does ben and jerry's support blm

(The Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, which the company funds, also earmarks about $2.5 million annually to grassroots causes across the U.S. Running the show is Miller, whose posts on Ben & Jerry’s social media accounts have helped bring more than 130,000 new signatories to Color of Change petitions in the past year alone.). At times, Ben & Jerry’s activism has tested Unilever’s promises. On Tuesday 2 June, Ben and Jerry’s released a statement on its website, saying that the company is “outraged” over the killing of Mr Floyd and “the continued violent response by police against protesters”. Share Shares Copy Link. Anuradha Mittal was about to step out of her home in Oakland, Calif., on the last Friday of May, but first she had one last email to send. Companies keep trying, though. While the board’s seven directors do include four women and three people of color, two of whom are Black, the majority of its workforce and leadership, she says, remain “all very White.” In part this reflects Vermont’s demographic makeup—the state is 94% White—so Ben & Jerry’s has been seeking other ways of becoming more diverse. In 1978, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, friends since grade school, completed a $5 correspondence course in ice-cream making and founded Ben & Jerry’s out of a renovated gas station in Burlington, Vt. “I think that’s why, as a company, we can’t wait for others to make it a tipping point. 2017: Home Sweet Honeycomb aided refugees through the International Rescue Committee. Like hundreds of other protesters, she’d be praying and dancing late into the night, in streets blurred by billowing tear gas and teeming with riot police. Odak’s fractious tenure ended less than a year after the sale to Unilever. Mr Floyd’s family recently said the three other officers present at the scene are expected to be criminally charged. Around the same time, Paul Polman became CEO of Unilever and began a 10-year effort to turn the parent corporation into a testbed for a more socially adroit way of doing business. Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who knelt on Mr Floyd’s neck for over eight minutes, was charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. With a message of support for the Black Lives Matter movement in the strongest possible terms, Ben & Jerry’s continues its track record of dialed-in advocacy. In addition, the firm is supporting Mr Floyd’s family in creating a national task force that would help to combat racial violence and increase accountability of the police force. As Ben & Jerry’s most recent call to action this week has gotten attention, so have some companies’ far more tepid reactions to the current … Ben & Jerry’s — which is owned by the massive consumer goods brand Unilever but retains “autonomous subsidiary” status — has long been a … Following the Floyd protests, Righteous Gelato introduced a chocolate-flavored Black Lives Matter gelato, then quickly pulled it after an online backlash. Rihanna’s fashion and beauty brands – Fenty Beauty, Savage X Fenty and Fenty – announced they would be ceasing operations for the day. Ben and Jerry's signed a petition to release a guilty cop KILLER Mumia Abu-JAmal who KILLED Officer Faulkner of Philadelphia Police Department We’re heartbroken those words are just as relevant today. A distillery in Bristol, England, tweeted a crass reference to its gin’s “high flammability” making it a favorite of looters. Ben and Jerry’s has issued a statement emphasising the “urgent need to take concrete steps to dismantle white supremacy in all its forms”. The Vermont creamery kept doing what it’s always done. We have to use this moment to accelerate our nation’s long journey towards justice and a more perfect union,” the company concluded. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? In recent years, keeping revenue up has become ever more crucial as it fends off a rash of insurgents, from low-calorie alternatives such as Halo Top to chichi probiotic choices such as Foxy’s Thoughtful Ice Cream. “Unless and until white America is willing to collectively acknowledge its privilege, take responsibility for its past and the impact it has on the present, and commit to creating a future steeped in justice, the list of names that George Floyd has been added to will never end. https://www.eatthis.com/fast-food-brands-supporting-black-lives-matter And the company want us all to do the same. It’s challenging, Miller acknowledges, even for a company that’s long tried to be a rising voice for change. “Today, we want to be even more clear about the urgent need to take concrete steps to dismantle white supremacy in all its forms,” the firm stated. That project, like the statement on the George Floyd killing Miller drafted, follows from a recent emphasis on criminal justice reform, a cause Ben & Jerry’s has supported since at least the late ’80s, when it began sourcing the brownie bites found in some flavors from New York’s Greyston Bakery, which provides jobs and training to formerly incarcerated people and those who are homeless. One of its flagship brands, Dove soap, followed Ben & Jerry’s lead on BLM, saying it would advance its own calls for legislative action and extend its work with such organizations as the National Black Child Development Institute to address racial justice for the next generation of Americans. We have to stand together with the victims of murder, marginalisation, and repression because of their skin colour, and with those who seek justice through protests across our country. “If we share values on climate, same-sex marriage rights, racism, I think that’s a deeper bond than sugar and fat.”, These days, Ben & Jerry’s activism team counts almost 20 full-time members, including characters such as Dave Rapaport—the global social mission officer—who once spent several days in the Nevada desert being chased by armed security forces in helicopters after he tried to stop a nuclear weapons test explosion. Systemic racism is the most defining civil rights and social justice issue of our time. It came out of years of work and commitment of which we’ll never stop.”, Conversations about the root causes of racial inequality and systemic abuses by law enforcement still seem to overwhelm large swaths of the business community at times. Ben & Jerry’s released a strongly-worded statement in response to the murder of George Floyd and the ongoing violence perpetrated by police against protestors. His post has garnered 2,800 reactions and more than 1,400 shares. It is really for each one of us to ensure that George Floyd and Breonna Taylor do not just become a hashtag.”