Age

66 years old (1944-2010)

Town

Newark

Golden is a face of liberty because…

It was 1968 and Golden Johnson was working as a tuberculosis researcher in the Veterans Administration.

She wasn't happy with her job, said her sister Courtenaye Lawrence, so when she heard about a new program started by Rutgers Law School-Newark to attract under-represented populations to the profession, she jumped at the opportunity.

“As soon as I mentioned it to Golden, she was right there,” said her longtime friend Josephine Thorpe. “She has always been very much on top of issues affecting minorities. It's in her blood, being a minority herself.”

It was a natural step for Johnson, whose father, LeRoy Johnson, was a Newark civil rights activist and tenant president at Franklin D. Roosevelt Homes. He instilled in his children the importance of being engaged in their community. Before setting a foot into law school, Johnson had already integrated a public library in her mother's hometown of Wilson, NC, by sitting in a section of the library off-limits to blacks. As an undergraduate at Douglass College of Rutgers University, she advocated for the school to admit more black students.

“Golden always wanted to do things to make things better,” said Lawrence.

In 1972, a 28-year-old Johnson became director of the ACLU-NJ's Community Legal Action Workshop, which had started after a sharp rise in police abuse complaints by Newark residents surrounding the 1967 rebellion. In her first week, she defended affirmative action policies adopted by construction companies working in Newark, ultimately prevailing in the lawsuit. In 1973, she worked on a federal case to stop hiring discrimination on a project at the Kearny-based North Jersey Postal Facility, which resulted in the adoption of an affirmative action policy.

She opened doors to people of color in the workplace and fought for civil rights in a number of police brutality lawsuits. One of Johnson's federal civil rights suits fought for the rights of three black men who were beaten by police at a dance in Newark's North Ward. She also defended a black student who was charged with assault after the Newark Police had beaten him during a welfare demonstration in 1969.

Johnson made history in 1974 when she became the first black woman to serve as a Newark municipal court judge. Always looking to help others, Johnson helped create the Women Lawyers Division of the National Bar Association, the National Organization of Black Lawyers, and the Garden State Bar Association, a statewide group of black lawyers. In 1995, she joined the Essex County Prosecutor's Office, serving as an assistant prosecutor.

“She was one of those people who knew she could do whatever she wanted to do - she would succeed,” said Thorpe.

Age

35 years old

Town

Glassboro

The Farm Workers Rights Project is a face of liberty because…

The migrant workers came to the Garden State and became the bedrock of New Jersey's agricultural economy, planting and harvesting fresh vegetables and fruits under the baking sun. And despite inhumane work conditions and meager wages, their efforts to organize and improve their treatment were met with punishment and retribution.

That's when the calls started coming into the ACLU-NJ's office.

In 1975, the ACLU-NJ decided to expose the truth about New Jersey's own “deep south,” in South Jersey. Using $40,000 in grants, the affiliate established the Farm Workers Rights Project, which provided much-needed legal services to farm workers whose rights to organize were being trampled.

“South Jersey is one of the country's worst areas for migrant workers,” former Executive Director Stephen Nagler wrote in a proposal outlining the program. “Their poverty and despair will not change until they are brought under the full protection of constitutional guarantees.”

Working on a shoestring budget, the project opened a storefront office in Glassboro and assembled a tiny staff that spent most of its time visiting farms in Vineland, Bridgeton and Swedesboro.

“We were always looking to develop cases that made a difference,” said attorney Michael Berger, who led the project. Today, Berger is a personal injury lawyer in Haddonfield. “Although we did represent individual farm workers, we always looked for groups of workers that addressed an issue.”

The project sued in 1976 over compulsory use of short-handled hoes to harvest crops, which the Occupational Safety and Health Administration considered hazardous. It also challenged housing violations in migrant labor camps, police abuses in rural towns, and round-ups of migrant workers, most of whom were Puerto Rican, illegally removed from their homes.

In 1980, the project provided legal assistance to more than 100 migrant workers charged with petty criminal offenses and about 200 other workers embroiled in unemployment compensation claims. Under the leadership in the 1980s of Angel Dominguez, who ran the project, and Robert F. Williams, a professor at Rutgers School of Law-Camden, the workers formed a union, el Comite Organizador de Trabajadores Agricolas (COTA).

In 1987, in the case of COTA v. Molinelli, the state Supreme Court upheld the rights of farm workers to collective bargaining under the state Constitution. After the ruling, COTA reorganized independently as a migrant worker-organized membership organization, el Comite Apoyo de Trabajadores Agricolas (CATA) or the Farmworkers' Support Committee, which continues to advocate for the human rights of migrant and immigrant workers.

The most important part of the project was the education and organization of farm workers. It gave farm workers a voice in mobilizing to the thousands,“ said Dominguez. ”Pesticides, unemployment - whatever issues arose involving farm workers, we mobilized. The litigation was very important to the project.“

Coming full circle in 2007, the ACLU-NJ successfully defended CATA's right to free speech, suing the City of Bridgeton for imposing a fee of $1,500 to stage an immigrants' rights march in the city. The city settled the lawsuit and agreed not to collect any fees.

Alan believes in the ACLU because…

“It is relentlessly there to challenge overweening authorities, who, being authorities, will always overreach in their controlling powers as they perceive them to be their due; this will always be the case with rulers and regulators, operating with the same certainty as does the law of gravity.“

Age

80 years old

Town

Egg Harbor Township

Alan is a face of liberty because…

In the 1930s and 1940s, Alan Kligerman could feel the anti-semitism in his childhood town, the shore community of Margate. Kids called him derogatory names, threw stones, sunk his toys and dunked him in the ocean when he ventured down the beach. Sometimes he even sensed antagonism from his teachers.

“It choked off a lot of human relationship developments that might otherwise have taken place among school peers,” Kligerman said, adding that while not everyone was cruel, the treatment had a lasting impact.

“Ever since, whenever someone is held down, slapped down or effectively shut down because of his or her status, race or religion, I feel it personally.”

He attended Cornell University, where he studied dairy and food industry, and worked in the family dairy business - first, in childhood as a Kligerman Dairy delivery boy, and later, as an adult after his time at Cornell. He would go on to start SugarLo Company, a “diabetic ice cream” company, although the natural sugar found in all dairy products - lactose - would soon change his life. While tinkering with carbohydrates, as Kligerman called it, he developed two products that would become a well-known part of American culture: Lactaid® Milk and Beano®.

Advocacy was never far from his mind, while his success nationally allowed him to take on local risks that more vulnerable people couldn't afford. He spoke truth to power. In the 1960s he advocated for the rights of people of color, working to integrate craft unions in Atlantic City, and protested vocally and in multiple New York Times print ads against the Vietnam War. In the 1970s, still protected from serious retaliation, Kligerman played a key role in dismantling an Atlantic County political machine, which had controlled nearly all aspects of local businesses and civic life for generations.

His success has also allowed him to support the causes that matter to him most - including the ACLU-NJ. He has been one of the fiercest supporters for the organization, standing for racial justice, responsible government, and, above all, free speech.

“The ACLU-NJ is one of the strongest forces in America,” Kligerman said. “It never loses sight of its obligations.”

Deb believes in the ACLU because…

“It does the unpopular cases that no other organization is willing to do.”

Age

54

Town

Montclair

Deb is a face of liberty because…

Being raised Catholic shaped Deb Ellis profoundly. On the one hand, the church instilled in her a commitment to community service. On the other, it opened her eyes to a patriarchal system that she refused to accept.

“It had a galvanizing impact, realizing the lack of women's equality in the religion,” said Ellis, who served as the ACLU-NJ legal director from 1989 to 1992.

Those concepts guided Ellis's legal career, inspiring her to become a staff attorney at the national ACLU's Women's Rights Project. Later, she would take the helm as the legal director of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund.

During her years at the ACLU-NJ, Ellis helped overturn a law that required a husband to grant permission in writing for a child to take the mother's surname, as well as a policy of the state Department of Motor Vehicles that prevented a man from taking his wife's last name.

During her tenure, ACLU-NJ plaintiff Sally Frank finally won her protracted gender-discrimination lawsuit in 1992 against the exclusive Princeton University eating clubs that had barred female members.

Ellis held a bat mitzvah in honor of the 13-year-old case and soon after its coming-of-age party negotiated a sizable settlement from the eating clubs for attorneys' fees.

Ellis used the victory to convince Princeton University that the women's golf club should be made a varsity sport — without actually having to file a lawsuit.

“The power of the ACLU is that it has so much influence to negotiate,” she said.

Ellis strove to expand the ACLU-NJ's agenda to include lesbian and gay issues and poverty rights. In New Jersey's first case of its kind, the ACLU-NJ in 1991 defended four AIDS activists arrested for distributing clean needles to intravenous drug users. A Jersey City judge acquitted the men after describing their intentions as heroic. “It sent a message and helped the whole movement go forward,” Ellis recalled.

Ellis felt compelled to choose cases that pushed the boundaries of the state Constitution to give Garden State residents more protections than the U.S. Constitution. A decision in an ACLU-NJ case deemed shopping malls the new town centers, and ever since, New Jersey's shopping centers have benefited from the strongest free speech protections in the country.

Ellis oversaw several high-profile freedom-of-speech cases, including a successful defense of the far-right Jewish organization Kahane Chai to march past the Teaneck home of Professor Leonard Jeffries, who had caused a public uproar with comments implicating Jews and white people in the exploitation of black people. Ellis represented the Klu Klux Klan after the city of Millville in Cumberland County wouldn't allow the extremist hate group to hold a rally and march in the town.

“How did I reconcile that? I really believe in the First Amendment,” Ellis said. “People with reprehensible views have a right to march in the streets.”

She now works for her law school alma mater, New York University, as assistant dean for public interest law, encouraging students to pursue careers in public service where they can make an impact similar to her own.

Margaret and Haim Bar-Akiva

Margaret and Haim believe in the ACLU because…

Margaret: “It restores hope and dignity when all else fails and gives strength and courage to carry on.“

Haim: “It provides legal protection indiscriminately, even to those who discriminate.“

Age

Margaret 57, Haim 80 years old

Town

East Windsor

Margaret and Haim are a face of liberty because…

Brown on brown. That's what got Margaret and Haim Bar-Akiva into trouble with the Twin Rivers Homeowners Association (TRHA) in 1993.

Six years after the Bar-Akiva's bought their townhouse, the TRHA realized that their front door was painted the same color as the rest of the house and sent the Bar-Akivas official notice that they had violated the rules. When the couple missed the deadline to paint the door a contrasting color, they were told there was a price to pay: a $1,200 fine.

They delved into the governance that ruled Twin Rivers, their 10,000-resident Planned Unit Development in Mercer County, and soon learned what they were dealing with: a latter-day fiefdom in their own back yard.

“The more we got involved, the more alarming the picture became,'' Margaret Bar-Akiva said. ”The lack of transparency and the limitations on free speech were inconsistent with my notions of American democracy.“ The Bar-Akivas and other concerned New Jerseyans formed the Common-Interest Homeowners Coalition, a statewide nonprofit organization that serves as the voice of homeowners in New Jersey and is working to bring about democratic reform in HOA's through the legislative process.

In 2000, after fighting several free speech violations in their community to no avail, the Bar-Akivas called the ACLU-NJ. Along with the Rutgers Law School-Newark's Constitutional Litigation Clinic, which took the reins on the case, the ACLU-NJ sued the Twin Rivers association on behalf of the Bar-Akiva's and a few other residents, claiming the association restricted election signs on their property, controlled access to the community newspaper, and charged excessive fees to use the community room for political meetings.

The Bar-Akivas celebrated when an appellate court ruled in 2006 that New Jersey residents do not sign away their constitutional rights when they buy homes in private communities. The following year, though, the state Supreme Court overturned that ruling - delivering a seemingly crushing loss.

Despite the initial disappointment, the 2007 ruling included an important caveat: associations could not deny their residents reasonable opportunities to express themselves.

“We now know that associations do not have carte blanche,” said ACLU-NJ Legal Director Ed Barocas, analyzing the decision when it came down. “If they pass unreasonable restrictions, those restrictions will be shot down.”

