Titular co-creators of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield were arrested Monday, along with many others, for protesting in front of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. You can check out some photos they posted about the protest and experience on their website.
It all comes down to a simple idea that we believe in whole-heartedly: if you care about something, you have to be willing to risk it all—your reputation, your values, your business—for the greater good.
Protesting injustice has been on the agenda all weekend. We’ve been in Washington, D.C. with Democracy Awakening, a remarkable event that brought together hundreds of groups and thousands of people in an effort to fix our broken democracy. There are two trends that everyone from Greenpeace to the NAACP has realized are making it impossible for much good work to get done. The first is the flood of unregulated cash flowing into campaigns and elections. And the second is the wave of attacks in many states on citizens’ right to vote.
This is all in tandem with numerous protests going on as a part of the Democracy Spring and Democracy Awakening movement, meant to bring light to campaign finance and corporate control of the government. The last line from Ben & Jerry’s is about how everyone has a role to play in our democracy and protesting inequalities at the Capitol Building need not be left on those steps and that the excitement that people feel in trying to make that change needs to be brought back into their own communities when they leave Washington.
This is how real change happens.