One of the underpinnings we have seen with the Black Lives Matter folks is their rabid hatred of the evil ‘system’ and of course, capitalism, that from which all evil stems.
Unless of course, Black Lives Matter supporters can make money off of it.
This week, Ben Cohen, of Ben and Jerry’s fame, that aging old hippy champion of far left causes, encouraged the company to allow franchisees to sell #BlackLivesMatter T-shirts and other swag in their stores. Come get your Rocky Road with a topping of leftist ideology…
Speaking at their annual franchisee meeting earlier this month in New Orleans, Cohen and Greenfield—who sold Ben & Jerry’s to Unilever Corp. in 2000 but who reportedly remain heavily involved in operations—have publicly declared themselves allies of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Specifically raising awareness about the movement’s “Hands up, don’t shoot” iteration, Cohen urged franchise owners to sell T-shirts benefiting the work of Hands Up United, a grassroots organization founded by St. Louis hip-hop artist and activist Tef Poe and activist Taureen “Tory” Russell.
“Some people might say, ‘Oh, we can’t do that,’” Cohen said to franchise owners. “‘We can’t sell those T-shirts in our shops; it’s controversial.’ But isn’t that exactly the point? If it weren’t controversial, we wouldn’t need to do it. At some point we have to ask ourselves: ‘What do we stand for? Whose side are you on?’”
Hey Ben, we’re on the side of folks advocating actual rights, not the Communist collective.
Then there’s more folks using it to make a buck.
D’Angelo (who?), whose band appeared on SNL last night, played a truly horrible song that hurt my ears. His band wore T-shirts with #BlackLivesMatter and ‘I Can’t Breathe’ on them. D’Angelo himself wore a hoodie in honor of Trayvon Martin. A chalk mark body was drawn on the stage to symbolize Mike Brown and periodically, during the song, the robotic-like back up singers would raise their hands in the black power fist a la Tommie Smith and John Carlos (except without any of the drama). He is of course trying to promote his songs off his new Black Messiah album, which he rush-released to take advantage of #BlackLivesMatter effort (can we say use, here, yes, I think we can).
Okayplayer, an online music and promotional website, then was proud to tweet how they were promoting his song and that they provided the clothes for the event (hint: frequent us).
Okayplayer is proud to have supplied #DAngelo & band w their #BlackLivesMatter & #ICantBreathe tops as seen on #SNL pic.twitter.com/ti8xN1BuKh
— Okayplayer.com (@okayplayer) February 1, 2015
How do you know when something is over? When it gets a T-shirt and marketing appropriates it. But maybe someone might want to tell Unilever and D’Angelo about Black Lives ‘activists’ preventing a crash victim’s ambulance from reaching the hospital in Boston, interrupting MLK events, and protesting gay bars?
When even the liberal mecca of Boston tires of you, maybe it’s a sign…