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. Benjamin was the Green Party candidate in California in 2000 for the United States Senate. Early life 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. Moyne (2021, p. 268) said she did this, because she "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. Career Organizations 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. 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. 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. Politics 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