Uft-jlc Join Forces to Pressure U.S. Officials to Aid Soviet Jews

The United Federation of Teachers and the Jewish Labor Committee have joined forces to bring pressure to bear on American officials to intervene more actively on behalf of Soviet Jews. Their combined activity will be channeled through a joint committee composed of the leadership of both the JLC and the 70,000-member UFT, the largest union local in the U.S. At a joint JLC-UFT session held here recently, UFT president Albert Shanker described the UFT’s role in civil rights causes from its support of the California grapeworkers to Martin Luther King’s struggles in the South. “It would be strange indeed if the UFT did not get involved in this struggle.” he said, referring to the plight of Soviet Jews. Emanuel Muravchik, executive director of the JLC urged the joint committee to develop a line of activities to express views that could have a significant impact on the efforts of Jews to leave the Soviet Union.

Two initial acts of the joint committee were to pass a resolution appealing to the Soviet Union to end its anti-Jewish campaign and its trials of Jews, and to call on top level American leaders to take action. The committee voted unanimously to wire President Nixon, Secretary of State William P. Rogers, and New York’s senators Jacob K. Javits and James L. Buckley to “urge intercession of the U.S. government with the Soviet government” against the sentences of nine Jews in Leningrad and four in Riga and against new trials of Jews planned in other Soviet cities. The resolution appealed to “men of good will everywhere, to the United Nations and to the American government” to speak out against violations by the USSR of the UN Declaration of Human Rights and “for the inalienable rights of Soviet Jewry which should be accorded to all free people.”