Van Jones

[Bill Harsey]

Do we have anyone around San Francisco who know who Van Jones is?

The pres just picked him to be the Green Jobs Czar.

[Sacamuelas]

edited
PM inbound Sir Harsey.

[Richard]

Another community dis-organizer of note.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Jones

Richard's $.02

[SF-TX]

What are the chances an SF candidate would get a clearance with a similar background?

www.DiscoverTheNetwork.org Date: 8/27/2009 12:29:47 PM

VAN JONES

* Became a Communist in the aftermath of the 1992 "Rodney King riots" in Los Angeles
* Founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in 1996
* Was active in the anti-Iraq War demonstrations organized by International ANSWER
* Served as a board member of the Rainforest Action Network and Free Press
* In March 2009, President Barack Obama named Jones to be his so-called “Green Jobs Czar.”



Born in 1968 in rural West Tennessee, Van Jones earned a B.A. degree from the University of Tennessee at Martin and then attended Yale Law School. During his years at Yale, Jones served as an intern with the San Francisco-based Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights (LCCR), which views the United States as an irredeemably racist nation and “champions the legal rights of people of color, poor people, immigrants and refugees, with a special commitment to African-Americans.”

Jones says that he first became politically radicalized in the aftermath of the deadly April 1992 Los Angeles riots which erupted shortly after four L.A. police officers who had beaten the infamous Rodney King were exonerated in court. “I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th,” says Jones, who is black, “and then the verdicts came down on April 29th. By August, I was a communist.”

Jones was arrested during the L.A. riots and spent a short time in jail. “I met all these young radical people of color,” he recalls, “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.”

After earning his Juris Doctorate from Yale in 1993, Jones relocated to San Francisco, where he helped establish Bay Area PoliceWatch, a hotline and lawyer-referral service that began as a project of LCCR. In 1996 he founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which, claiming that the American criminal-justice system is infested with racism, seeks to promote alternatives to incarceration. According to the Baker Center:

“Decades of disinvestment in our cities have led to despair and hopelessness. For poor communities and communities of color it’s even worse, as excessive, racist policing and over-incarceration have left people even further behind.”

By the late 1990s, Jones was a committed Marxist-Leninist-Maoist who viewed police officers as the arch-enemies of black people, and who loathed capitalism for allegedly exploiting nonwhite minorities worldwide. He became a leading member of Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), a Bay Area Marxist-Maoist collective that was staffed by members of various local nonprofits, a number of whom had ties to the Ella Baker Center.

A small but influential radical organization, STORM was founded in 1994 by a group of black anti-war activists who had demonstrated together against the Gulf War three years earlier. STORM became the guiding force behind several notable front groups, one of which was an anti-police collective called Bay Area Police Watch. Another STORM front was the School of Unity and Liberation (SOUL), which was a Marxist training organization; yet another was People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER), which agitated on behalf of the jobless. STORM would grow in influence until 2002, when it disbanded due to internal squabbles.

In the early 2000s, Jones and STORM were active in the anti-Iraq War demonstrations organized by International ANSWER, a front group for the Marxist-Leninist Workers World Party. STORM also had ties to the South African Communist Party and it revered Amilcar Cabral, the late Marxist revolutionary leader (of Guinea-Bissau and the Cape Verde Islands) who lauded Lenin as “the greatest champion of the national liberation of the peoples.” (In 2006 Van Jones would name his own newborn son “Cabral” -- in Amilcar Cabral’s honor.)

During his tenure with STORM, Jones collaborated on numerous projects (including antiwar demonstrations) with local activist Elizabeth “Betita” Martinez, who served as a “mentor” for members of the Ella Baker Center. Martinez was a longtime Maoist who went on to join the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS), a Communist Party USA splinter group, in the early 1990s. To this day, Martinez continues to sit on the CCDS advisory board alongside such luminaries as Angela Davis, Timuel Black (who served on Barack Obama’s 2004 Senate campaign committee), and musician Pete Seeger. Martinez is also a board member of the Movement for a Democratic Society, the parent organization of Progressives for Obama. Martinez and Van Jones together attended a “Challenging White Supremacy” workshop which advanced the theme that “all too often, the unconscious racism of white activists stands in the way of any effective, worthwhile collaboration” with blacks.