. Other, more somnambulant businesses found themselves on the defensive. Ben & Jerry's, which also publicly supported the Black Lives Matter movement, called on President Donald Trump to disavow white supremacists and nationalist groups that "overtly support him." Four years ago, Ben & Jerry’s publicly stated their support for the Black Lives Matter movement. Its present-day headquarters is in South … Ben & Jerry’s activism didn’t slow through a mid-1980s initial public offering or its acquisition for $326 million in 2000 by Unilever, the sprawling Anglo-Dutch conglomerate behind Dove soap and Hellmann’s mayonnaise. We ask you to join us in not being complicit in the face of injustice. Related blog posts read like abstracts of essays by Sierra Club scientific advisers with a fondness for exclamation points and cutesy vernacular. ‘The murder of George Floyd was the result of inhumane police brutality that is perpetuated by a culture of white supremacy,’ ice cream company states, Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile. Washington’s franchise posted a tile, too. On Juneteenth, the activism team published a blog post announcing its next project: defunding U.S. police forces. In his view, the company’s expressions of principle serve, rather, to cement its long-term standing with socially minded fans. (The company offers some paid leave to workers at corporate-owned locations but doesn’t guarantee it to those employed by franchisees.) On June 2, while many other brands in the United States were posting a black square to their social media accounts and making carefully worded statements about racism in the wake of George Floyd’s death, Ben & Jerry’s had a much more direct message. That’s a particularly uncomfortable fact at a moment when glucose is increasingly regarded as the new tobacco, and it clashes, too, with the company’s work in support of Black Americans, who are more likely to contract Type 2 diabetes than Whites. One of its flagship brands, Dove soap, followed Ben & Jerry’s lead on BLM, saying it would advance its own calls for legislative action and extend its … But in the age of going viral, attempting to speak to more than four centuries of racial injustice can be perilous. Ben & Jerry’s has its issues, too, starting at the source: It makes its money from a deeply unhealthy product. An image purportedly showing the founders of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, holding a sign reading “We Hate Cops” was widely circulated on social media in … Facebook Inc. saw hundreds of employees stage a virtual walkout after it refused to add labels to false or incendiary Trump posts that apparently violated its policies; the furor prompted some of the world’s largest marketers, including Verizon, Coca-Cola, Lego, and Ben & Jerry’s owner, Unilever, to stop advertising their products on the platform for at least a month. Its factories are also outfitted with art painted by former inmates, and it’s brought in political figures such as Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and the late U.S. Representative John Lewis of Georgia to speak to its workforce and counsel management on the race-related imbalances that pervade the judicial system. Four Minneapolis police officers have been fired after a video taken by a bystander was posted on social media showing Floyd's neck being pinned to the ground by an officer as he repeatedly said, "I cant breathe". When Ben & Jerry’s posted the statement on June 2 to its website and social media accounts under the title “We Must Dismantle White Supremacy: Silence Is NOT An Option,” hundreds of thousands of people rapidly circulated it. Some businesses have come under pressure in recent years to find callings higher than driving shareholder value, as shoppers turn to brands with a more conscious approach to capitalism. Mittal says many employees viewed Unilever as an “8,000-pound gorilla moving in.” Ultimately, it took charge of the economic part of Ben & Jerry’s mission and left the other two to the subsidiary. She wanted the ice cream brand to express support for the Black Lives Matter movement and decry the violence against Floyd, who’d died while being restrained by a White law enforcement officer less than 15 minutes after his arrest for allegedly using a counterfeit bill to buy cigarettes. Copy {copyShortcut} to copy Link copied! “Loyalty is pretty valuable in this business,” he says. In the aftermath of George Floyd‘s death in Minneapolis, US, thousands have taken part in protests and demonstrations across the world supporting the Black Lives Matter movement and calling for an end to police brutality against black people. And the renewed attention to racial injustice led some companies and sports teams to reconsider problematic brand identities and logos. It called on the president to “disavow white supremacists and nationalist groups that overtly support him” instead of “using his Twitter feed to promote and normalize their ideas and agendas.” And it said Congress should create a commission to study the effects of slavery and discrimination dating back to 1619, the year the first Africans arrived in Virginia in shackles. Other companies tried to align themselves with the Black Lives Matter protests and failed. In the late ’80s, it released Rainforest Crunch, a flavor that incorporated nuts responsibly sourced from indigenous Amazonian tribes, helping spark a national conversation about deforestation. In January, Ben & Jerry’s threw its support behind Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders with a limited-edition flavor called Bernie’s Yearning. She was on her way to one of the demonstrations that had broken out around the world five days after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Its ethos closely tracked the Lennonesque worldview of its creators, who often seemed more comfortable hosting their One World One Heart music festival, a kaleido­scope of tie-dyed roots rock and psychedelic Ben & Jerry’s motifs, than participating in quarterly earnings calls. He traces the fundamental appeal of its pints to their indulgent flavors, as well as to carefully timed price reductions and product releases. Washington’s NFL franchise announced it would change its name, a racist slur against Native Americans. Unilever is also the world’s largest maker of ice cream and gelato, selling supermarket and concessionary brands such as Breyers, Cornetto, Fudgsicle, Grom, Klondike, Magnum, Popsicle, Solero, and Talenti. And when the company took a stance a decade ago against ingredients derived from genetically modified organisms and erected the first of several billboards about the cause, then-CEO Jostein Solheim got a call from Kees Kruythoff, who headed Unilever’s business in the U.S. and served on the board of the Grocery Manufacturers of America Inc., which is pro-GMO. While most shoppers came to know the brand for apolitical waistline crimes such as Caramel Chew Chew, it simultaneously became a committed corporate activist, campaigning for causes such as same-sex marriage, criminal justice reform, and nature conservation. Themselves on the defensive rather, to cement its long-term standing with socially minded fans re heartbroken those are... Leave to workers at corporate-owned locations but doesn ’ t guarantee it to employed. Published a blog post announcing its next project: defunding U.S. police forces the ice cream brands 16th. 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