Van Jones

Van Jones
Van Jones
	Van Jones at the Dream Reborn Conference in 2008
Born	1968
Nationality	United States
Education	University of Tennessee at Martin; Yale Law School
Occupation(s)	Civil Rights, Human Rights, and Environmental Activist
Employer	White House Council on Environmental Quality
Known for	1998 Reebok Human Rights Award winner ; 1994 Echoing Green Fellow
Title	Special Advisor for Green Jobs

Van Jones (born 1968) is the Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ).

By his own account and international reporting, Jones evolved as a "roudy [Black] nationalist" collaborating as an avowed Communist with radical Marxists and Maoists. ^[1] Appointed as a so-called "green czar" among the officials President Obama has installed in his government avoiding advice and consent of the Senate ^[2], Jones was reported in August 2009 when a Black activist organization he founded called "Color of Change" ^[3], began pressuring companies to stop advertising with the popular Glenn Beck cable TV show. ^[4] This occurred after Beck reported Jone's involvement in the "Apollo Alliance," where Beck cited Jones as a key architect of so-called "stimulus" and "cap and trade" legislation ^[5] ^[6] -- both highly controversial programs reported by the Congressional Budget as likely sources of deficits and job loss. ^[7] ^[8] Irrespective of partisan views on these issues, concerns now arise that suppression of this reporting (including removal of carefully cited information from Wikipedia due to alleged lack of documentation), has a chilling effect on freedom of the press and ultimately representative government.

He is an environmental advocate, a civil rights activist and attorney, and an author. Formerly based in Oakland, California, Jones is the president and founder of Green For All, a national NGO dedicated to "building an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty."^[9] His first book, The Green Collar Economy, released on October 7, 2008, was a New York Times bestseller.^[10] Jones also founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, a California NGO working for alternatives to violence and incarceration.^[11]

In 2008, Time Magazine named Jones one of its "Environmental Heroes."^[12] Fast Company called him one of the "12 Most Creative Minds of 2008."^[13]

On March 10, 2009, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) announced Jones' appointment as Special Advisor on Green Jobs for the CEQ. ^[14]

Jones lives in Oakland, California with his wife and two young sons.

Early life

{{}} Van Jones was born in 1968 in rural West Tennessee. He graduated from Jackson Central-Merry High School in Jackson, Tennessee, in 1986. After earning his B.A. from the University of Tennessee at Martin, Jones left his home state to attend Yale Law School. He While in law school, Jones served as an intern at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco. He quickly decided that he would relocate to San Francisco upon finishing at Yale.

In 1993, Jones earned his J.D. and moved to San Francisco. In San Francisco, he formed a socialist collective with other young activists called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), which read the works of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. ^[15]

Bay Area PoliceWatch & The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights

In 1993, Jones started Bay Area PoliceWatch, the region's only bar-certified hotline and lawyer-referral service for victims and survivors of police abuse. PoliceWatch began as a project of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, but by 1996 had grown big enough to seed a new umbrella NGO, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.

From 1996-1997, Jones and PoliceWatch led a successful campaign to get officer Marc Andaya fired from the San Francisco Police Department. Andaya was the lead officer responsible for the in-custody death of Aaron Williams, an unarmed black man. In 1999 and 2000, Jones was a major leader in the failed campaign to defeat Proposition 21, which sparked a vibrant youth and student movement that made national headlines. In 2001, Jones and Ella Baker Center launched the Books Not Bars campaign. From 2001-2003, Jones and Books Not Bars led a successful campaign to block the construction of a proposed "Super-Jail for Youth" in Oakland's Alameda County. Books Not Bars later went on to launch a statewide campaign to transform California's juvenile justice system. That campaign is still winning major reforms.^[16]

The Green-Collar Jobs Campaign & The Oakland Green Jobs Corps

In 2005, Van and Ella Baker Center produced the "Social Equity Track" for the United Nations' World Environment Day celebration.^[17] It was the official beginning of what would eventually become Ella Baker Center's Green-Collar Jobs Campaign.

