Van Jones
Encyclopedia
Anthony Kapel "Van" Jones (born September 20, 1968) is an American environmental
advocate, civil rights
activist, and attorney
. Jones is a co-founder of three non-profit organizations. In 1996, he founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
, a California non-governmental organization
(NGO) working for alternatives to violence. In 2005, he co-founded Color of Change
, an advocacy group for African American
s. In 2007, he founded Green For All
, a national NGO dedicated to "building an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty." His first book, The Green Collar Economy
, was released on October 7, 2008, and reached number 12 on the New York Times
Best Seller list
. In 2008, Time
magazine named Jones one of its "Heroes of the Environment
". Fast Company
called him one of the "12 Most Creative Minds of 2008".
In March 2009 Jones was appointed by President
Barack Obama
to the newly created position of Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, where he worked with various "agencies and departments to advance the administration's climate and energy initiatives, with a special focus on improving vulnerable communities." In July 2009 he became "embroiled in a controversy" over his past political activities, including a public comment disparaging congressional Republicans, his name appearing on a petition for 911Truth.org, and allegations of association with a Marxist
group during the 1990s. For these issues, Van Jones was heavily criticized by conservatives. Jones resigned from the position in early September 2009. "On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me," Jones said in his resignation statement. "They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide."
Jones is currently a senior fellow at the Center For American Progress
and a senior policy advisor at Green For All
. Jones also holds a joint appointment at Princeton University
, as a distinguished visiting fellow in both the Center for African American Studies and in the Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
.
. Their mother was a teacher at a high school and their father was a principal at a junior high school. Jones' sister said that as a child he was "the stereotypical geek—he just kind of lived up in his head a lot." He has described his own childhood behavior as "bookish and bizarre." His grandfather was the senior bishop in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church
, and Jones sometimes accompanied his grandfather to religious conferences, where he would sit all day listening to the adults "in these hot, sweaty black churches". Jones was a young fan of John
and Bobby Kennedy
, and would pin photographs of them to a bulletin board
in his room in the specially delineated "Kennedy Section". As a child he paired his Star Wars
action figures with Kennedy-era political figures; Luke Skywalker
was John, Han Solo
was Bobby, and Lando Calrissian
was Martin Luther King, Jr.
He graduated from Jackson Central-Merry High School
in 1986. Jones received his B.S.
in communication
and political science
from the University of Tennessee at Martin
(UT Martin).
Jones worked as an intern at the Jackson Sun (Tennessee), the Shreveport Times (Louisiana
) and the Associated Press
(Nashville
bureau). He also helped to launch and spearhead a number of independent, campus-based publishing efforts. These publications included the Fourteenth Circle (University of Tennessee
), the Periscope (Vanderbilt University
), the New Alliance Project (state-wide in Tennessee), and the Third Eye (Nashville's African American
community). Jones credits UT Martin for preparing him for life on a global stage:
After graduating from UT Martin, Jones left his home state to attend Yale Law School
. In 1993, Jones earned his Juris Doctor
and moved to San Francisco, California
.
for a protest of the Rodney King verdict in San Francisco. He and many other participants in the protest were arrested. The district attorney
later dropped the charges against Jones. The arrested protesters, including Jones, won a small legal settlement. Jones later said that "the incident deepened my disaffection with the system and accelerated my political radicalization." In October 2005 Jones said he was "a rowdy nationalist" before the King verdict was announced, but that by August of that year (1992) he was a communist
. His activism was also spurred on by witnessing racial inequality
in New Haven
, Connecticut
: "I was seeing kids at Yale do drugs and talk about it openly, and have nothing happen to them or, if anything, get sent to rehab...And then I was seeing kids three blocks away, in the housing projects, doing the same drugs, in smaller amounts, go to prison."
When he graduated from law school, Jones gave up plans to take a job in Washington, D.C.
, and moved to San Francisco instead. He got involved with Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement
(STORM), where Jones actively began protesting police brutality
. STORM was a socialist group whose official Points of Unity "upheld revolutionary democracy, revolutionary feminism, revolutionary internationalism, the central role of the working class, urban Marxism, and Third World Communism," and which built connections with other organizations to organize protests, especially against wars and police violence.
, which "consisted of a closet-like office and a computer that Jones had brought from his apartment."
From 1996-1997, Jones and PoliceWatch led a campaign which was successful in getting officer Marc Andaya fired from the San Francisco Police Department
. Andaya was the lead officer accused of the in-custody death of Aaron Williams, an unarmed black man. In 1999 and 2000, Jones was a leader in the failed campaign to defeat Proposition 21, which sparked a student movement that made national headlines. In 2001, Jones and the Ella Baker Center launched the Books Not Bars campaign. From 2001 to 2003, Jones and Books Not Bars led a 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.
in 2005, Jones and James Rucker
co-founded a Web-based grassroots organization to address Black issues called Color of Change
. Color of Change's mission as described on its web site is as follows: "ColorOfChange.org exists to strengthen Black America's political voice. Our goal is to empower our members—Black Americans and our allies—to make government more responsive to the concerns of Black Americans and to bring about positive political and social change for everyone." Within two years of co-founding the organization, Jones moved on to other pursuits, but remains listed on the Color of Change website as "Former Staff".
and environmental justice
. In 2005 the Ella Baker Center expanded its vision beyond the immediate concerns of policing, declaring that "If we really wanted to help our communities escape the cycle of incarceration, we had to start focusing on job, wealth and health creation." In 2005, Jones and the Ella Baker Center produced the "Social Equity Track" for the United Nations
' World Environment Day celebration, held that year in San Francisco. 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 meld his desire to improve racial and economic equality with his newer desire to mitigate environmental concerns. 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."
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. The plan grew out of the work previously done at local level at the Ella Baker Center. Green For All would take the Green-Collar Jobs Campaign mission — creating green pathways out of poverty — national.
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 cohosted, 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 and started the Green For All Capital Access Program to assist green entrepreneurs. As part of the Clean Energy Corps Working Group, it 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.
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."
Jones advocates a combination of conservation, regulation and investment as a way of encouraging environmental justice
and opposing environmental racism
. In an interview for the "EON Deep Democracy Interview Series" Jones spoke of a "third wave of environmentalism":
, 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 was a keynote speaker at the youth conference Power Shift
2009 and 2011 in Washington, D.C.