In 2005 Jones and the Ella Baker Center produced the “Social Equity Track” for the United Nations’ World Environment Day celebration, a project that eventually would evolve into the Baker Center’s Green-Collar Jobs Campaign -- “a job-training and employment pipeline providing ‘green pathways out of poverty’ for low-income adults in Oakland.”

Soon after attending the Clinton Global Initiative in September 2007, Jones launched “Green For All,” a non-governmental organization “dedicated to building an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty … advocating for local, state and federal commitment to job creation, job training, and entrepreneurial opportunities in the emerging green economy – especially for people from disadvantaged communities.”

In 2008 Jones published his first book, The Green Collar Economy, which focused on environmental and economic issues. The book received favorable reviews from such notables as Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, Laurie David, Winona LaDuke, environmentalist Paul Hawken, and NAACP President/CEO Ben Jealous.

Jones has served as a board member of numerous environmental and nonprofit organizations, including the Rainforest Action Network; Free Press; Bioneers (which accepts the United Nations Millennium Ecosystem Report’s warning that “[h]uman activity is putting such strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet’s ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted”); the National Apollo Alliance (which seeks “to catalyze a clean energy revolution that will put millions of Americans to work in a new generation of high-quality, green-collar jobs”); the Social Venture Network (which aims “to build a just economy and sustainable planet”); and Julia Butterfly Hill’s “Circle of Life” environmental foundation.

Jones also co-founded Color of Change, an organization that views the United states as a profoundly racist country, and whose mission is "to make government more responsive to the concerns of Black Americans and to bring about positive political and social change for everyone."

Jones was a Senior Fellow with the Center for American Progress and a Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences.

In March 2009, President Barack Obama named Jones to be his so-called “Green Jobs Czar.” Jones’ formal title is “Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation” for the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

In a July 2009 interview with Newsweek magazine, Jones said he could not explain exactly what a “green job” is:

"Well, we still don’t have a unified definition, and that’s not unusual in a democracy. It takes a while for all the states and the federal government to come to some agreement. But the Department of Labor is working on it very diligently. Fundamentally, it’s getting there, but we haven’t crossed the finish line yet."

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/i...asp?indid=2406

[SF-TX]

Of course.

One day after the 9/11 attacks, President Obama's "green jobs czar" led a vigil that expressed solidarity with Arab and Muslim Americans as well as what it called the victims of "U.S. imperialism" around the world...

A WND review of the 97-page treatise found a description of a vigil that Jones' group held Sept. 12, 2001, at Snow Park in Oakland, Calif. The event drew hundreds and articulated an "anti-imperialist" line, according to STORM's own description.

The radical group's manual boasted the 9/11 vigil was held to express solidarity with Arab and Muslim Americans and to mourn the civilians killed in the terrorist attacks "as well as the victims of U.S. imperialism around the world."

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=108180

[akv]

The guy is a garden variety California coconut, I always thought religion and communism were mutually exclusive? This guy changes his stripes a lot.

[SF-TX]

After listening to Van Jones speak to Powershift 09, I get the impression that he hasn't given up his goal for communist revolution. It has just been re-badged as 'green for all' and the 'green economy.'

Some comments from the speech, in no particular order:

"Coal miners are people too." - He then goes on to slam the coal industry.

(The United States) is "a pollution based economy."

"Green for everybody"

"What about people who come here from all around the world who we're willing to have out in the fields with poison being sprayed on them, poison being sprayed on them because we have the wrong agricultural system." - Referring to immigrant agricultural workers.

"We obviously need some help [from immigrants]. We need some wisdom from some place else. Because what we have come up with here don't make no sense at all." - Referring to the current US economic system.

