Ben & Jerry’s Co-Founder Arrested For Protesting Famine in Gaza

Yesterday, Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Ben Cohen was among the many protesters taken into police custody at a Senate Well being, Training, Labor and Pensions Committee listening to at which Well being and Human Companies Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. answered questions on HHS spending, layoffs, and different modifications. Video exhibits protesters leaping up from the benches with indicators and shouting, “RFK kills individuals with AIDS,” earlier than they’re dragged out of the listening to by police. Cohen stands behind them in a grey blazer, and might be heard saying, “Congress kills poor youngsters in Gaza by shopping for bombs and pays for it by kicking youngsters off Medicaid within the U.S.” He added, “Congress and the senators must ease the siege. They should let meals into Gaza. They should let in meals to ravenous youngsters.” He, too, is escorted out.

Cohen posted the video of the protest to X, writing, “I informed Congress they’re killing poor youngsters in Gaza by shopping for bombs, and so they’re paying for it by kicking poor youngsters off Medicaid within the US. This was the authorities’ response.”

Cohen has been launched from police custody, and based on the New York Occasionswas charged with the misdemeanor “crowding, obstructing or incommoding.”

It’s no shock to seek out Cohen among the many outspoken protesters. Although he and co-founder Jerry Greenfield are not concerned within the firm, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream has all the time put politics on the forefront of its enterprise. In 2016, it declared its assist for Black Lives Matter. In 2019, it launched a taste impressed by Bernie Sanders that featured scorching cinnamon representing “our political revolution holding politicians’ toes to the hearth to make America work for working individuals of all races and genders.” In 2021, it introduced it could not promote its product in Israel, a transfer Cohen and Greenfield supported in a Occasions op-ed. It has a complete activism part of its web site, the place it outlines its dedication to points like LGBTQ+ and refugee rights and environmental justice. And extra lately, it has gone to bat with its guardian firm, Unilever, for allegedly threatening these commitments to social values.

The problem Cohen spoke of within the Senate listening to couldn’t be extra pressing. The UN estimates one in 5 individuals, practically 500,000, are going through hunger in Gaza, as Israel blocks assist into the area. Most lately, the Dutch authorities, beforehand seen as a staunch ally to Israel, referred to as Israel’s ban on provide assist into Gaza a breach of worldwide humanitarian legislation.

Cohen joins a bunch of protesters, college students, journalists, and others who’ve been censured for talking out about Palestine. Ben & Jerry’s has not launched an announcement on the arrest, however Cohen posted once more to X this morning: “I can’t name myself an American and never put my physique on the road. For me, our government-funded destruction and slaughter of households dwelling in Gaza is an assault on justice, widespread decency, and what I had thought was the American method. The American method that Superman used to defend, together with Fact and Justice.”