During the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election
, Jones served as Arianna Huffington
's statewide grassroots director.
. The book outlines his "substantive and viable plan for solving the biggest issues facing the country—the failing economy and our devastated environment." The book has received favorable reviews from Al Gore
, Nancy Pelosi
, Laurie David
, Paul Hawken
, Winona LaDuke
and Ben Jealous.
In the book, Jones contended that invention and investment will take us out of a pollution-based grey economy and into a healthy new green economy. Jones wrote:
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. 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. 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. Jones was featured on the grassroots radio program, Sea Change Radio, talking about the book and about creating a "new, clean and green economy...in a way that's inclusive." The Green Collar Economy is the first environmental book authored by an African-American to make the New York Times bestseller list.
His position with the Obama Administration was described by columnist Chadwick Matlin as "switchboard operator for Obama's grand vision of the American economy; connecting the phone lines between all the federal agencies invested in a green economy." Jones did not like the informal "czar" term
sometimes applied to his job, and described his position as "the green-jobs handyman. I'm there to serve. I'm there to help as a leader in the field of green jobs, which is a new field. I'm happy to come and serve and be helpful, but there's no such thing as a green-jobs 'czar.'"
and Fox News commentator Glenn Beck
, who featured Jones on fourteen episodes of his show. They criticized Jones for his past political activities, including his involvement with STORM (Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement
) and his support for Mumia Abu-Jamal
, a prisoner sentenced to death
for murdering a police officer. In July 2009 Color of Change
, an organization that Jones founded in 2005 and left in 2007, launched a campaign urging advertisers on Beck's Fox News show to pull their ads, in response to comments by Beck stating President Obama has a "deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture." In September 2009, DefendGlenn.com, a website launched in response to the boycott campaign, posted a video on YouTube
of a February 2009 event at which Jones called Congressional Republicans "assholes". Jones responded by saying that the comments "were clearly inappropriate" and that "they do not reflect the experience I have had since I joined the [Obama] administration."
Several days later, Jones came under additional criticism for his name appearing on a 2004 petition from 911Truth.org that suggested the Bush Administration "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen". Representative Mike Pence
(R-Indiana), the chairman of the Republican Conference
in the U.S. House of Representatives
, and Senator John Cornyn
(R-Texas), Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee
, publicly criticized Jones, while Senator Kit Bond
(R-Missouri) urged Congress to investigate Jones' "fitness" for the position. Bob Beckel
, a Fox News political analyst who was formerly an official in the Carter administration
, became the first prominent Democrat to call for Jones' resignation. In response to the criticisms, Jones issued a statement that said, "In recent days some in the news media have reported on past statements I made before I joined the [Obama] administration — some of which were made years ago. If I have offended anyone with statements I made in the past, I apologize." Of the 9/11 petition specifically, he said, "I do not agree with this statement and it certainly does not reflect my views now or ever."
After what Jones described as a "vicious smear campaign" by "opponents of reform [of health care and clean energy]", he resigned on September 5, saying that he could not "in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past. We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future". During an interview on ABC
's This Week
, White House Press Secretary
Robert Gibbs
thanked Jones "for his service to the country" and said that Obama "doesn't endorse" Jones' previous association with the 9/11 Truth movement, his comments regarding race relations and politics, and his support for Mumia Abu-Jamal. Some liberal commentators expressed continued support for Jones, singling out the efforts of Glenn Beck to force his resignation. Arianna Huffington
predicted Beck's efforts would backfire by freeing Jones from being "tied to his desk with a sock in his mouth". John McWhorter
, in The New Republic
, related his analysis to the Obama presidency
in general, saying that allowing Jones to resign was "spineless".
In a post-resignation interview with The Washington Post
, Jones said he did not have "any bitterness or anger about the situation" and expressed his "hope and belief" that people would judge him based on his work. Later, in an op-ed about the resignation of another Obama administration official, Shirley Sherrod, Jones described the media as having "rushed to judgment" about him, and he denied having ever signed the 911Truth petition. On July 27, 2010, the group 911truth.org released a statement that they had "researched the situation and were unable to produce electronic or written evidence that Van agreed to sign the Statement". In 2009 when first questioned about it, Jones said that he hadn't fully reviewed the statement before he signed. Two other signatories of the statement, Rabbi Michael Lerner and historian Howard Zinn, told Politico's Ben Smith they felt they had signed a petition of more limited scope, one that asked only for an investigation into the attacks.
Janice Matthews, Director of 911Truth.org, said Jones and two other signatories "requested their names be removed. That has been done."
, where he leads their Green Opportunity Initiative "to develop a clearly articulated agenda for expanding investment, innovation, and opportunity through clean energy and environmental restoration". At the same time, he received appointments at Princeton University
, as a distinguished visiting fellow in both the Center for African American Studies and in the Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Jones is also a senior policy advisor at Green For All
.
On February 26, 2010, Jones received the NAACP President's Award at the 41st annual NAACP Image Awards.
On October 2, 2010, Jones spoke at the One Nation Working Together rally
in Washington, DC, where he spoke about linking the fight against poverty with the fight against pollution, saying that green jobs would bring "real solutions" instead of "hateful rhetoric".
On April 15, 2011, Jones spoke at Powershift 2011 in Washington, DC, where he addressed over 10,000 students on issues of climate justice and standing up for underrepresented communities. Powershift 2011 was the largest youth activism and organizing training in our country's history.
In 2011, Jones worked with MoveOn.org to launch the Rebuild the Dream
campaign, which was intended to start a progressive American Dream movement
to counter the Tea Party movement
. Following a kickoff on June 23, 2011, Rebuild the Dream announced a "Contract for the American Dream", intended as a counter to the Tea Party-supported "Contract from America
", and held house meetings in July. Jones claimed 127,000 people had become involved in the movement by the end of July 2011.
At the beginning of October 2011, prior to a Rebuild the Dream conference in Washington, DC, Jones compared the Occupy Wall Street
movement to an "American Autumn" comparable to the Arab Spring
uprisings, saying, "You can see it right now with these young people on Wall Street. Hold onto your hats, we're going to have an October offensive to take back the American dream and to rescue America's middle class."
