E-mail a friendVan Jones
airdate February 25, 2010
With a history of activism, Van Jones emerged as a national environmental leader, calling for green economic development in urban America. He founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and was founding president of Green for All, a national campaign for green-collar opportunities. Jones' first book, The Green Collar Economy, was a NYT best seller, and he went on to serve as special advisor to the White House Council on Environmental Quality in '09. He's a Yale Law grad and has worked as a journalist and been an independent publisher.
For the first time, Jones explains his resignation from the Obama administration. (2:08)
Full Interview (24:33)
Van Jones
Tavis Smiley: Van Jones is the cofounder and now senior adviser for Green for All, a community-based environmental organization started in Oakland that has become a model for environmental action around the country. He's also a former special adviser to the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and tomorrow night, here in Los Angeles, Van Jones is receiving the NAACP president's award. You'll see it live, I think, on Fox. So Van, congratulations in advance.
Van Jones: Oh, thank you. I'm happy to get the award. Three of my favorite fighters have gotten this award before me: Muhammad Ali, Bill Clinton, and Tavis Smiley. (Laughter) So I'm in a proud condition.
Tavis: No, it was quite nice to receive it, but I was so pleased when I read that you were receiving it. It has been quite a year for you.
Jones: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Tavis: Yeah. Let me start - can do we this first?
Jones: Sure, sure.
Tavis: I want to talk about the environmental movement and your role in it and your prospects for it down the road, but we've got to get to this White House stuff first.
Jones: Sure.
Tavis: Let me just throw a few things at you. These 9/11 truthers - what did you make of that story that started this ruckus about Van Jones in the White House?
Jones: Yes, yes. Well, I learned a tough lesson on that. First of all, let me say what I actually believe. I believe that 9/11 was a conspiracy by al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden, and nobody else, trying to hurt America.
What happened to me on that, a tough lesson learned for me, six years ago I was at a conference. Some people came up to me. They said, "Hey, we represent 9/11 families. I'm like, "Oh, okay, good to meet you." They said, "We need your help. Will you help us?" I said, "Sure, whatever you want.
Then these people - I didn't know what their agenda was - they went and put my name on some abhorrent, crazy language they never showed me, I never saw, and it just sat there on this website for years.
Somebody discovered it, and then boom. So people actually believe that I actually signed on to something I never saw, never signed on to, and that became a part of this whole firestorm.
I decided at that point that I needed to resign, because I was becoming a distraction. From my point of view, the president of the United States deserved to be able to talk not about my past and everything I either did or didn't do, but about America's future. So I chose to step down.
Tavis: That was solely your decision?
Jones: Oh, yeah. They didn't call me, I called them. You've got to remember for some people, politics is this whole gotcha game, cage match, all that kind of stuff. For me, this is life or death stuff. I know people who don't have health insurance. I know people. I've known people who went without health insurance for themselves trying to keep food on the table.
Here you have a president trying to get doctors to babies and the moment that he's stepping forward trying to fix one of our biggest problems, people start throwing me as an issue. I said, "You know what?" Your tendency is to want to get out there and fight. I'm going to clear the record, this is not true, that's not true. But all that would do is make the distraction bigger.
Tavis: But it does raise this question, though. When you said to the powers that be that I am going to step aside because I don't want to become a distraction, did anybody in the president's circle say, "Van, let's rethink this, we don't want you do this, let's fight this?" Did anybody say that?
Jones: Of course. It was heartbreaking inside the building because everybody knew that this stuff, a lot of it was just manufactured. At the same time, these are serious times and the president's staff is there to protect and defend him, not the other way around. I don't think people understand that.
I got six months to be in the White House - dream job. Everything I've ever dreamed of to work on, Tavis, I got a chance to work and touch, from energy efficiency policy for America's homes to save people money - I got a chance to work on that.
I got a chance to work on getting auto workers green job training so they can go from working on the cars of the past to the smart cars and solar panels of the future. All those things are beautiful, and to be inside the White House, an historic White House, for six months and make that kind of contribution, I have no regrets going, I have no regrets leaving.
Tavis: I only raise that because as you well know, we're big boys, we can handle this - I only raise that, Van, because as you know, there have been some questions, legitimate, illegitimate, we can agree or disagree, but questions about what this president and his staff truly believe in, what their principles are, what they are really willing to stand up and fight for.
