With the help of the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ) has moved in State Supreme Court to vacate a 1971 injunction barring demonstrations in the immediate vicinity of the Soviet UN Mission on Manhattan’s East Side.
The injunction, handed down by Judge Isidore Dollinger after a lawsuit was initiated by block residents with the support of the United States Attorney’s office, barred protesters from, among other things, “engaging in loud chanting, shouting, stomping of feet, clapping of hands, singing or sounding of horns,” using sound amplification equipment or picketing within 100 feet of the Mission.
The 48-page motion declared that the injunction was “a ‘meat-ax’ set of prohibitions,” “substantially out of step” with the First and Fourth Amendments. “We cannot allow the rights of free speech which so distinguish American from Soviet society to be denied to us as we protest the Kremlin’s oppression,” a SSSJ spokesman stated.
A parallel lawsuit against Police Commissioner Robert McGuire, Mayor Edward Koch, and the New York Police Department has been initiated in U.S. District Court by Concerned Jewish Youth, another activist group.
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