Van Jones
Environmental advocate, civil rights activist, attorney, and author who served from March 16 to September 5, 2009 as Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality in the United States.
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Van Jones got fired because he became the Scary Negro of the Week on Fox News, where, let's be honest, they still feel threatened by Harry Belafonte.
A green economy begins to replace some of the clunking and chugging of ugly machines with the wise effort of beautiful, skilled people. That means more jobs.
Jones may well be more effective outside the administration than within it (I think Beck put it as "dangerous." Semantics.) As Ariana Huffington opined in a post September 7 called "Thank You, Glenn Beck!" (The Huffington Post), Van Jones was undeniably the best person for this job, but the job wasn't best for him. Van Jones is not someone who ought to be stuck behind a desk, calculating tax credits and guarding his opinions from the 24-hour news-culture vultures.
To change our laws and culture, the green movement must attract and include the majority of all people, not just the majority of affluent people.
Our point of view is, lets not be so elitist that we can't honor good, hard, dignified, ennobling work: people working with their hands, building things, putting up solar panels, weatherizing homes, working on organic agriculture, building wind farms. We don't have robots in society, so somebody has to do that work. Lets make sure that the people who can use that work get a chance to do it. I see that as a first step toward bigger and better things.
We need a much deeper understanding of exactly what it is our industrial society, in its present creation, is jeopardizing. We need a more profound perception of what is at stake.
The time has come to move beyond eco-elitism to eco-populism.
The green economy should not just be about reclaiming throw-away stuff. It should be about reclaiming thrown-away communities. It should not just be about recycling things to give them a second life. We should also be gathering up people and giving them a second chance.
If the road to social transformation can be paved only by saints who never make mistakes, the road will never be built.
The human family has invaluable friends and irreplaceable allies in the plant and animal worlds. We cannot continue to tug at the web of life without tearing a hole in the very fabric of our earthly existence — and eventually falling through that hole ourselves.
The end of the occupation. The right of return of the Palestinian people. These are critical dividing lines in human rights. We have to be here. No American would put up with an Israeli-style occupation of their hometown for 53 days let alone 54 years. US tax dollars are funding violence against people of color inside the US borders and outside the US borders.
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