Medea Benjamin Jan31

Medea Benjamin
Thursday, January 31, 2012
7pm
First Church in Cambridge, Margaret Jewett Hall,11 Garden Street, Cambridge - 3 blocks from Harvard Sq T*
Sliding scale donation $5-10 requested to cover costs, no one turned away. Proceeds after expenses will be donated to legal costs of anti-drone protesters.

Medea Benjamin, founder of Global Exchange and CodePink Women for Peace, has  recently returned from solidarity trips to Gaza and to protest U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan. She will sign copies of her new book, /Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control./

Benjamin has been an advocate for social justice for more than 30 years.  Described as "one of America?s most committed -- and most effective --  fighters for human rights" by New York Newsday, and called "one of the high profile leaders of the peace movement" by the Los Angeles Times, Medea has distinguished herself as an eloquent and energetic figure in the progressive
movement. In 2005 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 worldwide. In 2010 she received the Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace Prize from the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Since the September 11, 2001 tragedy, Medea has been working to promote a U.S. foreign policy that would respect human rights and gain us allies instead of contributing to violence and undermining our international reputation. In 2000, she was a Green Party candidate for the California Senate. During the 1990s, Medea focused her efforts on tackling the problem
of unfair trade as promoted by the World Trade Organization. Widely credited as the woman who brought Nike to its knees and helped place the issue of sweatshops on the national agenda, Medea was a key player in the campaign that won a $20 million settlement from 27 US clothing retailers for the use of sweatshop labor in Saipan. She also pushed Starbucks and other companies to start carrying fair trade coffee.

Her work for justice in Israel/Palestine includes taking numerous delegations to Gaza after the 2008 Israeli invasion, organizing the Gaza Freedom March in 2010, participating in the Freedom Flotillas and opposing the policies of the Israel lobby group AIPAC. In 2011 she was in Tahrir Square during the Egyptian uprising and In 2012 she was part of a human rights delegation to
Bahrain in support of democracy activists; she was tear-gassed, arrested and deported by the Bahraini government.?

A former economist and nutritionist with the United Nations and World Health Organization, Benjamin is the author/editor of eight books. Her latest book is called /Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control/, and she has been campaigning to get lethal drones out of the hands of the CIA. Her articles appear regularly in outlets such as /The Huffington Post/, /CommonDreams/,
/Alternet/ and /OpEd News/.

Sponsored by United for Justice with Peace; co-sponsored by Women's International League for Peace & Freedom and Massachusetts Peace Action (list in formation).
United for Justice with Peace [1] is a coalition of peace and justice organizations and community peace groups in the Greater Boston region. The UJP Coalition, formed after September 11th, seeks global peace through social and economic justice.