Food & Water’s Memory Lane: The Ben & Jerry’s Campaign

Well, what do you say we continue the walk down Food & Water’s memory lane? As some of you will recall, after we secured our “popularity” in Vermont by highlighting Cabot’s use of rBGH, we turned our attention to Ben & Jerry’s refusal to go organic – a stand that they still hold to this day. Hmm, is there another “victory” lurking? I doubt it.

Food & Water held several meetings with Ben & Jerry (yes, the individuals), in 1996 and 1997 in an effort to convince them to single-handedly revolutionize Vermont agriculture by beginning the transition to organic dairy production. At the time, hundreds of Vermont farms supplied the popular corporation with the cream they required to meet their growing needs.

But Ben & Jerry refused to budge, claiming that they “couldn’t figure out a way to maximize their profits” via organic production. And so we gave them one more chance: Begin to move toward organic or Food & Water would publicize the fact that, despite the corporation’s rhetoric, it was sanctioning the use of toxic pesticides that threatened Vermont’s environment and the consumers of its ice cream.

Ben Cohen’s initial response was to offer me a job in their public relations department. I refused. Then he took us to a closet full of Ben & Jerry’s paraphernalia and told us to take whatever we wanted. I remember he was particularly proud of the “hippie ties” – yes neckties – that were recently made in his and the Grateful Dead’s honor. Take whatever you want, he declared.

“Thanks,” I remember replying, “but we’ve told you what we want: We want you to begin moving your farm suppliers toward organic dairy production.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Ben replied.

And so, the campaign was on. And so, too, was the liberal elite pushback. Big time. Whatever.

Our first shot across the Ben & Jerry’s bow was an ad that featured a cartoon family in a Vermont-like setting with a giant ice cream cloud lingering over them. The headline was blunt: “Ben & Jerry’s want to save the world. But who will save us from Ben & Jerry’s?”

The text below explained Ben & Jerry’s refusal to go organic and highlighted the thousands of pounds of carcinogenic Atrazine that was used on the Vermont dairy farms that supplied cream to the ice cream mavens.

Sure, we got our asses kicked in the media and within the nonprofit and funding community. I can remember one call I got from a significant funder and friend of Ben Cohen’s who began her conversation with, “You can’t do this.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because Ben’s a nice guy.”

Ben’s affability was never a part of the campaign, I pointed out to her. But I don’t think she ever heard me because the phone soon went dead, as did her support for our campaigns that she had previously declared as “visionary.” I’ll let you decide who went blind, however.

Shortly after the launch of our Ben & Jerry’s campaign, I was invited to speak at an anti-nuke rally in Brattleboro. The person inviting me, Deb Katz of the Citizens Awareness Network, wanted me to be a part of the rally but was nervous about the fact that Ben & Jerry’s had not only given money for the event but the two of them would also be speaking.

“I want you to speak, too,” Katz told me. “But you have to agree that you won’t mention Ben & Jerry’s.”

I told her I’d think about it. And after about ten minutes of thinking about it and laughing rather hysterically with my trusty colleague at the time, Michele Kirchner, I called Katz back: “It’s a deal.”

You see, we made a quick plan.  Sure, I’d appear at the rally – right before Ben & Jerry – and I wouldn’t “mention” the company.

And now, for the “rest of the story,” below is an excerpt from an article from the Boston Globe’s Sunday Magazine that featured the work of Food & Water. It was written by Sally West Johnson, who followed me around for days while researching her piece, including a trip to the Brattleboro anti-nuke rally. You can read the entire piece by clicking here.

We had fun. Because, as my activist mentor, Wally Burnstein, taught me: What’s the point of activism if you’re not having fun? Indeed. And people often thought we were devastated by the attacks we were so often under. Hardly. We were laughing. We believed in what we were doing and we were determined to have one hell of a good time in the process.

Here’s the Boston Globe’s description of our day at the Brattleboro rally:

Michael Colby’s time in the sun has arrived, and he’s ready for it. Striding up to the stage on this warm August afternoon, Colby, executive director of a political action group called Food & Water, has a small paper bag clutched in his left hand and mischief in his gray-blue eyes.

Colby is a scheduled speaker at an antinuclear gathering on the Brattleboro Common, a rally organized by the Citizens Awareness Network, based in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, in Washington, D.C.

He is well known in the leftist community for his sharp tongue and his no-sacred-cows approach to politics. In an age when much of mainstream political activism has adopted the vocabulary of mediation and compromise, Colby is a pit bull — one with wit, but a pit bull nonetheless.

His bark and his bite have drawn him national attention, including appearances on three network evening news shows, CNN, ABC’s 20/20, and Phil Donahue’s talk show.

Lately, one of the targets of Colby’s bark has been Ben & Jerry’s, the Vermont ice cream makers who are known for their liberal activism.

Colby’s Vermont-based group demanded that Ben & Jerry’s stop buying milk from farmers who feed their cows grain treated with the herbicide atrazine, a suspected carcinogen.

Ben&Jerry’s argues, as do a number of environmental watchdog groups, that atrazine in cattle feed does not show up in the milk supply and that organic corn, raised without weed-killing chemicals, is too expensive to find a market.

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the founders of Ben & Jerry’s are at the rally today to join in the antinuclear speechmaking, and the organizers have extracted a promise from Colby that he will not say anything about Ben, Jerry, or the atrazine controversy, but will stick to nuclear reactors and nuclear waste.

Colby takes the stage along with his assistant, Michele Kirchner. He opens the bag, extracts a pint of nicely softened Chubby Hubby, one of Ben & Jerry’s best-known flavors, pulls out a spoon, and begins to eat.

“Doing bad and feeling good about it,” Colby intones between bites of ice cream. This is a phrase that appears often in the Food & Water advertising campaign against the ice cream maker, and many of the 100 or so activists in the audience appear to know that. Others seem intrigued.

“Doing bad and feeling good about it,” Colby says again, pausing for another spoonful of Chubby Hubby. “Doing real bad, and feeling real good about it.”

With that, his microphone goes dead. The audience begins to buzz; people ignore the next speaker’s arrival, flocking to Colby and Kirchner as they descend the steps at the back of the stage.

Was Colby deliberately cut off, people want to know. Yes, he was. Well, why? Doesn’t he have aright speak his mind? Colby now has the platform he was looking for, albeit not an official one.

“Six hundred farmers are using a carcinogenic herbicide,” Colby tells the crowd gathered around him offstage, “and Ben &Jerry’s won’t stop buying the milk made by cows that
eat that corn.”

Debbie Katz, president of the Citizens Awareness Network, defends the decision to shut Colby down. “We said that going after Ben & Jerry’s was unacceptable, and he agreed three times not to do that,” she says. “His issue is real and should be brought up in a different forum — just not here.”

Others aren’t so sure “I don’t believe in censorship,” says Bill Addington, an antinuclear activist who has come from Texas to speak against the location of a low-level nuclear waste dump – a destination for Maine and Vermont nuclear waste — in the remote Texas town of Sierra Blanca. And Mardie Ratheau, of Brattleboro, calls the episode a “serious infringement” of Colby’s right to free speech.

It has been a moment of pure street theater: short, punchy, and effective, just the way Michael Colby likes it.