Medea Benjamin

Medea Benjamin ran as the Green Party candidate for Senator of California in 2000. But she urged voters in swing states to support Kerry. "I looked at the world and saw how important it was to send a message to the world that George Bush's policies do not represent us as a nation," she says. "And I thought that joining in the massive effort to defeat Bush was the only way we could send that message. I do believe it was the right thing to do. I just wish we'd done it more effectively."

Benjamin ranks as an accomplished organizer. She co-founded the anti-war group Code Pink. And before that, she co-founded Global Exchange, an organization committed to social and environmental justice. At Global Exchange, she monitors labor rights in sweatshops and launches high-profile campaigns against business giants like Nike and The Gap. In 1999, Benjamin's work helped to shed light on the horrendous working conditions endured by garment workers in the U.S. territory of Saipan, which led to a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against more than a dozen U.S. retailers.

Benjamin was also involved in organizing the Battle of Seattle against the World Trade Organization. "We have to get back the energy and momentum we had in Seattle in November 1999 and put a lot more attention now on the issue of not only stopping the free trade agreements but building the alternative economy that we want to see," she says.

She somehow has managed to write several books, including The Peace CoTs and More: 175 Ways to Work, Study, and Travel in the Third World and Bridging the Global Gap: A Handbook to Linking Citizens of the First and Third Worlds.

In 2002, Benjamin received international attention for a trip she took to Afghanistan with victims of 9/11. "Taking people who lost loved ones on September 11 to meet with people who lost loved ones due to the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan was an effort to show the world community that we are not callous, uncaring people," says Benjamin. "One of the only things that will make it more difficult for the U.S. to attack another country is if we show Americans that these people from 'evil' countries are not evil people--they're people just like us."

I spoke to her by phone on November 3, moments before John Kerry gave his concession speech. We also communicated by e-mail a few days later.

Q: How could Kerry have lost by three million votes when the left was so united behind him?

Medea Benjamin: Kerry lost because he never provided a clear message or an inspiring vision about the direction this country should take. And we have to admit that Bush's fearmongering and gay-bashing worked. Bush kept on message, while Kerry didn't. On Iraq, Kerry had a terribly mixed message. It was very confusing to people to understand where he stood on that issue.

Up until the debates, it was a pretty lackluster campaign. It was almost as if those of us from the anti-war movement grimaced every time Kerry would open his mouth and say something about Iraq. I never put on a Kerry sticker, button, bumper sticker. Not for a person who supported the war in Iraq. And I know a lot of people like that.

The Democrats have really lost touch with their base. In this campaign, the ones who were out there going door to door for Kerry were the 527 groups like America Coming Together and MoveOn. While these organizations galvanized thousands of activists,

I witnessed a lot of duplicated efforts and wasted money by bringing in a lot of volunteers from out of state. Whereas when you look at the Republicans, they were more organized, united under a "central command" in the party, and rooted in community through church networks. The Republicans emphasized local volunteers.

Q: What does this Kerry defeat mean for Greens and third party politics?

Benjamin: This whole Presidential campaign has been devastating for the Greens. At our party convention, most Greens decided that the most important thing in this election was to defeat Bush, so we rejected Ralph Nader in favor of David Cobb, a candidate who pledged to run a campaign that focused on supporting Greens running for local offices and building membership within the party.

Another faction of the Greens, however, went with Ralph Nader, and this caused tremendous division within the Green Party. We spent a lot of time fighting among ourselves instead of becoming more effective in the campaign to defeat Bush. This election has not been good for third party politics in general. We didn't come out of this campaign with a strong sense among progressives of the need to build a third party. Hopefully, with this divisive election behind us, we can heal the wounds and get back to the basics of building the party from the bottom up.

Q: What kind of impact did Ralph Nader have on this election?

Benjamin: In terms of numbers, Nader got less than 500,000 votes total compared to 2.7 million in 2000. He didn't have enough votes in any state that would have changed the outcome. Nader's campaign was misguided. It became more a fight about ballot access--the support of rightwing groups to get him on the ballot and the dirty tricks by Democrats to keep him off than about the issues themselves. His campaign took up a lot of time and energy among progressives. It divided our forces rather than united our forces. And I don't think it was good for Nader himself, since it severely tarnished his stellar career.