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Ben Cohen I don't believe that the U.S. should be the only advanced democracy in the world that doesn't provide health care for all of its people. Because our government is diverting the money that should go to that to weapons manufacturers instead. (.) They've prioritized killing over living. (....)
Sanam Welcome to If You Were In Charge, a podcast about people, power, and possibilities. I'm Sanam Naraghi Anderlini.
Kavita Ramdas And I'm Kavita Nandini Ramdas. Yes. Coming up, we have Ben Cohen. Yes, that's the Ben of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream. And that was the voice you heard at the top of this program. We're going to be talking about militarism, ice cream, and activism.
Sanam That's quite a combination, isn't it? So, the format is slightly changed. So, Kavita and I will actually discuss some of the issues that are happening around us. And undoubtedly this week, we'll probably touch on the Epstein sludge and the question of war on Iran. And anything else that's happening in the U.S. side, Kavita?
Kavita Ramdas I'm wondering what shoe is going to drop next, honestly, now that the tariffs have fallen. But I'm also delighted that we're welcoming your daughter, Sole, to be with us as we face the unmentionable.
Sanam Absolutely. And so, welcome back to you and your bacteria stories, which I hope we'll pick up on sometime.
Soleh No more bacteria talk. (..) No, I'm glad to be back. (....)
Sanam So, Kavita, where do we start? What is blowing your mind as we look at sort of Monday and the next, you know, this week and the next week? And I have a theory that I want to share with you, but I want to hear what you have to say about what's...
Kavita Ramdas Well, I'm so glad we have a member of the younger generation with us as we talk about what's blowing our minds. So, hi, Sole, so happy to have you with us. I honestly, I don't know whether to be more outraged that people seem more upset and outraged by the Epstein files than they were about Gaza for the last two years. So, there's a part of me that's just sort of like, okay, now my LinkedIn profile is blowing up because people are so shocked and horrified that what we've always known forever, you know, dominant patriarchy, militarism, rampant capitalism and cronyism, not to mention white supremacy is still, you know, top of people's minds. Or whether I should be grateful that people are now horrified about Epstein because finally we're having a conversation about patriarchy. I don't know, Sanam, where is it leaving you? I guess I ricochet between being horrified and disappointed and also really mad as hell.
Sanam I find myself literally like swearing in ways that I have never done in my entire life because Gaza is still an ongoing travesty and this board of peace nonsense is just, it's extraordinary. I mean, it's like the, it's like the James Bond, you know, council of all the bad guys, literally. It's chairman is Trump. It's not the U.S. president. It is one man. And they're all writing billion dollar checks to him, right? Yeah. And then they're pretending as if there's going to be peace, but they've got two war criminals. So, Gaza and what's happening there gets me. I can't sleep at night because every Iranian that I know, we go to bed at night thinking, are they bombing tonight? Are they going to do it tomorrow morning? What happens to our family over there? Oh, we've got diaspora who seem to be beating the drums of war, which... Because they're sitting safely in their little suburbs of Maryland. Wherever they're sitting, I'm like, I feel as if in the last 20 years, they, their head was buried in some other sand because they did not pay attention to Iraq or Syria or Yemen or Sudan. So, that bothers me enormously. And then the Epstein stuff, what I find extraordinary is that it's not just the Epstein stuff. It's now this crazy French man, Christian Negre in France, who would give people, women, diuretics and watch them squirm and document their discomfort when they went for job interviews for 10 years. And the guy is still walking around for you. I'm like, guys, what the hell is this? I don't understand it. And what is this world? So, yeah, so my brain is slightly fried.
Kavita Ramdas Soleh, I know your mom and I are wringing our hands here because we sort of feel like 30 years of activism for advancing equality and justice and overthrowing the patriarchy have come to naught. But we're curious to hear what do you and your colleagues in the next generation think of what all this means, if anything?
Soleh Yeah, I think what you were saying about the Epstein stuff breaking through is really interesting. And I think it has a lot to do with how people, like, especially young people, like, it's broken through a lot. I think it has to do with how people consume media and the fact that it's really easy to laugh at a lot of the people in the files, actually. Like, all the Elon Musk emails and all that kind of stuff that are, like, objectively kind of funny, like, to see him being rejected, right? And all these celebrities who've kind of used these left-wing and, like, progressive causes to make themselves look better and kind of become popular when it was easy. And I think the files and this whole story is really showing they never really sympathized with anybody. They're all kind of in a class of their own.
Kavita Ramdas Sort of advancing their own interests rather than the causes they claim to care about.
Soleh Yeah.
Sanam There was a comedian saying that, you know, the first thing we have to do is apologize to all of our conspiracy theorist friends, which is true. And it, you know, it reminded me of the QAnon craziness.
Kavita Ramdas And we would just roll our eyes and say, what do they mean?
Sanam You know, it's, you know, sex trafficking in the basement of the pizzeria in Connecticut Avenue in D.C. Well, it turns out that the address was wrong. It was in Fifth Avenue. It wasn't in Connecticut Avenue. And it was in New York, not in D.C.
Soleh I think that, I mean, it was also kind of the right, like, you know, people who are generally on the political right pointing at the Democrats as having, like, this political, you know, this cabal or whatever they wanted to call it. And, yeah, they got a lot of it right. It just, the call was coming from inside the House. Not completely. There's plenty of Democrats and left-wing people in there as well. But if you look back on the QAnon stuff, they weren't so far off, I guess.
Kavita Ramdas No, no. And I think overall, I think this is a moment in which we also just depressingly have to realize that white supremacy and patriarchy and colonial legacies have no particular preference for political party. Think of Marco Rubio's speech, Sanam. That was the other thing that absolutely drove me absolutely bonkers these last few weeks.
Sanam Can I have a little rant about that one?
Kavita Ramdas Please do, because I thought, oh, really, are we feeling nostalgic then for the age of empire?
