(RNS) — We both got arrested last week for disrupting business as usual in Washington, D.C. We’d do it again in a minute.
The backstory is important. On April 28, our mutual friend, the Rev. William Barber II, an anti-poverty activist, was arrested along with two other religious leaders as they prayed in the Capitol Rotunda — a prophetic protest against the proposed federal budget cuts that will destroy the lives of our most vulnerable neighbors. Those proposed cuts include programs like food assistance, Head Start and Medicaid for millions of kids and families, while at the same time increasing military spending — which is already nearly $2 million per minute and comprises over half the federal discretionary spending.
One week later (May 5), as a continuation of the “Moral Monday” witness in Washington, D.C., Shane was arrested along with four other faith leaders praying in the Rotunda, holding the same Bible that Barber used the week before. We cried out against the violence in Gaza and the proposed budget, which is its own form of economic violence. As we were handcuffed, we sang “This Little Light of Mine” and read the words of the prophet Isaiah: “Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless” (Isaiah 10:1).
It was Shane’s second arrest in less than a month, after a “good trouble on Good Friday” prayer vigil blocked the main entrance to Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest weapons contractor, where the weapons being used in Gaza are made.
Then just over a week later, Ben was arrested for disrupting a Senate hearing as he made the same connections to Congress: “You’re killing poor kids in Gaza by buying bombs, and you’re paying for it by kicking poor kids off Medicaid in the U.S.”
Our charges were similar – disorderly conduct, obstructing and incommoding — the old disturbing the peace sort of thing, but it reminds us of the words of historian Howard Zinn: “They’ll say we’re disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war.” We’re working for that day when the schools have everything they need and the military has to hold a back sale to buy a bomber.
Ben Cohen, bottom right, is removed and arrested by Capitol Police during a Senate hearing with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Wednesday, May 14, 2025, in Washington. (Video screen grab)
We share a vision for a sweeter, kinder world, one with less war and more ice cream. It’s kind of a powerful, fun tag-team — a Jewish business guy and a post-evangelical pastor.
It’s been over 10 years since we first teamed up for a project called “Jesus, Bombs and Ice Cream,” a 90-minute sold-out show at Philadelphia’s iconic World Café Live. We chopped up an AK-47 and turned it into garden tools. A juggler chopped up a watermelon disguised as a bomb over Ben’s head as he lay on the floor. We ended the show by dropping Ben & Jerry’s ice cream buckets from the sky with helium balloons. It was epic.
We’ve been stirring up good trouble and holy mischief ever since. Just this past year, we hosted an event at the University of Pennsylvania called “In War We Trust” to grieve the lives lost in Gaza and the ever-increasing money wasted on war. Ice cream was served, of course.
We need more subversive friendships like this. We don’t have to agree on everything — that’s part of the fun. And we are both keenly aware of the deep roots of resistance and the rich tradition of civil disobedience that we are a part of.
Nearly every time we are together, we think of these words of Martin Luther King, Jr.: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” He pointed out that every time a bomb is dropped overseas, we feel the second impact of that bomb at home as we see our schools go bankrupt and our neighborhoods deteriorate. As Jesus put it, “live by the sword, die by the sword.” We have lived by the sword and died by the sword way too long.
We will continue to disturb the war machine, and we hope more people will join us. We need more good troublemakers. King put it plainly: “There is nothing wrong with a traffic law which says you have to stop for a red light. But when a fire is raging, the fire truck goes right through that red light, and normal traffic had better get out of its way.”
There is a fire raging in Gaza right now. The lives of our own children here in the U.S. are at stake as Congress considers this immoral budget. Ben is right — Congress is killing kids in Gaza and paying for it by killing kids here at home. Over 50,000 people have been slaughtered in Gaza, and the age group with the most deaths is 6- to 10-year-olds, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. This is a critical moment in our country and in our world.
Not all of us will go to jail. But each of us can ask, what does courage look like right now? What does it look like to show courage in the face of collective punishment and forced starvation as we see in Gaza, after over two months of Israel blocking humanitarian aid? What does courage look like as a few of the world’s richest billionaires cut resources to the world’s poorest people? What does courage look like as Congress considers cuts that would destroy the lives of families and children here who need the support of programs like Section 8, Head Start and SNAP?
So yes, we went to jail last week, and we would do it again. We will smile in our mugshots, as John Lewis said, because we know we are on the right side of history. May you also feel the contagious courage stirring up around the country and find some good friends to get into good trouble with.
(Shane Claiborne is a longtime activist and co-director of Red Letter Christians, a Christian social justice group. Ben Cohen is co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)