About Franke

My mother's family homesteaded in Terry, Montana. After the family ranch burned down following a four-year drought, the older children moved further west while the younger children and my grandparents moved to the eastern shore of Maryland to start over as what my mom used to call dirt farmers. My mother went to one-room schoolhouses both in Terry and in Denton, Maryland, and then went on to nursing school. My father was a brick mason. My mother talked often of Terry, and how she carried a four-pound moss agate in her lap on the long train ride from Terry to Denton. I brought it back in 1991.

I became involved in civil rights in high school, graduating the year Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, and spent the following year studying journalism as a college student. Over the next 12 years I became a wife, mother, and later a single parent, and worked as a secretary, carpenter, and waitress before completing my undergraduate degree.

In the late 1970s I worked for a Community Relations Council. We mediated disputes stemming from tense race relations, engaged in pro-active advocacy of improved relations, and investigated cases filed under Title VII of the Federal Civil Rights Act. In graduate school I worked as a substitute teacher and an auditor for General Motors. I worked for minimum wage, for tips, to put food on the table and a roof overhead. I could not afford health insurance.

Hard work made my dream of becoming a college teacher come true. I have lived in Bozeman for 19 years now.  My daughter and her four children also live in Bozeman and attend Bozeman public schools.  My commitment to environmental protection, economic security, and responsible government spans 30 years, from tutoring students in coal mining towns to starting one of the first  neighborhood-recycling programs in Baltimore in the 1980s.

My background in community relations, lifelong commitment to social justice, and academic interest in human rights led me to community service promoting human rights in Montana too. At the same time white supremacists became more active in Billings (the subject of the award-winning documentary Not in Our Town), parallel activities were taking place in Bozeman. A small group of committed individuals mobilized in Bozeman and we established the Gallatin Human Rights Task Force.

That was fifteen years ago and the GHRTF continues its work today to raise consciousness of human rights in our community. We renewed our efforts in the summer of 2009 when the "Montana Creativity Movement" became active in Bozeman.  In 2005 Governor Schweitzer asked me to chair the Montana Human Rights Commission. For one or two days every other month, the Commission holds meetings in Helena to hear appeals of cases investigated by the Montana Human Rights Bureau under Title 49 of the Montana code, the Montana Human Rights Act.

I want to serve in the state legislature for the same reason I teach politics. As a young woman I fell in love with the idea of America, its promise of progressive justice, and continuous self-improvement as a democracy. I believe in individual responsibility, that wise use of public resources can make our society better and eliminate deprivation, and that productive debates and finding the best course of action require the participation of both parties.

The 2011 legislature will consider many critical issues involving energy, education, the economy, health care, and natural resources. These issues have long been important to me and, listening to the people of North Bozeman, I've learned that the voters in North Bozeman care about them too. I'll work in the legislature hard to support public education, small business, good paying jobs, extending affordable health care to more Montana kids, affordable and clean alternative energy, and to fulfill our state constitutions promise of a clean and healthful environment.