I SCREAM, YOU SCREAM, WE ALL SCREAM FOR SOCIAL, ECONOMIC, AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

Ben & Jerry’s recipe for corporate activism

- Jordyn Holman and Thomas Buckley

Anuradha Mittal was about to step out of her home in Oakland, Calif., on the last Friday of May, but first she had one last email to send. She was on her way to one of the demonstrations that had broken out around the world five days after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Like hundreds of other protesters, she’d be praying and dancing late into the night, in streets blurred by billowing tear gas and teeming with riot police.

The note Mittal, the board chair of Ben & Jerry’s, was sending was to the chief executive officer, Matthew McCarthy, requesting that a statement be prepared by Monday. She wanted the ice cream brand to express support for the Black Lives Matter movement and decry the violence against Floyd, who’d died while being restrained by a White law enforcement officer less than 15 minutes after his arrest for allegedly using a counterfeit bill to buy cigarettes. McCarthy replied immediately to assure her his team was already on it.

Over the weekend, the CEO, who sports Woodstock-chic elbow-length curls and a straggly beard, consulted two advocacy groups the company works with, Color of Change and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, for advice on how to phrase an unequivocal takedown of racial injustice. He was one of five Ben & Jerry’s employees, including executives with curious titles like global social mission officer, making edits to a Google Docs draft written primarily by the company’s global head of activism strategy, Chris Miller. On Monday a final version was sent for approval to Color of Change and the NAACP, and then to Ben & Jerry’s board.