Ben & Jerry's was founded on a simple idea: Business should be a force for good. We love making ice cream, but helping to make the world a better place gives our work its meaning. That’s why, for more than four decades, we have spoken out on issues like racist policing, antimilitarism, the climate crisis, and reproductive rights.
And that’s why we’re speaking out today.
What we're living through, in the United States and around the world, has a name. Dissent criminalized. Marginalized communities targeted. The systems meant to hold power accountable - courts, elections, the press - bent to serve the powerful instead. History has seen this before. It knows what to call it.
Authoritarianism concentrates power in the hands of a few at the expense of everyone else's freedom. It targets the most vulnerable first: Black and Brown people, LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, and others. And it does not stop there.
What we’re seeing:
- The right to protest is under attack. Since 2020, dozens of states have passed laws designed to turn peaceful demonstrators—from city streets to college campuses—into criminals. Even journalists reporting on protests are being arrested.
- People are being locked up without due process. The American Immigration Council reports that arrests of immigrants with no criminal record have skyrocketed. People are held in tent camps on military bases or sent to foreign jails without a hearing.
- The right to vote is being dismantled. The Brennan Center for Justice has been tracking the two dozen states that have enacted restrictive voting laws since 2020. The racial turnout gap is growing nearly twice as fast in regions that lost federal Voting Rights Act protections.
- Military force is being used without accountability. Troops in US cities. Lethal strikes on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. Unilateral use of force in Venezuela. A war launched against Iran. Without oversight or checks and balances.
- This is a global challenge. Freedom House reports that authoritarian governments are using digital surveillance and state-run propaganda to silence dissent and manipulate elections—from Africa to Eurasia to democracies that once seemed strong.
This smells like authoritarianism: Suppress dissent; lock people up; make it harder to vote; intimidate scientists, business leaders, and journalists; spread lies and sow doubts about facts; consolidate wealth and power.
Why This Matters
Authoritarianism comes for everyone’s freedoms, no exceptions.
Dr. King wrote, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Authoritarianism is that injustice, scaled up and turned into policy. It erodes the everyday freedoms we rely on.
We fought hard for these freedoms. It’s easy to forget that—until they start disappearing. We have to protect our freedoms.
What We Can Do
Authoritarian leaders try to project strength and promote fear because they want you to forget something huge: Authoritarianism loses to democracy. All the time.
Why? Because authoritarianism is no match for the power of the people.
- In 1964, Black sharecroppers organized the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and cracked open a political system that had used violence and terror to shut them out.
- Two million Filipinos filled the streets of Manila in 1986 and ended a 20-year dictatorship
- The people of Chile voted to end a dictatorship in 1988.
- South Koreans protested for weeks throughout 2025 until a corrupt president was arrested and removed from office.
- During the winter of 2025-26, Minneapolis residents organized, showed up for their neighbors, and protested a violent and unprecedented federal immigration surge and the administration moved ICE out of the city.
In every case, victory came from the mobilization of ordinary people who decided they'd had enough. That's the work now. Not just individual acts of resistance, though those matter, but collective, sustained, organized movement-building to protect what a just and fair society is and should be.
Research by Harvard professor Erica Chenoweth found that no government has withstood a challenge when 3.5% of the population mobilized against it at peak, and that momentum, organization, and sustained participation matter just as much as numbers. That's not a ceiling. It's a floor. In the US, that threshold means roughly 12 million people, and recent mass mobilizations are already closing in on that number. We're closer than we might think. Let's keep going.
- Show up: At school-board meetings, protests, block parties, concerts, local events. Joy is not a distraction from the work; it is the work. Community built through pleasure and connection is community that holds when things get hard.
- Contribute to good causes: Join or donate to groups working for positive change.
- Put your skills to work: Speak out in whatever way feels right to you. Everyone has a talent—think of how to use yours to express yourself and reach other people.
- Be brave: Sometimes that means helping others, and sometimes it means asking others for help. Each of us is strong, but together we’re stronger.
- Resist: Authoritarianism needs your silence and your compliance. Don’t give it either.
Ben & Jerry's will be there with you. We've always believed that people power is unstoppable and everything happening right now only makes us more certain of that. This is our moment. Let's make it count.