That's the reason why I ask that question, because it's connected to this notion of if what was said about you was an absolute lie, it was untrue and it was manufactured and it was just a bunch of - it was a gotcha game, to use your word from earlier, why not defend Van Jones?
Jones: Well, let me tell you something. I can, more than anybody, give my testimonial to what kind of people are working in the White House. I wish everybody in America could spend one week working there. I can't even - I get emotional thinking about it.
We've all been in airplanes where there's turbulence, and we know what it feels like. Imagine being in the cockpit, where it really does come down to you. You're talking about people that work 12, 18 hours a day. Every single problem in the world from literally North Korea to the local post office eventually comes back up to the White House.
I was not going to let them go through what it would take to cannibalize an effort to deal with healthcare just to defend me. I had a job before I went to the White House; I have a job after I go to the White House.
Tavis: A few of them.
Jones: A few of them. (Laughter) So I have plenty of ways to help my country, and I'm going to continue to help my country. But the one thing I will not listen to anybody say is anything negative about this president and his courage and his commitment.
This man stood up and volunteered to be the captain of the Titanic after it hit the iceberg, okay? (Laughter) And we're still floating - and we're still floating, that's the miracle.
So I think now it's time to think about - if you want to talk about my job, let's talk about how to get millions of jobs to people in America, because I think that's what's most important.
Tavis: I'm going there in two minutes, I promise.
Jones: Yes, sir.
Tavis: One other question about this, and this really isn't about your time in the White House, it is prior to that - your decision to go inside the White House. When you told me that you were going to do this - I can say this now.
Jones: Yes, sir.
Tavis: My friend Geraldo Rivera used to host a show that said, "Now it can be told." (Laughter) I can now tell you this, since you're out of the White House.
Jones: Exactly, it's all right.
Tavis: When you told me that you were going to go inside the White House, I didn't want you to - I believe in supporting friends and you know I love you, would do anything - would take a bullet for Van Jones.
Jones: Yes, sir, yes, sir, yeah.
Tavis: But I'm thinking this Negro has lost his mind. (Laughter) I'm like, I know what it means to have the freedom as an advocate on the outside - I've been on the inside and on the outside - the freedom that you have on the outside to tell the truth, to speak truth to power, to side with truth over power.
That freedom - and this is not about Obama, it's just the whole political infrastructure. You know where I'm going with this.
Jones: Yes, I do.
Tavis: When you go on the inside, your wings get clipped a little bit. You can't speak truth the way that you've been speaking it for all these years on the outside. So I'm thinking Van is one of the freest Negroes I know. (Laughter) Why does he want to bind himself up to some degree and go on the inside?
Jones: Yeah, but you have to remember if we were talking about an administration that had to be beat up and convinced to move in a clean energy direction, then it makes sense for me to stay on the outside.
Tavis: That's fair.
Jones: The first thing that this president does is sign a recovery package - one-third tax cuts, one-third helping teachers and firefighters keep their jobs. Out of the other third, $80 billion, clean energy jobs.
Tavis: That's fair.
Jones: So I said hold on a second - at a certain point you have to be willing to take yes for an answer. When your government is now trying to do all the things that you dreamed of and you're thinking about people in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana who don't have jobs, skilled workers who know how to make cars. Nothing wrong with them, but they haven't been allowed to make the products of tomorrow. I can help them.
Tavis: What did you think you could do on the inside that you could not do in your regarded and respected capacity on the outside?
Jones: Well, a couple of things. First of all, the federal government has numerous departments and agencies, all of which have to work together to get anything done.
It was one thing to stand on the outside and say, "You should do this, you should do that." It's a totally different thing when you say, "Okay, now how do we do it?" When you're talking about a clean energy transformation, when you're talking about re-powering the country so we use our own energy resources, we have a Saudi Arabia of wind energy in America which we've never tapped. We have a Saudi Arabia of solar power in America which we've never tapped.
So when you're going to take that on, that's the Department of Energy that's got to work with HUD, that's got to work with EPA. You can go down the list. So I said I've got organizing skills, I know how to get people to work together. I got people working together in Oakland, which is tough. (Laughter) You know what I mean? If I can get both working across those lines in Oakland I believe I have something to offer.
