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| Name | Anthony K. "Van" Jones |
|---|---|
| Alt | Portrait photo of an African-American man seated in front of a wood paneled wall. He has a bald head, glasses and a mustache, and is wearing a gray suit, blue shirt and red tie. |
| Caption | Van Jones as White House Council on Environmental Quality's Special Advisor for Green Jobs, 2009 |
| Birth name | Anthony Kapel Jones |
| Birth date | September 20, 1968 |
| Birth place | , United States |
| Known for | Former Special Advisor for Green Jobs in the Obama administration 2009 Time magazine 100 Most Influential People 2009 New York Times bestselling author |
| Education | UT Martin (B.S.) Yale Law School (J.D.) |
| Occupation | Attorney Activist Author |
| Website | http://vanjones.net/ |
Anthony K. "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 Americans. 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. Highlighting these issues, conservatives launched an aggressive campaign against him. Jones resigned from the position in early September 2009. He has described his own childhood behavior as "bookish and bizarre." 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". He graduated from Jackson Central-Merry High School in 1986. Jones received his B.S. in communications 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 .
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."
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.
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.'"
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".
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".
Category:1968 births Category:Living people Category:People from Jackson, Tennessee Category:Activists from the San Francisco Bay Area Category:African American non-fiction writers Category:American bloggers Category:American civil rights activists Category:American human rights activists Category:American motivational speakers Category:American non-fiction environmental writers Category:Center for American Progress Category:Obama administration controversies Category:Obama Administration personnel Category:Sustainability advocates Category:University of Tennessee at Martin alumni Category:Yale Law School alumni
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