By Ben Jealous
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September 14, 2026 (Houston Style Magazine) — For almost as long as I can remember loving ice cream, I have loved Ben & Jerry’s for its boldness. Bold flavors. Bold crunch. And most uniquely, for boldly standing up for the values that define America’s highest aspirations: freedom, fairness, peace and love.
If you feel like it is slipping toward becoming just another soulless corporate product, you are not alone.
Prince lost control of his own name because a record company owned it. He fought for years and won it back. Ben and Jerry have their names on every pint, but they say illegal corporate decisions are gutting what those names stand for.
What is the value of Ben & Jerry’s without the values of Ben and of Jerry?
Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield opened Ben & Jerry’s in an old Vermont gas station in 1978. Jerry stayed 47 years.
Then this time last year Jerry did the unthinkable and walked out, disappointed in where the company’s new owners were taking his and Ben’s namesake.
He did not leave over money. Standing up for justice and our shared humanity, he wrote, has never mattered more than it does right now. And yet Ben & Jerry’s had been “silenced, sidelined for fear of upsetting those in power.”
In 2000, Unilever offered more money than shareholders could refuse. They could not stop the sale. So they got key assurances in writing.
The deal created an independent board with the last word on the social mission, the ice cream, and the name. Only those directors could remove one of their own. The parent company could not remove anyone. The lawyers said it would last in perpetuity. That is lawyer talk for forever.
Forever lasted twenty-five years. In December 2025 Unilever spun its ice cream brands into a company called Magnum. By New Year’s Day, every independent director was gone.
They had already gone to federal court. They said a Black History Month post was blocked. They said it could not name President Trump on wages, health care, and climate. They said it could not call for a ceasefire in Gaza. They said chief executive David Stever was pushed out for listening to them.
Magnum, Ben says, has done this to “a brand that was built to speak.”
This summer Magnum cut the funding and took the offices of the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, which has backed grassroots justice work since 1985. It has announced it will close this December unless the lawsuit succeeds.
Last month a judge threw out most of the directors’ claims. Two survive, over money Unilever promised and never paid. Magnum calls that charge nonsensical. It says the brand is thriving and points to three new directors.
Those directors, Ben says, “were added illegally.” A board can be full of good people and still have no say.
Frederick Douglass said it plain. “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” A contract is only as strong as those who enforce it.
I led the NAACP for half a decade. We asked big box chains to hire people coming home from prison. Most said no, worried about image.
Walmart said yes. Its leadership said it was simply right. Executives told me the courage had been noticed. It was very good for business.
The charge is that Magnum made the other choice. They ignored Jerry’s warning, Ben says, and proved his point. Magnum is “on course to destroy the Ben & Jerry’s brand.”
Ben is seventy-five and determined that the company bearing their names stay true to their values. He asks three things of us.
He asks us to sign. More than 200,000 have signed at FreeBenAndJerrys.com, asking Magnum to sell to owners who will keep the promise and let it speak.
He asks us to pledge. Not against Ben & Jerry’s. He wants shoppers to skip Magnum’s other brands: Breyers, Klondike, Talenti, Yasso. Keep buying the good stuff. Ben and Jerry “plan on eventually owning it.”
He asks us to organize. Supporters are forming brigades in Vermont.
My family and I are Ben & Jerry’s people. Its boldness made the bold flavors taste better. Magnum’s heavy hand has added a bitterness to our favorite dessert that is hard to swallow.
Recently we added our family to the petition and ordered stickers for the refrigerator door. We are always down to help good people get their names back. And when dad needs to eat his feelings, he does not need a corporation giving him indigestion.
Ben Jealous is a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania and the former national president and CEO of the NAACP. photo Ben Jealous
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