What I will say proudly for myself - nobody ever criticized anything I said or did when I was working for the president. It was all stuff they went back from the past and tried to whip up. But when I was there I was able to use those skills, and I want other young activists to know those skills you are using right now in Florida, in Detroit, those skills are valuable skills later in life for business, for government, because what it's about is getting people to have a shared goal and agenda.
Tavis: What did you learn about the nasty - my phrase, not yours - the nasty game of Washington politics?
Jones: Honestly, the role that I had, I didn't see that. What I saw was -
Tavis: No, I mean them coming after you to try to get you out of the White House.
Jones: Oh, well, sure, sure.
Tavis: The way the game is played.
Jones: Well, I think other people have a better view of that even than I do. What I was shocked by - I went there, everybody said it's a terrible town, everybody's out for themselves. I didn't see any of that. I got there and I found government workers who had so much pent-up enthusiasm to do things differently, to make a change. Genius ideas way down in the departmental level.
This president said, "I want to hear from the people all the way down through the chain of command," and we were pulling up amazing ideas - they still are. So my experience in D.C. was incredibly positive.
The people that I met were incredibly dedicated, and I honestly wish that especially kind of the pundit class, the blogger class, everybody should have a chance to go just spend a week inside that black box and see the level of professionalism, dedication, love for country. These are people - some of the most impressive people - and you know I've been all around the world - some of the most impressive people I've ever met.
Tavis: But that's my point, though. When you see what you saw on the inside that you're now describing for us so beautifully, it must really anger you, then, that the Glenn Becks of the world on the outside -
Jones: Here's the thing - I have one thousand defeats from last year, and one victory. I don't have any hatred in my heart for anybody, I'm not mad at anybody. I understand the pain of Glenn Beck's listeners; people who are wondering where are we going as a country? How am I going to get a job? All these different people are coming here, am I going to be respected?
I understand that, and I feel like what we've got to do is to answer to the pain, not respond hatred to hatred or bitterness to bitterness or add to the divisiveness, because that actually will keep us where we are.
This whole thing started when an unknown state senator stood up in 2004 and said, "We're not red states and blue states, we are one country, we are one people." I believe that now more than ever. I am more than ever committed to the politics of hope.
The work I was doing was - the big project I was just about to take on, and this does break my heart, we were going to do a green jobs program for Appalachia, and we were going to be able to go into some of the reddest of the red states and say, "Hold on a second now. You got this land here and you're struggling. We're going to figure out a way to get you three sources of income.
"Let's put some wind turbines here and use this wind to get you paid. We're going to help you grow energy crops so that you can be a part of the whole advanced biofuels game and get you paid. And if you do it the right way, where your soil is being taken care of and you're extracting carbon from the air, you can play in the carbon market and get paid three ways."
We were going to start lifting up Appalachia. Now, why can I do that? Because I'm a Southerner, grew up in the church, grew up in Tennessee, went to public schools there.
So to me, what we've got to remember is once we start taking the pain away and people can see they have a place in this future too, then a lot of this anger will subside and we can actually go and be one country.
Tavis: In the last year, since President Obama has been in Washington as president, how has the conversation about the green economy changed?
Jones: Well, the whole movement for hope and change has taken a blow, and I often try to get people to understand when you're in the campaign mode you're trying to get people to go from despair to hope. When you're governing, you're trying to go from hope to change, and change is harder.
It's just like me, I'm 15 pounds overweight and I had a doughnut coming over here. (Laughter) That's called despair, right?
Tavis: And only 15 pounds overweight? I ain't feeling sorry for you. I'm more than 15, but go ahead.
Jones: But sometimes you just say the heck with it, I'm never going to get back in shape - that's despair. Sometimes you look at all the magazines and you kind of look at the guys and say, "I could look like that." (Laughter) That's hope. Losing the 15 pounds? That's change.
Tavis: Yeah. (Laughter)
Jones: That's hard. Change is up and down, it's back and forth, and that's where we are right now as a country, both with the green agenda and with the whole political agenda. Change is hard, it's up and down; it's back and forth. But if you don't go back to despair, if you keep the hope alive, to quote a great leader in our country, if you keep the hope alive, then all things are possible.
So I know that people say, oh, the climate stuff, we don't know, blah, blah, all this controversy. Here's what I know - we need jobs in America, and right now if you want the jobs of tomorrow you have to make the products of tomorrow. That's the only way you're going to get those jobs.