Sanam So, I couldn't bear to actually watch the speech. And over the last few years, I've been invited to the Munich Security Conference. But I knew last year that I wouldn't get invited again this year. You know, it was becoming a little bit too white, a little bit too military, a little bit too male. So, in a way, I was happy not to be there, because you always feel like it's a little bit of a, you need a moral shower afterwards. But anyway, what I did was I read the speech, the transcript of it, and it is textbook extremism. This is work that we've been doing at ICANN for, you know, 13, 14 years. And the way that they tap into what I call visceral identity. So, he's talking to them about their white, Christian, European, like, these are three identities that sit in your gut. And then he very cleverly, you know, talks to the French about something that they think is great. And the Brits and the Germans and the Italians. He touches everybody, right? And you just see the room when they stand up to give a standing ovation to this white supremacist madness. I'm like, are we back in 1938? Like, what is this?
Kavita Ramdas We really were. That's what it felt like. And, you know, it was extraordinary that for those of us who grew up, I mean, I'm the generation, the first generation to be born into a free India that didn't have signs saying dogs and Indians not allowed in restaurants. And, you know, I'm thinking, here we are. He's singing a peon of praise to what it was like for these young men to go out and conquer the world. And I kept feeling like saying, yeah, without any visas. I noticed none of you got visas to go on your little expeditions all over the world.
Sanam It's also the sort of the classic issue of zero nuance, zero self-reflection. You know, he says, he says, and the UN didn't know what to do with Gaza or, you know, failed in Gaza. I'm like, no, the UN didn't fail you, whatever. It was the United States that consistently refused to pass a resolution on ceasefires. Like, you guys are the problem, but you've given this very black and white, metaphorically and literally, speech where you're singing your own praises.
Kavita Ramdas And actually, as we, the poor blacks who are doing well as long as we were, you know, under colonial domination, until then we were doing great.
Sanam And also, like, in our societies now, all of these countries have pluralistic populations, right? So I'm listening to...
Soleh He's literally Latino, right? //S02: He's Latino himself.//
Sanam Well, except that he's European, right?
Soleh So his parents are Cuban immigrants.
Kavita Ramdas Yeah, well, that, you know, that was just an inconvenient fact, Soleh, that was left out of this discussion, but...
Sanam It's like white Christian Europe, right? Like, that's how he connects himself.
Kavita Ramdas And, you know, people from Latin America, there's this whole thing in which, you know, they're like, oh, but we don't really have any indigenous blood. We're directly descended from European ancestry. I'm just sort of like, and you're not ashamed to say that. That's really interesting.
Sanam But anyway, so that, that, that, yeah, so that whole story, and then there's a little bit of a bizarre sense of humor. I mean, you have to have a sense of humor looking at the state of the world right now. But this morning, as I'm following the Iran issues, you know, what's happening, and there are three crazy old men. I mean, it's come in a...
Kavita Ramdas Oh, and you sent the story of the club toilets on the USA.
Sanam So the USS Ford, USS Ford, which is the biggest military ship sent out into the Persian Gulf to ostensibly be involved in this war. (..) With, I think it's 11 or 12 billion or 18 billion dollars. I mean, I don't know how much of our tax money went into this, into this thing. Yes. It's floating around there, and they have a toilet problem. It's the sewage doesn't work, the loos don't work. And some dude, or many of them, I don't know, have been putting T-shirts and all sorts of strange things down the toilet. And you're like, is this part of their strategy to actually sabotage being able to go to war? Like, who's doing this? I don't know.
Kavita Ramdas There's another Muslim twist on poop these days in New York City as well, which is entirely... You would think this would be laughable, but now a Republican has taken it and has brought a bill to pass in Congress. So people haven't been picking up their poop in New York City because we've had the dog's poop, not their own poop. I was going to say, you should clarify. (.) The poop on the sidewalk. The poop on the sidewalk, although given New York's homelessness problem, we, you know, that occasionally you do wonder. But the dog poop hasn't been picked up. And a New York City councilwoman, in a piece of satire, said something like, you know, this is why in Islam dogs are considered unclean and shouldn't be kept at home because nobody's actually willing to pick up the poop. (.) And then this got picked up, of course, twisted immediately because now, God forbid, we have a Democratic Socialist Muslim mayor of New York City who somehow is both a communist and about to impose Sharia law at the same time as far as the Republicans are concerned. So now there's Poopgate in New York because people are just, now they've gone to town saying, another New York council congressman said, well, if I had to choose between Muslims and dogs, I know who I'd choose. And you're like, oh, God, really?
Sanam Is this where we are at? Yeah, this is really insane. But to just turn the conversation around and actually bring a little bit of hope and inspiration about the good guys out there, super excited to start the season with Ben Cohen. He's the co-founder of Ben & Jerry's. He's also super famous for his radical politics, which haven't dimmed despite building this billion-dollar business. And he was recently arrested protesting in Congress, and he is regularly online in social media raising the issues he cares about. So in a universe of incredibly bad, awful guys that we have out there, when we think about the world of business and politics and so forth, (.) Ben Cohen stands out as a genuine superstar, a genuine nice guy, a genuine good guy who is using his name and his platform and his money for good causes. And so what an inspiration and how exciting to have him as our first guest. It's really humbling to talk to him. (.......) We are super excited to have Ben Cohen as our guest on the show. Ben is the famous Ben of Ben & Jerry ice cream, which I think everybody loves, certainly my generation. We were so excited when we started seeing all these chunky things coming out and love the flavors. But also founder of Up in Arms, which is a new organization campaigning against militarism in the United States. And the ballooning Pentagon budget. So, Ben, super excited to have you and for this conversation and lots of things for us to talk about, for sure.
Ben Cohen More and more every day. Yeah, great to be here with you.
Sanam Can we just start with going back a little bit? You started Ben & Jerry's after a $7 or $5 correspondence course on ice cream making. When was that?
Ben Cohen It was a $5 course. Jerry and I didn't have much money. We split one between the two of us.
