February 22, 2018
Sometimes ice cream is all about joy, like that first euphoric lick on a hot summer day or diving into a new flavor and savoring its gustatory intricacies. And sometimes it’s about something even bigger, like pushing for progressive change on society’s most important issues through awareness and activism.
Over the years, we’ve served up a good number of ice cream flavors that were meant to do even more than tantalize your taste buds. These 5 each had an important activist agenda:
-
Save Our Swirled, 2015
This flavor is a real superhero: it inspired over 300,000 fans to join the global climate movement and make their voices heard for a green future! Climate change is changing our world in some pretty scary ways. 2015 was a critical year for climate activism — in December of that year, 196 countries met in Paris for COP21, a conference to hammer out a plan for keeping warming below 2°C, the threshold scientists have deemed necessary for avoiding the worst of climate change. With Save Our Swirled, we got the word out about the urgency of addressing climate change and inspired our fans to take action.
-
I Dough, I Dough, 2015
Love is love, no matter who your special someone is! We celebrated the Supreme Court’s monumental 2015 decision in favor of marriage equality by renaming Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough I Dough, I Dough. Fans purchased pint sleeves to rename their pints, which in turn raised some dough for the Human Rights Campaign to support the wonderful work they do. We couldn’t be prouder!
-
Empower Mint, 2016
It’s no coincidence that this flavor launched on May 17th, the anniversary of the day the Supreme Court issued its landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, which ended segregation in the school system. We believe democracy only works when it works for everyone, and Empower Mint was a powerful reminder that when we raise our voices together — whether through direct activism, voting for your values, or sharing your point of view with friends and family — we can create real change for justice and equality. And since a portion of the proceeds from sales of this pint went to the North Carolina NAACP, we know that it’s making a real difference.
-
Home Sweet Honeycomb, 2017
We believe everyone deserves a safe place to call home. And for refugees fleeing dangerous situations, that can be exceedingly difficult to find. In Europe and the United Kingdom, we partnered with the International Rescue Committee to launch Home Sweet Honeycomb and call on our fans to support a historic piece of legislation that would resettle refugees safely into Europe. Our fans drove over 30,000 emails to MPs across Europe urging them to support the legislation and over 100,000 supportive actions globally
-
One Sweet World, 2017
Last December, exactly 50 years after the launch of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign, we were proud to be a part of the launch of the new Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. We took part in a direct action event at the Capitol Building, supported a rally filled with music and messages of justice and equality, and — of course — launched this totally euphoric ice cream flavor to help spread the word. A portion of the proceeds from this pint go to the Poor People’s Campaign so they can continue their important work at the intersection of economic and racial justice.