Ramona Ripston


Title:

Executive Director

Organization:

American Civil Liberties Union, Southern California Chapter

Born:

1927, Brooklyn, N.Y.

Education:

Bachelor’s degree in political science, Hunter College, New York; honorary doctorate of law, West Los Angeles School of Law.

Career Turning Point:

Hearing anti-Semitic remarks while growing up in Brooklyn

Most Admired Person:

Eleanor Roosevelt

Hobbies:

Reading, going to movies, spending time with grandchildren

Personal:

Married to Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Has three grown children from previous four marrigages; six grandchildren.

Ramona Ripston, head of the American Civil Liberties Union’s local chapter, is concerned new curbs on rights will overreach

As head of the Southern California affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, Ramona Ripston has been a fixture on L.A.’s civic scene for nearly 30 years.

The Brooklyn native and longtime civil rights crusader has never shied from a fight. She sought to desegregate L.A.’s public schools in the 1970s and to stop the spread of local government crackdowns on gangs and the homeless in the 1980s and early 1990s. More recently, she’s battled to reform the L.A. Police Department in the wake of the Rodney King beating and the Rampart scandal. Currently, Ripston is leading the ACLU’s attempt to force the L.A. Unified School District to devote adequate resources to its special education programs.

Now Ripston and the ACLU face another challenge. In the wake of last month’s terrorist attacks, sweeping new rules on security inspections of people traveling and gathering in public places are being proposed every day at all levels of government. What’s more, polls show widespread public support for relinquishing some civil liberties in the name of public safety.

Question:

There has always been a line between what is necessary to safeguard the general public and to protect civil liberties. Has that line shifted as a result of Sept. 11?

Answer: Most of the polls I read indicate more than a majority of people are willing to give up freedoms. And I think we can do a lot to make air travel safer, for example. I travel frequently and I’ve seen how lax the security has been at U.S. airports. We need to change how we do all these things. But we must be careful about it. I definitely think security at airports should be taken over by the federal government. People who perform the security checks should be better compensated and trained better. And various airline and airport employees should go through more intensive investigations.

Q: That sounds like taking away people’s privacy and freedoms.

A: There is a distinction here between inconvenience and taking away people’s freedoms. We have to be ready to be inconvenienced now after these horrible attacks. But when it comes to the traveling public, for example, everybody should be screened in the same way. You shouldn’t single out people just based on their race or ethnicity that’s taking away their freedom without just cause. There are things you can profile travelers for: travel history, financial transactions, education.

Q: Do you think there has been an overreaction to the threat posed by the recent attacks?

A: Look, this is the first time since the Civil War that Americans have felt threatened on their own soil and personally not safe. So yes, there has to be some accommodation to this threat. But you go back and look, after the start of every single war, there is a long list of curtailments of civil liberties. In almost all of these cases, it became clear that we over-reached. What this really teaches us is that we have to be deliberate and really debate the wartime curtailment of civil liberties.

Q: But the government is trying to restore public confidence.

A: You can pass all sorts of laws limiting freedom and that may make people feel safer. But then you have to ask, “Are we really safer?” And I don’t think that question is being asked right now. For example, people with one-way tickets. You’d think they’d always arouse suspicion. But what happened on Sept. 11? These were all people with one-way tickets.

Q: What concerns you the most about some of the other things that are being proposed?

A: The definition of a domestic terrorist is too broad. The wiretap provisions are of concern in that they could allow law enforcement to go in without getting prior consent from a judge. Some of the immigration bills also are of concern.

Now the big thing that concerns me about all of these proposals is that there are no sunset provisions in them. Let’s be careful about what we do, not rush everything through Congress, and for what does pass, review it a year or two later when things have settled down a bit to see if they are still needed.

Q: You also have this tremendous backlash going on against people of Arab descent. What is the ACLU doing to stem these hate crime incidents?

A: We run a hotline that’s taking incidents of alleged hate crimes. We had a meeting here the other night with civil rights lawyers and community groups. We’re trying to monitor this and give advice to people who feel they’re victims of hate crimes as to how to file complaints.

But I must tell you a lot of what is going on is visits from the FBI. People who are Arab or of Arab descent are getting visited by the FBI and asked questions: “What do you believe? What is your religion?” These questions don’t uncover anything. And we’ve had this go on before, in the 1950s when the FBI visited suspected Communists.

Q: So you’re saying the FBI is going too far in the numbers of people that are being questioned?

A: Yes, I suppose I am. If they have good reasons, if there is reasonable suspicion or any of the standards, that’s fine. But just to question someone because they have a name that sounds like an Arab name, that is going too far.

Q: Are elected and law enforcement officials doing enough to curb the incidents of hate crimes?

A: They are saying the right things. But I think it would be good to get the word out in radio and television ads. That might quell some of this sentiment we’re seeing now.

Q: There are other matters besides Sept. 11 that continue to draw your attention. Among them is the attempt to reform the L.A. Police Department. How do you think that’s going now?

A: We now have the consent decree and it’s a very good first step. But it needs to be monitored to see whether the provisions are being followed. We also need that early warning computer system to track problem officers in place now, with no more delays. The Sheriff’s Department has it, but the LAPD has never put it in place. The one thing that the consent decree does not cover is protection for whistleblowers.

Q: You backed legislation that would have restricted the right of financial institutions to share customer information with affiliates or marketing firms without getting prior approval from the customers. That bill failed. So what’s the next step here?

A: This is a case where rights are won incrementally. It takes a long time and we’ll just have to continue to fight.