April Third Movement
Cindy Bendat
April 25, 2009
I arrived at Stanford in 1971, after most of the activities giving rise to the A3M movement. Nonetheless, there was also Stanford activism during the time I was at Stanford (1971-1974), and I was actively involved in a number of issues, often with my Columbae House friends, including the women's movement, farmworker organizing, and anti-war protests. Our actions, including demonstrating, leafleting, guerrilla theater, and civil disobedience, were primarily directed at educating and mobilizing other members of the Stanford community.
These activities plus my work experiences assisting Wendy Williams at Redwood City Legal Aid, interning with Bella Abzug in Washington D.C. during the summer of the Watergate hearings, and volunteering with the Wounded Knee Legal Defense Committee in Lincoln, Nebraska led to my decision to go to law school. I attended Berkeley's Boalt Hall where my focus became labor and employment law. While at Boalt, I worked with Equal Rights Advocates in San Francisco and the Agricultural Labor Relations Board in Delano, California.
Since graduation from law school, I have been a union-side labor and employment lawyer, having worked for 20 years for 3 different labor unions, as well as in private practice handling employment discrimination and wrong termination cases. My last position was with the Writers Guild of America, west in Los Angeles where I was employed for more than 16 years as an Attorney and as Director of Organizing. About three years ago, I left the Writers Guild to pursue other activities.
Now I am a photographer. (Photography was something I had also been actively doing for decades, including at Stanford.) Through the years, I have traveled throughout the world and, in addition to photographing abroad, I am particularly interested in photographing the cultural diversity—the many cultures and subcultures living in Los Angeles where I live, and in creating art with social impact. In that regard, I sometimes work with nonprofit organizations, including, most recently, with Bridges to Understanding in Dharamsala, India and with Homeboy Industries in downtown Los Angeles. Examples of my work may be found at www.cindybendat.com.
I also serve on the Board of Directors of a number of non-profit organizations, including for many years with the Center for the Study of Political Graphics in Los Angeles—see www.politicalgraphics.org.
My years at Stanford cemented what was for me already a burgeoning feminism, a concern about the world, and a belief in the importance of activism and community involvement.