Kids wondering if their father will go to prison this summer for participating in a nonviolent demonstration. Young siblings staying with relatives as their dad—already struggling financially after he was fired from his job for his organizing—couch surfs while their mom self-isolates with a fever and other worrisome symptoms.

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.

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.