While we're having this kind of back-and-forth and arguing about whether the science is real, blah, blah, blah, our sisters and brothers in China, God bless them, have now leapfrogged us in the past year on now they are the number one producer of the wind turbines we're going to need, the smart batteries we're going to need for advanced cars, the solar panels we're going to need.
We've got tremendous wind and solar resources here, but I'm not talking about green jobs of just somebody putting up Chinese technology and going home. I want us to have the factories producing that stuff here so we can ship it around the world and not just import it.
Tavis: To your point of a moment ago, Van, about the science, what do you make of the fact that all these years later we are still in this debate? Whenever anybody wants to make the point that global warming isn't real, that this isn't true, this is true, there is some science they can find somewhere to support that.
I think everyday people in America are still trying to figure out who's telling the truth about this.
Jones: Well, we went through this as a country before, and it was about tobacco. People forget for years and years and decades and decades, the tobacco industry said well, what about this study? What about that study? What about this study? (Laughter) For years, to the peril of my father, who died two years ago of lung cancer and emphysema.
So we've been through this before. What we know about science is nobody has an incentive in science to agree with anybody else. You don't get a Nobel Prize in science saying -
Tavis: For agreeing with folk.
Jones: Exactly - saying, "Tavis is right. Where's my Nobel Prize?" (Laughter) You don't get that.
Tavis: Got to do your own thing, yeah.
Jones: Exactly, you have to do your own thing. So if you get 60, 70, 80, 90 percent agreement in science, case closed. You'll find people right now who say HIV doesn't cause AIDS, but when you get 90 percent of the people saying it's true, that's as close to unanimity as you're going to get in science.
But what happens is when there's big financial interest, Tavis, they'll point to that 10 percent forever, until we have baked this planet, just as they pointed to faulty science forever until my father died. This is something that we've got to be clear about.
People are saying, "Oh, well, look at all the snow in D.C. Therefore, it can't be global warming." That's why Thomas Friedman has been saying for so long to the environmentalists, "Don't call it global warming, call it global weirding." That's what he says, because climate change, it's three feet of snow in D.C. when you don't have snow with the Winter Olympics. That looks like change to me.
Climate change means you're going to have all kind of wild events, and you can't plan. You can't plan your agriculture; you don't know what's going to be happening. So we have to take our science seriously, but more importantly we've got to take our economy seriously.
I do not want to see this country go from importing dirty energy from the Middle East to importing clean energy technology from China and skip all the jobs in the middle. So to me, that's the common ground, and the reason that this green jobs movement I think is so important is that if you just - everybody just calm down for a second.
This is the common ground in America. Who doesn't want the jobs of tomorrow? Who doesn't want us to be energy independent and tap our own resources for energy and do for ourselves what we've asked other countries to do for us? Who can argue - we're not saying we want more Welfare. We're saying we want more work. We're not saying we want more entitlements. I'm arguing we want more enterprise.
We're not saying we want to redistribute existing wealth. We're saying we want to actually reinvigorate and revitalize our energy sector to create new wealth. So progressives should be happy because we're talking about poverty and jobs and environmentalism, but conservatives should be happy too because we're talking about using market-based mechanisms to get it done, and that's my politics.
Tavis: But when you got on the inside at the White House, to go back to that just for a second, were your hopes, your aspirations, confirmed that you could actually do your part to deliver those green jobs for the people you've been working on behalf of your entire life, everyday people, many of them people of color?
Jones: Absolutely yes, and one of the great things about this administration - again, I think the president doesn't get enough credit - look at his green cabinet. You have Secretary Chu, who's Asian-American, who have Salazar -
Tavis: Lisa Jackson.
Jones: Well, Lisa Jackson, who's my huge hero, obviously, an African American woman. You've got Salazar at Interior, who's as green as anybody, who's Latino. You have a rainbow green cabinet that has so many different approaches, and even Vilsack, who's a Caucasian male but who's looking at rural America and saying to them, "Yes, red states, rural America, you can be a part of a green future as well."
