Strengthening Her Sisters

First Shelter Established
After defying the efforts of city officials and court orders to remove the women from her house, Sandra Ramos succeeded in getting the first shelter established in the late 1970s. Since then, thousands have found refuge in Ramos’s home or one of her shelters, which all together house some 180 women and children. Many of them are Latinas, and Ramos plans to start a weekly Spanish-language group counseling session. But Ramos—who was born Sandra Blumberg and kept the surname of her ex-husband, a Cuban immigrant—notes that the racial and ethnic makeup of the shelter residents constantly changes.

"Domestic violence crosses all race and class lines," she said on a recent Sunday, during a break from her daily two-hour swim at the mountain stream-fed Highlands Pool. "It’s an equal opportunity employer."

Ramos’s aversion to the status quo shapes her lifestyle as well as her activism. She makes frequent references to "the Goddess," explaining that she believes that "the creator" is feminine and that the term also refers to "the power of women’s energy.”

Ramos, who wears her bright-red hair long, favors 1950s and 1960s sartorial styles, lives in a pink-and-purple Quonset hut transplanted from a military base, and drives a 1986 fuchsia Volvo adorned with Art Deco hood ornaments symbolizing peace, women power, and protection of children. Once, mulling over what to don for a party, Ramos recalls, she looked at her curtain and decided to wear it to the bash. "I think women, as they get older, should get wilder," she says. "Do what you want to do."

"At the group meetings, I’ll ask people to tell me what they did in a 24-hour period. Then I ask them how many of those things did they really like—and usually it’s little or nothing at all. It’s sad."

Not surprisingly, the anti-bureaucrat takes a hands-on, grassroots approach to her shelters, which are funded through grants and donations. She’s a fixture in the shelters, serving meals to the women and children, and eating and schmoozing with them. She encourages the women to play a key role in the shelters; they cook their own meals and help organize activities.

"It’s a very cooperative environment," says attorney Linda Neilson, a former student of Ramos who provides pro bono legal counsel to women at the shelters. "The women work together for whatever they need. They’re very organized."

Ramos runs two weekly "empowering sessions" at the shelters—one focused on assertiveness training and the other a battered women's support group—and on Friday nights she sings in a gospel choir at one of the shelters. She sends advocates to court to offer women moral support when they are seeking restraining orders or fighting for custody of their children. She also helps women get legal advice but rarely goes to court herself because, says Ramos, "I’m constantly enraged by the injustice put forth by the judges."

"Sandy makes you feel like, OK, you’re going through this, but it’s going to get better," says Geraldine Wright, who was born in the Dominican Republic and sought refuge from her batterer at one of Ramos’s shelters. "One of the best things I did for myself and my children was come to the shelter. She helped me feel strong, which I usually wasn’t. She helped me get a job here at the shelter so that I could find a place and pay the rent."

Ramos meets with legislators and judges to discuss what she says is a court system that makes it too easy for batterers—who often are better able to afford expensive legal battles than their girlfriends or wives—to gain custody of children.

"I’ve never been a fan of the courts," says Ramos, adding that she’s heard judges express reluctance to issue restraining orders to women who didn’t seek them fast enough. "Many women are scared of their batterers. And batterers have learned that a way to get back at a woman who leaves them is to fight them for custody and get money from them for child support."

To combat the system, she pickets—for individual women when they have a court hearing or in annual demonstrations focused on a particular issue. For years, around Mother’s Day weekend, for instance, she has helped organize and participated in demonstrations outside courthouses in Passaic and Bergen counties, where several of her shelters are located. And in her characteristic belief that sometimes a bit of drama can make a point, demonstrators push empty strollers to symbolize the many battered women whom Ramos says unfairly lose custody.

Ramos says she has no plans to slow down. In demonstrations, speeches, classrooms, and meetings with legislators, she continues to push for better training about domestic violence for police and judges, better access to legal representation for battered women, and the creation of a civilian review board to look at cases in which a battered mother has lost custody of her children.

"Sandy’s legacy," Neilson says, "will be that she spent not just a portion but her entire adult life fighting to make sure battered women have the support and services they need."