He also speaks of "...older veterans like myself." Was he in the military? From the context of the speech, he seemed to be referring to himself as a 'veteran' in the fight to change our economic system.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVNtoAiOh1k

A little about Powershift, in their own Words:

Our Demands



We want politicians to stand up to the dirty energy lobby and pass the energy and climate policies we truly need. We expect the politicians we elected in November to listen to what science is telling us and act immediately to reduce emissions, create jobs and re-engage globally to tackle the climate and economic crises.


Goals of Power Shift 09:

o

Push the new administration and Congress to pass bold, comprehensive energy and climate legislation.
o

Prepare our leaders and our movement for the international climate negotiations in December 2009 where we will help build and ratify a strong global climate agreement - one that allows all communities to participate and benefit.
o Develop a comprehensive strategy for continued political pressure and accountability and a shared vision to facilitate the development and implementation of individual and group action plans for local, state and national campaigns.

o Strengthen the bonds between diverse youth constituencies while we train and empower each other with the skills needed to create one movement that tackles climate change, environmental injustice, and economic failure.

o Connect with fellow organizers and build community to build our power and sustain our own involvement for the long-term.

o Understand the magnitude of both the challenges and opportunities presented by the climate crisis and explore our own capacities to create transformative change.

http://www.powershift09.org/about/goals

[SF-TX]

STORM according to STORM:

'Reclaiming Revolution, history, summation & lessons from the work of Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM)'

http://web.archive.org/web/200707190...MSummation.pdf

[SF-TX]

No bias here.

The Van Jones (non) feeding frenzy
By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
09/04/09 11:30 AM EDT

From a Nexis search a few moments ago:

Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the New York Times: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the Washington Post: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on NBC Nightly News: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on ABC World News: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on CBS Evening News: 0.

If you were to receive all your news from any one of these outlets, or even all of them together, and you heard about some sort of controversy involving President Obama's Special Adviser for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, your response would be, "Huh?" If you heard that that adviser, Van Jones, had apologized for a number of remarks and positions in the recent past, your response would be, "What?" And if you were in the Obama White House monitoring the Jones situation, you would be hoping that the news organizations listed above continue to hold the line -- otherwise, Jones, who is quite well thought of in Obama circles, would be history.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/op...-57271402.html

[Five-O]

WTF is happening to this country?

[incarcerated]

In case you missed it:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009...as-green-czar/

The Radicalization of Obama's 'Green Czar'

Friday, September 04, 2009
The political radicalization of Van Jones, President Obama's "green jobs" adviser, dates back to 1992, when he and hundreds of others took their anger to the streets of San Francisco in the infamous Rodney King protests.

Jones, a Yale Law School student who was working in the Bay Area as an intern, was part of a mob that stormed the city following the acquittal in Los Angeles of four white police officers who had been charged with beating King, who is black, after a car chase.

In an essay he wrote soon after the rioting and republished in The Huffington Post in May 2007, Jones said he "just marched around and chanted slogans" as other protesters set trash cans afire, smashed car windows and threw rocks at passing motorists. But he clearly reveled in the protest.

"Our moment had finally come! We were righteous, fired up, weren't takin' no more!" Jones wrote. "We were one thousand strong on Market Street, with the Bay Bridge shut down in rush hour traffic and the grounds around the state building swarming with angry mobs! Our rallying cry was for justice; our demand was that the System be changed!"

Jones continued, "Yes, the Great Revolutionary Moment had at long last come. And the time, clearly, was ours! So we stole stuff. Y'know, stole stuff. Radios, tennis shoes. Well, not everybody, of course."

Days after he wrote the essay, Jones was arrested along with hundreds of participants in a "peaceful protest" march.

Charges against him ultimately were dropped, and he says he received a "small" settlement.

"I was arrested simply for being a police observer," he later said.

Jones, in the piece he wrote for The Huffington Post, said his essay "captures the pain, frustration and aspirations of a much younger person. But I think it speaks well to the thought process of many young activists at the time."

"But the incident deepened my disaffection with the system and accelerated my political radicalization," he wrote. "The political agenda I articulated for myself and my generation in this essay remains largely undone and incomplete."

Indeed, Jones' "disaffection with the system" appeared to continue. In a June 2008 speech to the National Conference for Media Reform, Jones blasted a proposed prison in Memphis that he compared to a "huge slave ship on dry land."

