What an incredible and gratifying way to close out 2024! RFC Executive Director Jenn Meeropol alongside her sister and cousins—the four grandchildren of Ethel Rosenberg—published an Op-Ed in Boston Globe Opinion today calling on President Biden to exonerate their grandmother before he leaves office.

Their plea follows the release of a recently declassified "smoking gun" in Ethel's case, a 1950 memo by American codebreaker Meredith Gardner written days after her arrest concluding that Ethel Rosenberg was not a spy.

Breaking: Just Security Op-Ed by Rosenberg sons Robert and Michael Meeropol calls on President Biden to set the record straight on their mother, Ethel.

They write, "Nearly 75 years after our mother, Ethel Rosenberg, was arrested for conspiracy to commit espionage and 50 years since we filed our first legal action under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to gain access to U.S. government records about our parents’ case, we have found the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle we have been working on for half a century.

We are blown away by this!! Legendary "Succession" and "The Apprentice" actor, Jeremy Strong, on Jimmy Kimmel Live calls Ethel Rosenberg "innocent," and says she "was recently exonerated" -- new evidence declassified this year revealed that Ethel Rosenberg, who was accused of giving the secret of the atomic bomb to the Soviets, was not a spy and that the government knew this when she was tried and executed in 1953 at the height of the McCarthy era.

Join us on Dec 7th at 10:30am (eastern) for a virtual update on the campaign to exonerate Ethel Rosenberg! World Fellowship Center hosts RFC Founder, Robert Meeropol, and Executive Director, Jennifer Meeropol, for a discussion about the recently relaunched campaign to Exonerate Ethel. This program will have time for Q&A and will conclude with a discussion of lessons learned from intergenerational organizing.

Love this new piece from author and Professor of History, Lori Clune. A previously secret memo declassified in Aug 2024 revealed a stunning admission by a top U.S. codebreaker three years before Ethel Rosenberg's execution: the government knew Ethel was not a spy.

This information changed Clune's mind about Ethel. She writes, "I now believe that a presidential exoneration is appropriate and necessary because it will correct the view that Ethel was an active spy. It will address the serious flaws in her trial and conviction. And it will set right the historical record."

When Ethel Rosenberg was executed in 1953, her sons were just 6 and 10 years old. In the nearly three years before then, she was an imprisoned mother painfully separated from her family. As a loving caregiver of her two young sons, the U.S. government robbed them of precious time together and the vital support she provided them.

Today is Ethel Rosenberg's birthday. The labor activist, loving wife and mother was charged and convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage alongside her husband, Julius, during the height of the McCarthy era Red Scare. They were sentenced to death and unjustly executed 71 years ago in 1953, orphaning their two young sons.

On this day in 2015, NYC Council members gathered for a ceremony on the steps of City Hall, with three generations of Ethel's descendants present, to issue a proclamation in her honor, stating in part that "the government wrongfully executed Ethel Rosenberg."

MassLive reports: a newly declassified NSA memo reveals the US government knew that Ethel Rosenberg was not a spy long before she was convicted and executed.

"She [RFC Exec Director/Rosenberg granddaughter Jenn Meeropol] said that the revelation has significance beyond her immediate family, and clearing Ethel Rosenberg’s name could provide a 'deterrent to further miscarriages of justice.'

'The fact that the only recourse we have here is a petition campaign and the request for a proclamation and exoneration is because the death penalty is final,' she said."

An AP News article reports on a recent major update in the Rosenberg Case (the release of a recently declassified NSA memo that provides powerful evidence that Ethel Rosenberg was not a spy).

Rosenberg son and RFC Founder Robert Meeropol is quoted, "we have a situation in which a mother of two young children was executed as a master atomic spy when she wasn’t a spy at all.”

Folks in the Boston area might be interested to know that "Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. Part 2: Perestroika," presented by Central Square Theater and Bedlam, continues at Central Square Theater through Oct. 8. “Part 1: Millennium Approaches” is staged Oct. 7.