This is Robert Meeropol. I am the Executive Director of the Rosenberg Fund for Children, and also the younger son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed by the government of the United States in 1953. It seems that almost once a generation—you can go back beyond my parents’ case, to the case of Sacco and Vanzetti, and beyond that generation to the case of the Haymarket martyrs at the end of the 19th century—you find at least once a generation, this government has to demonstrate the truly dangerous nature of those who seek to transform it, by linking them in the public mind with the most horrendous crimes of the day, and then executing them. In Mumia’s case, the crime of killing a police officer, in my parents case, the crime of stealing the secret of the atomic bomb and giving it to the Soviet Union, in Sacco and Vanzetti’s case, the crime of anarchy. but also it is a clear message to those involved in this activity, that if you’re going to take on the basic nature of the system, then your very life is at stake.
