Ben Cohen, of Ben & Jerry's, launches dollar-stamping campaign
By Matea Gold
September 24, 2012, 1:29 p.m.
WASHINGTON -- Ben Cohen, the co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s and a liberal activist, has hit on a concrete way to drive home the message about the role that money plays in politics.
“We are going to adorn currency,” he declared in a phone interview. “We are going to beautify our dollars. It’s a little monetary jujitsu – we’re using money to get money out of politics.”
Cohen is heading up a campaign by the Movement Resource Group, a nonprofit that funds the Occupy movement, which is urging people to stamp dollar bills with campaign finance reform messages like “Money is not free speech” and “Corporations are not people.”
The idea: to harness the natural churn of dollars to promote a constitutional amendment that would overturn Supreme Court rulings that protect political expenditures under the 1st Amendment and allow corporations to spend unlimited amounts on independent political activity.
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