The Benjamin Fund is a private foundation associated with Code Pink (styled CODE PINK) founder Medea Benjamin and her family that funds far-left organizations including Code Pink, Global Exchange, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). [1][2] Benjamin is also co-founder Global Exchange. [3]
The Benjamin Fund’s money reportedly comes from the estate of Rose Benjamin,[4] ex-wife of the late Long Island real estate developer Alvin Benjamin and mother of Medea. [5] Prior to his death, Alvin Benjamin provided money to the Fund. [6]
Funding Activities
The Benjamin Fund invests millions into many left-of-center organizations but its largest bloc of funding is to Medea Benjamin’s far-left demonstration group Code Pink. Code Pink has used those donations to invade and provoke Israel in 2011 and demonstrators aligned with the group called for the elimination of Israel in 2015. It also participated in a Holocaust deniers’ conference led by the Iranian regime in 2014. [7]
The second largest recipient of Benjamin Fund revenues is the other Medea Benjamin-founded far-left group, Global Exchange (GE). [8] After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Global Exchange suggested Americans needed to self-evaluate as to what the United States had done to provoke the terrorist attacks. It claimed that U.S. policies on Middle East oil and support for Israel fostered resentment and triggered the attacks. Global Exchange is a self-described “anti-corporate globalization” organization that supports open borders, amnesty for illegal immigrants, opposes capitalism and was the catalyst for the riots at the 1999, WTO conference in Seattle. [9]
Benjamin donates significant funding to One DC, a grassroots organization that claims to represent the poor and oppressed in Washington D.C. Its manifesto states that housing, wellness, and income are human rights, seeks free, non-imperialistic education, abolition of prisons, and the control of land that has been lost to gentrification and developers. [10]
People’s Hub receives Benjamin funding and charges communities for training services. It claims to train people to achieve progressive change through the four R’s which are resistance, resilience, restoration, and re-imagination. It promotes education with anti-racist and anti-oppressive strategies for marginalized communities to build power. [11]
Social Good applies its Benjamin donations into fiscal support of left-of-center geared projects that support environmentalism activism, illegal immigration advocacy, abortion and LGBT causes. [12]
The Diverse City Fund uses its monies from Benjamin to stave off minority community displacement within Washington, D.C. and to drive policies that benefit people of color including liberation, fighting oppression and seeking change. [13]
The Green Festival was founded by Medea Benjamin’s husband, Kevin Danaher, to showcase environmentally sustainable products and services. [14]
The Center for Constitutional Rights claims to support communities under threat to combat oppression, racism, and injustice through vigorous legal advocacy. [15]
Leadership
Medea Benjamin is the president of the Benjamin Fund; her two daughters Maya Danaher and Arlen Gomez, sit on the board as treasurer and secretary, respectively. Medea Benjamin has opposed the United States’ foreign policies and supported Fidel Castro’s regime, the Communist Viet Cong in Vietnam, the Nicaraguan revolutionary Sandinistas, and anti-U.S. Iraqi forces. During the battle of Fallujah in the Iraq war in 2004, Benjamin provided $600,000 to aid Iraqi forces. She is also aligned with the former Weather Underground extremist Bill Ayers in The International Solidarity Movement. [16]
While leading Global Exchange, Medea Benjamin co-organized anti-World Trade Organization demonstrations that devolved into riots that caused mayhem in Seattle in 1999. [17]