Marie Braun, lifelong peace and justice activist, dies at 87

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."

"I think going to Iraq, seeing it firsthand, changed her life," said WAMM board member Carol Walker. Braun held a prayer service every December for the children of Iraq, said Julie Madden, director of justice and peace ministries at St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church in Minneapolis.

"She made it a lifelong cause to care about people in Iraq," said international peace activist Kathy Kelly, of St. Charles, Ill.

Others said Braun had a knack of pulling together people with different philosophies. "Marie was a calming presence and could move things ahead," said Lucia Wilkes Smith, a former WAMM director. Said Jess Sundin, a founder of the Anti-War Committee: "Marie was absolutely trusted. She was one of the most principled people in the movement."

The Brauns also participated in civil disobedience protests against weapons manufacturing. "Sometimes we took turns getting arrested," she said a few years ago. "Most of the time we got arrested together."

Alan Dale, of the Minnesota Peace Action Coalition, recalled a police officer telling Braun at a protest of thousands at Loring Park that they could not march without a permit, and demanding her driver's license. "You can have my driver's license, but we're still going to march," she told the officer. And they did.

John Braun died in 2018. Besides her daughter, Braun is survived by her son, Matt, of Edina; sisters Betty Morson, of Minneapolis, and Kathy Powers, of Robbinsdale; and five grandchildren. Services will be held at 11 a.m. Thursday at St. Joan of Arc, 4537 3rd Av. S., Minneapolis, with a gathering at 9:30 a.m.