left-wing progressives at the time – a community that felt very much under attack in that moment in history. Sixty three years later I still hear from people who were shaken to their core, but whose response was to resist the repression they were experiencing.

In the fall of 2015 four new families received their first RFC grants. Including the seven new recipients in the spring, almost a dozen families and targeted activist youth joined the RFC community last year. With the $370,000 we awarded in 2015, our total granted since our founding has reached almost $6 million!

The new beneficiaries include: