New York Criminal Court Justice Richard Lowe dismissed “disorderly conduct” charges today against 24 persons arrested November 19 for staging a sit-in on the street in front of the Soviet Mission to the UN here. The sit-in, to protest on behalf of Prisoners of Conscience and refuseniks in the USSR, coincided with the hour of the Geneva summit meeting between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The defendants included eight rabbis as well as the National Coordinator of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, Glenn Richter. The rabbis, all from the New York metropolitan area, were Irvin Beigel, Edward Feld, Matthew Futterman, Julie Gordon, Matthew Kamens, Allan Meyerowitz, James Michaels and Robert Port.
Since January, 360 individuals, including 153 rabbis, have been arrested in the peaceful mass actions held at Soviet offices in New York as part of “Operation Redemption.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
