Ben Cohen is the co-founder, along with Jerry Greenfield, of the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream company. But he has also been involved throughout his life with a number of major activist efforts on issues of peace, social justice, anti-racism, and climate change. He is currently leading the Up In Arms campaign to rein in military spending. Other initiatives he has played a major part in establishing include the People’s Power Initiatives, the Eisenhower Media Network, the Pierre Sprey Award for Investigative Journalism, and the Stamp Stampede campaign for campaign finance reform. Cohen was a national co-chair of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign. He has been arrested multiple times in the course of his activism, including disrupting an RFK Jr. Senate hearing to protest the war in Gaza. He is the author of the book Above The Law: How Qualified Immunity Protects Violent Police (OR Books, featuring an introduction by Killer Mike) and he is currently running a campaign to “free Ben and Jerry’s” from its corporate overlords to protect its social activism.

NATHAN J. ROBINSON

You are an ice cream man by trade, but one of the very common threads that runs through the “extracurricular work” you have done outside the ice cream business has been issues of war and peace. And recently, people might have seen the conflict with Ben & Jerry’sover creating a flavor for Palestine. You have been arrested. People might have seen you in front of the White House chainsawing a mockup of the Pentagon filled with dollar bills. So let me start by asking you, why have issues of war and peace been so central to the work you’ve done?

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