before she adopted the name "Medea" as a Tufts University freshman, she was Susie Benjamin, self-described "nice Jewish girl from Long Island."
She went to Cuba with her first husband, who was coach of the national basketball team. Cuba's comparative social equality "made it seem like I died and went to heaven." She was working at a Communist-run newspaper in Cuba.
Her father, Al, is a well-to-do developer, who says he has "donated hundreds of thousands" of dollars to Global Exchange over its 14-year-history.
San Francisco nonprofit Global Exchange, which Benjamin co-founded in 1988 with her husband Kevin Danaher, a tough-talking activist.
She and her husband spend only two days a month together.
Kevin Danaher, Veteran Human Rights Activist and co-founder of Global Exchange. Kevin is an executive producer of the Green Festivals, two-day events bringing together hundred of green economy companies, social justice and environmental organizations, speakers, live music, organic food and drink, and tens of thousands of attendees hungry for a transition to the green economy.
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A former economist and nutritionist with the United Nations and World Health Organization, Benjamin is the author/editor of eight books, and lives in San Francisco with her husband Kevin Danaher, who also works at Global Exchange, & is Executive Producer of Green Festivals. and her two daughters Arlen, age 20, and Maya, age 11.
Medea Benjamin's support for oppression precedes Global Exchange - she got her start in the mid-80s, providing aid to the Communist Sandinista government of Nicaragua as a coordinator for the Institute for Food and Development Policy.
As head of Global Exchange and the women's anti-war group Code Pink, she has stood on stage with all three Communist-dominated anti-war coalitions - the Workers' World Party-controlled International ANSWER, the Revolutionary Communist Party-dominated Not In Our Name coalition, and the creation of former Communist Party U.S.A. activist Leslie Cagan, the Coalition United for Peace and Justice.