Kavita Ramdas And Ben, I was telling Sanam, because I have a husband who went to Hampshire College, that it might have been right after you graduated from Hampshire.
Ben Cohen Well, actually, I never went to Hampshire and I never graduated from any college.
Kavita Ramdas Oh, excellent. Even better.
Ben Cohen I think the president of Hampshire at the time felt that I was qualified to be on the board of Hampshire College. And so I was on the board for a while.
Kavita Ramdas Oh, that's wonderful. That's the Hampshire connection. Well, that's exciting. Because Sanam and I were wondering whether there was a way to inculcate aversion to militarism at a young age.
Ben Cohen I had this aversion to militarism during my elementary school years. I was a early bloomer in that respect. It was amazing. I mean, it was during the Cold War. And I just had this image of these two countries, the Soviet Union and the United States, facing each other with these huge piles of shiny new weapons. And in back of them was their people that were kind of suffering, you know, not having enough to eat, not having health care. They weren't happy people. And I don't know. You know, what can I say? I was called. I had this vision. Here I am.
Sanam So, Ben, it's so interesting you say that. Because right now with this massive arms race and, you know, I'm in London, it's, you know, 60 billion pounds that we don't have. We're borrowing it for the next generation, you know, for more nuclear weapons. And I keep saying to people, but these weapons are only useful if they stay entirely useless. I mean, it's just, it's like, it's just chunks of metal. Because if we start using them, we're all obliterated, right?
Ben Cohen Exactly. People used to be happy with mad, mutually assured destruction. And no, now that's not enough. We need to have super mad, not just destroying the world 10 times over, but, you know, how about 100? That way we can spend, you know, in the U.S., we can spend 1.5 trillion a year of our money that should be used for the benefit of improving the quality of life for regular old people. I just can't, it's just kind of unbelievable that these guys get away with that, you know, in a naked, blatant, corrupt move to line their pockets. It just doesn't make any sense. It's irrational. It's immoral. You know, and then when we go to the governments and say, hey, we need money for schools. We need money for housing. (.) They say, oh, man, we really care about you guys. I'm sorry your kids don't have health care or don't have enough to eat or don't have daycare, but we just don't have enough money. You know, somehow, I mean, it's this, they've manufactured this fear. You know, Eisenhower said people want peace so much that one of these days governments are going to have to get out of their way and let them have it.
Sanam You know, we have been programmed, or the mantra is like, a war is good for business. And again, for me, I've been doing peace work for 30 years. I'm like, it's not good for business. It's not good for the ice cream makers and the hoteliers and the, I don't know. I mean, war is good for a very small handful of companies, isn't it?
Ben Cohen Yeah, I think that's right. I think there's economic studies that have shown that, you know, when you put money into weapons, it's an economic dead end. The money doesn't keep circulating in the economy and it's not an investment. (.) It's spending. I mean, they always try to paint it as an investment, but an investment would be something like keeping your people healthier, making them more educated, you know, those things. And, of course, it creates way more jobs. Anytime you spend money in anything besides weapons, you create a lot more jobs.
Sanam You're in the sort of American zeitgeist because of Ben and Jerry and, you know, in our supermarkets and everything. And then this other universe of this anti-militarism stuff, which it's still kind of niche. People kind of think that we're slightly awed, right, to be so upset about this. But how do we bring this conversation to the public to say, you know, the money that is being spent now on weapons is money that isn't going for the disabled kids in Virginia or it's not going for research in, you know, green energy or environmental issues. I've got kids that are working on these issues and all of their friends' PhD programs have been cut back because now we're not interested in, you know, progress related to the environment. How do we make that connection for the ordinary American? Is that something that bothers you at night or? (..)
Ben Cohen Well, it has bothered me, but I think I've come up with the answer, which is that you need to start with what people are concerned about. And what people are concerned about is that they can't afford a house, they can't afford child care, their school budgets are always in the red. And the reason why that is is because our government is diverting the money that should go to that to weapons manufacturers instead. (.)
Kavita Ramdas Ben, you're sounding dangerously like the socialist who just got elected mayor in New York City. Do you care about child care and affordable housing? (.)
Ben Cohen Yeah, hard to believe. Yeah, and yeah, I don't believe that the U.S. should be the only advanced democracy in the world that doesn't provide health care for all of its people.
Soleh They've prioritized killing over living.
Ben Cohen I think what happens is that, you know, people are busy. You know, they're trying to bring up their kids. They're trying to keep the car going. It's breaking down. The roof is leaking. I mean, how are they supposed to take the time to figure out, well, is the government spending the right amount of money on the Pentagon? (.) Shit, I don't know. Well, it must be those guys in the uniforms with all the, you know, patches on them and metals and shit. They must have our interests at heart. And they say that, you know, these other countries are, you know, about to, you know, blow up the United States. So I got to go along with it. And, you know, nobody's got the time to analyze, you know, do we really need 1300 F-35s or do we need so many aircraft battle groups? People can't get into that, so they've simplified it to say that, well, the more we spend on the Pentagon or on weapons, the safer and more secure we are.
Sanam I became really interested in this space of what do you do differently. And in the 1990s, I met a South African woman and she had been in the MK. She'd sort of been in the armed entity of the ANC, Fighting Apartheid. And then afterwards made it to Parliament and she chaired the Defense Select Committee. And she said at some point the arms industry came to her, you know, in South Africa, you know, during the apartheid era, spent 25% of their budget on militarization.
Kavita Ramdas And had a nuclear weapons program. And had nuclear weapons, exactly.
