I feel a kinship with Bradley Manning.  In all likelihood a few weeks from now a military judge will sentence him to serve several decades in prison for violating the Espionage Act of 1917.  My parents, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, were convicted of violating the same act and executed just over 60 years ago when I was six years old.  But that’s only the beginning of my sense of connection with him.  The prosecutors, and now the judge, have labeled Manning’s actions espionage, theft and several other unsavory terms.  Stripped of the pejorative legal expressions, howev

One of my most enjoyable tasks as part of the staff transition underway at the RFC has been to review communication from beneficiaries from the past few years.

Under cover of darkness on July 28th, 2012 three members of Transform Now Plowshares used wire cutters to breach the fence at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.  The group, which included an 83-year-old nun, were all pacifists who had engaged in civil disobedience over the years in support of their anti-war beliefs.  They expected to be arrested immediately, but when no guard appeared they moved deeper into the complex, cutting through three more fences before reaching a storage fac

I’m spending a lot of time this summer going through what seems like mountains of material in preparation for my turning over the RFC’s Executive Director job to my daughter Jenn.  My last regular work-day in the office is August 31st. I want to have figured out by then what files Jenn will need for future reference, what should go home with me, what should be recycled, archived etc…

 Last Friday night my wife Elli and I attended the world premiere of Commie Camp at the VisionFest film festival in lower Manhattan.   Commie Camp is a documentary made by Katie Halper about Camp Kinderland (http://www.campkinderland.org/), a secular Jewish, socialist-oriented summer camp, located in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts.