Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and Rep. Steven Solarz (D.NY) joined Jewish students yesterday as they began a three-day hunger strike and prayer vigil for Soviet and Syrian Jews on the steps of historic Federal Hall in Manhattan, opposite the Stock Exchange. The strike will end sundown tomorrow. The action is being staged by the Jewish Athletic Club of Brooklyn (JACOB), Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry and Committee for Rescue of Syrian Jews.
Speaking to a large noontime crowd. Clark, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate, told of his efforts to represent Soviet Jewish Prisoners of Conscience at the notorious 1970 Leningrad trials, and described his visit a year ago to the USSR where he met leading Jewish activists.
“Public pressure works,” he declared. “We do have the capacity to change governments. Human rights is the concern of us all.” Clark then added his name to a petition for Soviet Jewish prisoners and “refusenik.” The petition campaign, initiated by Soviet Jewish activists themselves, has a one million signature goal.
Solarz spoke of his intensive efforts to free the 4500-member Syrian Jewish community, and his trip to Syria to plead with government officials there. New York City Council President Paul O’Dwyer, who is also seeking the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate, was scheduled to visit the demonstrators today.
The groups said they deliberately chose the hunger strike and vigil site “in the heart of Wall Street to ask as many financial leaders as possible who have increasing Russian and Arab contacts to urge them to let their Jews go.” The strikers will sleep on the steps of Federal Hall at night.
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.