Environmentalism
Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements...
advocate, civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
activist, and attorney
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
. Jones is a co-founder of three non-profit organizations. In 1996, he founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights is a non-profit strategy and action center based in Oakland, CA. The stated aim of the center is to work for justice, opportunity and peace in urban America....
, a California non-governmental organization
Non-governmental organization
A non-governmental organization is a legally constituted organization created by natural or legal persons that operates independently from any government. The term originated from the United Nations , and is normally used to refer to organizations that do not form part of the government and are...
(NGO) working for alternatives to violence. In 2005, he co-founded Color of Change
Color of Change
Color of Change is a Web-based grassroots organization that aims to strengthen the political voice of Black America. It was formed after the events of Hurricane Katrina, a powerful storm that devastated much of the north-central Gulf Coast...
, an advocacy group for African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
s. In 2007, he founded Green For All
Green For All
Green for All is an NGO in the United States "working to build an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty." Based in Oakland, California, Green For All advocates for a clean energy economy as a solution to both environmental and economic problems. Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins...
, a national NGO dedicated to "building an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty." His first book, The Green Collar Economy
The Green Collar Economy
The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems is a 2008 book by Van Jones. It outlines a plan for simultaneously solving socioeconomic inequality and environmental problems. The book has received favorable reviews from Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, Laurie David, Paul Hawken,...
, was released on October 7, 2008, and reached number 12 on the New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
Best Seller list
New York Times Best Seller list
The New York Times Best Seller list is widely considered the preeminent list of best-selling books in the United States. It is published weekly in The New York Times Book Review magazine, which is published in the Sunday edition of The New York Times and as a stand-alone publication...
. In 2008, Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine named Jones one of its "Heroes of the Environment
Heroes of the Environment (2008)
Heroes of the Environment is a list published in Time magazine. After the inaugural list of 2007, the next list was published in September 2008...
". Fast Company
Fast Company (magazine)
Fast Company is a full-color business magazine that releases 10 issues per year and reports on topics including innovation, digital media, technology, change management, leadership, design, and social responsibility...
called him one of the "12 Most Creative Minds of 2008".
In March 2009 Jones was appointed by President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
to the newly created position of Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, where he worked with various "agencies and departments to advance the administration's climate and energy initiatives, with a special focus on improving vulnerable communities." In July 2009 he became "embroiled in a controversy" over his past political activities, including a public comment disparaging congressional Republicans, his name appearing on a petition for 911Truth.org, and allegations of association with a Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
group during the 1990s. For these issues, Van Jones was heavily criticized by conservatives. Jones resigned from the position in early September 2009. "On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me," Jones said in his resignation statement. "They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide."
Jones is currently a senior fellow at the Center For American Progress
Center for American Progress
The Center for American Progress is a progressive public policy research and advocacy organization. Its website states that the organization is "dedicated to improving the lives of Americans through progressive ideas and action." It has its headquarters in Washington D.C.Its President and Chief...
and a senior policy advisor at Green For All
Green For All
Green for All is an NGO in the United States "working to build an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty." Based in Oakland, California, Green For All advocates for a clean energy economy as a solution to both environmental and economic problems. Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins...
. Jones also holds a joint appointment at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, as a distinguished visiting fellow in both the Center for African American Studies and in the Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs is a professional public policy school at Princeton University. The school has granted undergraduate A.B. degrees since 1930 and graduate degrees since 1948...
.
Early life
Jones and his twin sister Angela were born in 1968 in Jackson, TennesseeJackson, Tennessee
Jackson is a city in Madison County, Tennessee, United States. The total population was 65,211 at the 2010 census. Jackson is the primary city of the Jackson, Tennessee metropolitan area, which is included in the Jackson-Humboldt, Tennessee Combined Statistical Area...
. Their mother was a teacher at a high school and their father was a principal at a junior high school. Jones' sister said that as a child he was "the stereotypical geek—he just kind of lived up in his head a lot." He has described his own childhood behavior as "bookish and bizarre." His grandfather was the senior bishop in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church
Christian Methodist Episcopal Church
The Christian Methodist Episcopal Church is a historically black denomination within the broader context of Methodism. The group was organized in 1870 when several black ministers, with the full support of their white counterparts in the former Methodist Episcopal Church, South, met to form an...
, and Jones sometimes accompanied his grandfather to religious conferences, where he would sit all day listening to the adults "in these hot, sweaty black churches". Jones was a young fan of John
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
and Bobby Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy
Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy , also referred to by his initials RFK, was an American politician, a Democratic senator from New York, and a noted civil rights activist. An icon of modern American liberalism and member of the Kennedy family, he was a younger brother of President John F...
, and would pin photographs of them to a bulletin board
Bulletin board
A bulletin board is a surface intended for the posting of public messages, for example, to advertise things to buy or sell, announce events, or provide information...
in his room in the specially delineated "Kennedy Section". As a child he paired his Star Wars
Star Wars
Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...
action figures with Kennedy-era political figures; Luke Skywalker
Luke Skywalker
Luke Skywalker is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the original film trilogy of the Star Wars franchise, where he is portrayed by Mark Hamill. He is introduced in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, in which he is forced to leave home, and finds himself apprenticed to the Jedi master...
was John, Han Solo
Han Solo
Han Solo is a fictional character in the Star Wars franchise played by Harrison Ford. Introduced in the film Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope , Solo and his Wookiee co-pilot, Chewbacca , become involved in the Rebel Alliance against the Galactic Empire...
was Bobby, and Lando Calrissian
Lando Calrissian
Lando Calrissian is a fictional character in the Star Wars universe. He is portrayed by Billy Dee Williams in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi...
was Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...
He graduated from Jackson Central-Merry High School
Jackson Central-Merry High School
Jackson Central-Merry High School is a public four-year high school located in Jackson, Tennessee, USA...
in 1986. Jones received his B.S.
Bachelor of Science
A Bachelor of Science is an undergraduate academic degree awarded for completed courses that generally last three to five years .-Australia:In Australia, the BSc is a 3 year degree, offered from 1st year on...
in communication
Communication
Communication is the activity of conveying meaningful information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast...
and political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
from the University of Tennessee at Martin
University of Tennessee at Martin
The University of Tennessee at Martin is a campus in the University of Tennessee system. Other campuses include the flagship campus in Knoxville, the Chattanooga campus, the Center for the Health Sciences in Memphis, and the Space Institute in Tullahoma...