In effect, the New Jersey Supreme Court decision created the strongest law in the country to protect the free speech of people who live under the rules of homeowners associations.

Frank Askin, who has led the Rutgers Constitutional Litigation Clinic since he created it in 1970, said the Twin Rivers ruling provided a powerful tool that he uses regularly to change associations' unreasonable policies.

“When they try to restrict too much free speech, we get them to back down,'' he said.

While the New Jersey Supreme Court's decision disappointed Margaret Bar-Akiva, the experience only bolstered her admiration for the ACLU-NJ. “When the forces that control our lives abandon the principles of our democratic tradition, the ACLU ensures that the people don't stay powerless for long.”

Robert believes in the ACLU because…

“They defend free speech for all Americans. The ACLU was severely criticized for representing Nazis who wanted to march in Skokie, Illinois, but I have always believed it was the correct decision. It showed that even when the speech at hand is indefensible, the freedom of speech still needs a strong defense.”

Age

90 years old

Town

South Orange

Robert is a face of liberty because…

In 1977, the ACLU fought for the rights of neo-Nazis to march in a Chicago suburb where thousands of Holocaust survivors lived, and 30,000 ACLU members destroyed their membership cards in disgust.

“I felt then, as I do now, that it was the correct decision — a classic case for the ACLU,” said Robert Marks, one of the ACLU-NJ's founding members. Sometimes, he said, you must stand up for causes you find detestable in order to secure free speech for all.

Growing up in Troy, N.Y., Marks took an interest in politics, social issues and civil rights — especially free speech. During his high school and college years, he enjoyed hours of spirited discussions with his father, an ardent Republican. Neither ever ultimately convinced the other.

Marks left Harvard Law School to serve for nearly four years in the U.S. Navy during World War II, returning to law school in 1946 and graduating in 1947. Following graduation, he moved to New York City and for a time volunteered for the national ACLU offices, reading and summarizing cases.

In 1957, he and his wife, Paulina, moved to New Jersey. Marks remembers clearly the night that they met Emil and Edith Oxfeld, sometime around the winter of 1959, at the home of Jacqueline and Howard Levine. There was a great deal of discussion that night about the ACLU, and still more in the following months — and in 1960, the ACLU's New Jersey affiliate was formed.

Before an executive director was chosen and an office rented, Marks relieved Oxfeld — who would serve for 25 years as the affiliate's first president — of some of the long-time ACLU responsibilities. Marks received calls for the ACLU at his office in Newark and would direct the callers to the appropriate volunteer attorneys.

Marks was a member of the ACLU-NJ Board of Trustees from 1960 to the early 1980s, serving as treasurer for most of that time. In addition to his ACLU service, Marks joined the board of the Newark Beth Israel Medical Center in the late 1970s, eventually serving for 16 years as it chairman. In his non-volunteer career, he ran a family business manufacturing moving eyes for dolls and zippers for various industries with a workforce that was diverse and fully integrated.

Marks has always valued diversity of opinion as much as diversity among his employees. At the 1971 ACLU-NJ annual dinner, which carried on the affiliate's tradition of one civil libertarian honoring another, the scene that unfolded struck Marks for demonstrating that freedom of thought can lead to important changes of heart. That year, renowned pediatrician Benjamin Spock, prosecuted in 1968 for urging resistance to the draft, received the ACLU-NJ's highest award from the same man who had prosecuted him just years before — former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark. It embodied what Marks has always loved most about the Constitution — the equal standing it gives everyone.

Marks and his wife Paulina have been married for almost 63 years and have 3 children and 4 grandsons.

Sally believes in the ACLU because…

“Without civil liberties the government can — as it has before — attack anyone who dissents from its policies. Keeping other people safe from the government keeps me safe from the government.”

Age

51 years old

Town

Bayonne

Sally is a face of liberty because…

Sally Frank's assignment to watch the news every night in fifth grade made an impression that lasted far beyond the current events of the day. It set the course for her future. As she watched the trial of the Chicago 8 and coverage of the horrific shootings at Kent State and Jackson State universities, she decided she would never stand by as a witness to injustice. She would stand up instead, fighting wherever she saw it.

So when she attended Princeton University and discovered that women were barred from joining the campus's prestigious eating clubs, Frank took action.

“I thought they had a harmful impact on the campus,” Frank said. Their all-male policy “radiated sexism back onto the campus and made women second-class citizens.”

She believed the exclusion set a precedent that would carry over to the students' professional lives: if men ate only with other men at the eating clubs, they would continue to feel comfortable in situations where men and women received unequal treatment — whether personally or professionally.

No stranger to the ACLU — at 14, Frank asked for and received a membership as a Chanukah present — Frank told New Jersey's Executive Director Steve Nagler about the eating clubs while working a volunteer shift. He suggested she file a discrimination suit.

The New Jersey Division on Civil Rights twice refused to investigate Frank's complaint, citing the eating clubs' status as private organizations. Frank argued, however, that the clubs functioned as public accommodations. In 1983, as a third-year law student, Frank argued her appeal. When the court ruled that the Civil Rights Division had to fully investigate the claim, Nadine Taub joined the case as co-counsel for the ACLU-NJ.

Over the next nine years, the case made its way through the New Jersey Division of Civil Rights, the New Jersey Office of Administrative Law, the state appeals court the New Jersey Supreme Court, which ruled in Frank's favor in July, 1990. The case didn't end there. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear issues in the case twice and the clubs brought their fight to the federal courts to try to overturn the New Jersey ruling. Ultimately, the eating clubs had to admit women as members and pay the ACLU's legal fees as they settled the federal case in June, 1992.

Frank says that the case and the amount of time it spanned cemented her ongoing, positive relationship with the university. She considers herself an active Princeton alum, coming back regularly for reunions and alumni days. Her support was just as strong while the case was still active, in part out of a personal need to show that her lawsuit “wasn't out of hate, but out of love.” In 1990, the Alumni Council honored her with an award recognizing her service to Princeton.

“I've always felt that I have a responsibility to wherever I am to make it a better place,” she said.

As a law professor at Drake University, Frank continues the tradition of making an impact through the homework she assigns. In her class on women and the law, Frank v. Ivy Club is required reading.

Age

52 years old (1947-1999)

Town

Montclair

Eric is a face of liberty because…

Eric Neisser understood pain and loss. As a child, Neisser listened to his mother recount stories of her escape from Austria during the Holocaust and the family members who perished. When he was 16, Neisser's 18-year-old brother committed suicide.

“Those experiences gave him a deep sense of pain in the world,” said his widow, Joan. “It made him want to make it a better place.”

And that he did. Neisser, always energetic and upbeat, devoted his legal career to fighting for civil rights, both in New Jersey and nationwide.

Neisser volunteered as a cooperating attorney for the ACLU-NJ for years before serving as the organization's legal director. In a landmark case that tested the boundaries of the Fourth Amendment, Neisser and colleague Frank Askin helped convince the U.S. Supreme Court in 1979 that police must have a reasonable suspicion to stop a motorist for questioning.

He became involved in one of the state's most bitterly contested murder case. Twelve years after Vincent James Landano was convicted of killing a Newark police officer in 1976, evidence crucial to Landano's defense — and withheld by prosecutors — surfaced. Neisser teamed up with Landano's attorney, Neil Mullin, to get all FBI records in the case.

Their challenge went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which issued a decision broadening access to investigative records for attorneys, journalists, watchdog groups, and concerned citizens. The records released under the ruling corroborated what had already been uncovered. Landano was retried and acquitted in 1998.

Along with several other former clients, Landano attended a farewell party for Neisser to wish him well as the head of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, New Hampshire. By the time Neisser left New Jersey, he had taught at Rutgers School of Law-Newark for 20 years, helping run the school's Constitutional Litigation Clinic and having at one point assumed the role of acting dean.

Joan Neisser said the clients whose rights had been trampled on were always her husband's first priority.

Age

Without beginning or end

Town

Statewide

The most compelling faces of liberty are sometimes cloaked in anonymity. The ACLU-NJ has worked on behalf of countless people who, for reasons as numerous as the number of clients we take on, choose not to reveal their identity. They use their initials or go by Jane or John Doe, because even if they can't come forward publicly, the principles they stand for deserve vigorous defense.

Take, for example, the Latino immigrant who, with his family, rented an apartment in a multi-family home in Riverside for several years. In 2006, the town passed an ordinance making it illegal to rent to an undocumented immigrant, and the plaintiff's landlord asked for his documentation. He worried his family would lose their home, but he also feared retaliation, sown from virulent anti-immigration sentiments in town. So, taking on the name John Doe, he joined the ACLU-NJ's lawsuit against the discriminatory ordinance. In response to the pressure, as well as the law's constitutional questionability, the town repealed the measure.

In another case, a boy in Toms River, identified in court papers as L.W., had been harassed and assaulted by classmates over his sexual orientation since the fourth grade. The verbal and physical attacks continued well into high school and at one point resulted in an injury that kept him out of school. After numerous beatings, his mother transferred him to a new school. The case, in which the ACLU-NJ was involved as a friend-of-the-court, and which was decided in 2007, helped establish that a student bullied based on his perceived sexual orientation could sue the school district under the state's Law Against Discrimination in the same way an employee can sue and employer.

In 1997, at the dawn of the Internet age, several anonymous web posters waged one of the first early battles for online privacy rights, with the ACLU-NJ by their side. They had posted comments on a Yahoo message board criticizing Dendrite International, a New Jersey-based pharmaceutical software company. Alleging libel, Dendrite sought a subpoena for the posters' identities. The resulting court opinion established strong protections for anonymous posters and strict limitations on those who seek to pierce that anonymity. It was one of the first cases to establish a yardstick for anonymous free speech in relation to the strength of the case for revealing someone's identity.

In 2010, the ACLU-NJ took on several cases defending the rights of anonymous commenters on the Internet who dealt with subpoenas for their identity and claims of defamation based on the content of their online speech.

In a 2009 matter where privacy was paramount, the ACLU-NJ represented a pregnant minor and her parent, who had been charged with the child's truancy. The judge required the family to return to court to disclose whether or not the minor would carry the pregnancy to term. With the help of ACLU-NJ, she did not have to disclose her decision to the judge.

Sometimes, the most private of matters come under public scrutiny. In those cases, an individual's right to privacy may need protection, but the violations of their civil rights need to see the light of day. The ACLU-NJ does what it can to balance these two principles, fighting for progress in the open, even if the client's identity must remain unknown.

Photograph by Josh Pesavento

Mary believes in the ACLU because…

“Of their high integrity.”

Age

64

Town

East Orange

Mary is a face of liberty because…

When the first anniversary of her son's death approached in 2000, Mary Weaver's friends convinced her to hold a march and candlelight vigil in front of her East Orange home.

Her friends from the activist group People's Organization for Progress thought the vigil could bring attention to police brutality issues and help ease Weaver's deep grief over the loss of her only child, Randy, who was killed by East Orange Police at age 21. But when Weaver went to City Hall to get a permit for the vigil, she was told she had to first secure a $1 million insurance policy and sign an agreement that she would be held liable for anything occurring at the event before even applying for a permit.

“It was a simple request to commemorate my son and they refused me,” Weaver said. “They were so rude, I left the place crying.”

After Weaver and Larry Hamm, the president of People's Organization for Progress, were denied permits, they turned to familiar friends at the ACLU-NJ. Over the years, the ACLU-NJ has fought for POP's right to march in the streets of Newark and partnered with the grassroots organization to fight other injustices, including mistreatment of women warehoused in a men's prison and students who were disciplined in the criminal justice system for minor offenses.

In letters to East Orange, the ACLU-NJ threatened to sue the city if it failed to remove the onerous stipulations of the permit process. The city in response lifted the requirements as an exception for Weaver, but it refused to rescind the liability requirement for future applicants.

True to its word, the ACLU-NJ sued in June 2002, charging that the city's policies had effectively chilled residents' First Amendment rights to free speech and rallying. Although the lawsuit lingered for years, Weaver has kept Randy's memory alive with an annual march on July 16. At first they were somber, but now they are spirited, with other mothers joining her cause.