Sanam Anyway, she said these guys came to her and were like, we need this many jets and this many submarines and this many, you know, like giving her the shopping list. And she turned around and she said, well, wait a second, before we buy all this, what are the security threats? What are people saying? So she initiated a national defense review where they went and talked to ordinary people. And they said, what makes you feel insecure? Right? I mean, in villages and towns and people have said, well, I don't know, the water is dirty. Because we had a military installation or we don't have streetlights. And they'd taken all of that consultation and distilled it to make the next, the white paper on national security policy for South Africa afterwards. And it lasted about, I don't know, eight, nine years before the weapons industry again came back and there was a change in president. But I always think, you know, imagine if we could do that in the U.S. And we actually went to those communities across, I don't know, Kentucky and Louisiana and, you know, California and whatever. And just what makes you feel insecure? It would be a very different set of issues. It would, you know, it would be drought.
Kavita Ramdas It would be, as you say, child care. It would. Sanam, it's what you all at ICANN, what we've been working on for so many years at the Global Fund for Women and other places, called human security. I think the definition of security as being something that somehow states have to have, that countries have to have. But we never actually talk about what it means to be secure as a human being. Ben, Sanam and I were also curious. We know you have an interesting history of activism. You recently got arrested in Congress. So I want to know all about it because, you know, it's troublemakers like you who are giving all of us a little bit of hope, as well as these wonderful young people who are part of the Mamdani campaign here and prior to that, all the protests on Gaza. So can you tell us a little bit about what it means to you to have been both a business owner and an activist and why it matters to do both and why you're still continuing to protest?
Ben Cohen You know, as far as I'm concerned, it's about love and justice. You know, Cornel West's statement that justice is what love looks like in public is very meaningful to me. I mean, that's what I believe. When you're confronted with situations of injustice, you know, you kind of have three choices. You can ignore it, you can complain about it, or you can do something about it. And, you know, I feel better doing something about it. And one of the things about my country that drives me crazy, and, you know, it relates to what we've been talking about the whole time, is that, you know, we have these epidemics of lead poisoning in our country. And the lead poisoning is from lead in the water pipes and lead in chipping paint that comes off the walls of the apartments that low-income people have no choice but to live in. Lead poisoning affects the brain development of young children, and you can't remediate it. It's for life. It's lifelong. If you wanted to put something into the environment to keep a generation down for years to come, it would be lead. And we know how to fix it. You know, you can replace the pipes, and you can remediate, you know, you can get the lead off the walls, and you can paint them with stuff that isn't toxic. We choose not to do it. (.) I mean, I call that economic violence. You know, instead of doing that, we choose to build weapons that we hope never to use. So, there was another outbreak of lead poisoning, and, you know, I'm reading about that in the paper, and I'm reading about the slaughter in Gaza. I said, you know, everybody's got their breaking point, and this is mine. I want to write a statement about those choices that, you know, that the U.S. government is not taking care of kids that are getting poisoned by lead, and instead is taking the money that could have been used to do that and buying bombs to slaughter people in Gaza. And I said, I want to write that statement. I want to chain myself to the White House fence and, you know, make my statement. It's the strongest statement a citizen can make. I have some people that I work with, and they said, you know, chaining yourself to the White House fence is not exactly something you can do these days. There's another fence in front of the White House fence, and, you know, so there's no man's land in the middle, which is patrolled by these heavily armed guards. They said, you know, they said, you know, well, what you could do is you could disrupt the hearing, and I said, what, you think that's really going to work? Health and Human Services, that hearing. And so come up with something related to Health and Human Services and the slaughter in Gaza. And, you know, so I'm trying to think of a short little pithy thing about that. And so I came up with giving bombs to Israel and funding it by kicking kids off health care in the U.S. So they, I got up, I said that, and they led me out and searched me, you know, handcuffed me. But, you know, then they take you to the Capitol Police Station and, you know, search you again. They search you a few times. They like to keep searching. And, I mean, the cops were fine.
Sanam Did they know who you were? (.)
Ben Cohen I don't think so. I mean, maybe at some point. I don't think so.
Kavita Ramdas I'm glad that you were treated well then. That makes me feel, that makes me feel slightly better.
Sanam Ben, your company were giving 7.5% of your pre-tax profit to causes, to good causes, charities, etc., you know, right off the bat. (.) Now, I sort of think about that on one corner of my brain. And then I think about during COVID how we were all using Amazon and, you know, so happy that Amazon was delivering things to us. But Amazon started doing a fundraiser for their personnel. Be kind to the Amazon guys and stuff. And I just remember thinking, why are we, as the customers, being asked to supplement the salaries or the benefits for Amazon workers when Jeff Bezos is sitting there just piling up the zeros? In that universe, I don't know whether you hang out with business people or businessmen or the corporate world. But, you know, why aren't these guys being more decent and humane? Like, what's happened in the last 20, 30 years where it's the accumulation of insane wealth has become some, it's almost like a sickness. A billion isn't enough, 50 billion isn't enough, we're now looking at a trillion. It's just, what would you say to these guys if you could meet with them and, you know, just spend some time with them around the value of doing good in the community alongside making the money that you've made?
Ben Cohen I think that for a lot of people, business is kind of a game like, you know, a football game or a basketball game. And the object is to get as many points as you can. And in the business world, points are dollars. They're just playing the game. They're just trying to get as many as they can. I've been thinking lately about the game Monopoly, which we were brought up on as kids. And, you know, what that game teaches you, what it instills upon you, when you're an impressionable child, is that one person wins and everybody else loses. And you just grow up thinking that that's normal, that's okay, that's the way the world works. I believe it was a woman who created the game Monopoly and she was actually an anti-capitalist. I mean, she was thinking that the game was going to be used to undercut capitalism. Didn't work out that way. And the other thing in terms of business in general and especially publicly held companies, the stock market, there's only one measure of success. The only legitimate function of a corporation is to maximize profits. That's the way they work.
Sanam Did you get pushback when you were saying we want to do 7.5%? Did you have shareholders? Did you get, did people tell you you're crazy?