(UT Martin).
Jones worked as an intern at the Jackson Sun (Tennessee), the Shreveport Times (Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
) and the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
(Nashville
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...
bureau). He also helped to launch and spearhead a number of independent, campus-based publishing efforts. These publications included the Fourteenth Circle (University of Tennessee
University of Tennessee
The University of Tennessee is a public land-grant university headquartered at Knoxville, Tennessee, United States...
), the Periscope (Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University is a private research university located in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, the university is named for shipping and rail magnate "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided Vanderbilt its initial $1 million endowment despite having never been to the...
), the New Alliance Project (state-wide in Tennessee), and the Third Eye (Nashville's African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
community). Jones credits UT Martin for preparing him for life on a global stage:
After graduating from UT Martin, Jones left his home state to attend Yale Law School
Yale Law School
Yale Law School, or YLS, is the law school of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Established in 1824, it offers the J.D., LL.M., J.S.D. and M.S.L. degrees in law. It also hosts visiting scholars, visiting researchers and a number of legal research centers...
. In 1993, Jones earned his Juris Doctor
Juris Doctor
Juris Doctor is a professional doctorate and first professional graduate degree in law.The degree was first awarded by Harvard University in the United States in the late 19th century and was created as a modern version of the old European doctor of law degree Juris Doctor (see etymology and...
and moved to San Francisco, California
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...
.
Earlier activism
In 1992, while still a law student at Yale, Jones participated as a volunteer legal monitorLegal observer
Legal observers are individuals, usually representatives of civilian human rights agencies, who attend public demonstrations, protests and other activities where there is a potential for conflict between the public or activists and the police, security guards or other law enforcement personnel...
for a protest of the Rodney King verdict in San Francisco. He and many other participants in the protest were arrested. The district attorney
District attorney
In many jurisdictions in the United States, a District Attorney is an elected or appointed government official who represents the government in the prosecution of criminal offenses. The district attorney is the highest officeholder in the jurisdiction's legal department and supervises a staff of...
later dropped the charges against Jones. The arrested protesters, including Jones, won a small legal settlement. Jones later said that "the incident deepened my disaffection with the system and accelerated my political radicalization." In October 2005 Jones said he was "a rowdy nationalist" before the King verdict was announced, but that by August of that year (1992) he was a communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
. His activism was also spurred on by witnessing racial inequality
Racism in the United States
Racism in the United States has been a major issue since the colonial era and the slave era. Legally sanctioned racism imposed a heavy burden on Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latin Americans...
in New Haven
New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven is the second-largest city in Connecticut and the sixth-largest in New England. According to the 2010 Census, New Haven's population increased by 5.0% between 2000 and 2010, a rate higher than that of the State of Connecticut, and higher than that of the state's five largest cities, and...
, Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
: "I was seeing kids at Yale do drugs and talk about it openly, and have nothing happen to them or, if anything, get sent to rehab...And then I was seeing kids three blocks away, in the housing projects, doing the same drugs, in smaller amounts, go to prison."
When he graduated from law school, Jones gave up plans to take a job in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, and moved to San Francisco instead. He got involved with Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement
Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement
In 2010, various right wing web sites and blogs posted a document that claims to describe the history of a group called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement , which was supposedly a left wing revolutionary cadre-based organization based in the Bay Area of the United States.It is...
(STORM), where Jones actively began protesting police brutality
Police brutality
Police brutality is the intentional use of excessive force, usually physical, but potentially also in the form of verbal attacks and psychological intimidation, by a police officer....
. STORM was a socialist group whose official Points of Unity "upheld revolutionary democracy, revolutionary feminism, revolutionary internationalism, the central role of the working class, urban Marxism, and Third World Communism," and which built connections with other organizations to organize protests, especially against wars and police violence.
Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
In 1995, Jones started Bay Area PoliceWatch, the region's only bar-certified hotline and lawyer-referral service for victims of police abuse. The hotline started receiving fifteen calls a day. PoliceWatch began as a project of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights. "We designed a computer database, the first of its kind in the country, that allows us to track problem officers, problem precincts, problem practices, so at the click of a mouse we can now identify trouble spots and troublemakers," said Jones. "This has given us a tremendous advantage in trying to understand the scope and scale of the problem. Now, obviously, just because somebody calls and says, 'Officer so-and-so did something to me,' doesn't mean it actually happened, but if you get two, four, six phone calls about the same officer, then you begin to see a pattern. It gives you a chance to try and take affirmative steps." By 1996, Jones founded a new umbrella NGO, the Ella Baker Center for Human RightsElla Baker Center for Human Rights
The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights is a non-profit strategy and action center based in Oakland, CA. The stated aim of the center is to work for justice, opportunity and peace in urban America....
, which "consisted of a closet-like office and a computer that Jones had brought from his apartment."
From 1996-1997, Jones and PoliceWatch led a campaign which was successful in getting officer Marc Andaya fired from the San Francisco Police Department
San Francisco Police Department
The San Francisco Police Department, also known as the SFPD and San Francisco Department Of Police, is the police department of the City and County of San Francisco, California...
. Andaya was the lead officer accused of the in-custody death of Aaron Williams, an unarmed black man. In 1999 and 2000, Jones was a leader in the failed campaign to defeat Proposition 21, which sparked a student movement that made national headlines. In 2001, Jones and the Ella Baker Center launched the Books Not Bars campaign. From 2001 to 2003, Jones and Books Not Bars led a campaign to block the construction of a proposed "Super-Jail for Youth" in Oakland
Oakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
's Alameda County. Books Not Bars later went on to launch a statewide campaign to transform California's juvenile justice system.
Color of Change
Following Hurricane KatrinaHurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...
in 2005, Jones and James Rucker
James Rucker
James Rucker is an American social entrepreneur and co-founder of Color of Change.Rucker currently runs Color of Change, an online activist organization that claims to strengthen the voice of African Americans in the United States...
co-founded a Web-based grassroots organization to address Black issues called Color of Change
Color of Change
Color of Change is a Web-based grassroots organization that aims to strengthen the political voice of Black America. It was formed after the events of Hurricane Katrina, a powerful storm that devastated much of the north-central Gulf Coast...