“He was an all-around good kid trying to do the right thing being raised by a single parent,” Weaver said.

Her battle to stage a memorial has chipped away at her faith in the system.

“I thought the police department and powers that be were there to listen to the little people and help them because they know more,” she said. “I lost trust in people's fairness and their humanitarianism.”

Ramona believes in the ACLU because…

“I think it's the most important civil liberties and civil rights organization in the country. The kinds of work that we do — organizing and policy development and legal work — I don't know any organization that does it at the levels of breadth, depth and success that the ACLU does.”

Age

83 years old

Town

Weehawken

Ramona is a face of liberty because…

Although Ramona Ripston adored her three young children, she found her life as a 1950s Long Island housewife stifling and unsatisfying.

One day Ripston, a card-carrying member of the ACLU, walked into the New York ACLU's office and signed up to volunteer. They liked her work so much that they offered her a paid position as a fundraiser and editor. But when she told her husband about the job offer, he demanded she turn it down and stay at home.

Ripston took the job and left the husband.

It was the start of her storied career as one of the most outspoken and respected voices on civil rights issues in the nation.

In the 1960s, the ACLU tapped Ripston to interview for the job of executive director of the ACLU-NJ. Ripston felt she was not ready to assume that amount of responsibility, but she thought her new husband, activist and lawyer Hank di Suvero would be perfect for it, and urged him to apply. When di Suvero got it Ripston worked alongside him, handling press inquiries and raising money for the affiliate.

On the morning of July 12, 1967, the couple was on their way to the beach when the news broke of rioting and looting in the streets of Newark. They turned the car around and headed to the ACLU's office on Academy Street where they watched flames lick the city's streets and buildings.

“It really made a great impression on me,” Ripston said. “There was so much poverty in Newark. The police were very antagonistic towards blacks. My experience in Newark helped me want to do something about police behavior and cities with mayors that didn't care about poor people.”

Ripston left the ACLU-NJ, a year later, discovering she couldn't afford to raise her family on the salary. She returned to New York City where she worked at the New York Urban Coalition and at the ACLU's national offices. In 1972, she became executive director of the Southern California affiliate, becoming the first woman in the country to assume a leadership role in the ACLU. Under her tenure, the Southern California affiliate became one of the largest and strongest in the nation, ending segregationist policies in Los Angeles schools, holding the Los Angeles Police Department accountable for abuses and fighting for voting rights for Latinos.

Ripston plans to retire in 2011.

Parastou believes in the ACLU because…

“I've lived in countries where there is no such thing as the ACLU. The inclination for people in power to want to abuse that power is a natural one. That's why I think it's vital to live in a country where you can have an organization like the ACLU, which can question authority, challenge the government, and safeguard freedom.”

Age

39 years old

Town

Cairo, Egypt

Parastou is a face of liberty because…

Parastou Hassouri arrived at the ACLU-NJ amid a civil liberties crisis that would define our country for a decade, and she had landed in the center of the storm.

Parastou started doing immigrant outreach at the ACLU-NJ in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and immediately she challenged a federal program calling for men from a list of 25 designated countries to “register” with the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

“There was a lot of confusion in the immigrant communities about this,” she recalled. “Why are they supposed to do this? What will happen, what happens if they don't?”

So Hassouri, whose personal immigrant experience gave her guidance, leapt into action. She set up ACLU-NJ legal clinics statewide where people could receive the critical assistance they needed to understand their rights under the U.S. Constitution.

“Every other day there seemed like there was some sort of initiative that was specifically targeting this community,” she said.

She also reached out to other groups, often speaking before audiences who were not recent immigrants. She would remind them that when their ancestors first came to the United States, they encountered similar kinds of antagonism.

“I felt like it was really important that people sort of not forget that every wave of immigrants in the U.S. confronted some hostility, some discrimination,” she said. “For me, that was one of the most enriching parts of the work. ”

Hassouri, who arrived in the United States from Iran at 14 years old, knew the immigrant experience well. After college, while pursuing a PhD in comparative literature, she studied Arabic in Egypt. The country's autocratic government, ruled by the same president since 1981, awakened an interest in law and human rights.

With the government using the recent terrorist attacks to target some of America's immigrant communities, “I felt a really strong pull towards a job that would involve more advocacy,” she said. So she shifted her role from an immigration attorney in a private firm to a staff attorney with the ACLU-NJ, where she could make the greatest impact in broader communities of immigrants.

She noted the ACLU's celebrated history of confronting head-on the American government's wartime rationalizations to trample civil rights.

“After WWII when Japanese Americans were interned, the ACLU was the only organization at that time to get involved with vocal criticism,” said Hassouri. “To me, there was of course no question that in the aftermath of Sept. 11th the ACLU was going to be the voice calling for the rule of law and the Constitution.”

Madhavi believes in the ACLU because…

“Its lawyers make the promise of our Constitution real, fighting for the equal rights of all citizens — no matter weak or strong, young or old — to make our voices heard, to challenge, change, and improve our world.”

Age

39 years old

Town

Northfield

Madhavi is a face of liberty because…

When she first started as editor in chief of Mainland Regional High School's student newspaper in the late 1980s, Madhavi Sunder didn't know much about the American Civil Liberties Union. But by the time her term on Hoofprints was over, she would be grateful to the ACLU for protecting her from a false accusation of libel.

An article in Hoofprints about possible steroid use by student athletes — and about a possible source of the supplements found within the local Gold's Gym — caught the attention of the fitness club's owner. He took umbrage and sued, alleging libel. In 1989, Frank Corrado, now president of ACLU-NJ, took on the case, which would become his first with the organization.

During depositions, the high school football coach admitted he had told the team to stay away from Gold's, fearing they would be tempted to use the steroids he suspected were available there. Upon hearing his sworn statement, the gym's owners dismissed the lawsuit against Sunder in 1990, who was by then an undergraduate at Harvard University.

“The ACLU's staunch defense of student journalism made me appreciate the freedom of speech all the more,” said Sunder, who served as associate managing editor of the Harvard Crimson. Sunder, who noted that renowned attorney and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz provided some input on the case, credits Corrado with the victory.

Think how disaffected I would have become, seeing student speech squelched by those in power,“ she said. ”The ACLU showed me that the promise of freedom in America is not merely theoretical.“

The experience inspired Sunder's career choice: she went on to Stanford Law School and is now a professor of law at the University of California, Davis, focusing on the primacy of dissent in a democracy. She has been a visiting professor at Yale Law School, the University of Chicago Law School and Cornell Law School.

Liz believes in the ACLU because…

“The ACLU helps everyone. By protecting the Constitution it doesn't just choose one group of people or just one issue. Its mission gives the ACLU a breadth of vision that a lot of other groups don't have and ensures that it doesn't sacrifice anyone or anything.”

Age

25 years old

Town

Montclair

Liz is a face of liberty because…

Liz Houston was always a precocious student of politics and inequality. Her mother, the legal director of Passaic County Legal Aid, worked on issues such as home repair and mortgage fraud, giving Houston early lessons in justice that shaped the adult she would grow to become.

Even at age five, Houston walked with her family as part of the Jesse Jackson's Rainbow PUSH Coalition in her hometown's Fourth of July parade. She heard names like Frank Askin, one of the ACLU's most prominent attorneys and activists, and Eric Neisser, the former ACLU-NJ legal director, while sitting around the dinner table.

By the time she was a junior in high school, Houston wanted to channel her passion for civil liberties to make a difference in people's lives. And while there were plenty of groups doing good work, it disheartened Houston that so many of them focused on one particular group at the exclusion of the others. That's when her mom suggested she contact the ACLU.

After consulting with ACLU-NJ Executive Director Deborah Jacobs and finding teachers who would serve as faculty advisers, Houston started Montclair High School's first student chapter of the ACLU, bringing youthful new warriors to the front line in the defense of civil liberties.

The high school chapter was an enormous success. English teachers enthusiastically took part in the chapter-sponsored Banned Books Week, as student ACLU members popped into classrooms and read from books that had been banned or challenged in court. The group led discussions about the consequences of censorship and organized a mock gubernatorial debate in 2001 with students standing in for politicians. It also hosted programs about issues like racial profiling and preserving civil liberties after the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks.

Houston bristles when she hears people talk about the apathy of today's youth. “I don't think that kids are any more detached than adults are,” she said. “Look at our national elections. Student and youth volunteers have played major roles in the last two presidential elections.”

The ACLU-NJ always greeted students with open arms, she remembers. She started attending board meetings while still in high school, sitting in on her first one right after September 11. The board, split into groups, had a wide-ranging, prescient discussion about the civil liberties issues that could arise in the next several years, from privacy threats to racial profiling.

“I got to sit in a group with Frank Askin and Sue Carroll, one of the heads of the Center for American Women and Politics. Just these people I had heard about and known since I was a little kid. I got to hear what they were saying and actually be part of a discussion,” Houston said.

In April 2002, Houston was one of nine nationwide recipients of an ACLU Youth Scholarship, which she won for her zeal in founding the Montclair High chapter, organizing other students, and playing such an active role in the larger mission of the ACLU-NJ. With the scholarship, she attended Rutgers University, majoring in political science and animal science. She continued her lifelong tradition of activism, founding an ACLU student chapter on campus. She also spent summers volunteering in the Newark office and served on the ACLU-NJ board between 2002 and 2008.

Jason believes in the ACLU because…

“They represent everything that is just, and serve those whose rights are compromised. They ensure justice — be it social or otherwise — is available to the masses.”

Age

29 years old

Town

Glassboro

Jason is a face of liberty because…

In April 2003, Jason Kitchen, a budding filmmaker, suddenly found himself center stage in a First Amendment drama.

When the college senior became the first broadcast journalist to secure an on-camera interview with death-row inmate Robert Marshall, the state Attorney General's Office was determined to become the first to secure the footage. The office issued a subpoena, hoping the tapes would help the state's case. Marshall, sentenced for arranging his wife's death to collect on a $1.5 million insurance policy, had filed an appeal, and the state aimed to challenge it.

Kitchen refused to hand over his footage.

“The documentary wasn't made to serve the needs of the state of New Jersey,” Kitchen said. “It wasn't their property and they had no right to access it without consent.”

Besides, the state hadn't asked nicely.

“If they had requested a screener copy of the documentary, I would have gladly obliged,” he said.

Kitchen, at the time an intern for movie director Michael Moore during the making of Fahrenheit 9/11, told the documentarian and his wife about the situation. Moore's wife immediately called the ACLU.

Once the judge presiding over the case had heard the ACLU-NJ's arguments, he criticized the prosecution for launching a “fishing expedition.” Swayed by the ACLU-NJ's arguments, the court deemed Kitchen's work protected by his freedom of the press and determined that the state failed to meet the criteria to overcome that protection — especially since it had passed on an opportunity to question Marshall at a deposition.

Kitchen said the experience “provided me a bit of faith in the American justice system.” He went on to graduate school but he still works behind the camera, in addition to writing for the Huffington Post.

As for Marshall, he will be eligible for parole in four years. A federal judge overturned his death sentence in 2004, finding that a defense lawyer mishandled the penalty phase of the murder trial by not calling witnesses, and in 2006, the Ocean County prosecutor decided against retrying it. New Jersey abolished the death penalty in December 2007.

Bernard believes in the ACLU because…

“The organization is fearless. It's uncompromising. The organization doesn't change its attitude toward civil liberties based on who's in the governor's office or who's in the legislature or whether the economy is good or bad. It's really one of the few organizations that seriously and tirelessly represents the civil rights of people, no matter who they are or what walk of life they come from.”

Age

62 years old

Town

New York , N.Y.

Bernard is a face of liberty because…

Bernard Freamon first learned about the American Civil Liberties Union from the literature his grandmother brought home from her NAACP meetings.

She was the president of the local chapter in Far Rockaway, N.Y., and throughout his childhood she instilled in him a passion to fight for civil rights.

These early lessons led Freamon to advocate for those who needed it most. He became the founding director of Seton Hall Law School's Center for Social Justice and chairman of the Board of Essex- Newark Legal Services, among other stops along a distinguished legal career.

