This mailing seeks donations for legal fees for people who were arrested for protesting the visit to Albany of the Springboks, the national rugby teams from South Africa. Of the three originally scheduled matches in New York City, Chicago, and Albany, N.Y., only the Albany match was actually played, and anti-apartheid demonstrators there outnumbered spectators by more than four to one. Nine activists were arrested in the days leading up to the match on various trumped up charges. The weekend before the match, Bojie Jordan of the Pan Africanist Congress was arrested; after the match, four youths were thrown out of a car, had their car searched, and were eventually arrested on weapons charges...
This mailing seeks donations for legal fees for people who were arrested for protesting the visit to Albany of the Springboks, the national rugby teams from South Africa. Of the three originally scheduled matches in New York City, Chicago, and Albany, N.Y., only the Albany match was actually played, and anti-apartheid demonstrators there outnumbered spectators by more than four to one. Nine activists were arrested in the days leading up to the match on various trumped up charges. The weekend before the match, Bojie Jordan of the Pan Africanist Congress was arrested; after the match, four youths were thrown out of a car, had their car searched, and were eventually arrested on weapons charges because sticks were found in the trunk. The mailing says the most serious arrests occurred on the evening and morning before the match; four people, including Mike Young, a co-convener of New York SART (Stop the Apartheid Rugby Tour Coalition), were jailed literally hours before the game and were refused bail until three days later. The mailing says John Spearman, one of the four, was arrested for possession of a stolen car, which belonged to Mike Young. The arrests of the other three, Vera Michelson, Aaron Estis, and Mike Young, paralleled many arrests in the 1960's, as a squad of FBI and policemen broke into Vera's apartment at 3:30 a.m., with shotguns pointed and pistols drawn.
