Movement Directory

Cindy Bendat
Laura Brown
Walter Cohen
H. Bruce Franklin
Ned Groth
Joe Hardegree
Glenda Jones
Paul Loeb
Andrew Moss
Christine Mrak
Marc Sapir
Lenny Siegel
Jim Warren
Marc Weiss
Carol White
Jim Wolpman

Christine Mrak

April 20, 2009
Christine Mrak.
In 1967 I took my first plane ride from small town Indiana to Stanford and was promptly thereafter marching through San Francisco to "Stop The Draft." I had Harvey Hukari and the Shoch brothers to my Indiana home to make strudel (and I have photos of them in aprons). After a year in Grove House, I lived off campus in collectives, culminating in the Webster Street headquarters of the Palo Alto tenants union. I was a founding member of the Women's Union and supported myself through school cleaning houses in Atherton and serving as Prof. Drekmeier's typist. I was one of the Stanford 29 tried for confronting the Trustees over war research in January 1969, and was one of the consumers of éclairs awaiting the Trustees' dessert course as we milled the halls of the Faculty Lounge seeking entrance to their meeting. At trial, our inquisitors peered at us over a mound of éclairs piled upon their table by theatrically-minded SDSers. Since I was in Europe that Spring, I missed the takeover of AEL, for which I credit my graduation.
Post-Stanford, I moved to Seattle and had a 30-year career as a labor union lawyer. I served on the Board of the national AFL-CIO lawyers' organization. One significant experience (which poses a contrary message to the movie Northcountry) was my tactical support of a 1979 strike by 1500 men—rural loggers and sawmill workers—to reinstate a woman coworker who had been fired after filing sex harassment charges against her plant manager. They were out for 2-1/2 months in a declining timber market, but ended well when a federal judge told the company, "I'm putting her back to work Monday, counsel."
Since hanging up my spurs, I'm enjoying a slower pace. I hike, ski, cook and volunteer as a voting rights attorney. I headed the 2004 AFL-CIO voting rights effort in Washington State, testified before our state legislature on voting rights, volunteered for the Democrats in 2008, and went to Minnesota to help supervise the Franken recount. I married Rick Blumberg (Stanford Law '70) in 1995 after we'd been together for 20 years. We have 3 great kids, all grown, one of whom is a Stanford alum. Time to write that screenplay...
Christine Mrak