Latest news with #BenandJerry's
Newsweek
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Newsweek
Ben Cohen: I Was Arrested at Senate Hearing Because I Protested for Justice
Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the interpretation of facts and data. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. On Wednesday, I was arrested at the U.S. Capitol while protesting an issue that affects every American, whether they know it or not. There are so many terrible things going on in the world that it's hard to take them all in, much less respond to them all. But there are some things that, for one reason or another, affect each of us more deeply. For me, there are two such attacks on justice, common decency, and what I had thought was the American way that are especially troubling. The first injustice is local. It's an attack on the health of children living in the poorest communities in our country. I was shaken 10 years ago when I first learned about the lead crisis in Flint, Michigan, and read that more than 100,000 people—many of them children—were being poisoned by the city's water supply. Now we're hearing about it in Milwaukee. Lead poisoning is a pervasive problem in our country. And it is continuing. We know how to eliminate it—it's pretty simple. Replace lead pipes. Remove lead paint. But our country refuses to commit the resources to do so. WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 14: Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben and Jerry's, is detained by U.S. Capitol Police for disrupting proceedings during a hearing with U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy... WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 14: Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben and Jerry's, is detained by U.S. Capitol Police for disrupting proceedings during a hearing with U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions on Capitol Hill on May 14, 2025 in Washington, DC. More Samuel Corum The second injustice is global. It's our government-funded destruction and slaughter of families living in Gaza. Not only is our government funding genocide; it defends that genocide by attacking the basic American value of free speech. Our government is criminalizing the courageous students who have nonviolently protested this inhumanity, which is being done in our name and with our money. These two things—lead pipes and Gaza—are connected. Every day, our government chooses to buy more bombs instead of replacing lead pipes in America. It would cost $45 billion to end lead poisoning in the United States and prevent lifelong, irreversible brain damage to children. Some studies show that the cost to solve the problem is far less than the cost of dealing with the long-term effects it will cause. I know that $45 billion sounds like a lot of money. But it's less than 5 percent of what we spend on the Pentagon every year. And when you realize that we've spent more than $22 billion over the last two years to provide bombs that are being used to slaughter and displace an entire population, it starts to sound like a pretty reasonable trade-off. But that's not all our government spends money on. We're currently spending $1.5 trillion on a whole new generation of nuclear weapons (that's in addition to our current nuclear arsenal, which already has 50,000 times the explosive power of the Hiroshima bomb). Clearly, we can afford to replace lead pipes. Meanwhile, Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency has been exposed as nothing more than a sham. It worked to destroy many relatively small departments that serve the needs of the American people for a better life—like getting rid of lead pipes that are poisoning communities' drinking water—while increasing the budget for the biggest, most wasteful, most corrupt department in our government, one that accounts for over half of the entire discretionary budget: the Pentagon, formerly known, more correctly, as the Department of War. I can't witness such extraordinary violence and injustice, call myself an American, and not put my body on the line. Ben Cohen co-founded Ben & Jerry's Homemade Holdings and recently launched the "DOGE vs. Blob" contest to expose wasteful Pentagon spending. The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Kuwait Times
16-05-2025
- Business
- Kuwait Times
Ben & Jerry cofounder removed from Senate in Gaza protest
WASHINGTON: Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben and Jerry's, is detained by US Capitol Police for disrupting proceedings during a hearing with US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F Kennedy Jr before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions on Capitol Hill.- AFP WASHINGTON: Ben Cohen, co founder of Ben & Jerry's ice cream and a longtime progressive activist, told AFP he was speaking for millions of Americans outraged by the 'slaughter' in Gaza after his removal from a US Senate hearing on Wednesday. Cohen, 74, was among a group of protesters who startled Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr by interrupting his testimony about his department's budget proposal. Shouting that 'Congress pays for bombs to kill children in Gaza' while lawmakers move to slash Medicaid - the health insurance program for low income families - the businessman and philanthropist was placed in handcuffs by Capitol Police. He urged senators to press Zionists to let food reach 'starving kids' as he was led away. 'It got to a point where we had to do something,' Cohen said in an interview after his release, calling it 'scandalizing' that the US approved '$20 billion worth of bombs' for Zionists even as social programs are squeezed back home. 'The majority of Americans hate what's going on, what our country is doing with our money and in our name,' he said. US public opinion toward Zionist entity has become increasingly unfavorable, especially among Democrats, according to a Pew Research Center Poll last month. Beyond the spending, Cohen framed the issue as a moral and 'spiritual' breach. 'Condoning and being complicit in the slaughter of tens of thousands of people strikes at the core of us as far as human beings and what our country stands for,' he said, pointing to the fact that the United States pours roughly half its discretionary budget into war related spending. 'If you spent half of that money making lives better around the world, I think there'd be a whole lot less friction.' Invoking a parenting analogy, he added: 'You go to a three-year-old who goes around hitting people and you say 'Use your words.' There's issues between countries but you can work them out without killing.' A longtime critic of Zionist policy, Cohen last year joined prominent Jewish figures in an open letter opposing the pro Zionist lobby AIPAC. 'I understand that I have a higher profile than most people and so I raise my voice, it gets heard. But I need you and others to understand that I speak for millions of people who feel the same way. War in Gaza began after the October 7, 2023. Retaliatory offensive has killed at least 52,928 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to figures from the territory's Hamas-run health ministry, which the United Nations considers reliable. Gaza is at 'critical risk of famine,' with the entire population facing a food crisis after more than two months of an aid blockade, and 22 percent facing a humanitarian 'catastrophe,' a UN-backed food security monitor warned this week. — AFP
USA Today
08-04-2025
- General
- USA Today
It's Ben and Jerry's Free Cone Day 2025! How to get free ice cream on Tuesday, April 8
It's Ben and Jerry's Free Cone Day 2025! How to get free ice cream on Tuesday, April 8 There is nothing better than free ice cream, am I right? We see that with other free cone days. And on Tuesday, April 8 2025, we get free ice cream thanks to Ben and Jerry's! That's right, friends it's ... FREE CONE DAY! Here's how to get one: First, make sure your Ben and Jerry's is participating in Free Cone Day. Then, go between 12 p.m. and 8 p.m. and ask for a free cone, one per customer. Which flavors can you get? Whichever one you want! That's the beauty of Free Cone Day! That's all you need to know. Go enjoy some free ice cream on Tuesday! Here's the post from Ben and Jerry's: Enjoy!
