Ben & Jerry raise cool ‘Occupy’ cash, get activists’ cold shoulder

Ben Cohen(C) and Jerry Greenfield (R) of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream lend their support to Occupy DC and pass out ice cream to the hundreds of protesters camped out in Washington, DC's McPherson Square November 8, 2011, in Washington, DC. (PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images)

A slide, captured on video, from ice cream entrepreneur Ben Cohen's Feb. 26, 2012 presentation to a group of Occupy Wall Street activists. Cohen's Occupy fundraising group, the slide says, "currently has $300K cash on hand and pledged"

Ben Cohen(C) and Jerry Greenfield (R) of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream lend their support to Occupy DC and pass out ice cream to the hundreds of protesters camped out in Washington, DC's McPherson Square November 8, 2011, in Washington, DC. (AFP Photo / Paul J. Richards)

This unassuming Burlington, Vt. office space houses the non-profit parent group for the Ben & Jerry's founders' new Occupy Wall Street funding plan (Google maps / Street view)

The iconic duo behind “chunky monkey,” “whirled peas” and other memorable Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavors have turned their attention to raising money for Occupy Wall Street. But the occupiers themselves gave big-businessmen Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield a cold reception during a meeting Sunday in New York City.

Working with with two former record executives, a Philadelphia organic-only restaurateur and a liberal business entrepreneur, Ben & Jerry have already raised $300,000 for the Movement Resource Group, out of a proposed $1.745 million budget for 2012. That budget was described on a Web page in development, which TheDC identified on an unprotected Web server last week. The entire draft website disappeared Wednesday afternoon.

The Wall Street Journal first reported that the Sunday meeting included some financial disclosures by the liberal activists responsible for most of the donations to date.

But when Greenfield explained to the occupiers assembled in the sanctuary of the West Park Presbyterian Church how little control they would have over the funds his group was raising, their mood quickly turned from supportive to hostile.

Responding to an activist who asked how to submit a proposal for financial support, Greenfield responded, “We are not Occupy Wall Street. We are working in a way that’s different, and we want to integrate values and ideals to the degree that we can, but we are not committed to consensus decisionmaking.”

That slap to the sensibilities of the Occupy movement, known for its leaderless and sometimes interminable committee meetings, made several activists visibly angry. (RELATED: Full coverage of the Occupy protests)

“I think it’s absolutely essential that your donors have zero say in where the money goes,” said Linnea Palmer Paton, an audience member. “Right now we have a system where the wealthy design, create, build and have control over what happens. And I think it’s very important that the wealthy do not have that power.”

Paton told Greenfield he should ensure that expenditures are “absolutely decided by the committee, which maybe has mostly occupiers … it needs to be decided by them. Decision-making should not be amongst the wealthy about which projects get funded, otherwise we’re just creating the wealthy world again.”

Another female occupier stormed out after addressing the funding group.

“I have worked in the arts, and this looks exactly like any sort of board or commission or committee that you have to submit to to get a project or an art piece done,” she exclaimed. “And I fundamentally cannot support this. … You created a board. We don’t need a board. We dont want a board at all. Because that is not helpful, it’s destructive.”

“Who helped you incubate this idea?” a third woman asked. “Because it was not incubated with all of us.”

Only one man in the audience, an activist who identified himself only as “Charles,” spoke favorably about breaking with the Occupy Wall Street movement’s General Assembly (GA) and embracing a smoke-filled-room approach to financing the Occupy revolution.

“If you continue to give your money on your own judgment, behind the scenes, non-transparently, as much as you want to whoever you want, you might actually get a lot more done more easily than in what you’ve tried to do today,” he said to a chorus of groans and yells.

“And I, for one, would probably trust your judgment over anything that the GA [general assembly] is likely to do.”

NEXT: The source of the gold