. Color of Change's mission as described on its web site is as follows: "ColorOfChange.org exists to strengthen Black America's political voice. Our goal is to empower our members—Black Americans and our allies—to make government more responsive to the concerns of Black Americans and to bring about positive political and social change for everyone." Within two years of co-founding the organization, Jones moved on to other pursuits, but remains listed on the Color of Change website as "Former Staff".
Shift to environmentalism and Green for All
By 2005, Jones had begun promoting eco-capitalismEco-capitalism
Eco-capitalism is one of several strategies of the green movement and Green Parties. Its central idea is that capital exists in nature as "natural capital" on which all wealth depends...
and environmental justice
Environmental justice
Environmental justice is "the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, sex, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies." In the words of Bunyan Bryant,...
. In 2005 the Ella Baker Center expanded its vision beyond the immediate concerns of policing, declaring that "If we really wanted to help our communities escape the cycle of incarceration, we had to start focusing on job, wealth and health creation." In 2005, Jones and the Ella Baker Center produced the "Social Equity Track" for the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
' World Environment Day celebration, held that year in San Francisco. 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 meld his desire to improve racial and economic equality with his newer desire to mitigate environmental concerns. 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."
In September 2007, Jones attended the Clinton Global Initiative and announced his plans to launch Green For All
Green For All
Green for All is an NGO in the United States "working to build an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty." Based in Oakland, California, Green For All advocates for a clean energy economy as a solution to both environmental and economic problems. Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins...
, a new national NGO dedicated to creating green pathways out of poverty in America. The plan grew out of the work previously done at local level at the Ella Baker Center. Green For All would take the Green-Collar Jobs Campaign mission — creating green pathways out of poverty — national.
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 cohosted, with 1Sky
1Sky
1Sky is a United States based campaign in support of federal action to stem global warming and promote renewable energy.1Sky was founded in the spring of 2007 when thirty climate campaigners were on a retreat in the Hudson Valley of New York state...
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 and started the Green For All Capital Access Program to assist green entrepreneurs. As part of the Clean Energy Corps Working Group, it 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.
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."
Jones advocates a combination of conservation, regulation and investment as a way of encouraging environmental justice
Environmental justice
Environmental justice is "the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, sex, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies." In the words of Bunyan Bryant,...
and opposing environmental racism
Environmental racism
Environmental racism is a sociological term referring to policies and regulations that disproportionately burden minority communities with negative environmental impacts....
. In an interview for the "EON Deep Democracy Interview Series" Jones spoke of a "third wave of environmentalism":
The first wave is sort of the Teddy Roosevelt, conservation era which had its day and then, in 1963, Rachel Carson writes a book, Silent Spring, and she's talking about toxics and the environment, and that really kind of opens up a whole new wave. So it's no longer just conservation but it's conservation, plus regulation, trying to regulate the bad, and that wave kind of continued to be developed and got kind of a 2.5 upgrade because of the environmental justice community who said, "Wait a minute, you're regulating but you're not regulating equally, the white polluters and white environmentalists are essentially steering poison into the people-of-color communities, because they don't have a racial justice frame." ... Now there's something new that's beginning to gather momentum, and it's conservation plus regulation of the bad, plus investment in the good ... beginning to put money into the solutions as well as trying to regulate the problem.
Other
Jones has served on the boards of numerous environmental and nonprofit organizations, including 1Sky, the National Apollo AllianceApollo Alliance
The Apollo Alliance is a project organized by the Institute for America's Future and the Center on Wisconsin Strategy. The Alliance is a project of the Tides Center....
, Social Venture Network
Social Venture Network
The Social Venture Network is a network of socially responsible business leaders committed to building a just and sustainable world through socially and environmentally sustainable business. As of 2007, SVN has over 430 members in the United States....
, Rainforest Action Network
Rainforest Action Network
Rainforest Action Network is an environmental organization based in San Francisco, California, USA. The organization was founded by Randy "Hurricane" Hayes and Mike Roselle in 1985, with the financial help of Fund for Wild Nature....
, Bioneers, Julia Butterfly Hill's
Julia Butterfly Hill
Julia Butterfly Hill is an American activist and environmentalist. Hill is best known for living in a -tall, roughly 1500-year-old California Redwood tree for 738 days between December 10, 1997 and December 18, 1999...
"Circle of Life" organization and Free Press
Free Press (organization)
Free Press is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, national organization working to reform the media in the United States.It was founded in 2002 by media scholar Robert W. McChesney, The Nation contributor John Nichols, and Josh Silver, current CEO of the Democracy Fund, a foundation challenging the influence...
. He was also a Senior Fellow with the Center for American Progress
Center for American Progress
The Center for American Progress is a progressive public policy research and advocacy organization. Its website states that the organization is "dedicated to improving the lives of Americans through progressive ideas and action." It has its headquarters in Washington D.C.Its President and Chief...
and a Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences. He was a keynote speaker at the youth conference Power Shift
Power Shift
For the book by Alvin Toffler, see Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century. For the driving technique, see Powershifting....
2009 and 2011 in Washington, D.C.
During the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election
California recall election, 2003
The 2003 California gubernatorial recall election was a special election permitted under California state law. It resulted in voters replacing incumbent Democratic Governor Gray Davis with Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger. The recall effort spanned the latter half of 2003...
, Jones served as Arianna Huffington
Arianna Huffington
Arianna Huffington is a Greek American author and syndicated columnist. She is best known as co-founder of the news website The Huffington Post. A popular conservative commentator in the mid-1990s, she adopted more liberal political beliefs in the late 1990s...
's statewide grassroots director.
The Green Collar Economy
On October 7, 2008, HarperOne released Jones' first book, The Green Collar EconomyThe Green Collar Economy
The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems is a 2008 book by Van Jones. It outlines a plan for simultaneously solving socioeconomic inequality and environmental problems. The book has received favorable reviews from Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, Laurie David, Paul Hawken,...
. The book outlines his "substantive and viable plan for solving the biggest issues facing the country—the failing economy and our devastated environment." The book has received favorable reviews from Al Gore
Al Gore
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....
