Editing Medea Benjamin (section)

== Early life ==
Medea Benjamin was born Susan Benjamin on September 10, 1952, daughter of Alvin and Rose Benjamin. She grew up in [[Freeport, New York]], on [[Long Island]], and is of Jewish descent. Her father, Alvin Benjamin (1920-2012), was a wealthy real estate developer, president of The Benjamin Companies.<ref>{{cite news|last=Garofoli |first=Joe |url=https://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/1026-04.htm |title=S.F. Woman's Relentless March for Peace |newspaper=San Francisco Chronicle |date=October 26, 2002 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130618045700/http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/1026-04.htm |archive-date=June 18, 2013 |df=mdy }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.benjamindevco.com/founder.html|title=Our Founder|website=The Benjamin Companies}}</ref><ref name="InfluenceWatch">{{cite web|url=https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/benjamin-fund/|title=Benjamin Fund|website=[[InfluenceWatch]]}}</ref>

During her first year at [[Tufts University]], she renamed herself after the [[Greek mythology|Greek mythological]] character [[Medea]]. [[Samuel Moyn]] wrote that Benjamin "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]] [[tradition]]s".<ref name="moyn2021">{{cite book |last=Moyn |first=Samuel |title=Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War |publisher=[[Picador]] |date=2021|isbn=9781250858719}}</ref>{{rp|268}}

She also joined the [[Students for a Democratic Society]].  Later she dropped out of school and [[hitchhike]]d 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]],<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://www.codepink.org/medea_benjamin|title=Medea Benjamin|newspaper=Codepink|access-date=2017-01-26}}</ref> the [[World Health Organization]], the [[Swedish International Development Agency]],<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.globalexchange.org/blogs/peopletopeople/author/medea/|title=People to People Blog|website=People to People Blog|language=en-US|access-date=2017-02-13}}</ref> and the [[Institute for Food and Development Policy]].{{citation needed|date=February 2016}}