He started at the ACLU in 1974, fresh out of Rutgers School of Law - Newark, directing CLAW, the ACLU-NJ's Community Legal Action Workshop. The Newark-based project, founded in the aftermath of the 1967 Newark Rebellion, upheld a mission to represent people historically underrepresented in civil liberties litigation, including students, tenants and prisoners.

Freamon recalls winning legal battles for tenants who were arrested during a rent strike in Newark's subsidized housing projects and citizen protestors, upset about inadequate garbage collection, who dumped refuse on the steps of City Hall.CLAW defended their First Amendment right to direct sharp and difficult criticism at their public officials.

He often helped prisoners confined in poor conditions to secure needed medication and family visitations that were otherwise denied or illegally curtailed. He also represented plaintiffsin police brutality lawsuits arising out of the 1974 riots in Newark's Puerto Rican neighborhoods in reaction to mistreatment of Hispanic residents and underrepresentation in the police force. . Although he left the ACLU-NJ in 1976 to work at Rutgers, he has still maintained close ties with the organization, serving over two decades as an elected member of the Board of Trustees, as well as the ACLU-NJ's affirmative action officer, from 1998 to 2008.

“The ACLU has been one of my best experiences as an attorney, as an academic, and as a lifelong advocate at heart,” he said.

Age

88 years old (1915-2003)

Town

South Orange

Emil is a face of liberty because…

It was 1947, and the Cold War was beginning. From small dining halls to the largest hall in the state, establishments in Newark - under pressure from local police and political bosses - would not rent rooms for meetings of organizations seen as left-leaning. In short, the constitutional right to assemble evaporated within city limits. So the people within city limits - as well as people beyond - contacted the ACLU.

Emil Oxfeld, then the National ACLU's New Jersey representative, responded in the spirit of the First Amendment: with protest. Oxfeld organized groups from all over the state, as well as the spectrum, that had been silenced. They assembled together at the Mosque Theater - then the largest hall in the state, and now known as Newark Symphony Hall - booked under the name of the national ACLU.

“The American Civil Liberties Union calls upon all fair-minded and democratic people to join with it in providing a forum where organizations and individuals, whose rights have been denied, can assembly and freely speak - even those with whom we may disagree,” said a 1947 newspaper advertisement for the gathering.

Oxfeld opened the doors for everyone in New Jersey to have a place at the podium.

That early confrontation against censorship became a preview of the kind of leadership Oxfeld would provide on civil rights for decades. In 1960, he became the first president of the newly formed ACLU-NJ, a position he would hold for 25 years.

Oxfeld, the youngest of nine children, grew up in working-class Newark. He would eventually enroll at Harvard University, paying his way with scholarships and supporting himself with a weekend job as a vendor in Newark's ball parks. After graduating from Harvard Law School with honors, he returned once again to Newark determined to make a difference in the city he had always considered home.

Oxfeld became the ACLU presence on the ground in New Jersey starting in 1944, long before the affiliate formed. Having defended teachers who lost their jobs for refusing to recite McCarthyist loyalty oaths and students banned from publishing articles criticizing the Hiroshima bombing in the school newspaper, Oxfeld knew from his experience that the state needed a dedicated presence on the ground. He linked up the advocacy he had led in North Jersey with the work of South Jersey-based ACLU activists, who until then had worked with the Pennsylvania affiliate. On the evening of June 16, 1960 at a meeting in the Continental Ballroom at 982 Broad Street in Newark, Oxfeld and other founding members brought the ACLU of New Jersey into the world.

“We believe that the liberties in the Bill of Rights belong to every American, to all the people in New Jersey regardless of their political beliefs, race, religion, or national origin,” Oxfeld said at the time. “We believe these freedoms must be exercised if democracy in our state is to grow and thrive.”

In the fledgling affiliate's earliest years, before it had its own office space or an executive director, Oxfeld's law practice became the ACLU-NJ's makeshift headquarters. Throughout his presidency, he argued for the rights of the indigent, challenged laws ordaining prayer in public New Jersey schools, fought off book banning, worked to remove anti-leafletting laws, and took on subjective anti-obscenity laws. More than simply defending people's rights, he made it a priority to teach the public about the rights they had.

When the ACLU affiliates debated internally in 1968 over whether they would represent clients directly or as friends of the court, Oxfeld took a leading role in the advocacy for defending people directly, as New Jersey always had. As with other ACLU-NJ positions, including the defense of Fifth Amendment rights for witnesses facing the House Un-American Activities Committee and the First Amendment rights of conscientious objectors to the Vietnam War, the larger ACLU embraced the New Jersey affiliate's stance.

Throughout its first 25 years, with Oxfeld presiding, the ACLU-NJ formed projects to defend the rights of specific groups: inner-city communities, women, farm workers, and prisoners. Oxfeld established the ACLU-NJ's annual practice to honor civil liberties leaders with awards in 1970, presenting the inaugural Roger Baldwin Award to civil rights activist and New Jersey native son Paul Robeson. From 1960 to 1985, the number of members in New Jersey soared, going from 1,000 to 6,000.

Oxfeld approached his work with the ACLU-NJ as a full-time labor of love. As his full-time living, however, he practiced labor law, also an issue he felt passionate about, as a partner in Rothbard, Harris and Oxfeld, in Newark. He and his wife, Edith, a Newark public school teacher, raised their daughters Nancy and Ellen in a household that valued justice, civil rights, and free thought.

In 1985, during the 25th anniversary of the ACLU-NJ, Oxfeld penned a concise yet inclusive overview of the organization's history.

“One of the interesting aspects of civil liberties work is that the present menace always looms larger than the ones that have been overcome,” Oxfeld wrote. “I guess maybe that's the stimulation we need to try to stay forever young. I wonder how it will look after the next 25 years; I suspect not much different.”

Twenty-five years later, some things don't look much different. However, a heartening number of things do, thanks to the ACLU-NJ's legacy. That's how the organization stays forever young.

Emil believed in the ACLU because, in the words of his wife, Edith… “What thinking person wouldn't?”

Bruce believes in the ACLU because…

“The ACLU always speaks out to protect the rights and freedoms of everyone, including people with whom I may disagree.”

Age

62 years old

Town

Hunterdon County

Bruce is a face of liberty because…

For Bruce Davidson, faith and the fight for civil liberties have always gone hand in hand.

The Lutheran pastor and ACLU-NJ board member has admired the organization since the 1960s, when he was a peace activist demonstrating against the Vietnam War.

“The ACLU was always out defending people's rights to speak up and speak out,” he recalled. Sometimes they were standing with him, he said, and sometimes they were standing on the other side, “but the message was the same.”

Over the years he noticed that the ACLU weighed in on just about every issue he cared about - from the peace movement to free speech, from civil rights to economic justice, police corruption and marriage equality. He renewed his “card-carrying” member status when the first President Bush criticized ACLU membership during the 1988 presidential debate.

“The ACLU is consistently there when it comes to upholding what defines us as a country: our values, our Constitution, our laws, our freedoms,” Davidson said.

Davidson's own interest in social justice was shaped in part by coming of age in the 1960s and 70s, a time of intense social unrest, activism, and strides in civil rights. He also had parents who quietly instilled notions of equality. They were not activists, but middle-class working people who led by example, showing their son that “you just didn't judge people. Period. And certainly not on the basis of the color of your skin or the religion you practice.”

Finally, Davidson was deeply influenced by his faith, which he began to explore as a teenager growing up in Philadelphia. Many of the Lutheran sacred writings, as well as the Bible, resounded with a consistent call, as he describes it, “to serve people, to love people without regard, to forgive, to strive for justice.”

Davidson is often called upon by the ACLU-NJ to combat the false notion that the organization is somehow anti-religion. In fact, the ACLU-NJ fiercely protects the individual's freedom of religion, while also upholding the cardinal founding principle of a separate church and state.

Davidson said his own faith preaches much the same idea. “We have the same right and responsibility to speak up and speak out as any other citizen does, but in a way that's informed by our tradition of calling for justice in society, and protecting people who are poor,” he said. However, “the state doesn't tell the church what to do and the church doesn't tell the government how to do its job.”

Ron believes in the ACLU because…

“If the ACLU isn't there to defend our rights, no one else may be there to do it.”

Age

52

Town

Berkeley Heights

Ron is a face of liberty because…

It was 1988, and he was watching the presidential debate when then-candidate George H.W. Bush accused his opponent, Michael Dukakis, of being a “card-carrying member of the ACLU.”

“It just got me angry,” he said. “I sent in my $35. Yes, he's a member of the ACLU, and why shouldn't he be? And why aren't you?”

Chen's involvement with the organization, sprung from that initial fit of pique, quickly evolved into a long-lasting connection. Within months, the Rutgers law professor joined the ACLU-NJ's board of trustees — at the time the youngest member of the governing body by several decades. He served as a trustee from 1989 to 2002, and served on the National Board from 1996 to 2006, the last three years of which he also was elected to serve on the National Executive Committee.

Chen says his beliefs had long aligned with the organization's principles. “I've always had very strong feelings about free speech and freedom of religion,” he said. Chen, the son of Chinese immigrants who came to America just after World War II, grew up in a community where he was one of few Asians. This made him acutely aware of what it felt like to be different — an experience he said influenced his passion for defending civil liberties.

He would eventually become associate dean for academic affairs at Rutgers School of Law-Newark, where he taught classes and provided pro bono representation on various civil rights matters. He represented the ACLU-NJ in a case against then-Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler challenging the constitutionality of the city's holiday display, which included a crèche and a menorah. Ultimately, the courts determined Jersey City's display was unconstitutional, but ruled that government-sponsored holiday displays can include religious symbols, as long as they have secular symbols to counter-balance them. Chen also successfully defended a bar owner whose property was being seized by the city through eminent domain in order to construct improvements to a religious school.

The civil liberties crisis in the aftermath of Sept. 11 left the ACLU with a new, important obligation in America, Chen said. He worked on a team of attorneys filing suit to demand the federal government disclose the identities of immigrant detainees housed in state and county jails after the terrorist attacks. “It was an example of how the ACLU — especially the affiliates — stepped up to the plate and tried to combat some of the hysteria that followed 9/11,” Chen said.

Chen resigned from all ACLU positions in 2006, when then-Gov. Jon Corzine named him the state's first Public Advocate in 13 years. After Corzine left office in January 2010, Chen returned to Rutgers School of Law-Newark as vice dean, defending civil liberties where he left off. Within months of coming back to Rutgers, Chen argued for the rights of a student against abortion to silently protest at school with a “life” armband, and wrote the ACLU's amicus brief in the second round of Lewis v. Harris — the case that established civil unions in 2006 — pushing for marriage in 2010.

Richard believes in the ACLU because…

“It stands for fundamental civil rights and human rights and I want to be a part of that process.”

Age

40 years old

Town

Hudson County New Jersey

Richard is a face of liberty because…

When Richard Rivera was sworn into the West New York Police Department in 1990, he was determined for his career in law enforcement to make a positive impact.

Rivera achieved his goal, but not by sweeping criminals off the street. Instead, it came through his courage in 1994 to call the FBI, letting the agency know about the unchecked corruption in the West New York Police Department.

The phone call resulted in largest investigation of police corruption in New Jersey and led to the indictment of 34 people, including the police chief on charges of accepting bribes to protect prostitution, illegal gambling, illicit liquor sales and extortion from towing companies. Rivera played a pivotal role in the investigation, posing as a crooked cop for 18 months, infiltrating an organized crime syndicate.

“The corruption was so ingrained and so overwhelming,” Rivera said. “I wanted to make a difference so other officers wouldn't have to go through what I faced on a daily basis.”

Instead of being praised for doing the right thing, Rivera was fired. He looked far and wide across the state for help in filing a lawsuit against the department's retaliation. Hardly anyone returned his calls except for the ACLU-NJ.

“The ACLU was the only place that would offer some assistance,” Rivera said. “Beyond mere litigation, the ACLU both provided information and showed me how I could get information myself, to the point that I am now an expert in that field.”

The town settled the lawsuit, but refused to admit any wrongdoing.