So you have literally every color in the Skittles bag in his cabinet, all of them talking about green and clean solutions, and the level of coordination to get this done is extraordinary. Don't forget, $80 billion in the recovery package. Then you talk about the disadvantaged. Look at the Department of Energy - they have put together something called a retrofit roundup that is going to concentrate whole neighborhoods following obviously Representative Cleaver's great leadership, where he took a whole neighborhood of low-income people and said rather than just throw recovery dollars here and there we're going to concentrate those dollars, retrofit homes so people can save money on their energy bills, put people to work improving those homes, upgrading those homes, creating local jobs.
At the same time, because homes that are more efficient don't put so much strain on our power plants, you're cutting pollution. Well, he did that in one city and now the Department of Energy is moving that across the country. So there is an effort to concentrate some of these recovery dollars in smart ways for people who need jobs.
Tavis: Was Copenhagen a success, failure, or somewhere in the middle?
Jones: Somewhere in the middle. It wasn't Hopenhagen, it wasn't Nopenhagen. (Laughter) It was just Copenhagen, so that's what -
Tavis: Just coping.
Jones: It was just coping, just Copenhagen.
Tavis: Yeah, yeah.
Jones: But I have to applaud this president because he had enough sense to see that all these countries fighting with each other right up to the last minute weren't going to get it done, and pulled those countries off to the side - China, India, Brazil, South Africa and the United States - and said, "We may not be able to solve everything today, but we're not going to leave empty-handed."
The Copenhagen accord did some incredible stuff. It put folks on record, big emerging and the United States countries on record saying we will not let this planet bake beyond two degrees. That's a huge statement.
Tavis: Huge on the one hand, but you know it did not make environmentalists happy, though.
Jones: It did not make environmentalists happy, and we have to continue moving forward. But I'm the kind of person, I look for the positive. I look for where is that little crack of sunlight that we can then all stand together around it and behind.
Tavis: What do you do - I was going to say what do you do going forward; let me rephrase that. What do you do after you get your NAACP president's award tomorrow night on Fox? For the NAACP Image Awards, after you get that high honor that you so richly deserve, where do you go next?
Jones: Well, I'm going to Princeton. Now that sounds good. (Laughter)
Tavis: Long way from Tennessee.
Jones: Exactly.
Tavis: Long way from Oakland.
Jones: Exactly. My cousins are happy about the NAACP award because they think I'm going to meet Beyonce. (Laughter) So I'm getting text messages. "Get her number." I'm like, "I'm not trying to get killed by my wife or Jay-Z," but they're happy about that.
Tavis: Right.
Jones: Then my mom's excited about Princeton, because that just sounds so good in Sunday school to say, "My baby (unintelligible) Princeton." (Laughter) I'm excited about it because I get - Tavis, if you want to have a healthy plant - I'm a green guy - you've got to have a lot of sunshine and a lot of fertilizer. That's who I am. I've had a lot of sunshine. You put me on national TV for the first time in my life; it's just gone amazingly since then.
I've also had a lot of what I call fertilizer - some pain, some setbacks. But you need all of that in order to - the successes give you confidence, but the setbacks give you character. I'm not that young guy that you knew 10 years ago, running around saying all kind of crazy stuff.
I went through a journey back to my father's values. My dad was in the military, he was police officer in the military, came home, he was an educator, raised me to be super-patriotic. I left home, Tavis, and I saw discrimination, homelessness, kids going to prison for doing stuff that the Ivy League kids were doing every day, and I was heartbroken.
I went in a very bitter, negative direction. I just rebelled against him and everything he taught me for a while. But I burned out on it, and I think a lot of people have gone through that journey, rebelling against your parents and you burn out, and what I saw was my angry rhetoric was not getting anybody a job. People couldn't live under my protest signs.
I wanted to figure out how can I make a positive contribution, and what I have discovered, my father rest in peace, he was right. What works is work, the dignity of skilled labor, giving people something they can do with their own hands. My dad always said people need to climb the ladder of poverty, as he did, themselves, so they've got it. But society has to make sure there's a ladder for them to climb, and that's my politics.
Tavis: Van Jones is among the best our community has ever produced, and that is why he is the recipient this year of the NAACP Image Award, the president's award, specifically. Van, I am so proud of you and I'm always honored to have you on this program.
Jones: Thank you. I appreciate you.
Tavis: Please -
Jones: Just getting started.
Tavis: Appreciate you back, man. We'll talk again, I'm sure.
Jones: All right, looking forward to it.
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