If you want to know what a good ally looks like, look no further than Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. The founders have spoken out publicly in support of #BlackLiveMatter and encouraged franchises to sell Hands Up United T-shirts:
“Some people might say, ‘Oh, we can’t do that,’” Cohen said to franchise owners. “‘We can’t sell those T-shirts in our shops; it’s controversial.’ But isn’t that exactly the point? If it weren’t controversial, we wouldn’t need to do it. At some point we have to ask ourselves: ‘What do we stand for? Whose side are you on?’” To his immense credit, Cohen didn’t equivocate or hide behind politically correct “All Lives Matter” rhetoric, though the corporation would do just that several days later when it distanced itself from the co-founder’s call to action. … “You know, I think there will always be injustice, and we are outraged and saddened by it. But it’s in the act of working to end injustice that we find our hearts, our souls and our joy.”
Maybe the NYPD could benefit to learn from their business practices.
Team Blackness discussed another milestone in Obamacare, Huckabee’s further inability to understand women, and Comcast’s impressively horrific customer service.
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Belafon
Sometimes it’s fun playing with punctuation:
raven
Fucking idiot crackers in the Athens paper had a fit about Ben and Jerry’s shirt!
Tree With Water
I used to own a “what, me worry?” t-shirt. I’d buy another one, too.
srv
This will just widen the divide between vanilla and chocolate.
Swirl, people.
dedc79
Great story. Just curious who are the “bad allies” to which they’re being compared? Is this a reference to some previous post?
Elizabelle
Glad to hear about this. Yea Ben & Jerry’s and Black Lives Matter.
SatanicPanic
I’m going to go buy some of their ice cream
scav
Another sour srving of nothing but a rocky road advocated by the usual suspect.
Decisions decisions. Which exact flavor(s) and then how much . . .
The aforementioned crackers in Athens can go chew on their holy chicken, we’ve got dessert.
Laertes
This just in: White Lady Doesn’t Understand Why Blackface Sucks
http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/30/politics/mary-cheney-facebook-post/index.html
Helmut Monotreme
If you predict that bad things are going to happen in a war zone, you’re going to be right. If you predict that every civil war is going to explode into WWIII, you’re going to be wrong. You keep pointing at Germany in the 1930s as the model of what’s happening in Ukraine. But it’s more valid to compare it to what happened to Yugoslavia in the 1990s. It will continue to be a dirty little war. The people that die will be just as dead, and the war crimes that will be committed against the civilian population are going to suck and it’s going to be a damn shame. In years to come we will all wonder if we could have done something to have mitigated the tragedy. But unless you can summon up battalions and divisions with a phone call, or have thousands of tons of supplies airdropped anywhere in the world on 48 hours notice, the answer is still going to to be no. No I cannot, and you cannot do a damn thing to influence the imperial ambitions of Putin, or the military strategy of the US, the EU and NATO. So another goddamn brushfire war will be fought for no good goddamn reason, and violent men will rise to prominence over the corpses of their adversaries. And the bloodlands will be bloodied again because the wheat fields of Ukraine would look so damn peachy in a little corner of Novorussia. The only people that will be fighting and dying in Ukraine will be Ukrainians and the Russians Putin sends to make sure his faction wins. And to the extent that Nazis exist in Ukraine, they are empowered solely by the conflict against Russia. Want Ukrainian Nazis to be out of power? get Russia to leave yesterday. Want to empower Nazis? Make Ukrainians need the memory of the third deadliest Russian foe in history after the Russians themselves and vodka.
Another Holocene Human
Speaking of #BlackLivesMatter, the author of GhettoSide was doing the rounds on NPR and ALL of the top rated comments were racist bilge on npr.org. I was horrified. They need to shut comments down if that’s going to be the case.
Her point is that we don’t spend enough in communities of color ON FUCKING SOLVING CRIMES. Yeah, DNA and forensics and even manpower to go door to door cost money and racist whites would rather spend money on sending SWATTed up assholes onto streets to “prevent” crime by hassling the fuck out of anybody who fits the description.
You know why Chicago’s murder rate is so high (it’s not, but it’s high compared to peers). BECAUSE THEIR HOMOCIDE CLEARANCE RATE SUCKS. Don’t catch a murderer, he/she will do it again. Getting caught is the biggest deterrent to recidivism there is (it’s more significant than prison time!!!). That’s how you prevent crime, you catch criminals. Geezus, the racist police in the 1990s knew that much (but they were lazy, easier to sprinkle some crack on a stiff, right?), the 2010’s crew think that STOPNFRISK prevents crime. Now that is some strong anti-reality right there. Foxbots drink the hard stuff these days.
Another Holocene Human
@SatanicPanic: The founders sold it to Unilever years ago.
eta: that’s oversimplified but they AFAIK do not own a bit of it
Another Holocene Human
@dedc79: Huh?
Elizabelle
@SatanicPanic: It’s the patriotic thing to do.
@Another Holocene Human:
Details, details. Where’s my White Russian? (Not speaking of Bob in Portland.)
Elizabelle
@Another Holocene Human: I’ve ordered Ghettoside.
You go Jill Leovy. Sounds like a useful and well told read.
dedc79
@Another Holocene Human: The framing – “If you want to know what a good ally looks like…” – made me think this was a follow-up to a prior story/post. Was just wondering if that was the case.
SatanicPanic
@Another Holocene Human: well there’s goes my excuse for eating ice cream, besides the obvious one that it’s delicious
LanceThruster
Vermonters Call on Ben & Jerry’s To End Complicity with Israel’s Occupation and Settlements
Another Holocene Human
@SatanicPanic: I just had a bowl, all the cool kids are doing it.
w/ banana, so “healthy”