, Nancy Pelosi
Nancy Pelosi
Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro Pelosi is the Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives and served as the 60th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 2007 to 2011...
, Laurie David
Laurie David
Laurie David is an American environmental activist. She serves as a trustee on the Natural Resources Defense Council and a member of the Advisory Board of the Children's Nature Institute and is a contributing blogger to The Huffington Post.-Personal life:David was born as Laurie Ellen Lennard, and...
, Paul Hawken
Paul Hawken
Paul Hawken is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, and author.-Life:Paul Hawken had a Swedish grandmother and a Scottish grandfather with a farm. His father worked at UC Berkeley...
, Winona LaDuke
Winona LaDuke
Winona LaDuke is a Native American activist, environmentalist, economist, and writer. In 1996 and 2000, she ran for vice president as the nominee of the United States Green Party, on a ticket headed by Ralph Nader. In the 2004 election, however, she endorsed one of Nader's opponents, Democratic...
and Ben Jealous.
In the book, Jones contended that invention and investment will take us out of a pollution-based grey economy and into a healthy new green economy. Jones wrote:
We 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.
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. 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. 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. Jones was featured on the grassroots radio program, Sea Change Radio, talking about the book and about creating a "new, clean and green economy...in a way that's inclusive." The Green Collar Economy is the first environmental book authored by an African-American to make the New York Times bestseller list.
White House Council on Environmental Quality
On March 10, 2009, it was announced that Jones would serve as Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Jones, while an ardent supporter of President Barack Obama, originally did not intend to work for the White House, later explaining "when they asked the question, I burst out laughing because at the time it seemed completely ludicrous that it would even be an option. I think what changed my mind was interacting with the administration during the transition process and during the whole process of getting the recovery package pulled together."His position with the Obama Administration was described by columnist Chadwick Matlin as "switchboard operator for Obama's grand vision of the American economy; connecting the phone lines between all the federal agencies invested in a green economy." Jones did not like the informal "czar" term
Czar (political term)
Czar or tsar is an informal title for certain high-level officials in the United States and United Kingdom. Political czars can run or organize governmental departments, and may devote their expertise to a single area of work...
sometimes applied to his job, and described his position as "the green-jobs handyman. I'm there to serve. I'm there to help as a leader in the field of green jobs, which is a new field. I'm happy to come and serve and be helpful, but there's no such thing as a green-jobs 'czar.'"
Controversy and resignation
After his White House appointment, Jones began receiving criticism from media sources such as WorldNetDailyWorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily is an American web site that publishes news and associated content from a U.S. conservative perspective. It was founded in May 1997 by Joseph Farah with the stated intent of "exposing wrongdoing, corruption and abuse of power" and is headquartered in Washington, D.C.-History:In...
and Fox News commentator Glenn Beck
Glenn Beck
Glenn Edward Lee Beck is an American conservative radio host, vlogger, author, entrepreneur, political commentator and former television host. He hosts the Glenn Beck Program, a nationally syndicated talk-radio show that airs throughout the United States on Premiere Radio Networks...
, who featured Jones on fourteen episodes of his show. They criticized Jones for his past political activities, including his involvement with STORM (Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement
Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement
In 2010, various right wing web sites and blogs posted a document that claims to describe the history of a group called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement , which was supposedly a left wing revolutionary cadre-based organization based in the Bay Area of the United States.It is...
) and his support for Mumia Abu-Jamal
Mumia Abu-Jamal
Mumia Abu-Jamal was convicted of the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner and sentenced to death. He has been described as "perhaps the world's best known death-row inmate", and his sentence is one of the most debated today...
, a prisoner sentenced to death
Capital punishment in the United States
Capital punishment in the United States, in practice, applies only for aggravated murder and more rarely for felony murder. Capital punishment was a penalty at common law, for many felonies, and was enforced in all of the American colonies prior to the Declaration of Independence...
for murdering a police officer. In July 2009 Color of Change
Color of Change
Color of Change is a Web-based grassroots organization that aims to strengthen the political voice of Black America. It was formed after the events of Hurricane Katrina, a powerful storm that devastated much of the north-central Gulf Coast...
, an organization that Jones founded in 2005 and left in 2007, launched a campaign urging advertisers on Beck's Fox News show to pull their ads, in response to comments by Beck stating President Obama has a "deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture." In September 2009, DefendGlenn.com, a website launched in response to the boycott campaign, posted a video on YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
of a February 2009 event at which Jones called Congressional Republicans "assholes". Jones responded by saying that the comments "were clearly inappropriate" and that "they do not reflect the experience I have had since I joined the [Obama] administration."
Several days later, Jones came under additional criticism for his name appearing on a 2004 petition from 911Truth.org that suggested the Bush Administration "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen". Representative Mike Pence
Mike Pence
Michael Richard "Mike" Pence is the U.S. Representative for Indiana's , and previously the , serving since 2001. The 6th district covers much of Eastern Indiana. He is a member of the Republican Party....
(R-Indiana), the chairman of the Republican Conference
Republican Conference of the United States House of Representatives
The House Republican Conference is the party caucus for Republicans in the United States House of Representatives. It hosts meetings and is the primary forum for communicating the party's message to members...
in the U.S. House of Representatives
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
, and Senator John Cornyn
John Cornyn
John Cornyn, III is the junior United States Senator for Texas, serving since 2003. He is a member of the Republican Party. He was elected Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee for the 111th U.S. Congress....
(R-Texas), Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee
National Republican Senatorial Committee
The National Republican Senatorial Committee is the Republican Hill committee for the United States Senate, working to elect Republicans to that body. The NRSC was founded in 1916 as the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee...
, publicly criticized Jones, while Senator Kit Bond
Kit Bond
Christopher Samuel "Kit" Bond is a former United States Senator from Missouri and a member of the Republican Party. First elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986, he defeated Democrat Harriett Woods by a margin of 53%-47%. He was re-elected in 1992, 1998, and 2004...
(R-Missouri) urged Congress to investigate Jones' "fitness" for the position. Bob Beckel
Bob Beckel
Robert Beckel is an American political commentator and an analyst on the Fox News Channel. He is also a columnist for USA Today where he writes "point-counterpoint" style articles with friend and political opposite Cal Thomas. He is the brother of actor Graham Beckel.-Career:Beckel holds a B.A....
