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A taste of activism

April 08, 2008|By Jeremy Oberstein

DOWNTOWN — Ben Cohen looked out onto a swarming Burbank crowd Monday, attracted by free ice cream and the thumping beats of the African Children’s Choir, and vowed to help eradicate one of the ills plaguing a portion of the global population.

“Some people think there is nothing we can do about poverty,” said Cohen, known more congenially as Ben, from Ben & Jerry’s. “The reality is different.”

Cohen and members of ONE, a Washington, D.C.-based organization dedicated to fighting Third World poverty, announced the newest Ben & Jerry’s flavor — ONE Cheesecake Brownie — in front of the Burbank store, near San Fernando Boulevard.

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The flavor will be sold in Ben & Jerry’s stores and will deliver the organization’s message on every carton and on leaflets available in its branch locations.

“The ONE campaign starts the process and the road to engagement,” said the nonpartisan group’s chief executive David Lane. “Some people ask me why we concentrate in third-world countries. Great nations should be able to do more than two things at once.”

ONE was founded in 2005 behind the altruistic star power of U2 front man Bono and the financial weight of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. Its 2.4 million members are engaged in efforts to raise public awareness about global poverty, hunger and disease in the world’s poorest countries, Lane said.

Lane, a former chief of staff at the Commerce Department under President Bill Clinton, has worked with Republicans and Democrats in an effort to bring change to a global population in which 1 billion people live on less than a dollar a day, he said.

The nonpartisan spirit was largely eschewed by Cohen, who laid part of the world’s woes on a bloated national defense budget.

“Two months of paying for the war in Iraq could feed three million kids dying of starvation,” he said. “We were promised more funding for foreign aid. It’s time for us to hold their feet to the fire. The important thing is to influence government.”

The star power upon which the organization was founded continued Monday, with Cohen, Greenfeld and Chris Daughtry, the lead singer of his eponymous band who recently returned from Uganda.

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