When it came time to show his gratitude, Rivera helped the ACLU-NJ in the best way he knew how: by lending his police expertise. He has advised the affiliate on cases concerning police affairs, with insights gained from his direct experience, and co-authored the 2009 ACLU-NJ report “The Crisis in Police Internal Affairs,” which documented a statewide epidemic of police departments ignoring and deflecting citizens' complaints against officers. As a former ACLU-NJ board member, he mapped out a 10-point plan on how to improve community policing and helped position the ACLU-NJ to become New Jersey's most powerful advocate for police accountability.

In the 1990's he drove more than 30,000 miles on New Jersey's roadways while conducting studies that demonstrated racial profiling was a reality.

Today Rivera continues to make a difference in law enforcement, working as a consultant to assist victims of police indiscretion and advise departments on better training and community outreach programs.

The ACLU believes in protecting the rights of everyone because…

“Democracy means giving everyone a chance to be heard, along with the power to listen with their own judgment. Once the government puts limits on who can speak, what someone can say, and how a person say it, all of our rights eventually find their way to the chopping block. Censorship won't destroy an idea, but it will incubate defiance to a government that exercises authoritarianism. The culture of censorship silences speech before it starts. It turns the seeds of democracy fallow.

A government that suppresses the ideas of its people will always be more dangerous than anything words could have the power to invoke. ”

Age

Without beginning or end

Town

Statewide

Carrying the torch for liberty sometimes means lighting the way toward equal rights for groups that, under a different set of circumstances, would probably view the ACLU as adversaries. But with the Constitution as a guide, the ACLU will step in whenever civil liberties are being trampled - regardless of whose they are.

One of them had wanted to observe a nationwide day of solidarity against abortion. The girl, a student at Bridgeton High School in Cumberland County, had wanted to distribute anti-abortion literature and spend the day in silence, letting her armband bearing the word “life” speak for her.

When the school district forbade her to silently express herself, the vocally pro-choice ACLU-NJ was among the groups that rallied to her aid, fighting for her right to free expression.

When a group like the ACLU stands for principle, it defends those principles for everyone - which sometimes leads the ACLU defend the rights of groups that, more often than not, oppose its work.

When an elementary school student was told she could not sing “Awesome God” at her after-school talent show in 2006, the ACLU-NJ - which has fought officially sanctioned prayer in schools since its founding - stepped in to argue that the school had infringed upon her religious freedom.

Fighting back against police misconduct is a hallmark of the ACLU (44k PDF), but the organization has fought for a number of police officers over the years. When the Newark Police Department threatened to fire two Muslim officers because they would not shave their beards - as prohibited by their Sunni faith - the ACLU-NJ defended their religious freedom. And in 1998, when the North Wildwood Police Department prohibited several officers who had fought in U.S. wars from wearing flags on their uniforms as a symbol of their service, the ACLU-NJ spoke out on their behalf.

Even New Jersey Right to Life and the ACLU-NJ — usually on opposing sides of the heated debate over keeping abortion legal — have teamed up on issues such as the privacy rights of birth parents, opposition to the welfare cap law (which denies welfare benefits to any child born to a mother already on welfare), and campaign disclosure proposals that overreach to restrict the freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.

As long as the ACLU exists to fight for principles, it will represent people with opinions that don't reflect our own, and we will work in coalitions with groups usually on the other side of the argument. That's part of what makes the ACLU both credible and incredible.

Stephen Nagler addressing the audience at the Annual Awards Dinner, November 1, 1975.

Steve believes in the ACLU because…

“I'm a believer in the fundamental concept of American freedom and democracy and I think those issues are as important as they ever were.”

Age

72 years old

Town

Newark

Steve is a face of liberty because…

When the president of New York's City College banned the editor of a communist newspaper, “The Daily Worker,” from speaking on campus in 1956, Stephen Nagler turned to the New York Civil Liberties Union for help.

As head of the City College Public Affairs Forum, which he founded, Nagler had invited the editor, John Gates, to speak after another school had barred him. Although the director of the NYCLU agreed with Nagler that he had a slam-dunk First Amendment case against City College, he refused to represent him. Because the attorney saw no opportunity for the case to establish new law, he didn't think it would be one worth taking.

That 1956 episode influenced Nagler's philosophy when he took over as executive director of the ACLU-NJ in 1968.

“If there was a civil liberties case, we'd take it on,” he said. “If you don't, then you're a paper tiger.”

Born and raised in Brooklyn, Nagler always had a passion for civil rights. While he was at New York University School of Law, he ran John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign in Queens County. He served in the Peace Corps after graduation and then litigated civil rights cases in Louisiana and Florida for the Congress of Racial Equality.

Nagler knew little about New Jersey when he arrived at the ACLU-NJ, but his impact would be felt throughout the state. Under his 12-year tenure, the organization opened local offices in urban areas, launched the Prisoners' Rights Organized Defense and Farm Workers' Rights projects, and took on hundreds of cases involving police abuse, First Amendment violations, and suppression of religious freedom, equal protection and due process.

The ACLU-NJ also fought the country's first profiling case under Nagler's watch. Hippies who had said police on the Turnpike targeted them contacted the ACLU-NJ for help in droves. In order to prove the problem existed, Nagler invited members of the media to take a ride down the highway in a Volkswagen van driven by a shaggy-haired hippie. Although the ride proved less eventful than the everyday experiences of hippies at the time, the reporters covered the extent of the profiling they saw.

Today Nagler is a partner at the law firm Eaton & Van Winkle in Manhattan.

Jennifer believes in the ACLU because…

“Even the most unpopular rights require a champion.”

Age

35 years old

Town

East Brunswick

Jennifer is a face of liberty because…

By the time she reached high school, Jennifer Ching had a sense that she was an outsider in many ways, despite her typical suburban upbringing. Born and raised in New Jersey, the daughter of Chinese immigrants said she recognized acts of racist exclusion all around her, some systemic and some incidental.

While attending Harvard University in the 1990s, she worked as a community organizer in Boston's Chinatown. She discovered that families struggled daily with employment issues and began to focus on workers' rights. That experience, she said, gave her “the vocabulary of activism and social change.”

She worked with the ACLU-NJ fresh out of New York University School of Law in 2000 as a Skadden Fellow and started its Immigrant Workers' Rights Project, providing legal advocacy for low-wage immigrant workers throughout the state.

Working with Newark's American Friends Service Committee, Ching brought a federal class-action case on behalf of eight employees from Latin America working under nightmarish conditions at a chain of dollar stores. Ironically, the Jersey City location was called “99-cent Dreams.”

The workers described being locked in the stores overnight while earning less than minimum wage, if any wages at all, for a workday that could last as long as 22 hours. The chain settled the highly publicized lawsuit and made a commitment to abide by federal and state labor laws.

When she completed her two-year fellowship at ACLU-NJ, Ching kept a connection to the ACLU. As a John J. Gibbons Fellow in Public Interest and Constitutional Law at Newark's Gibbons PC, she worked alongside the ACLU on post-Sept. 11 cases seeking government documents and evidence of torture and unlawful detention in U.S. facilities, including Guantanamo. Ching continues to represent the interests of those in greatest need of an advocate as director of Queens Legal Services.

Larry believes in the ACLU because…

“The ACLU is the single most courageous public interest group in New Jersey and the United States. It is the group that is always willing to take on causes no matter how unpopular, simply because it is the right thing to do. Without the ACLU, the world would be a much more intolerant and much less fair place.”

Age

54 years old

Town

Chatham

Larry is a face of liberty because…

On May 11, 1995, the New Jersey Supreme Court issued a ruling that allowed 3-year-old Scott Thomas Deremer to keep his mother's last name. The court declared that a parent's love for a child, rather than that child's given name, binds the two.

The Court's landmark decision has stayed with attorney Lawrence S. Lustberg, who represented the mother, Karen Deremer, on behalf of the ACLU-NJ. The child support case addressed the last vestiges of sexism that remain, putting mothers equal legal footing with fathers when it comes to the names of their children. Trial and appellate courts had first sided with Alan Gubernat, who wanted Scott to have his last name even though he had for a year, denied paternity.

Over Mother's Day weekend, just days after the ruling, Gubernat killed the toddler, then himself.

“It's a tragic case. It's a case that I can never forget,” Lustberg said. “It makes us all remember that as important as these kinds of cases are, there are real people and real consequences of our work. It is something I never forget.”

It is the people who are subjected to poverty and injustice who have inspired Lustberg to do public interest and criminal defense work from the start. Since joining Gibbons P.C. in 1990 as its first John J. Gibbons Fellow in Public Interest and Constitutional Law, a program he now directs, Lustberg has worked on at least 24 cases with the ACLU, both nationally and in New Jersey.

The cases include New Jersey's first same-sex divorce, challenging such practices as racial profiling and the blanket collection of DNA collection in the state, and requiring the federal government's release of information proving the government had tortured detainees abroad.

He sees the organization as one of the few in New Jersey willing to lead the charge for civil liberties and to fight for more than just causes, but for real people suffering from real injustices.

“The ACLU takes individual clients and tries to make not only their lives better but our justice system fairer and our world a more just and humane place,” Lustberg said.

Annamay believes in the ACLU because…

“It founds its work on a basic belief that given a free and informed choice, people will do the right thing. The ACLU is steadfast in the role of guardian of that free choice.”

Age

82 years old

Town

West Orange

Annamay is a face of liberty because…

Annamay Sheppard paid a price in 1949 for following her conscience, but it was a cost well worth it, she says. The state of California mandated all public employees sign loyalty oaths, and when Sheppard refused, she lost her job as a middle school teacher.

That conscience led her to become a vocal advocate for the law's repeal. When she spoke to an African American church about her case, she heard resounding calls of “That's right! That's right!'' from the audience. She couldn't be sure, she jests, that she wasn't channeling her paternal grandfather, a charismatic Hasidic rabbi who had died before she was born.

The stories she had heard about her family helped Annamay shape what she calls her “core” - the place deep within her that illuminates which battles are worth fighting. That core solidified during the struggle against loyalty oaths, as she witnessed the passion of pro bono attorneys who risked their own jobs to fight for hers.

Sheppard had set her sights at a young age on doing “something heroic'' for a living, inspired by the civil rights work of her idol, Paul Robeson. When she and her husband, Herb, left California and moved to New Jersey, she enrolled in night classes at Rutgers Law School-Newark and joined the ACLU-NJ.

After six years in private practice, Sheppard helped launch the Newark Legal Services Project in 1966. A year later, the agency represented John Smith, the cab driver whose rumored death in Newark Police custody sparked uprisings in July 1967. Under Sheppard's leadership, Legal Services created a bail fund for the hundreds of people arrested in police street sweeps.

Sheppard played a major role in the aftermath of the unrest, when the ACLU-NJ and Newark Legal Services jointly demanded a federal takeover of the city police department. As an ACLU-NJ cooperating attorney, she helped female high school athletes win the right to play on all-boy teams throughout the 70s and successfully fought the censorship of Livingston High School's literary magazine in 1972.

In 1970, she joined the faculty of Rutgers Law and established its Urban Legal Clinic, where Rutgers students continue to represent low-income clients. She served more than 30 years on the ACLU-NJ board of trustees, including a term as president.

She retired from Rutgers in 1999, but has since kept a hand in matters of civil liberties, serving on a women's rights forum at the law school last fall.

Age

37 years old (1959-1996)

Town

Rutherford

Marsha is a face of liberty because…

Marsha Wenk grew up rooting for the underdog. The daughter of civil rights activists, “she was always helping people, always reaching out to people,” said her friend Frances Bouchoux, a Rutgers School of Law-Newark classmate of Wenk's. Bouchoux recalled that her friend kept fruit in her pocket to give to people on the street who asked for money.

Wenk fiercely defended civil rights — whether popular or not — as legal director of ACLU-NJ in the 1990s.Ã∞â≈ Ã≠  Even after receiving a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer in the spring of 1995, Wenk remained committed to her calling until her death at age 37 in March 1996.

“She was passionate and compassionate, intellectually sharp and open-minded,” said Bouchoux, now Rutgers Law School-Newark's associate dean for academic and student services. “She could always see the counter-argument, and that made her a great attorney.”