, a Fox News political analyst who was formerly an official in the Carter administration
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
, became the first prominent Democrat to call for Jones' resignation. In response to the criticisms, Jones issued a statement that said, "In recent days some in the news media have reported on past statements I made before I joined the [Obama] administration — some of which were made years ago. If I have offended anyone with statements I made in the past, I apologize." Of the 9/11 petition specifically, he said, "I do not agree with this statement and it certainly does not reflect my views now or ever."
After what Jones described as a "vicious smear campaign" by "opponents of reform [of health care and clean energy]", he resigned on September 5, saying that he could not "in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past. We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future". During an interview on ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
's This Week
This Week (ABC TV series)
This Week is ABC's Sunday morning political affairs program.The Sunday morning talk show has aired on Sunday mornings on ABC since 1981; the program is initially aired at 9:00 AM ET, although many stations air the program later, especially those in other time zones...
, White House Press Secretary
White House Press Secretary
The White House Press Secretary is a senior White House official whose primary responsibility is to act as spokesperson for the government administration....
Robert Gibbs
Robert Gibbs
Robert Lane Gibbs was the 28th White House Press Secretary. Gibbs was the communications director for then-U.S. Senator Barack Obama and Obama's 2008 presidential campaign...
thanked Jones "for his service to the country" and said that Obama "doesn't endorse" Jones' previous association with the 9/11 Truth movement, his comments regarding race relations and politics, and his support for Mumia Abu-Jamal. Some liberal commentators expressed continued support for Jones, singling out the efforts of Glenn Beck to force his resignation. Arianna Huffington
Arianna Huffington
Arianna Huffington is a Greek American author and syndicated columnist. She is best known as co-founder of the news website The Huffington Post. A popular conservative commentator in the mid-1990s, she adopted more liberal political beliefs in the late 1990s...
predicted Beck's efforts would backfire by freeing Jones from being "tied to his desk with a sock in his mouth". John McWhorter
John McWhorter
John Hamilton McWhorter V is an American linguist and political commentator. He is the author of a number of books on language and on race relations. His linguistic specialty is creole and the process through which it forms.-Early life:...
, in The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
, related his analysis to the Obama presidency
Presidency of Barack Obama
The Presidency of Barack Obama began at noon EST on January 20, 2009 when he became the 44th President of the United States. Obama was a United States Senator from Illinois at the time of his victory over Arizona Senator John McCain in the 2008 presidential election...
in general, saying that allowing Jones to resign was "spineless".
In a post-resignation interview with The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, Jones said he did not have "any bitterness or anger about the situation" and expressed his "hope and belief" that people would judge him based on his work. Later, in an op-ed about the resignation of another Obama administration official, Shirley Sherrod, Jones described the media as having "rushed to judgment" about him, and he denied having ever signed the 911Truth petition. On July 27, 2010, the group 911truth.org released a statement that they had "researched the situation and were unable to produce electronic or written evidence that Van agreed to sign the Statement". In 2009 when first questioned about it, Jones said that he hadn't fully reviewed the statement before he signed. Two other signatories of the statement, Rabbi Michael Lerner and historian Howard Zinn, told Politico's Ben Smith they felt they had signed a petition of more limited scope, one that asked only for an investigation into the attacks.
Janice Matthews, Director of 911Truth.org, said Jones and two other signatories "requested their names be removed. That has been done."
Post-White House activity
In February 2010, Jones became a senior fellow at the Center For American ProgressCenter for American Progress
The Center for American Progress is a progressive public policy research and advocacy organization. Its website states that the organization is "dedicated to improving the lives of Americans through progressive ideas and action." It has its headquarters in Washington D.C.Its President and Chief...
, where he leads their Green Opportunity Initiative "to develop a clearly articulated agenda for expanding investment, innovation, and opportunity through clean energy and environmental restoration". At the same time, he received appointments at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, as a distinguished visiting fellow in both the Center for African American Studies and in the Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Jones is also a senior policy advisor at Green For All
Green For All
Green for All is an NGO in the United States "working to build an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty." Based in Oakland, California, Green For All advocates for a clean energy economy as a solution to both environmental and economic problems. Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins...
.
On February 26, 2010, Jones received the NAACP President's Award at the 41st annual NAACP Image Awards.
On October 2, 2010, Jones spoke at the One Nation Working Together rally
One Nation Working Together rally
The One Nation Working Together rally was held on October 2, 2010 in Washington, D.C. by a coalition of liberal and progressive organizations operating under the umbrella of "One Nation Working Together"...
in Washington, DC, where he spoke about linking the fight against poverty with the fight against pollution, saying that green jobs would bring "real solutions" instead of "hateful rhetoric".
On April 15, 2011, Jones spoke at Powershift 2011 in Washington, DC, where he addressed over 10,000 students on issues of climate justice and standing up for underrepresented communities. Powershift 2011 was the largest youth activism and organizing training in our country's history.
In 2011, Jones worked with MoveOn.org to launch the Rebuild the Dream
American Dream Movement
The American Dream Movement is an American center-left political organization founded in June 2011 by former Obama Administration advisor Anthony K. "Van" Jones and the groupMoveOn.org. It aims to counter the Tea Party movement...
campaign, which was intended to start a progressive American Dream movement
American Dream Movement
The American Dream Movement is an American center-left political organization founded in June 2011 by former Obama Administration advisor Anthony K. "Van" Jones and the groupMoveOn.org. It aims to counter the Tea Party movement...
to counter the Tea Party movement
Tea Party movement
The Tea Party movement is an American populist political movement that is generally recognized as conservative and libertarian, and has sponsored protests and supported political candidates since 2009...
. Following a kickoff on June 23, 2011, Rebuild the Dream announced a "Contract for the American Dream", intended as a counter to the Tea Party-supported "Contract from America
Contract from America
The Contract from America was the idea of Houston-based attorney Ryan Hecker. Hecker states that he developed the concept of creating a grassroots call for reform prior to the April 15, 2009 Tax Day Tea Party rallies. To get his idea off the ground, he launched a website which encouraged people to...
", and held house meetings in July. Jones claimed 127,000 people had become involved in the movement by the end of July 2011.