Ben Cohen Huge pushback. Lots of people saying we were crazy. When Ben, in the early days of Ben and Jerry's, you know, the ice cream was really good. People really liked it. Even as a one-shop homemade ice cream parlor, we were doing as much as we could to be of service to the community. Donating money to different things, donating ice cream. We were sponsoring community celebrations. And then we started selling a whole lot of ice cream. We started distributing to the rest of the New England states. And, you know, we got to a point where we needed to build a real ice cream plant. We were working in a little rented facility. And we had all these venture capitalists that came to us unsolicited, saying, we'll give you money to grow your business. And we said, no, we don't want to take your money. We don't want to have our business create more money for people who already have a lot of money. We would like to spread the wealth. So we decided what we wanted to do is we wanted to sell shares and Ben and Jerry's to Vermonters. And we held what became the first ever in-state Vermont public stock offering. So it didn't go over state lines. We were selling shares to our neighbors. And therefore, we didn't need to go through the whole SEC process. There was a lot of people who told us we were crazy when we did that. I mean, you know, we were trying to find lawyers and accountants to help us do the legal part of this in-state public stock offering. And they all said, you're crazy. Don't do it. (.) You know, it's never going to work. There aren't that many people who live in Vermont. Those that are there don't have much money. And you want to have this very low minimum buy. And if you're a public company, it's going to cost you more to service those people than you're going to make, et cetera, et cetera. But we did it. And by the end of the offering, one out of every hundred Vermont families bought shares and Ben and Jerry's. You know, and then we had a national public stock offering. And we told them we want to include in the prospectus that 10% of the profits are going to be donated to various community organizations. And they said, oh, no, you can't do that. The street's never going to buy that. All that money going out of the company, you can't use it to grow. And we won't be able to sell stock like that. They said, why don't you do one and a half percent? You know, that's the corporate. Well, that's a lot. That's more than the corporate average. And we said, no, no, no, we can't do that. And they eventually came up to 5%. We were at 10% and we compromised at seven and a half.
Sanam As the company did well, all of your friends and neighbors, everybody benefited, right? That must be an awesome feeling.
Ben Cohen It was great. It worked the way it was supposed to. People have come up to me, said, my kid went to college on the stock that we bought in that offering.
Sanam What's the balance between the wealth that you need to have and that sense of fulfillment? Like, you know, because again, like this idea, when is it enough? You know, they're all chasing this dragon. When is it enough? And how else do you make yourself actually feel good inside and outside? (.)
Ben Cohen Yeah, it is really interesting. (.) You know, I talk to young people, you know, they're talking about what line of work should I go into? (..) You know, for a lot of people, that's somewhat determined by how much money can I make in this line of work? I explained to them that doing work that is fulfilling to your soul and your spirit is worth a lot of money. I mean, the only reason to make money, I think, is to feel good. I mean, is to meet your needs. And you have other needs in addition to having money. You have a need to feel good inside yourself and feed your heart. What, you do a job that's kind of soulless, where you're working for the man who's paying you a lot of money and you're not getting real soul satisfaction out of that?
Kavita Ramdas Maybe for that, Ben, we needed a different game than Monopoly to teach us about soul satisfaction. (..)
Ben Cohen Yes, an opportunity for you to come up with the new game, Kavita. (.)
Kavita Ramdas Ah, yeah.
Ben Cohen Well, I mean, that's a business opportunity.
Sanam Oh, yeah, that's a business opportunity. That's so true.
Kavita Ramdas Ben, you mentioned Gaza in the context of speaking out at the House hearing. But could you say a little bit more about that? I think for both Sanam and I, people who have worked on both women's rights and the well-being of families all over the world, I think we were so disheartened to see how this terrible tragedy in Gaza was playing out inside the United States. And I think it would be really interesting for us to hear a little bit more about what you felt you were able to do by taking positions, because Ben and Jerry's had already taken a position on selling ice cream in the settlements, meaning in the West Bank. So that was prior to Gaza, just wondering if you can say a little bit more and help our listeners understand how, why was it so important? And the fact that Ben and Jerry is actually in your agreement with Unilever also fought to have an independent board of directors. I know Anu rather well and others, of course. So just, if you could say a little bit about that and share with our listeners why you made that choice.
Ben Cohen Jerry and I were both opposed to the sale in the year 2000 to Unilever because we were concerned that the social mission would not survive. But the company was publicly held and there were SEC regulations that required the board to recommend the sale because Unilever was offering so much of a premium above what the stock was trading at. And, you know, according to the SEC rules, the only thing that matters is dollars. So we were quite reluctant for a publicly held company as soon as some company makes an offer, then the company is considered to be, quote, in play. So then other entities can make offers. And so there were several entities that were making offers. (..) Unilever wanted to make the best offer and they came to understand that for Jerry and I, it was about the social mission. And so we were negotiating with them, trying to write the social mission into the acquisition agreement. And there was an understanding that, you know, the social mission needed to evolve and change as the society and culture evolves and changes and as different issues come to the fore. And the way to be able to do that was to establish this independent board of directors for Ben and Jerry's, which has the legal authority over the social mission of the company.
Sanam First of all, you made the watermelon ice cream, right? In support of Gaza. //S00: Yes, I did.//
Ben Cohen Personally, the company did not.
Sanam The company, that's not the company.
Ben Cohen And that's the reason why we're now trying to free Ben and Jerry's. I mean, we essentially, you know, at one point about two years ago, Unilever announced that they wanted to sell off their entire ice cream division. You know, there had developed this tremendous conflict between the independent board and Unilever, which has now become the Magnum ice cream company. And it was first about pulling out of the West Bank. You know, Unilever had agreed to do it. I mean, we studied the situation for years. There were visits, the whole bit. And, but then once we actually made that decision, Unilever got so much pushback from Israel that they reneged on it and ended up selling the rights to Ben and Jerry's to an Israeli. And so the ice cream is now available in the West Bank, just in Hebrew. That's what started this big conflict. And since then, Unilever and now Magnum has censored Ben and Jerry's taking positions on a, on a whole range of issues, free speech, the right to protest, Black History Month. So we said to Unilever, you've announced you're looking to sell the whole thing. Why don't you just carve out Ben and Jerry's and sell it to this group of socially aligned investors? And they refused to do it. It's kind of unbelievable. I mean, these, these huge corporations, they're, they're only driven by dollars and they just want to be in the mushy middle. They, they don't want to do anything that's perceived as controversial by anybody. I mean, the reality is that corporations are extremely political. They determine who gets elected based on campaign donations, determine what laws get passed based on lobbying. They just do that covertly. They don't really want people to know about it. And the difference is that Ben and Jerry's takes public stands on what's considered to be political issues. (.) We do it overtly. And instead of doing it in our own self-interest, we do it in the general interest of people, the society. (.)