During her second year at Rutgers Law, Wenk co-founded an organization to raise money for scholarships to students entering public interest law - and had no qualms about hitting up her classmates bound for private practice.

The New Jersey native postponed her dream job — working for the ACLU-NJ — to get day-to-day trial experience. As a Warren County public defender, Wenk would take on extra work to prove that a client's constitutional rights had been violated - even when the case could be resolved on far simpler grounds.

When she did finally feel ready for her dream job as the legal director of the ACLU-NJ, she left behind a storied legacy. Under Wenk's leadership, the ACLU-NJ challenged a plan to include prayers at a South Jersey school district's graduation ceremonies and established the right for one partner in a same-sex couple to adopt the other partner's children.

Even with a full plate as legal director, Wenk volunteered at her alma mater to develop workshops and mentor students who wanted to pursue careers in public service.

Wenk's commitment to justice lives on. Each semester, the Marsha Wenk Fellowship allows a Rutgers public interest law student to intern part-time at the ACLU-NJ, fulfilling the mission of an organization she loved and upholding principles she held so closely to her heart.

Steve believes in the ACLU because…

“The ACLU is probably the one organization in the United States whose mission is to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Age

70 years old

Town

Bloomfield

Steve is a face of liberty because…

Steve Latimer was a young lawyer running a program offering eligible offenders alternatives to jail in 1972 when he walked into the Brooklyn House of Detention.

What he saw appalled him. On his way to interview an inmate, he saw two prisoners squeezed into a six-by-eight foot cell, practically sleeping on top of each other.

“It really horrified me,” Latimer said. “If I were to give an instance that radicalized me, it was that instant.”

From that point on, Latimer, who sat on the ACLU-NJ's Board of Trustees from 1980 to 2000, specialized in fighting for prisoners' rights. It was a natural fit for the former Navy officer, who had vowed to uphold the Constitution. It is an oath, he said, that he has never felt relieved of.

For decades, Latimer has used his expertise as a prisoners' rights attorney to help the ACLU-NJ. Shortly after joining the ACLU as a member in the 1970s, he took part in the chapter's Prisoner Rights Organized Defense project, which sought to eliminate a solitary confinement program in the state prison. Although their efforts were unsuccessful, Latimer went on to fight for the rights of prisoners to practice their religion and exercise the First Amendment freely.

Latimer served as an ACLU-NJ cooperating attorney in State vs. Kelly, where defendant Gladys Kelly was on trial for murdering her husband, Ernest. The case established the right for a battered woman accused of killing her batterer to have an expert witness at her trial to explain to the jury the battered woman syndrome.

“I am particularly proud of that case and the doors it opened for the battered woman defense,” he said.

David believes in the ACLU because…

“It defends real principles. It doesn't always get to choose the best clients, and the defending of the principle is not always the most popular thing to do. Nevertheless, we need to do it. The ACLU has always shown us the way. Even it loses support, it retains the principles that undergird our freedom.”

Age

61 years old

Town

South Orange

David is a face of liberty because…

When David Harris' fourth grade teacher used to taunt some of black students, rather than cower under her authority, he would return the favor. She attempted to bring him in line with public “paddlings” in the hallway, sometimes even in front of other classrooms assembled to watch. The teacher gave up the beatings once the other kids could see that, as Harris put it, “She couldn't break me.”

The determination to remain unbowed would also become one of the recurring themes of his high school years, which spanned the height of the civil rights movement. An activist even then, he participated in marches and demonstrations against the Vietnam War and in defense of civil rights. By the time he was a junior in high school, he had decided to pursue a career in law.

Harris, today a partner at Lowenstein Sandler in Roseland, now works on intellectual property and complex commercial and business litigation, but he may be best known for his pro bono work — he has never been without a pro bono case since his first day as a lawyer. He gained notoriety for several civil rights cases he tried successfully against the Trenton Police Department in the 1990s.

He joined the ACLU-NJ Board of Trustees in the 1980s at the suggestion of ACLU General Counsel Frank Askin. In Harris's tenure as board president during the 1990s, he led the organization through a major transition. He shifted the board's focus to raising financial resources and engaging new leaders to carry out the ACLU's mission.

Harris stays actively involved with the ACLU. The organization — just like that fourth-grader so many years ago — is unbreakable.

“We need organizations like the ACLU that stand up for people when nobody else will,” Harris says. “In a free society, you have to allow the most truly despicable and dangerous people the right to be heard. The ACLU understands the importance of freedom, and it is not afraid of it.”

Age

73 years old (1919-1992)

Town

Moorestown

Emerson is a face of liberty because…

Emerson Darnell had just passed the state bar exam when a partner in a large Camden law firm where he clerked invited him to lunch. He offered Darnell a job as an associate in the firm.

When it became clear, however, that Darnell would have to discontinue his pro-bono work with the ACLU, he did not hesitate to decline the offer. Darnell would share that story many times with his son Chris to demonstrate his commitment to civil liberties. That passion, rooted in his Quaker upbringing, would mark his illustrious legal career.

Looking back on his career, Darnell had said “To me the challenge of practicing law has been how to make things 'fairer,' in my own small way.”

Born and raised in Medford, Emerson Darnell was a conscientious objector during World War II and started doing pro bono work with the ACLU after he finished law school. He founded the South Jersey chapter of the Philadelphia ACLU and went on to become a founder of the ACLU-NJ. He served on the board of directors for 39 years.

As a volunteer attorney for the ACLU-NJ, Darnell defended the rights of the Ku Klux Klan (which had sought to march in Millville), anti-war activists, conscientious objectors, Hispanic motorists targeted by race on the New Jersey Turnpike, and gay men entrapped in public restrooms by undercover police. He was also a lead attorney in the case that brought about the integration of Willingboro Township after developers, Levitt and Sons, refused to sell homes to African Americans.

“He was always tilting at the windmills and taking on unpopular causes,” Darnell's son said. “Within the legal community he had a reputation as a lawyer who followed his conscience.”

Longtime friend and colleague Bill Buckman called Darnell a true believer who worked on some of the most critical civil rights cases of their time.

“Emerson wanted to conserve the Bill of Rights against all encroachments,” Buckman said. “He pushed back at the everyday rationalizations and creeping pressure on our liberties in the name of illusory security or supposed technical needs.”

In 1992, Darnell was the recipient of the ACLU of New Jersey's Roger N. Baldwin Civil Liberties Award, “for his gallant struggle to vindicate the constitutional rights of all persons however unpopular.”

Jennifer believes in the ACLU because…

“Every time the ACLU files a complaint or amicus brief in a case, they are putting New Jersey on notice that people's civil liberties are threatened every day. The worst thing that someone can do is bury their head in the sand and pretend that these issues are outdated, stale or irrelevant. They're as essential now as they ever were.”

Age

26 years old

Town

Scotch Plains

Jennifer is a face of liberty because…

After graduating from Rutgers School of Law in 2008, Jennifer Buurma decided to practice family law because she thought it would allow her to help clients on a personal level. But after witnessing nasty disputes that tore apart clients' families, she decided it was not the career for her.

In order to chart her future, she consulted her past. A pattern emerged.

“I did some soul searching and looked for a common thread in my educational history,” Buurma said. “I realized that the majority of the classes that I enjoyed not only in law school but also in college dealt with the interruption of people's civil liberties.”

Buurma was drawn to the ACLU out of the same desire to help people that led her toward family law. She wanted to make sure people - especially peers in her own generation - understood that civil rights are not obtuse concepts already achieved in a bygone era, but rather everyday struggles in people's lives.

Her own history had guided her next step. Little did she know it would also shuttle her back 50 years into the past.

In November, 2009, Buurma volunteered to assume primary responsibility for piecing together the chapter's 50-year history through old newspaper clippings and newsletters to mark the organization's Golden Anniversary. As she worked her way through each decade, she was amazed by New Jersey's staggering progress in civil rights issues. At the same time, she was disheartened by how many of those problems - discrimination, suppression of free speech, and police abuse - emerged time and again.

“I only hope that organizations like the ACLU-NJ continue to play the role they always have in protecting the rights that people sometimes find for granted until they lose those rights themselves,” she said. “My relationship with the ACLU-NJ will be a lifelong one, and I eventually want to make the kinds of big-picture changes that challenge people's biases.”

Buurma still advocates for others. She now works with socially and politically progressive non-profit organizations to improve their fundraising and communications.

Maggie believes in the ACLU because…

“They are doing the work of maintaining those things that America is famous for in the rest of the world — our protection of our civil liberties.”

Age

36 years old

Town

Woodstown

Maggie is a face of liberty because…

Maggie McCool expected some resistance when she told her 10th grade biology teacher she would not dissect worms, frogs or fetal pigs because of her religious beliefs.

Administrators at Woodstown High School were known for disciplining students who questioned their authority. But McCool never imagined the school would flunk her for refusing to take a knife to the animals.

“I thought of myself as a very peaceful person and thought I could settle it through persuasion,” she said.

She thought wrong. When the district refused to change her grades, McCool's father, a lifelong member of the ACLU, sought help from the New Jersey affiliate to sue the district for violating her freedom of religion. While McCool was not a member of any religious body, she held a deep, religious conviction about the sanctity of life.

Just before the case was to go to trial on July 24, 1989, the Woodstown-Pilesgrove Board of Education agreed to settle the case and recalculated her grades.

Today McCool is a teacher in Delaware, working with students who have emotional and behavioral disabilities. Her case has made her more sensitive to the beliefs of her own students.

“It has impacted how I look at other individuals,” she said.

Bill believes in the ACLU because…

“It is the only game in town. It's the one organization that is broadly organized and effectively protects the Bill of Rights.”

Age

56 years old

Town

Cherry Hill

Bill is a face of liberty because…

Bill Buckman was standing near an exit on the New Jersey Turnpike, thumb stretched midair, looking to hitch a ride from New York City to Cherry Hill. A State Police vehicle veered off the highway and pulled directly in front of Buckman.

The troopers smiled and laughed as they inched the car closer to the 16-year-old's knees, forcing him to walk backwards slowly.

The incident hardened Buckman's beliefs about government - that it could be arbitrary and abusive, especially if its power went unchecked. The Turnpike would also be the focal point for a case he argued that would be one of the most significant in the history of both the ACLU-NJ and New Jersey.

In 1970, Buckman opened an ACLU office in Atlantic City and became the youngest member on its board of trustees. In 1999, after fielding complaints from black motorists harassed on the state's roadways, Buckman would play a key role in pressuring New Jersey to admit the harassment was racially-motivated. He and a team of other ACLU-NJ attorneys successfully won a settlement on behalf of 12 motorists who were stopped on the Turnpike because of their skin color.

“The racial profiling work is the most significant that I've done with the ACLU,” Buckman said. “I felt that we were doing the right thing - that people of color had the right to travel the highways of New Jersey without being stopped, endangered, humiliated and harassed.”

Jeff believes in the ACLU because…

“It is the critical American institution in ensuring compliance with the Bill of Rights.”

Age

65 years old

Town

Orange

Jeff is a face of liberty because…

Shortly after the ACLU-NJ decided to challenge a state statute allowing for a moment of silence in public schools in 1983, Jeff Fogel, the executive director of the ACLU-NJ, received a phone call from a colleague on the national ACLU legal staff.

“What are you people - crazy? That's not prayer. You're going to lose,” Fogel said, recalling the caller's sentiments about ACLU-NJ's decision to sue.

The case, May vs. Cooperman, was the biggest and one of the most taxing during Fogel's tenure as executive director from 1982 to 1986. A district court declared the statute unconstitutional based on its religious intent, siding with the ACLU-NJ. The ruling was upheld by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and became a model for other challenges to government bodies pushing religion.

For Fogel, it was a colorful chapter in his long history with the ACLU-NJ, where he has been a plaintiff, volunteer, attorney, legal director and executive director of the ACLU-NJ.

In 1967, following the Newark uprisings, the Rutgers-Newark law student worked among the team of volunteers who collected affidavits from black residents alleging police brutality, abuse and warrantless searches of Plainfield homes. In 1970, as a shaggy-haired hippie pulled over by the New Jersey State Police, he became an ACLU-NJ plaintiff in the state's first profiling case.

