Candidate for
Judge, Superior Court; County of Marin; Office 2

About Cliff Meneken

Cliff is a 4th generation San Francisco native who was raised in the Sunset District. He attended public schools and UC Berkeley, where he first got his start with civil rights activism. Following graduation from UC, he spent two years in the Peace Corps in South Korea, teaching English. He next went to Newark, N.J., as a VISTA volunteer, where he helped set up an alternative school and early childhood center. He later worked as a counselor for inner city youth, a director of a community center, and an administrator for the Welfare Department. At the same time, he attended graduate school at Rutgers University, eventually receiving an MA in U.S. History.

In 1977, Cliff returned to San Francisco, where he lectured in English at USF before attending law school there. He was a law clerk with the U.S. Attorney's Office, and a legal extern for Calif. Supreme Court Justice Stanley Mosk. He was granted an Environmental Internship from the Sierra Club, during which he wrote an appellate brief in defense of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act for the 9th Circuit.

After law school, he was employed as an attorney for the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB) and for 12 years prosecuted unfair labor practices, mostly on behalf of farm workers, in Oxnard and Salinas. He handled many trials and resolved most of his cases early on, some of which involved multi-million dollar settlements. In 1993, Cliff and his family moved to Marin County, where he worked for a decade with two labor law firms, litigating and writing appellate briefs in complex labor/employment and general civil matters. During the above periods, he also did volunteer work as an attorney for Legal Services and the Prison Law Office in San Rafael. For the last two years, he has been engaged in private practice, mostly representing individuals and neighborhood groups on environmental matters.

He and his wife Bonnie (who teaches in a local school) live in Terra Linda. They have two children, both of whom graduated from Marin public high schools (Tam and Redwood), before going on to UC colleges. He has one grandchild.

Cliff has been active in community affairs for some time, working as a docent for the Anne Frank Exhibit while living in Corte Madera and currently serving as a Board member of the Santa Margarita Neighborhood Association (SMNA). He has involved himself in various beautification projects in Terra Linda. Most recently, he led a successful grass roots movement that culminated two years ago in a landmark San Rafael City ordinance to ban second floor construction for the city's historic Eichler homes.

He also organized and moderated a well-attended Terra Linda Town Hall Meeting last October that dealt with both national and local issues, with Representative Lynn Woolsey and Supervisor Susan Adams as primary speakers. One of Cliff's current projects is working on a fundraiser for the Hospice of Marin which will include a tour of Eichler homes in the fall.