Sanam And in this particular case that, as you say, they take this mushy position, but we're talking genocide. I mean, it's, this is not a black and white sort of, you know, it's not mushy. It's very clear what is, has been going on in, in the last couple of years by law. And, and to see that, yeah, corporations, um, don't have the backbone or, or not even that. It's like they're actually by, by not taking a stand, they're complicit.
Ben Cohen That's correct. Yeah. I think that the public needs to start letting them know that they're not going to tolerate this complicity. (..) My Jewish heritage, what it taught me was that, uh, you know, throughout, uh, history, Jews have been oppressed and, and scapegoated and discriminated against. And that makes me feel simpatico with other people that are oppressed and scapegoated and discriminated against. So that comes, my support for, for other oppressed people really comes from my Jewish heritage. And it's the same as I'm just following Jesus Christ. You know, what you do to the least of these you do to me, you know, it was interesting. I happened to be on the Tucker Carlson show.
Kavita Ramdas And yes, we wanted to ask you.
Ben Cohen Well, I mean, we were talking about militarism.
Kavita Ramdas Yeah.
Ben Cohen He agreed with me a hundred percent. We didn't talk about anything else, but that was fine.
Sanam I could talk to him about Iran and he'd probably agree. I mean, it's, it's probably, yes. The alignments are, are, are all sorts of all over the place.
Ben Cohen You know, I'm, I'm considered to be a, what progressive guy, but I mean, the, the entity that's been the, the best partner that I've had in terms of trying to fight the military, industrial congressional complex is Cato, the libertarian group. I mean, I'm fine working with anybody who agree, you know, if we can find an area that we agree on, let's work on that area. Let's not work on the other area. But the reason why I brought up Tucker was because, you know, at the end of the interview, he's saying, well, is there any kind of spiritual practice that you follow? And I said, you know, not really, but I love Jesus Christ. Christ. And that was the headline in the Israeli paper. Cohen says he loves Jesus Christ. (.) I mean, I love Jesus Christ more than white Christian nationalists do. I mean. (.)
Kavita Ramdas Actually, Ben, you're reminding me of a quote from Gandhi a long time ago. Gandhi said, when they said, well, what do you think about Christianity? And he said, I think most Christians seem to have forgotten the Christ in Christianity.
Ben Cohen Exactly right. It's unbelievable to me that it seems like the mainstream of Christianity in our country is not about being Christ-like. You know, I don't know. I'm not sure what it's about.
Sanam You know, I do a lot of work on extremism and how you have people kind of elevate one identity and they think that they're supreme over others and it allows them to be discriminatory and violent against each other. And it's like these visceral identities. And, you know, faith ends up being one of those things. And I look around and I'm like, it's basically extremist Christian evangelicals on one side and then the jihadis, you know, on the Muslim side. And then the, I don't know, extreme, you know, Hindus. And I'm like, all these extremists are talking to each other and the rest of us are in the middle going, what the hell is going on? Yeah, where is the core of this? Because all of them...
Kavita Ramdas And what does this have to do with spirituality in any way?
Ben Cohen Exactly, exactly. It's all counter.
Kavita Ramdas Ben, I'm mindful of time. And Sanam and I tend to have a set of questions that we like to ask all our guests on the show. As you know, it's called, if you were in charge. So if you were in charge, Ben, what would you most like to see? And also, is there a radical idea that you don't think should be radical at all?
Ben Cohen I think that the nations of the world and the US plays a big role in the nations of the world should be using their power and their expertise and their knowledge to cooperate with each other, (.) to build a world that meets the needs of more and more people. I mean, the reality is that we've got all the money we need to feed people, to educate people, you know, all over the world. I mean, you know, you hear that, oh, you know, there's all these people dying of hunger around the world, starvation. It's a huge problem. There's nothing we can do about it. That's a lie. We can take care of all the people that are dying of hunger and starvation for $40 billion a year. Now, you know, you save $40 billion a year and people say, oh man, 40 billion, that's a shitload of money. But, you know, the Pentagon budget is now a trillion dollars. Let's see, 10% of a trillion dollars is-
Sanam I was gonna say, people don't even understand the zeros anymore.
Ben Cohen Right, right, right. 10% of a trillion dollars is $100 billion. (.) For less than 5%, you could take care of all the people in the world that are dying of hunger, and it's not like you have to spend that every year. I mean, part of that $40 billion is standing up a sustainable food production ability around the rest of the world. (.) So, if I ran the world-
Kavita Ramdas Why not? (.) We'd have ice cream. We'd have ice cream aplenty. (..)
Sanam Ben, so again, bringing it sort of, you know, I do piece work, and we work with such pittance of money in this universe. And every time, you know, there's a study, they tell us that for every dollar spent on peacebuilding, and peacebuilding includes the internet, you know, food and livelihoods, it's not just actually ending wars. I mean, the ending wars part and preventing wars is even less. But for every dollar spent in that space, $1,800 in defense and weaponry and so forth. So, I sometimes want to say to these billionaire guys that if they really want to have a legacy, they could bring peace to the world. I mean, if Trump actually wanted to end wars, it's not expensive to end a war. You can- it's doable, right?
Ben Cohen No money in it. There's no profit in it.
Sanam The key question that I- that we want to put out there is what gives you hope right now?
