Medea Benjamin, founder of the international human rights organization Global Exchange and co-founder of the peace and social justice organization Code Pink: Women for Peace, will present a lecture, "Globalization, What it is, What's Wrong With it, and What Can be Done to Fix it," on Tuesday, Feb. 24, at 7:30 p.m. in the Hamilton College Chapel.
Benjamin is a leading activist in the human rights movement, working for social justice in Asia, the Americas and Africa for more than 20 years. She has advocated improved labor and environmental standards for multinational corporations, pushed for a reorientation of the U.S. budget to focus on health care, education and housing, and once interrupted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as he proposed his war plan to Congress.
Benjamin has also worked to challenge the policies of the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. She is a key figure in the anti-sweatshop movement, promoting "fair trade" alternatives, and her activism was instrumental in pressuring coffee retailers such as Starbucks to begin carrying fair trade coffee. In the arena of international peace and justice, Benjamin has traveled to Iraq several times, establishing the Occupation Watch International Center in Baghdad to monitor military occupation forces and foreign corporations. Benjamin also ran as a Green Party candidate to the U.S. Senate from California in 2000.
Medea Benjamin's lecture is sponsored by the Sophomore Seminar on Globalization.
