Medea Benjamin

Described by the Los Angeles Times as "one of the high profile players in the peace movement," Susan "Medea" Benjamin founded the in-your-face women's organization, Code Pink, in 2002. Code Pink members, in a wry nod to the patriarchy, have worn pink every day since then, while they throw Presidents and Secretaries of Defense and other powerful people into a panic with their bold protests. Highly proficient at sneaking into "serious" governmental meetings and press conferences to heckle speakers, Code Pink members are so good at brainstorming creative, effective forms of protest, they actually make it look fun. One Code Pink member, for example, thrust her red painted hands in the face of Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and yelled, "The blood of millions of Iraqis is on your hands!" (an act that rapidly circled the globe in the international mass media).

Holding all appropriate people responsible for U.S. military involvement in the Middle East, Benjamin protested -- loudly and visibly -- at both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions in 2004. She has been deported from Pakistan, was stopped in the process of trying to deliver humanitarian aid to Palestine, and spent months in the winter of 2011 sleeping in a box in Washington, D.C., to protest the control of U.S. wealth by 1% of its population. As a result of the in-your-face quality of Code Pink tactics, which continue to this day, Benjamin has been arrested multiple times. Like she cares.