In the Twin Cities peace community, Marie Braun was known as a builder of bridges and a tireless organizer who never took herself too seriously.
Braun frequently led large marches in the early 2000s that opposed American intervention in Iraq. Along with her late husband, John, she organized the distribution of thousands of signs that sprouted on lawns across the state, demanding "No war with Iraq," and helped launch in 1999 the Wednesday peace protests on the Lake Street-Marshall Avenue Bridge that still continue.
Braun, of St. Louis Park, died on June 27 at 87. She recently had undergone back surgery, said her daughter, Becca Braun, of Edina.
"She was a giant and she had so much energy," said Sarah Martin, a board member of Women Against MiIitary Madness (WAMM).
"As children, my brother and I went to a lot of protests, not always willingly," said Becca Braun. "It was kind of one of our family jokes. ... She was a wonderful mom, an incredible grandma."
Born in St. Paul, Marie Powers moved with her family to Good Thunder, Minn., where her parents, Leonard and Antoinette, ran a farm and she went to high school. She received a degree in sociology from the University of Chicago and a master's degree in social work at the University of Minnesota. She married John Braun in 1972.
The couple joined Clergy and Laity Concerned About Vietnam, and she became an early member of WAMM. In 1979 they started the Counseling Clinic in Brooklyn Center, providing outpatient mental health and chemical dependency treatment. They sold the clinic in 1995.
The Brauns helped form a local campaign to end sanctions on Iraq, and in 1998 she visited Iraq as part of a delegation to report on the impact of U.S.-imposed sanctions. Marie Braun later wrote that she toured crowded hospitals with "wards of misery," staffed by doctors who had no medicine and containing children "dying because of preventable illnesses — from malnutrition, gastroenteritis, and vitamin deficiencies."
