Ben & Jerry's Co-Founder Coming to Sarasota To Fight Citizens United

The co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream is in Sarasota to visit a Ben & Jerry’s Scoop Shop with his 21-foot long money stamping truck with the hope of winning a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United.

Ben Cohen is driving cross country from Vermont to West Texas, with dozens of stops in between, in his money-stamping Amend-O-Matic StampMobile.

"The Amend-O-Matic StampMobile is an amazing one of a kind machine," Cohen said. "Part Coney Island, part Rube Goldberg, part Kinetic Sculpture and part social action. It's participatory, colorful and interactive."

The vehicle will be at the St. Armands Scoop Shop, located at 372 St. Armands Circle, Friday at 4 p.m., where Cohen will spread awareness about the corrupting influence of money in politics and promote his non-profit organization, Stamp Stampede.

Ben Cohen founded Stamp Stampede in July of 2012. The non-profit organization sells stamps, at cost, which have messages like “Stamp Money Out of Politics,” or “Not To Be Used For Bribing Politicians” on them. People stamp these messages onto their money (which is completely legal), and spread the message simply by spending.

Cohen and The Stampede are seeking a constitutional amendment that states: 1) Corporations are not people; and, 2) Money is not free speech.

The Amend-O-Matic will park outside the Scoop Shop and attract visitors to come get their money stamped by this truly one of a kind machine. Cohen describes stamping as “a petition on steroids” as each dollar stamped reaches an estimated 875 people. In Cohen’s words “it’s a little monetary jiu-jitsu – using money to get money out of politics.”

According to political strategists Matt MacWilliams and Ed Erikson: “[Cohen’s] open source Stampede marketing campaign may become the new model for how to fuse social media and grass-roots activism with the assets of existing organizations to engage and provoke the public in demanding change.”