Medea Benjamin

Medea Benjamin (born Susan Benjamin; September 10, 1952) is an American political activist who was the co-founder of Code Pink with Jodie Evans and others.

Along with activist and author Kevin Danaher, she created the fair trade advocacy group Global Exchange.

Susan Benjamin was born September 10, 1952, and grew up in Freeport, New York, on Long Island, a self-described "nice Jewish girl".

During her first year at Tufts University, she renamed herself after the Greek mythological character Medea.

Samuel Moyn wrote that Benjamin "liked how the name sounded, and she had heard a feminist interpretation of the Greek tragedy suggesting that Medea had never killed her children and was only blamed for it by patriarchal traditions".

She also joined the Students for a Democratic Society.

Later she dropped out of school and hitchhiked through Europe and Africa, teaching English classes to earn money.

She later returned to the United States and received master's degrees in public health from Columbia University and in economics from The New School.

Benjamin worked for ten years as an economist and nutritionist in Latin America and Africa for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Health Organization, the Swedish International Development Agency, and the Institute for Food and Development Policy.

In 1988, with her husband, Kevin Danaher, and Kirsten Moller, Benjamin co-founded the San Francisco-based Global Exchange, which advocates fair trade alternatives to what she describes as corporate globalization.

During the 1990s, Benjamin focused on countering what she believed was unfair trade as promoted by the World Trade Organization.

She participated in an anti-sweatshop movement, initiating campaigns against Nike and clothing companies such as the GAP.

In 1999, Benjamin helped expose the problem of indentured servitude among garment workers in the United States territory of Saipan (the Marianas Islands), which led to a billion-dollar lawsuit against 17 United States retailers.

In 1999, she produced the documentary Sweating for a T-Shirt about the sweatshop industry.

During the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in December 1999, Benjamin's organization, Global Exchange, helped organize the 1999 Seattle WTO protests.

Benjamin was the Green Party candidate in California in 2000 for the United States Senate.

In 2000, Benjamin ran for the United States Senate on the Green Party ticket.

She advocated a living wage, universal healthcare and delaying genetically engineered foods.

Democratic incumbent Dianne Feinstein, Benjamin and her Republican rival Tom Campbell chose to participate in joint events, including a press conference, during the campaign.

Benjamin garnered 99,716 votes, 74%, in the Green Party primary, and 326,828 votes, 3.08% of the general election total ballots.

Since then she has remained active in the Green Party and has also supported efforts by the Progressive Democrats of America.

She is a member of the Liberty Tree Board of Directors.

In 2002, with Jodie Evans and others, she co-founded the feminist anti-war group Code Pink: Women for Peace, which advocated for an end to the Iraq War, the prevention of future wars, and social justice.

Benjamin has been involved with the anti-war organization United for Peace and Justice.

She later created the Occupation Watch Center in Baghdad (IOWC) to monitor the United States military, and the war's effect on civilian populations.

From 2002 to 2009, Benjamin engaged in numerous protests involving members of the Bush administration (Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld; President George W. Bush; Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice); Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, and others.

Through this center, she brought U.S. military family members to see the conditions under which enlisted personnel served, and to speak out against the war, in Congress and at the United Nations, in 2003.

Benjamin engaged in protest actions at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and the 2004 Republican National Convention.

During 2005–2010, she worked to oppose United States threats of a possible impending war with Iran, including lobbying Congress, taking peace delegations to Iran, and bringing Iranian youth to Congress.

On December 4, 2007, she was arrested by plainclothes police in Lahore, Pakistan, detained by the ISI for eight hours, and deported after protesting the house arrest of lawyers (including Aitzaz Ahsan).

In 2009, Benjamin joined the steering committee for the Gaza Freedom March.

In February 2012, Benjamin was arrested and deported for illegal entry to Bahrain and her participation in an illegal protest.

Benjamin repeatedly interrupted a major speech by President Barack Obama regarding United States policy in the War on Terror at the National Defense University on May 23, 2013.

After Benjamin was removed for her actions, President Obama then went off script.

"The voice of that woman is worth paying attention to," he said.

"Obviously I do not agree with much of what she said. And obviously she wasn't listening to me and much of what I said. But these are tough issues. And the suggestion that we can gloss over them is wrong."

"If he had indeed made significant policy changes, I wasn't going to say anything," Benjamin told The Daily Beast later.

"I would have preferred that option, but given that he didn't make those kind of changes I was looking for, I was glad to be given the opportunity to speak out."

In 2015, she served in the Green Party shadow cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State.

On July 21, 2016, Benjamin heckled Donald Trump's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention with a sign that read "Build bridges not walls".