Medea Benjamin Biography

Medea Benjamin is a cofounder of CODEPINK and Global Exchange, an international human rights organization. Benjamin has written eight novels. Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control is her most recent book, and she has been advocating against the use of killer drones. Her questioning of President Barack Obama at his 2013 foreign policy address, as well as her subsequent visits to Pakistan and Yemen, served to bring attention to the innocent civilians murdered by US drone strikes. For more than 30 years, Benjamin has been a social justice activist. She was one of 1,000 exemplary women from 140 countries nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the millions of women who do the essential work of peace around the world. She was described as one of America's most committed — and effective — fighters for human rights by New York Newsday and one of the high-profile leaders of the peace movement by the Los Angeles Times. She was awarded the Fellowship of Reconciliation's Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace Prize in 2010 and the US Peace Memorial's Peace Prize in 2012. She worked for the United Nations and the World Health Organization as an economist and dietitian. Medea has been fighting to support a US foreign policy that respects human rights and gains allies rather than contributing to violence and damaging our worldwide reputation since the September 11, 2001 disaster. She ran for the California Senate as a Green Party candidate in 2000. Medea concentrated her efforts in the 1990s on combating the problem of unfair trade as advocated by the World Trade Organization. Medea was a prominent actor in the campaign that secured a $20 million settlement from 27 US apparel stores over the exploitation of sweatshop labor in Saipan. She is often recognized as the woman who drove Nike to its knees and helped put the subject of sweatshops on the national agenda. She also lobbied for Starbucks and other firms to carry fair-trade coffee. Her efforts for justice in Israel/Palestine include leading many trips to Gaza during the 2008 Israeli assault, organizing the Gaza Freedom March in 2010, participating in the Freedom Flotillas, and criticizing AIPAC's tactics. She was tear-gassed, detained, and deported by the Bahraini government in 2011 when she was at Tahrir Square during the Egyptian revolt, again in 2012 when she was part of a human rights delegation to Bahrain in support of democracy campaigners. Medea has also been a leading figure in the anti-drone campaign. Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control is her most recent book. She also convened the first-ever worldwide drone conference and led teams to Pakistan and Yemen to speak with victims of drone strikes and relatives of Guantanamo Bay detainees.

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