Jerry Greenfield, co-founder of the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream brand, has stepped down from the company he started 47 years ago citing a retreat from its campaigning spirit under parent company Unilever.
Greenfield wrote in an open letter late Tuesday night — shared on X by his co-founder Ben Cohen — that he could no longer “in good conscience” remain an employee of the company and said the company had been “silenced.”
He said the company’s values and campaigning work on “peace, justice, and human rights” allowed it to be “more than just an ice cream company” and said the independence to pursue this was guaranteed when Anglo-Dutch packaged food giant Unilever bought the brand in 2000 for $326 million.
Cohen’s statement didn’t mention Israel’s ongoing military operation in Gaza, but Ben & Jerry’s has been outspoken on the treatment of Palestinians for years and in 2021 withdrew sales from Israeli settlements in what it called “Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
why?
Because I’m gay. And I was curious. Your reports (which btw reek of projected homophobia) got my curiosity deleted by a mod.
i’m also gay. your threadstarter comment reeked of projected homophobia, tbh. fwiw, i didn’t report. it just struck me as a super odd question to ask, and struck me right in the “uh oh, avoid this person, they’re a homophobe” sense
Of course you conveniently ignore that my comment was innocent as per the evidence. You piece of shit. You’re the one who projected homophobia onto the question I asked.
Are you even gay? Or a conservative troll 🙄
listen. i’ve been gay a long time. irrelevant questions like what you asked are almost never harmless. they’re almost always coming from the right. i tried to give you the benefit of the doubt and asked a simple question. “why?”
you said “i was curious” i explained where the rest of us were coming from. now you’re bombarding me, exactily like a conservative troll while calling me a conservative troll and accusing me of not being gay. that shit is not okay, and i’m gona block you. i’m still gonna give you the benefit of the doubt that you’re young and haven’t had to but up with the shit i have and explain what’s going on so maybe you can get why everyone responded to you the way you did.
there’s a conservative strategy called “Just Asking Questions” where someone is just asking innocent enough questions, or so they say. their goal is to normalize questioning the validity of the existence of gay people at all, and it often starts with asking about the true relationship between two same sex people. either it starts with asking if two business partners or gay, or asking if two men who are living as a couple could really be gay, or if it’s just a marketing strategy to sell more ice cream at their business.
that’s how your comment read to a lot of us 25yo+ queer folk. i try to be optimistic about people so i wanted to give you a chance to explain yourself. i regret it because even though you explained and i explained now you won’t leave me the fuck alone like you’re entitled to me seeing the world how you see it, explaining every little thing to you, and validating your way of doing things.
Dude, did you read my comment or something else?
I am not misremembering. I literally asked if they were a couple.
What? For asking if they’re gay? Am I misremembering what I typed or something?
I literally remember asking if they were a couple and that’s it.