Ben Cohen Uh, that there's people that are outraged, that are resisting, that are out in the streets. The people in Minneapolis give me a lot of hope. The people that are standing up to the thugs, the goon squad, the ICE militarized mask thugs. How can our country say, oh, that- that country over there is bad. They're authoritarian. They have secret police. They're snatching people off the streets. They're shooting innocent people when that's what's going on in our country. So, yeah, the- the people in Minneapolis that are- that are standing up, that are- that are on the front lines, that are putting their bodies on the line, that gives me hope. And, you know, I- I know that the majority of people in the United States are opposed to many of these actions. I mean, I'm aware that most of the people who voted for Trump are still big Trump supporters. But I think- I think there's some that are quite opposed to a bunch of the stuff he did. You know, the majority of the population, including Trump supporters, believes that, uh, presidents should have to follow court orders. You know, the majority of people in the country feel like we should not pardon, uh, the January 6th insurrectionists. Call me a cockeyed optimist, but, you know, I have faith that the majority of- of the American people are good, caring people. You know, a lot of them are just totally shut out of the political process. They've given up on it, and I don't blame them. But I believe that the majority are decent and care about other people.
Sanam I have a big question to ask you about ice cream, actually. I have to give you some context. I grew up in Iran, I'm Iranian by background, and my cousins and I would spend hours in the kitchen mixing, you know, vanilla and chocolate on our own cookies and- and you name it. Like, we were sort of concocting this stuff as kids. So when Kavata and I were talking and I was like, the Persian version, we need a Ben and Jerry's Persian ice cream. With- with- with rose and cardamom. That's right. Ooh, I like that.
Ben Cohen You know, I- I did once make a- an ice cream with rose and cardamom for a friend of mine who was getting married to a woman named Rosemary.
Kavita Ramdas Oh.
Ben Cohen So I- I made a rose and cardamom ice cream, but it was not for public consumption. It was a good flavor, though.
Sanam Well, ours- ours comes with pistachios, frozen little blobs of cream, and saffron as well. //S00: So- We have a little saffron, yeah.// We'll have to take you to- to Persian ice cream place.
Ben Cohen Yeah, I'd like that. I like the Persian version. That's a good name. (.)
Sanam So that was Ben Cohen. Uh, Sos, over to you in terms of your reaction. What did you like about him?
Soleh Yeah, I thought the whole conversation was really interesting. his points about where are people's breaking points and how do you figure out, like, what is the- the event or something that is going to radicalize as someone or makes them kind of motivated to switch gears, talking about kind of Israel and Gaza and how that's been a big motivator for a lot of young people in the past couple years. I thought his being lead water was really interesting as well, because growing up in D.C., that was something that we learned about, because there was a big, like, lead water crisis in D.C. in the early 2000s. And then, of course, Flint, Michigan.
Sanam It's- it's interesting you- you brought that up, because to me, that's that direct connection between- which he raised as well, of like, we're spending all this money on weapons systems and military and then killing other people's kids and- and then back home, we literally don't care about lead poisoning. It just- I don't know, Kavata, yeah, for you, what- what is it that- that when you hear Solisip saying this, it's sort of-
Kavita Ramdas Well, I mean, I think that's- that's exactly right, Soli, and I think the other thing that stood out for me was how early on he becomes involved in efforts around anti-militarism, right? He talks about the fact that he didn't understand why we were spending money on nuclear weapons to blow up the world many times over. And I think that in a way, Sanam, as somebody who has worked on militarism and on demilitarizing the world, and for myself as someone who has worked with so many women's groups around the world who see war and militarism as a genuine threat to their- to the dreams that they have for a better, more equal world, it seems sometimes hard for us to understand why the rest of the world doesn't see our commitment to this, replace weapons with ice cream for crying out loud, you know? But- but I think that was nice.
Soleh It seems like the ice protests and the- the two ice shootings, I think, have been also really key moments that have kind of broken through as well in this idea of, like, militarization and spending and making it really clear to people that there is all this military spending and kind of government effort being put into something that is not just, like, not helpful to people, but actively harming so many Americans. And, of course, it's easier to get through to people when it's affecting people that they can relate to.
Sanam Yeah. I remember when, back in 2003, when the Iraq war started, I had a colleague who lived in Virginia, and he had a child who was born with Down syndrome. And so the state services included, you know, speech therapy, physical therapy, variations of very specialized therapy for this child. And he noticed that almost week on week, the services were diminishing. And he was saying- As the war dragged on. As the war dragged, because- and the answer of why is there no more speech therapy provided, or why is there- why is the physiotherapy now, I don't know, you know, once every two weeks as opposed to once a week, was that they were saying, well, there are cuts in the budget, cuts in the budget. And it's like, who do they affect? It affects a disabled baby, like, or somebody who has, you know, born with a fundamental sort of problem. And this is where we're at, that the gross level of investment in war and the lack of investment in the future.
Soleh Yeah, at the cost of everything else. At the cost of everything else. I think the ICE funding is particularly clear to people, because usually the military spending is somewhere else. Now, the military spending is here. //S01: Exactly.//
Kavita Ramdas Or, I mean, here meaning in the US. Close to home, yes.
Soleh At home. So it's so obvious where the money is being directed. You know, you hope that this is an argument that the Democrats will be able to effectively make coming up, you know, relatively soon. Yeah, it's- it's just so much more obvious.
Kavita Ramdas I mean, I think, unfortunately, the Democrats have ceded so much ground on that. Soleh, I think the- the really depressing thing is their failure to speak out about Gaza and the fact that people don't see the through line that leads from Gaza to ICE in Minneapolis and all across the United States is sort of chilling because the same companies, Palantir, for example, which is being used for surveillance of all the migrant communities across the US, is a Israeli-owned company, a tech company that has also then been used in Gaza and is now being used. So I think- I feel like you're
Soleh making that point. I think in a way, like, the Democrats could use- it's easier to make the point- well, you'd hope- again, all this is all me hoping and talking to any Democratic strategists listening to this podcast. But you hope that they'd be able to draw the connection. Like, I think it's really difficult to get a majority, like a large majority of people to care about something that is so far away from them. But if there's something that is much closer-
Kavita Ramdas I hope that's true. Although I think the vast majority of Americans did actually feel very differently than the Democratic Party did about Gaza. And that's actually one of the sad things.
