Ben & Jerry’s is a household name within the realm of frozen desserts. Yet people that actively follow Ben & Jerry’s may also realize that the company isn’t afraid to get political every once in a while. From openly supporting issues such as same-sex marriage and Occupy Wall Street, the company can safely be called liberal-leaning. For the first time, however, Ben and Jerry have jumped on the presidential campaign trail in support of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
That is, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield — the people behind the ice cream.
At the recent pro-Bernie event at the Middle East in Cambridge, Cohen and Greenfield spoke to a crowd of about 100 people, recounting how they worked in Vermont as Bernie’s constituents, and loved what he stood for — one of the main reasons they are jumping into political campaigning for the first time.
Cohen and Greenfield said they have been hitting the campaign trail hard, as they’ve gone to numerous events ranging from Iowa to Massachusetts.
“Being out on the campaign trail and talking to people is what they do,” said Ryan Midden, the general manager of Ben & Jerry’s operations in Boston. “It’s what they’re really good at. I think it’s their gift to so many communities whether they sell ice cream there or not.”
Ironically enough, Cohen and Greenfield have been touring with their very own limited edition flavor of ice cream known as “Bernie’s Yearning,” a title with hidden meaning.
It consists of a mint ice cream base that is covered by a milk chocolate disk placed on top. The chocolate represents the economic gains that the one percent has seen since the economic crisis in the late 2000s. Meanwhile, the mint ice cream represents the rest of the U.S. population. As one breaks the chocolate disk, it becomes one with the rest of the ice cream, representing the spreading of the United States’ concentrated wealth.
“Ben & Jerry’s actually has no official stance on [the presidential campaign],” Midden said. “We always notify Ben & Jerry’s when we do stuff like this, but we try to minimize it. We try to phrase everything as best we can to let people know this is Ben and Jerry the people, not the corporation.”
The politically-charged ice cream was created by Cohen independently of the company he co-founded. The website for Bernie’s Yearning shows a video of Cohen making the flavor in his own kitchen at home.
The Ben & Jerry’s corporation was quick to distance itself from the flavor, tweeting out the following in January: “This was created by Ben as a citizen. The company is not involved.”
While the company itself has advocated for political issues directly, it has never been directly involved in an election or candidate, perhaps because both the company and the people want to take big money out of politics.
“There’s Ben and Jerry the people, and Ben & Jerry’s the corporation,” Midden said. “One has rights and can vote and influence elections with dollars, and one shouldn’t have that right.”
It’s also been publicized by the Sanders campaign that the senator is only accepting money from individuals, not corporate interests or super PACs.
“I think that when you look back at Bernie’s history and Ben and Jerry’s history as individuals and the causes they’ve supported, it’s pretty well aligned,” Midden said.
Yet Cohen and Greenfield’s influence on their company falls in line with a lot of Sanders’ ideology. At Ben & Jerry’s, an entry-level employee earns double the federal minimum wage, according to Midden. It also provides jobs for the unemployed. All of the brownie bits in its Chocolate Fudge Brownie and Half Baked flavors are baked at Greyston Bakery, a specialized bakery in New York that uses “open hiring” practices, allowing anyone to sign up for work regardless of background.
Regarding whether or not Cohen and Greenfield felt their endorsement of a presidential candidate would potentially alienate customers, Cohen succinctly told The Daily Free Press, “No.”
Greenfield extrapolated, however, saying the answer is easy.
“Ben and I support things as individuals, which we’re happy to do,” he said. “We are not Ben & Jerry’s the corporation. Ben & Jerry’s does things that I don’t necessarily support. It’s just kind of who we are as people. We want to be using our voices to talk about the values that have been important to us as business people for over 30 years.”