New York Times
19-03-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Ben & Jerry's Accuses Unilever of Firing Its C.E.O. for Political Reasons
Ben & Jerry's accused Unilever, its parent company, of firing its chief executive because he allowed the ice cream maker to speak out on political issues, according to a complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday. In the filing, Ben & Jerry's said Unilever had fired David Stever because of his commitment to the company's social mission rather than his job performance. He had held the ice cream company's top job since 2023. 'Unilever has repeatedly threatened Ben & Jerry's personnel, including C.E.O. David Stever, should they fail to comply with Unilever's efforts to silence the social mission,' Ben & Jerry's said in the filing. Unilever informed the Ben and Jerry's board on March 3 that it was planning to remove and replace Mr. Stever as chief executive, the filing said. This was done without the approval of an advisory board, and went against an agreement the two companies signed when they merged in 2000, Ben & Jerry's claimed in the filing. It added that, 'under Mr. Stever's tenure, Ben & Jerry's outperformed Unilever's ice cream portfolio.' In 2024, sales at Ben & Jerry's grew faster than at Magnum, another one of Unilever's major ice cream brands, according to a Unilever presentation on its financial performance. Under the acquisition deal between the two companies, Unilever agreed to let Ben & Jerry's maintain an independent board to oversee the brand. This allowed Ben & Jerry's to place 'guardrails' around its social activism and gave its founders continued control of the company. The amended complaint filed on Tuesday was part of a lawsuit that Ben & Jerry's filed in November accusing Unilever of censorship and threats over the ice cream maker's efforts to express support for Palestinian refugees. That lawsuit claimed that Unilever tried to dismantle the ice cream maker's independent board and to stop it from taking certain political stances, including calling for a cease-fire in Gaza, supporting U.S. students protesting civilian deaths in the territory and urging an end to U.S. military aid to Israel. Unilever did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Last year, it said in a statement that it would strongly defend itself against the accusations in the lawsuit. Ben & Jerry's also did not respond to a request for comment. The founders of Ben & Jerry's, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, have long been outspoken on social issues. Tensions flared in 2021, when Ben & Jerry's said it would stop selling its ice cream in Israeli-occupied territories. In March 2024, Unilever announced plans to spin off its ice cream unit, which includes Ben & Jerry's. The move is expected to be completed at the end of this year, and, if successful, will end the 25-year, often rocky marriage between the two companies.
Sky News
19-03-2025
- Business
- Sky News
Ben & Jerry's boss being 'replaced' in new row with UK parent firm
Ben and Jerry's claims its chief executive has been sacked amid a longstanding row with its UK parent firm over ice cream maker's political activism. Court documents allege David Stever was being removed from his post by Unilever because he was too outspoken on social issues. Last month the ice cream company, which had launched a flavour in support of Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris, accused Unilever of demanding it stop any public criticism of Donald Trump. Ben and Jerry's, which was founded by Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield in 1978, was bought by the consumer goods giant in 2000. As part of the merger deal, an independent board was set up to protect the ice cream brand's mission and strong stance on social issues. Unilever said that under the arrangement it "reserved primary responsibility for financial and operational decisions". A series of disputes have followed. The most high profile spat came in 2021 when the US brand took the decision not to sell ice cream in Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories on the grounds that sales would be "inconsistent" with its values. Unilever responded by selling the business to its licensee in Israel. Ben & Jerry's alleged in its filing to the US District Court for the Southern District of New York that Unilever had wanted to stop Mr Stever - its boss of almost two years - from making political statements. "Unilever has repeatedly threatened Ben & Jerry's personnel, including CEO David Stever, should they fail to comply with Unilever's efforts to silence the social mission," the filing said. "On March 3 2025, Unilever informed the independent board that they were removing and replacing Mr Stever as Ben & Jerry's CEO." Unilever has been contacted for comment. Mr Stever - a veteran of the ice cream brand who started out as a company tour guide in 1988 - remains listed as the chief executive on Ben & Jerry's website. There is a possibility that the frostiness between Ben & Jerry's and Unilever will thaw under the parent's firm's plans to spin off its ice cream interests into a separate company. That division, which also comprises brands such as Magnum and Wall's, is set to be based in the Netherlands with a primary stock market listing in Amsterdam.