Sanam Yeah, of course. So I'm just- I'm just curious about when- when you hear somebody like Ben Cohen talking about Gaza, and then you think about the student protests, both in the states, but also here, and how institutions have, you know, tried to push it under the carpet. Yeah, meaning the UK. Here in the UK, yeah. I mean, last night was the BAFTA Awards. And there was a Palestinian film among the foreign films. There was an Iranian film, both of them just extraordinary. And the Norwegian film won the award. The Norwegian film was lovely. It's very nice. It's the first time that the Norwegians have, you know, won a BAFTA or been nominated. But honestly, compared to the depth of the stories and the issues that these others were, you know, these other two films were dealing with, I just- I was just like, wow, is there so much cowardice? You know, it really- there was something fake about it.
Soleh But it's the same problem as what he was talking about with, like, Unilever trying to control what he was doing. Like, this is all corporations not wanting to make these kinds of statements, right? Like, you know, corporation bottom line.
Sanam You know, the other thing I think that he shows is that it's nonsense to say that corporations can't take moral stance on issues. Like, they've always had a social justice element. They always, like his description of how they sold shares in the company and it was first in Maine and then nationally. You know, that they did it because they, it was their core values and they wanted to practice their core values. And it helped the bottom line and it was a just cause, right? So he's setting an example of what is possible to do. Patagonia does the same thing. You know, there are companies that are doing good work because their core values to drive their strategies as well. And I think this is the moment to be highlighting some of those, given the, as I say, the sludge and awfulness of everything else that we're seeing.
Kavita Ramdas I mean, I think I'm so glad that Sole brought up what was happening in Minneapolis and ICE because I actually do think, for me, when I think about people power and possibilities, the people power that we saw in Minneapolis really does give me hope for possibilities, does give me a sense that our collective mobilization, as did the student protests over Gaza, right? I mean, I really do think that some of our extraordinary guests on this podcast, whether Stephanie Fox from Jewish Voices for Peace or the young women who are working in a prison, I mean, these are all people who do give us that sense. But I think, Sole, there was a way in which, and in this, I think you're right, that there was a way in which what happened in Minneapolis, especially because it happened to a primarily white group of very visibly sort of clean-cut Minnesotans who were singing in the streets, you know, gives us the possibility that even a pathetically lacking in courage group of Democrats might find themselves able to sort of, you know, scrape out from the bottom of their barrel some degree of courage and some degree of commitment to actually bring forward a different message for these coming up to mid-term elections. And in that, I think you're right, that there's something unique. Yeah, you'd hope, right? Yeah.
Sanam You know, one of you, as you were talking about Minnesota and Minneapolis, so for me, Minneapolis has always held a very special place in my heart, very strangely, because when we were kids in Iran, we had teachers, a lot of our teachers that are at the Tehran International School, a community school, were Americans. And my third grade teacher was from Minneapolis. And I remember saying at some point, we're like, she asked us, where are you all going to go for the summer? And, you know, we told her what we were doing. And we asked her, and she said, I'm going back to Minneapolis. And it sounded really exotic. It sounded, you know, for us sitting in town in Minneapolis. But what always struck me is that any time I came across Midwesterners from the US, to me, they represented the very best of what we imagined America to be in terms of values and attitudes and attitudes and stuff, you know, whether they came to Iran, whether it was colleagues in my social justice work and peace, peace building work in DC. When I think about the people power and possibilities is that there's a force that is trying to divide us, hone in on differences, and then divide us. But if we revisit it and see that it doesn't matter whether you're white middle class or you're black middle class or poor or in Minneapolis or in India, frankly, if your core values are the same, that's where the real power and possibilities exist. It's kind of bringing us the similarities that we have at the heart of what we think about universal human rights and what the world should be that is going to be the big power and potential that we have. So I like to sort of think about it in that way. Yeah. Yeah, Sosi.
Soleh I hope so. But I feel like right now, it's also all about like, what is breaking through to people? Like there's so much, there's so much news, there's just so much out there that it's just like politicians often like they can't, I mean, not to defend the Democrats or something, but like a lot of these stands, they can't take until they become like, or they won't take until they become popular and kind of breakthrough. So these, what's happening with ICE and even with Epstein files, like, is giving politicians, again, we hope, giving politicians like the ability to actually kind of push for these things in the UK with Prince Andrew or whatever his name is now, not Prince Andrew, whatever, getting arrested. Like nobody thought that that would ever happen. Right. But there's been such a popular push with all the Mandelson stuff as well that it did happen.
Kavita Ramdas Well, Soleh, I could talk to you all day long, but hopefully I'll get to do that when I come to London. Although I know you're not quite in London, you're in Cambridge. nearby. And Sanam, I'm hoping you're in recovery from listening to Marco Rubio's speech. I'm going to try and thaw out here in New York City.
Sanam Well, I hope you do thaw out and I hope that you begin to see the crocuses because we're beginning to see them here. And yes, and Soleh, two seconds. Bacteria, tell us anything, anything exciting, or are you going to hold that out for the next season?
Soleh No, there's no point in doing it. Ears, cut this out.
Sanam All right. Okay. So thank you very much. And we will be back soon. (.....) This was If You Were In Charge, a podcast brought to you by ICANN, the International Civil Society Action Network. Get in touch and tell us what you think at info at icanpeacework.org and follow our newsletter. Like and subscribe and please tell everybody else who might like the show. My thanks to ADA Productions for making the show possible, to A Little Monster Media for our music. And of course, to my amazing co-host, Kavita Nandini Ramdas. And finally, to all of you for listening. We'll be back soon. Thank you.