At the beginning of October 2011, prior to a Rebuild the Dream conference in Washington, DC, Jones compared the Occupy Wall Street
Occupy Wall Street
Occupy Wall Street is an ongoing series of demonstrations initiated by the Canadian activist group Adbusters which began September 17, 2011 in Zuccotti Park, located in New York City's Wall Street financial district...
movement to an "American Autumn" comparable to the Arab Spring
Arab Spring
The Arab Spring , otherwise known as the Arab Awakening, is a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests occurring in the Arab world that began on Saturday, 18 December 2010...
uprisings, saying, "You can see it right now with these young people on Wall Street. Hold onto your hats, we're going to have an October offensive to take back the American dream and to rescue America's middle class."
Awards and honors
Jones' awards and honors include:- 1997-1999 - Rockefeller FoundationRockefeller FoundationThe Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...
"Next Generation Leadership" Fellowship - 1998 - Reebok International Human Rights AwardReebok Human Rights AwardThe Reebok Human Rights Award honours activists under the age of 30 who fight for human rights through non-violent means. Each year, the award is given to four or five individuals. Each receives a grant of US$50,000 that must be used to support their human rights work. The awards are underwritten...
- 2000 - International AshokaAshoka: Innovators for the PublicAshoka: Innovators for the Public is a nonprofit organization based in Arlington, VA, supporting the field of social entrepreneurship. Ashoka was founded by Bill Drayton in 1981 to identify and support leading social entrepreneurs through a Social Venture Capital approach with the goal of...
Fellowship - 2008 - Best Dressed Environmental List (#1 of 30); Sustainable Style FoundationSustainable Style FoundationThe Sustainable Style Foundation is a Seattle, Washington-based international nonprofit organization that promotes sustainable design and sustainable living....
- 2008 - TimeTime (magazine)Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
Magazine Environmental Hero - 2008 - ElleElle (magazine)Elle is a worldwide magazine of French origin that focuses on women's fashion, beauty, health, and entertainment. Elle is also the world's largest fashion magazine. It was founded by Pierre Lazareff and his wife Hélène Gordon in 1945. The title, in French, means "she".-History:Elle was founded in...
Magazine Green Award - 2008 - One of the George LucasGeorge LucasGeorge Walton Lucas, Jr. is an American film producer, screenwriter, and director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm. He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones...
Foundation's "Daring Dozen" - 2008 - Hunt Prime Mover Award; Hunt Alternatives FundHunt Alternatives FundHunt Alternatives Fund is a private family foundation located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded by sisters Swanee Hunt and Helen LaKelly Hunt in 1981, the Fund has contributed more than $80 million to social change worldwide....
- 2008 - Campaign for America's FutureCampaign for America's FutureCampaign for America's Future is an American political organization with a strongly progressive orientation. Its main issues of concern include the environment, energy independence, health care reform, Social Security, and education...
"Paul WellstonePaul WellstonePaul David Wellstone was a two-term U.S. Senator from the state of Minnesota and member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, which is affiliated with the national Democratic Party. Before being elected to the Senate in 1990, he was a professor of political science at Carleton College...
Award" - 2008 - Global Green USAGlobal Green USAGlobal Green USA is the U.S. arm of Green Cross International. It is one of 30 national offices with over 70 professional staff worldwide. Global Green USA is a national environmental organization.-References:*, Global Green USA Website...
"Community Environmental Leadership" Award - 2008 - San Francisco Foundation Community Leadership Award
- 2008 - Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative CitizenshipPuffin/Nation Prize for Creative CitizenshipThe Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship is an American award citation given jointly by the Nation Institute and the Puffin Foundation. The annual $100,000 award honors artists and others for “socially responsible work” and challenges to authority...
- 2008 - World Economic ForumWorld Economic ForumThe World Economic Forum is a Swiss non-profit foundation, based in Cologny, Geneva, best known for its annual meeting in Davos, a mountain resort in Graubünden, in the eastern Alps region of Switzerland....
"Young Global Leader" - 2009 - Hubert H. Humphrey Civil Rights Award
- 2009 - Eco-Entrepreneur Award, Institute for Entrepreneurship, Leadership & Innovation; Howard UniversityHoward UniversityHoward University is a federally chartered, non-profit, private, coeducational, nonsectarian, historically black university located in Washington, D.C., United States...
- 2009 - Individual Thought Leadership, Energy & Environment Awards; Aspen InstituteAspen InstituteThe Aspen Institute is an international nonprofit organization founded in 1950 as the Aspen Institute of Humanistic Studies. The organization is dedicated to "fostering enlightened leadership, the appreciation of timeless ideas and values, and open-minded dialogue on contemporary issues." The...
- 2010 - NAACP President's Award
- 2010 - Commonwealth Club of California - Inforum's 21st Century Visionary Award
See also
- List of people from Tennessee
- List of U.S. executive branch czars
- List of Yale Law School alumni
- Green collar worker
- Social justiceSocial justiceSocial justice generally refers to the idea of creating a society or institution that is based on the principles of equality and solidarity, that understands and values human rights, and that recognizes the dignity of every human being. The term and modern concept of "social justice" was coined by...
External links
- Blog entries at The Huffington PostThe Huffington PostThe Huffington Post is an American news website and content-aggregating blog founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti, featuring liberal minded columnists and various news sources. The site offers coverage of politics, theology, media, business, entertainment, living, style,...
- Blog entries at Grist.org
- 'Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in California', The Nathan Cummings Foundation (2004)
- 'Van Jones: Speak Truth to Power Defender' Speaktruth.org (2007 interview)
- 'Miracles', Jones' biographical keynote at the Craigslist Foundation's 'Nonprofit Boot Camp'
- Van Jones Resigns Citing "Vicious Smear Campaign Against Me" - video report by Democracy Now!Democracy Now!Democracy Now! and its staff have received several journalism awards, including the Gracie Award from American Women in Radio & Television; the George Polk Award for its 1998 radio documentary Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship, on the Chevron Corporation and the deaths of...
- Van Jones interview with Tavis Smiley at PBS (2010)
- Van Jones: Inforum's 21st Century Visionary Award (Commonwealth Club) (Full video 01:10:10 on FORA.tv)