Scoop: Ben & Jerry's Cofounder Wants to Freeze Money in Politics

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Scoop: Ben & Jerry's Cofounder Wants to Freeze Money in Politics

—By Gavin Aronsen
| Wed Oct. 10, 2012 3:00 AM PDT



Shortly after I met Ben & Jerry's cofounder Ben Cohen in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park last Saturday, he removed a rubber stamper from his pocket, took a dollar bill from my wallet, and stamped it with the words "STAMP MONEY OUT OF POLITICS. AMEND THE CONSTITUTION."

"Money stamping is kind of like petitions on steroids," he explained as we sat on a lakeside bench. "You sign a petition and, let's face it, nobody really sees it. But stamping money is essentially monetary jiu jitsu. It's using the power of money to get money out of politics." The money stamp is part of Stamp Stampede, Cohen's effort to build popular support for a constitutional amendment to undo Citizens United, one greenback at a time.

Cohen hopes that thousands of marked bills soon will be circulating through cash registers around the country. Anyone can purchase a bill stamper on the group's website. Cohen also plans to spread the message via the Amend-o-Matic Stampmobile, a customized van mounted with a 10-foot-tall "Rube Goldberg-esque machine" that will stamp bills "in an entertaining and educational way." (The contraption was supposed to hit the streets of San Francisco last weekened, but Cohen cheerfully explained that his team was still "fine-tuning" it.) Ben & Jerry's, where Cohen is employed as a "pretty face" with "no authority or responsibilities," is one of Stamp Stampede's main supporters; Cohen promised "there will be times where ice cream is given away."

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Cohen, a longtime progressive activist, says that his previous efforts to fight the influence of money in politics had turned him into a cynic. After he and Greenfield sold their company to Unilever in 2000, he created Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, which had taken on a largely unsuccessful effort to convince politicians to shift taxpayer money from military spending into social programs. When Citizens United came down in early 2010, he felt hopeless about overturning the ruling. But after seeing Occupy Wall Street, "I saw that it was possible to have a massive grassroots uprising and started feeling that maybe it was possible to have such a massive outcry that the politicians have to listen."

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http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/10/ben-jerrys-citizens-united-stamp