"You don't have to call somebody the n-word if you can call them a felon," Jones said in the speech, which can be seen on YouTube . "The fight against this new Jim Crow, this punishment industry, where for-profit prison companies are now being traded on the stock exchange ... that struggle is being met as it was 40 years ago."

In his 2007 reflection on the aftermath of King's beating, Jones said he was among those who chanted "no justice, no peace" during the "understandable, unavoidable, even necessary" riots.

"These riots were not revolution; without revolutionary values and revolutionary organization, they were merely sharp outcroppings of the systemic chaos that social injustice breeds," Jones wrote. "But flashpoints of rage can never substitute for radical social vision or grassroots coordination."

Jones, the founder of Green for All, which focuses on creating environmentally friendly jobs in poor areas, continues to be a focus of President Obama's critics after video surfaced of him referring to Republicans as "assholes" and it was revealed that he once joined the "9/11 truther" movement, which contended that the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks might have been an inside job by the Bush administration.

In 2004 Jones signed a statement calling for then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and others to launch an investigation into evidence that suggests "people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war."

The statement asked a series of critical questions hinting at Bush administration involvement in the attacks and called for "deeper inquiry." It was also signed by former Georgia Rep. Cynthia McKinney and Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans.

Jones distanced himself from the position on Thursday, saying, "In recent days some in the news media have reported on past statements I made before I joined the administration -- some of which were made years ago. If I have offended anyone with statements I made in the past, I apologize. As for the petition [9/11 statement] that was circulated today, I do not agree with this statement and it certainly does not reflect my views now or ever."

An aide to Jones told FOX News he "did not carefully review the language in the petition." The aide did not say when Jones signed the petition or when he became aware of the controversy.

Thursday's apology followed Jones' mea culpa on Wednesday, when he expressed his remorse for "offensive words" he uttered in February, when he called Republicans "assholes." He said those remarks "do not reflect the views of this administration" and its bipartisan aims.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs limited his remarks about Jones on Friday, saying only that he "continues to work in this administration." As to the Sept. 11 conspiracy theorists, Gibbs said, "It's not something the president agrees with."

At least one congressman, U.S. Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., has called for Jones' resignation.

Democratic strategist and FOX News contributor Bob Beckel predicted that Jones would be out of a job by Labor Day, and he wondered how Jones got the "czar" post in the first place.

"He's got every right in the world to be a self-avowed communist, but the Secret Service would no more allow a self-avowed communist into the White House as they would Charlie Manson, so that's what I don't get," Beckel said.

"There's something more in here about the breakdown of the system. Yes, it broke down with the Obama administration, but it also broke down with those people who are responsible for doing the background check," he added.

[Richard]

It was on CBS News last night.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?...in;contentBody

And so it goes...

Richard's $.02

[kgoerz]

This Guy doesn't know what he believes in or what to follow . To me it's simple, he's an IDIOT. The clip of the Whit House Spokes person bragging about having Van Jones as part of the White House Team says it all.

[SF-TX]

Originally Posted by Richard

It was on CBS News last night.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?...in;contentBody

And so it goes...

Richard's $.02

The time the search was conducted by Mr. York:

09/04/09 11:30 AM EDT

[Defender968]

What's amazing to me about Mr. Jones is not that he is a radical racist and self avowed communist, those are a dime a dozen surrounding this administration, but with all of his history either the secret service completely failed in conducting the background check when vetting him (and I have a hard time buying that as they would have had to simply not do it to miss all his skeletons) or that the one knew all of Mr. Jones background, and when the secret service said this guys bad ju-ju the one said he's in regardless because he believed it was ok for Mr. Jones to be a czar even with his background. How bad can his judgment be, I mean really, I'm not the super politician uber wise savior of the world, but I could have told him, no matter how much you want a commie in the Whitehouse with you, your opponents, and the general populace isn't going to go for this guy with his background and it will come up and it will drastically hurt your credibility and your ability to get things done, and it will be used as a spring board to attack your character, judgment, values, and motives.

Just my .02