To Support Bernie, ‘Ben & Jerry’ Give the Masses Free Ice Cream
Toni Pettway, 26, with Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield.
Bernie Sanders believes in a free college degree — and free ice cream.
At a Sanders campaign event in Union Square Thursday, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, founders of the Vermont-based ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s, organized the event and spoke to the large crowd of mostly college students about their love for the Vermont senator.
Cohen and Greenfield have been vocal about their support for Sanders. They even named an ice cream flavor named after the presidential hopeful and called it “Bernie’s Yearning.” The sundae consists of vanilla ice cream at the bottom and a hard, circular piece of chocolate on the top, which you are supposed to break with your spoon and mix in with the ice cream. What does it all mean?
“The chocolate gets to the top somehow. No one thought Bernie would get to the top,” said Spenser Nells, 20.
“It’s a way of showing diversity, mixing things up. That’s what Bernie’s message is, people of all races come together,” said Ahnaf Ahmed, 26.
If you were close enough to the front of the massive crowd, you could hear Greenfield and Cohen describe the true symbolism behind the sundae.
“The chocolate disk is the 1% so you get to break through the 1%,” said Isabel Naturman, 20.
The line for the sundaes went all the way from the southern end of the park at E. 14th St. to the northern end at E. 17th St. A campaign volunteer said that they expected 500 people at the event, but close to 1,000 showed up. Not all of the people were Bernie fans, and some came because they really wanted to meet Cohen and Greenfield.
“I love Ben & Jerry’s I grew up eating Ben & Jerry’s. So my mom is going to die when she finds out I actually met Ben and Jerry,” said Ophelia Blake, 24. “And on top of that, they’re endorsing Bernie Sanders who really cares about people in our age bracket.”
Of course, some people had other intentions.
“I’m not into politics at all. I just like free ice cream,” said Yani Diasa, 27.
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