Call her Susie. She hates that. And ask her about her wealthy developer father.
******
Born Susie Benjamin, she changed her first name to match the villain in a classical tragedy by Euripides, a barbarian witch whose murder of her own children was so vile even the stoic Greek chorus considered intervening.
As Green Party candidate for Senator in California in 2000, Medea was well known for disrupting other candidates' events by yelling and screaming at the top of her lungs.
Global Exchange's main activity is propaganda - conducting 'reality tours' to various countries, including Fidel Castro's Cuba and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, that take naVve Americans to meet with 'ordinary people' hand-selected by the dictators.
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.
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. No strings attached, say both Al and Medea Benjamin. Al has supported Jewish- related charities; Medea supports a Palestinian state.
"I admire Susie because she is always true to her own heart," said Al Benjamin; only her family still calls her "Susie." "Even when I totally don't agree with what she's saying."
Benjamin went to Cuba with her first husband, who was coach of the national basketball team; Benjamin hates sports.
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.
It was on a trip to Washington, D.C., in the mid-1980s that she met her now- husband Kevin Danaher, a tough-talking activist. He asked the then-vegetarian out to dinner -- to a steak restaurant. They've been together ever since.
"While I wanted to save the world one child at a time, Kevin always says, 'Let's get the bastards who are doing it to these kids.' "
Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin's to Chavez
Benjamin: "With the US elections coming up in November, George Bush and John Kerry for that matter could learn a thing or two from Hugo Chavez about winning the hearts and minds of the people."
"Benjamin went to Cuba with her first husband, who was coach of the national basketball team; Benjamin hates sports."
If Susie hates sports, why on earth would she marry a basketball coach? Also, if her first husband was a Cuban national basketball coach, then she certainly lived a different life than the vast majority of other Cubans; Fidel pampers his pet athletes and coaches.
Athletes are more equal than all other Cubans.