Kevin Danaher (activist)
Kevin Danaher is an American author and anti-globalization activist. With his wife Medea Benjamin and activist Kirsten Irgens-Moller, he co-founded Global Exchange, a social justice and anti-globalization non-governmental organization based in San Francisco, California. He is the founder and executive co-producer of the Green Festivals and he is executive Director of the Global Citizen Center. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Personal life
Kevin Danaher was born in New Jersey, on March 7, 1950.Danaher is from an Irish Catholic family and is the youngest of three children. His father, who was a bus driver, had immigrated from Ireland. He had an interest in politics and had been a messenger for the Irish Republican Army. In a 2003 article for Sfgate by Tom Abate, Danaher said that the stories he heard from his father about the IRA made him what he is today.
He graduated from high school in 1968 and flunked his physical to avoid being drafted. In those days he was working as a truck driver and bricklayer. His night times were spent as a bass guitarist for a band that did the rounds playing strip joints and topless bars. Eventually drifting westward, he met a woman in Los Gatos and decided to stay there. California marked a change in the direction his life took. By the time he had finished with the classes he took at De Anza College in Cupertino, and then his doing his time at Sonoma State University, picking up an undergraduate degree in sociology, he had undertaken Ph.D. at UC Santa Cruz. He had also written a thesis on the boycott movement against the apartheid regime of South Africa.
His wife comes from Long Island, N.Y.. They have two daughters.
Activism
In an interview with Miguel Bocanegra in February, 2000, Danaher said that his government's trying to send him to Vietnam caused him to question what his government was doing, namely the bombing of people who were no threat to the U.S.. In the early days, he wrote a dissertation on U.S. policy towards South Africa in what he saw as U.S. policy being supportive of the white minority against the black majority.He has been critical and vocal about the invasion of Iraq. Along with Scott Ritter, Daniel Ellsberg, Jody Williams, Norman Mailer, Noam Chomsky, and Medea Benjamin, he appeared in the film Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire.
Professional background
From 1979 to 1983, Danaher was with American University in Washington, DC, as an adjunct professor. By 1982 he had earned a Ph.D. in sociology at UC Santa Cruz.In 1984, having moved to the Bay area, he was working with Food First as a senior analyst.
Filmography
| Title | Role | Director | Year | Notes # |
| Timber GAP | Himself | James Ficklin, Kay Rudin | 2000 | |
| Trading Freedom: The Secret Life of the FTAA | Himself | 2002 | David Suzuki appears as well | |
| Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire | Himself | Jeremy Earp, Sut Jhally | 2004 | |
| Hannity & Colmes Episode dated 25 January 2006 | Himself | 2006 | Kimberly Guilfoyle also appears | |
| Project Censored the Movie | Himself | Doug Hecker, Christopher Oscar | 2013 |