Later, in 1982, Fogel returned to the ACLU-NJ as the executive director, a position he held for three years. When he took over, the chapter's coffers had run low that Fogel served as both legal director and executive director at the same time. Under his leadership, the ACLU-NJ confronted school prayer, gender discrimination at Princeton University, the re-imposition of the death penalty and drug testing in the state's public high schools.

“There were a lot of issues in the 80s with Ronald Reagan,” Fogel said. “It was a very small office relative to New York. There were always a million things to do.”

Alisa believes in the ACLU because…

“It defends and furthers many of my most deeply held values - justice, equality, freedom - and because marching alone to the back of the bus is not enough.”

Age

74 years old

Town

Hillsborough

Alisa is a face of liberty because…

Even at age eight, Alisa Mariani knew the bus signs that read “Colored Seat from Rear” and water fountains marked “White” and “Colored” in Miami Beach were outrageous.

“The only way this white kid knew how to protest was to drink ostentatiously from the 'colored' fountains and march directly to the back of the buses,” Mariani said.

As an ACLU-NJ member for more than 40 years, Mariani serves as a bridge between its past and future. Soon after moving to New Brunswick in the mid-1960s, she joined the recently formed Middlesex County chapter and later became its president. She sat on the ACLU-NJ Board of Trustees from the late 1960s through the 1990s.

Mariani believes a right to basic economic security underpins virtually all civil liberties issues. As chair of a state board committee to formulate an affiliate policy on economic rights - eventually adopted - she learned that a good number of ACLU members nationwide had long opposed the concept, whether on philosophical or practical grounds.

It was a personal lesson, she comments, in the complexities of working within an organization one cannot possibly always agree with.

Since the mid-1970s she has served as vice president of the Somerset County chapter - the state's only remaining county chapter. For 20 years, the Somerset County chapter has run a free, monthly walk-in clinic at which volunteer attorneys offer individuals guidance on a range of legal issues, including civil rights, divorce, landlord-tenant disputes, child custody battles, inequity in child support, and employment problems.

“We're serving a social need for people who might not have the money to consult an attorney,” said Mariani, who has organized and scheduled the legal clinic since its beginning.

She believes an ACLU presence at the local level is important and has worked hard to keep the chapter energized. “When people take an active role in what they believe in, it keeps them fired up.”

Bill and Rita believe in the ACLU because…

Bill: “It stood at the forefront of the rights and liberties of American people since it was formed. Its existence is as important and critical today as the day it started.“

Rita: “There are so few organizations in the country that have had as much impact and importance to the population of the country as the ACLU.“ ”

Age

Bill 68, Rita 68 years old

Town

Newark

Bill and Rita are a face of liberty because…

In 1968, one year after the streets of Newark erupted in violence and police brutality, a new office called the Community Legal Action Workshop opened quietly along a tattered stretch of Springfield Avenue.

The ACLU-NJ's storefront office sent a message to residents in the neighborhood struck hardest by the uprisings: They had legal recourse for police brutality and misconduct. There was a tiny staff of two - Rita Bender, then a recent graduate from Rutgers School of Law-Newark and a receptionist. Bender fielded inquiries from residents who wandered into the office. Some shared stories about police misconduct, while others simply wanted to talk about the goings-on in the neighborhood.

“We would get into discussions about what was happening to their kids in schools, or in the streets,” she said. “The community was very, very emotionally raw.”

Bender and her husband Bill got involved with the ACLU-NJ while they were law students together. In the immediate aftermath of the uprisings, the couple worked on a team of young attorneys alongside fellow attorneys Frank Askin, Oliver Lofton and Annamay Sheppard, who volunteered to represent victims of indiscriminate police round-ups, police abuse, or wrongful criminal charges.

Today the couple practices law at the firm Skellenger Bender. After spending a year at CLAW and leaving to give birth to a daughter, she worked as an attorney with the New Jersey Public Defender's Office in 1972 and taught a clinical program at Rutgers School of Law. Rita and Bill continued to work as public defenders after moving to Seattle, where eventually Rita also served as Regional Director of the Legal Services Corporation, a nonprofit organization that provides legal aid for low-income Americans.

“It was necessary and important,” said Bill Bender of his time working with the ACLU. “You couldn't live in that community at that time and not get involved.”

Randal believes in the ACLU because…

“They care, they stand up for what's right, and they're diligent. They work hard and they don't compromise your position. They're a vital resource, and they take cases that are going to benefit a wide range of people.”

Age

49 years old

Town

Manalapan

Randal is a face of liberty because…

Randal Yorker always told his son that the street was not the place to settle disputes.

“If you ever have a problem with law enforcement, respect the authority, come to me, and we'll deal with it,” Yorker had said to his son Diamond.

So when Manalapan Police harassed Diamond, then 16, in June 2003, Randal Yorker adamantly insisted he be heard. Diamond and several friends - two of them also black - had just left another friend's house when police officers approached the group. The officers asked the three white boys to leave, telling them, “You don't need to see this.” The white friends stayed, however, while the officers roughly searched Diamond and his 17-year-old friend. When the third African American boy, just 11 years old, started crying, the officers called him a “little punk” and “baby.”

At first, the officers discouraged Yorker, a Monmouth County probation officer, from filing an internal affairs complaint. Then once he submitted one, the officer processing it barely took any notes while Yorker recounted the incident. The officer refused to give Yorker a copy of his complaint and rolled the paper up, dismissively stuffing it into his back pocket. Later, Yorker saw what the officer had written about the boys on the forms - the word they had used was “negroes.”

That's when he knew the problem was systemic, he said. “This is not just one problem with one officer.”

Yorker decided to take legal action after the Manalapan Police determined the boys' rights had not been violated.

“The process is very discouraging,” Yorker said. “The system is very challenging. You have to be diligent and you can't be discouraged if you want to stand up for your rights.”

The private attorneys Yorker contacted balked at the case, and Yorker got the impression they did not want to sue the police. That's when he contacted the ACLU-NJ - old pros at handling lawsuits against abuse from officers.

With the organization's help, the boys won a $275,000 settlement. The Yorkers' case also made a lasting impact: The attorneys' fees from the suit helped create the ACLU- NJ Racial Justice Program, which works diligently to end the kind of discrimination Randal Yorker's son experienced.

Terry believes in the ACLU because…

“The ACLU comes in to help individuals like me fight against corrupt local governments and achieve a level playing field. There are so many people who need help. I'm just one of the lucky ones that the ACLU thought was worth helping against injustice.”

Age

66 years old

Town

Jersey City

Terry is a face of liberty because…

Since 1987, Terry Tan has tended bar at the Golden Cicada tavern, a popular watering hole in Jersey City that he bought with his wife.

One day, he plans to knock it down and build a senior center in its place. It would be a fitting tribute, he says, to his first wife, who died in 2004 amidst a protracted legal battle with the city over the property.

“With all the fighting that happened, I need to leave a legacy for her,” he said.

Since purchasing the land in 1987, the Tans were inundated with offers from developers interested in buying the property, but they turned them down. The Tans dreamed of building their retirement home there.

However, in 1999, the Jersey City Redevelopment Agency adopted a plan that re-zoned Tan's property for athletic or educational purposes. At the same time St. Peter's Prep, a Catholic school, decided it needed Tan's land in order to complete a new football field.

Suddenly the polite offers turned into dark threats. Tan was told to sell the property or it would become his tomb. He refused. In 2005, the Jersey City Redevelopment Agency moved to seize his property using eminent domain to benefit St. Peter's Prep. The move violated the establishment clause of the Constitution, which forbids government entities from taking actions to aid a particular religious entity.

The 2005 newspaper headlines documenting Tan's saga caught the attention of Ronald Chen of Rutgers Law School-Newark's Constitutional Litigation Clinic, a longtime trustee of the ACLU-NJ.

One month after the ACLU-NJ got involved, Jersey City and the redevelopment agency backed off.

Herb believes in the ACLU because…

“They're the guardians of people's rights. You need that, because otherwise people's rights would be trampled.”

Age

41 years old

Town

Houston, Texas

Herb is a face of liberty because…

Herb Morton was driving from his parents' home in Rockland County, NY, to Philadelphia in April 1998 when a state trooper on the New Jersey Turnpike stopped him for no apparent reason. The Continental Airlines pilot, who had his cruise control set at 55 miles per hour for the entire trip, suggested he was stopped because he was black. The officer yelled at Morton and forced him out of his van, but with no reason to issue a ticket, he eventually let Morton go.

When Morton filed a complaint against the officer, he learned the State Police had no record of his stop. Morton, who had kept the officer's name and badge number, had the strange experience of picking an officer out of a lineup. The police investigated his story and later substantiated his complaint.

But Morton had a personal imperative to go further.

“It's just lazy police work,” he said, discussing racial profiling on the highway. “If a guy walked on my airplane, he wouldn't think twice. But you see me on the Turnpike and all of a sudden I fall down levels in what you think of me? It doesn't make you feel too good when it happens to you.”

Luisa Paster & Harriet Bernstein

Harriet and Luisa believe in the ACLU because…

Harriet: “They have a clear vision of the critical importance of civil rights in our democracy, and they have a clear commitment to following that vision with dedication and concern for individuals.“

Luisa: “They believe in me by providing consistent and persistent protection for my civil rights, and also the rights of people whose ideas I may not share.“ ”

Age

Harriet 68, Luisa 62 years old

Town

Ocean Grove

Harriet and Luisa are a face of liberty because…

When they fell in love, Harriet Bernstein and Luisa Paster decided to make a lifetime commitment. They had planned to tie the knot on Sept. 30, 2007 at a waterfront pavilion in their hometown of Ocean Grove, but the Methodist group that owns the pavilion wouldn't let them. No same-sex couples allowed.

While the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association (CMA) allowed heterosexual weddings and advertised use of the pavilion to everyone, it claimed same-sex civil unions were inconsistent with its members' religious beliefs. The couple decided to fight for equal access.

“It fell on us to try to rectify an injustice that had been done to us and the GLBT community,” Bernstein said.

With the help of ACLU-NJ, they won - at least in principle. In December 2008, the state Division on Civil Rights found probable cause that the Camp Meeting Association violated the state's anti-discrimination law. The association had made the pavilion available to the public, voiding any claim for an exemption. The association stopped allowing weddings all together and appealed the ruling to federal court.

By then, Bernstein and Paster had celebrated their union elsewhere on the boardwalk, with the pavilion in view. The experience inspired them to become more active and outspoken for civil rights issues, including New Jersey's fight for same sex marriage.

Marci believes in the ACLU because…

“They're always trying to right a wrong . . . whether they're fighting for the freedom of speech for the KKK or whether it's for me, they try to uphold how we're supposed to live.”

Age

26 years old

Town

Nutley

Marci is a face of liberty because…

Marci Shepard was a teenager grieving the death of her father when the Russo family took her as their guest to the private Le Terrace Swim Club in Nutley in the spring of 2001. But an employee refused to let her in, claiming guests weren't allowed that day. While Catherine Russo complained to the owner, the employee allowed in a white member, along with that member's white guest. When Russo protested Marci's treatment, they were ordered off the premises.

The ACLU went to court on behalf of Shepard and another family denied a birthday party at Le Terrace because the guest list included “brown” or “black-skinned” students. Marci and the other defendants won a million-dollar settlement, which stopped the swim club from its discrimination on the basis of skin color.

Shepard, now a preschool teacher in Philadelphia, hesitated to file a lawsuit at first.

“When I realized, 'Geez, I'm really not being allowed in here because I'm black,' I felt kind of embarrassed. I was hoping if I opened my eyes I would be someplace else, but I wasn't.

“It was just such an ignorant act,” Marci said.

Working with the ACLU helped restore her faith - she knew not everyone was like the owner of the pool. When she realized the larger impact she could make standing up against such an egregious civil rights violation, she never looked back.

ACLU-NJ Cooperating attorney Avi Cover with his clients Tony Ivey, Jr. and Tony's mother Cassandra Jetter-Ivey

Tony and Cassandra believe in the ACLU because…

“They stand up on the side of the law and they make sure it's enforced. It's a voice that is heard.”