The Green-Collar Jobs Campaign was Jones' first concerted effort to combine his lifelong commitment to racial and economic justice with his newer commitment to solving the environmental crisis. It soon took as its mission the establishment of the nation's first "Green Jobs Corps" in Oakland. On October 20, 2008, the City of Oakland formally launched the Oakland Green Jobs Corps, a public-private partnership that will "provide local Oakland residents with job training, support, and work experience so that they can independently pursue careers in the new energy economy."^[18]

In 2007, Jones announced plans to launch a new national organization called Green For All. Green For All would take the Green-Collar Jobs Campaign mission — creating green pathways out of poverty — national.

Green For All

In September, 2007, Jones attended the Clinton Global Initiative and announced his plans to launch Green For All, a new national NGO dedicated to creating green pathways out of poverty in America.

Green For All formally opened its doors on January 1, 2008. In its first year, Green For All organized "The Dream Reborn," the first national green conference where the majority of attendees were people of color. It co-hosted, with 1Sky and the We Campaign, a national day of action for the new economy called "Green Jobs Now." It launched the Green-Collar Cities Program to help cities build local green economies. It started the Green For All Capital Access Program to assist green entrepreneurs. And Green For All, as part of the Clean Energy Corps Working Group, launched a campaign for a Clean Energy Corps initiative which would create 600,000 'green-collar' jobs while retrofitting and upgrading more than 15 million American buildings.^[19]

In reflecting on Green For All's first year, Jones wrote, "One year later, Green For All is real – and we have helped put green collar jobs on the map…We have a long way to go. But today we have a strong organization to help get us there."^[20]

The Green Collar Economy

On October 7, 2008, HarperOne released Jones's first book, The Green Collar Economy. The book outlines Jones's "substantive and viable plan for solving the biggest issues facing the country--the failing economy and our devastated environment."^[21] The book has received favorable reviews from such environmental activists as Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, Laurie David, Paul Hawken, Winona LaDuke and Ben Jealous.^[22]

Jones had a limited publicity budget and no national media platform. But a viral, web-based marketing strategy earned the book a #12 debut on the New York Times bestseller list.^[23] Jones and Green For All used "a combination of emails and phone calls to friends, bloggers, and a network of activists" to reach millions of people.^[24] The marketing campaign's grassroots nature has led to Jones calling it a victory not for him but for the entire green-collar jobs movement.

The Green Collar Economy is the first environmental book authored by an African-American to make the New York Times bestseller list. ^[25]

Awards and honors

Jones has won many awards and honors, including:

2009 New York Times Bestselling Author for The Green Collar Economy

selected as one of the 2009 Time 100 Most Influential People, Time Magazine

selected as one of the 2009 Ebony Power 150

the Hubert H. Humphrey Civil Rights Award, presented to those who best exemplify selfless and devoted service in the cause of equality.

selected as a Time Magazine 2008 Environmental Hero

designation as one of Essence Magazine's 25 most influential/inspiring African-Americans of 2008

the Elle Magazine Green Award 2008
selection as one of the George Lucas Foundation's "Daring Dozen 2008"
Hunt Prime Mover Award 2008
Campaign for America's Future "Paul Wellstone Award 2008";
Global Green USA "Community Environmental Leadership" Award 2008
designation as one of the nation's "Plenty 20" in the October/November 2008 edition of Plenty Magazine
San Francisco Foundation Community Leadership Award 2008
selection as one of Fast Company's "12 Most Creative Minds of 2008"

the 1998 Reebok International Human Rights Award
the International Ashoka Fellowship
selection as a World Economic Forum "Young Global Leader"
the Rockefeller Foundation "Next Generation Leadership" Fellowship
the Puffin/Nation prize for "Creative Citizenship"

In 2008, Tom Friedman profiled Van in his bestselling book, Hot, Flat & Crowded. Also in 2008, Wilford Welch featured him in the book Tactics of Hope, and Joel Makower highlighted Van's ideas in the book Strategies for the Green Economy.

Political Evolution

Having started his career as a staunch critic of capitalism, by the late 1990s Jones's views were evolving. Today, he has emerged as one of the foremost champions of green business and market-based solutions. In The Green Collar Economy, Jones wrote:

[W]e are entering an era during which our very survival will demand invention and innovation on a scale never before seen in the history of human civilization. Only the business community has the requisite skills, experience, and capital to meet that need. On that score, neither government nor the nonprofit and voluntary sectors can compete, not even remotely.