Age

Tony 15, Cassandra 43 years old

Town

Newark

Tony and Cassandra are a face of liberty because…

Tired and hungry after football practice, Tony Ivey, Jr. was headed to Burger King on June 14, 2008 with his coach, Kelvin James, and his teammate, Faheem Loyal, when Newark Police pulled their vehicle over on Clinton Avenue. Without any explanation, half a dozen officers, some wielding guns, piled out of two unmarked cars and ordered the passengers out.

They were frisked roughly and the car was searched — even though they had not been accused of a crime. When Ivey, then 13, returned home that day and told his mother, Cassandra Jetter-Ivey, 43, about the episode, she contacted the Internal Affairs office with the Newark Police Department. She got no response. As an investigator for the state's Division on Civil Rights, Jetter-Ivey decided to call what she considered the experts in fighting police brutality: the ACLU-NJ.

Their lawsuit against the Newark Police Department, filed in April 2009, is pending.

“We don't feel all cops are bad, just some of them who don't act in a professional manner,” said Jetter-Ivey. “You can't stereotype every single African American kid. They should not be subjected to that.”

Jetter-Ivey wants an independent agency to oversee the Newark Police in cases like Tony's. She also wishes her son's youthful disposition would return.

“He hasn't been able to live the life that a 13-year-old should,” she said. “All of his dreams of becoming a police officer are now gone.”

Ivey said that day changed him forever.

“I always have my guard up now,” he said.

But the experienced hasn't dimmed life for Tony. The star athlete loves playing football on his team.

Frank believes in the ACLU because…

“Without it, the country wouldn't be what it's supposed to be.”

Age

61 years old

Town

Cape May Court House

Frank is a face of liberty because…

Frank Corrado dreamed of becoming the next Anthony Lewis, the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and First Amendment scholar.

He worked nights at The Press of Atlantic City and spent days at Rutgers School of Law-Camden, intending to blend his legal knowledge into his reporting. But after spending a summer at a Philadelphia law firm defending newspapers against defamation claims, Corrado retired his reporter's notebook.

“That's when I decided this is more fun than being a newspaper reporter,” Corrado said. “Making the First Amendment really work appealed to me.”

Corrado, a partner at Barry, Corrado, Grassi & Gibson in Wildwood, has put his expertise to work for the ACLU dozens of times as volunteer counsel. In 1998, he forced Vineland to stop charging for police overtime when groups held public gatherings. In 2002, one year after joining the ACLU-NJ board, he secured an antiwar group's right to protest the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan on Pleasantville's main strip.

In 2009, Corrado argued before the state Supreme Court twice. He convinced the high court to invalidate municipal ordinances imposing severe residency restrictions on sex offenders, but failed to persuade the court to allow non-partisan distribution of voters' rights cards within 100 feet of the polls.

“That was a big disappointment,” he said of the Election Day decision. “But it hasn't lessened my commitment to free speech.”

Frank believes in the ACLU because…

“It helps us remain a free society with the aspiration of equal opportunity for all. We'd be quite a different society if not for the ACLU.”

Age

78 years old

Town

West Orange

Frank is a face of liberty because…

At the age of 16, Frank Askin was already championing civil rights.

He took on racial segregation in his hometown of Baltimore, handing out fliers, collecting signatures and joining the city's first mixed-race youth basketball team in an effort to overturn the city's Jim Crow laws.

That level of activism caught the attention of the FBI, which began keeping tabs on Askin in 1950, giving him a first-hand lesson on the real threats to his civil rights. Askin's lifelong alliance with the ACLU was destined at a young age.

On the heels of the 1967 Newark riots, Askin - by then a professor at Rutgers School of Law-Newark - began arguing cases for the ACLU-NJ and became a member of its board. He filed the nation's first police profiling lawsuit, which involved targeting long-haired hippies on the Turnpike. He secured voting rights victories for homeless people and parolees, and won a case that required shopping malls, playing the role of modern-day town centers, to participate in the marketplace of ideas by allowing free speech.

Askin, now the national ACLU's longest-serving general counsel, having started in 1976, played an integral role in the organization's support of affirmative action.

In 1970, he founded the Constitutional Litigation Clinic, one of the first of its kind, which continues to give Rutgers Law students hands-on experience with real cases.

“My greatest contribution has been to create a generation of public interest lawyers,'' said Askin, who remains its director. ”I'm not the retiring type.“

Planned Parenthood believes in the ACLU because…

“It has played a significant role in maintaining and furthering the rights of women and men in their access to reproductive health care.”

Age

78 years old

Town

New Jersey

Planned Parenthood's New Jersey Affiliates are a face of liberty because…

When Governor Christie Todd Whitman signed the parental notification law on June 28, 1999, abortion opponents in New Jersey rejoiced.

“New Jersey's law was carefully crafted to withstand an expected court challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union,” according to an article that appeared in the July 6, 1999 issue of National Right to Life News.

They were wrong.

The law rallied reproductive rights advocates statewide to challenge the act, which required doctors to secure parents' approval before performing an abortion on a minor. In September 1999, the ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of a coalition of abortion providers, including the five New Jersey Planned Parenthood affiliates. The ACLU-NJ argued that the law violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution.

The state Supreme Court agreed. On Aug. 15, 2000, the court struck down the act, declaring it unconstitutional.

“The ACLU-NJ has never wavered in defending the rights of society's most vulnerable people, and its work has brought down barriers to medical care for the people who need it most,” said Brooke Tarabour, president and CEO of Planed Parenthood of Metropolitan New Jersey.

The parental notification case was the second of two crucial partnerships between the ACLU-NJ and with the state's Planned Parenthood offices. The organizations had also challenged a state law banning late-term abortions. Lawmakers first passed the ban in June 1997, but it was never enforced because U.S. District Judge Anne E. Thompson declared it unconstitutional in 1998.

After the opposition pushed through several rounds of appeals to defend the law, costing state taxpayers a half million dollars, the lower court's decision was affirmed. In July 2000, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared the state law unconstitutional.

Planned Parenthood has the following New Jersey affiliates: Greater Northern New Jersey, Metropolitan New Jersey, Central New Jersey, Mercer Area, Southern New Jersey.

Jon & Michael believe in the ACLU because…

Jon: “They fought for us when nobody else would. They made our dreams come true.”

Michael: “Some people do not remember that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are not conditional; they are inalienable. In the face of unpopular causes and the difficulty of change, the ACLU stands strong in its defense of real people who need them.”

Age

Jon 46, Michael 47 years old

Town

North Haledon

Jon & Michael are a face of liberty because…

Jon and Michael Galluccio had no intention of making history in 1997 when they sued for the right to jointly adopt Adam, a toddler who was born HIV positive.

But with the help of ACLU-NJ, their case forced the state to become the first in the nation to grant equal standing to lesbian and gay couples in adoptions.

“Through the whole case, we were focused on the best interests of Adam,'' Jon Galluccio said. ”But afterward, we realized the impact of the case and how greatly the public needed to have that kind of discussion about the rights of families.“

The ACLU-NJ argued that the state's policy prohibiting unmarried couples from adopting children together in a single joint proceeding amounted to discrimination. It forced unmarried couples to go through the process twice, punishing same-sex couples denied the right to marriage.

A Superior Court judge in October 1997 ruled it was in Adam's best interest to be adopted jointly by the Galluccios, who had taken him into their care when he was an infant. Within months, the state changed its policy.

The Galluccios went on to adopt two sisters in the foster-care system - one who was 18 at the time - and to write a memoir, “An American Family.”

Jon and Michael wed in California in October 2008. Adam is now 14, Madison is 13 and Rosa, 27, is a mother of three. When the state Senate voted down New Jersey's gay marriage bill on January 7, a stranger lifted Jon Galluccio's spirits with a Facebook message describing how greatly the couple's case had changed his life. The Galluccios' experience allowed him and his partner to start a family.

“Our case opened the door for other couples,” Jon Galluccio said.

Abbe believes in the ACLU because…

“Everybody should have the same rights. I think having an organization like the ACLU is important. Who else could you go to for help?”

Age

53 years old

Hometown

Teaneck

Abbe is a face of liberty because…

Abbe Seldin wanted to play on the tennis court, but she wound up in federal court instead.

When Seldin arrived at Teaneck High School in 1972, she discovered there was no women's team, so she decided to try out for a spot on the men's team.

The coach turned the 15 year old away, citing a rule that prevented girls from participating with boys in non-contact sports. Represented by ACLU volunteer attorneys Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Annamay Sheppard, Seldin sued.

The New Jersey Interscholastic Athletic Association changed its rules, allowing girls to participate in sports with boys, and she earned her place on the team. However, the tennis ace quit the team after one winning season to escape mistreatment from her coach and teammates, who shunned her.

“The amazing thing is that it ended up being a really bad experience for me because the coach showed me no respect,” said Seldin, who went on to play professional tennis.

The battle, though, served her well for future challenges. When she arrived at Syracuse University, the athletic department tapped her to fight for scholarships for female athletes because of her experience at Teaneck.

Laila believes in the ACLU because…

“Every issue they tackle, at its core, is about some type of discrimination. They may not win every case, but they bring the problem out into the open. I wouldn't feel as safe without a group like the ACLU.”

Age

42 years old

Town

Montclair

Laila is a face of liberty because…

A shocking, violent experience at the hands of New Jersey state troopers during a traffic stop still makes Laila Maher emotional 14 years later. A trooper held a gun to her head, twisted her arm behind her back and threw her against the car. Another officer choked Maher's friend who had been in the car with her, Felix Morka, a Nigerian national who police repeatedly slammed head-first against the steering wheel.

Anger surged when Maher, an Egyptian-American, described what she had seen in the rear-view mirror that night. The troopers behind her were laughing after they let them go, having given her friend a speeding ticket.

“Overnight, I became scared to death when I saw a police officer. My heart would race,'' said Maher, who had just graduated from law school in January 1996. That physical reaction lasted years, and she has never fully regained trust in police.
When state police tried to prevent her from filing a complaint and later, after they found “no wrongdoing,” Maher turned to the ACLU-NJ. Information the ACLU-NJ uncovered showed the abuse happened not at the hands of two rogue cops, as Maher had believed, but from a statewide policy training troopers to discriminate based on skin color. In January 2003, the state - which by then had acknowledged widespread racial profiling and agreed to federal monitoring - settled with Maher and other victims.
Two months later, Maher watched as Gov. James McGreevey made racial profiling a crime.

“That was the most healing moment,'' she said, choking back tears. Maher is now director of Columbia University's Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action, as well as an ACLU-NJ member.

Ellen believes in the ACLU because…

“It protects the rights of all of us and makes sure the most marginalized among us have a voice.”

Age

68 years old

Town

Westfield

Is a face of liberty because…

Long before she felt ready to become a mother, a 20-year-old Ellen Samuel got pregnant a month after her 1961 wedding. While nursing her daughter in 1962, she heard her gynecologist on the radio talking about the pill, which had just hit American pharmacies.

“The diaphragm is the best birth control method out there,” she heard her doctor say. “I would never prescribe the pill to a patient.”

From then on Samuel — who had asked that same doctor about oral contraceptives — would never put the most important decisions of her life in someone else's hands. Holding her “diaphragm baby” in one hand, she raised her fist for women's rights with the other.

She went on to run two abortion clinics, start the Choice New Jersey coalition, and head Planned Parenthood of Middlesex County.

Samuel came to admire the ACLU working closely with its volunteer attorneys, who made sure anti-abortion protesters didn't shut the clinics down.

“We were in court a lot,” the mother of two said with a laugh.

She joined the ACLU-NJ board in 1995, becoming board president in 1998. Under her leadership membership more than doubled. Fundraising soared during Samuel's 10-year presidency, fueled in part by the ACLU's unwavering defense of civil liberties in the face of a full-on assault from the Bush administration. The ACLU-NJ filed the first lawsuit challenging post-September 11 detention without due process and organized its members to fight fiercely against the government's expanded — and unconstitutional — surveillance powers.