So in the end, our success and survival as a species are largely and directly tied to the new eco-entrepreneurs — and the success and survival of their enterprises. Since almost all of the needed eco-technologies are likely to come from the private sector, civic leaders and voters should do all that can be done to help green business leaders succeed. That means, in large part, electing leaders who will pass bills to aid them. We cannot realistically proceed without a strong alliance between the best of the business world — and everyone else.

Speaking to the East Bay Express, Jones said he first became radicalized in the wake of the 1992 Rodney King riots.

"I met all these young radical people of color -- I mean really radical, communists and anarchists. And it was, like, 'This is what I need to be a part of.' I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary. I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th. By August, I was a communist."

^[26]

Jones was still a law student at Yale Law School at the time. While volunteering as a legal monitor during a peaceful protest following the Rodney King riots, Jones was arrested along with other legal monitors and some protesters.

In the late 90s, Van Jones was involved in Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), a multi-racial activist collective with Marxist influences. While never large, STORM was an influential group in the Bay Area, working with numerous organizations including Bay Area Police Watch, School of Unity and Liberation (SOUL), and People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER). Jones and STORM were also active in the anti Iraq War demonstrations of the early 2000’s. ^{[citation needed]}

Other Activities

Jones has also served on the boards of numerous environmental and nonprofit organizations, including 1Sky, the National Apollo Alliance, Social Venture Network, Rainforest Action Network, Bioneers, Julia Butterfly Hill’s "Circle of Life" organization and Free Press. He was also a Senior Fellow with the Center for American Progress and a Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences. He recently was a key speaker at the youth conference PowerShift 2009 in Washington, D.C.

References

'Staff and Board', Ella Baker Center (2007) Retrieved January 25 2007.
'Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in California', The Nathan Cummings Foundation (2004) Retrieved January 28 2007.
'Van Jones' The Huffington Post (2007) Retrieved January 28 2007.
'Van Jones: Speak Truth to Power Defender' Speaktruth.org (2007) Retrieved February 06 2007.

Publications

The Green Collar Economy: A Revolutionary Plan to End Global Warming, Beat Poverty, and Unite America HarperOne (2008)

External links

[1] ttp://www.truthout.org/article/eliza-strickland-the-new-face-environmentalism

[2] ttp://newzeal.blogspot.com/2009/04/obama-file-72-obama-appoints-former.html

[3] ttp://colorofchange.org/about.html

[4] ttp://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=106805

[5] ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80zzW6Osyhs

[6] ttp://apolloalliance.org/what%E2%80%99s-new/apollo-board-member-van-jones-accepts-white-house-post/

[7] ttp://www.cbo.gov/publications/collections/collections.cfm?collect=12

[8] ttp://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=2876

[9] ttp://www.greenforall.org/about-us/our-mission

[10] ttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/20/how-environmental-activis_n_136054.html

[11] ttp://greenforall.org/van-jones

[12] ttp://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1841778_1841781_1841811,00.html

[13] ttp://www.fastcompany.com/multimedia/slideshows/content/creative-minds-2008.html?page=4

[14] ttp://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/09/03/10/Van-Jones-to-CEQ/

[15] ttp://www.truthout.org/article/eliza-strickland-the-new-face-environmentalism

[16] ttp://www.ellabakercenter.org/page.php?pageid=19&contentid=152

[17] ttp://ellabakercenter.org/page.php?pageid=16&contentid=100

[18] ttp://www.ellabakercenter.org/page.php?pageid=32

[19] ttp://www.greenforall.org/resources/green-for-all-2008-annual-report

[20] ttp://www.greenforall.org/resources/green-for-all-2008-annual-report

[21] ttp://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780061650758/The_Green_Collar_Economy/index.aspx

[22] ttp://vanjones.net/page.php?pageid=10

[23] ttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/20/how-environmental-activis_n_136054.html

[24] ttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/20/how-environmental-activis_n_136054.html

[25] ttp://www.greenforall.org/resources/green-for-all-2008-annual-report

[26] East Bay Express, The New Face of Environmentalism

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