K. Anthony "Van" Jones (born September 20, 1968) is an American to promote environmental issues, civil rights activist and lawyer. Jones is co-founder of three non-profit organizations. In 1996 he founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, a nongovernmental organization in California (NGOs) working in alternatives to violence. In 2005 he co-founded the color change, a pressure group of African-Americans. In 2007 he founded Green for All, an NGO dedicated to "Building inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty." His first book, The Green Collar Economy, published October 7, 2008, and reached 12 in New York Times best seller. In 2008, Time magazine named Jones, one of its "Heroes of Environment". Fast Company, he was invited by one of the "12 most creative minds in 2008.In March 2009, Jones was appointed by President Barack Obama's newly created position of special adviser for green jobs, entrepreneurship and innovation in the White House Council on Environmental Quality, where he worked on various "offices and departments to promote the climate, the government and energy initiatives focus on improving the vulnerable communities. " In July 2009 he was" involved in a controversy " about his past political activities, including a public consultation nasty Republicans in Congress, his name appears on a petition for 911Truth.org and allegations of association with a Marxist group in the 1990s. For these questions, Van Jones has been heavily criticized by the Conservatives. Jones has retired from employment in early September 2009. "On the eve of the historic struggle for health and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me," Jones said in his statement of resignation.
"They use lies and distortions to distract and divide."
Jones is currently Senior Research Fellow Center for American Progress and Senior Advisor for all of the green. Jones also holds a joint appointment at Princeton University, unlike Visiting Fellow at the Center for African Studies American program and the politics of science, technology and environment at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
Early Life :
Jones and his twin sister Angela was born in 1968 in Jackson, Tennessee. His mother was a school teacher and his father was principal of a school. Jones's sister, said that a child was "the stereotype of the geek, you just kind of life in his head a lot." He described his own childhood behavior as "strange and bookish." His grandfather was the oldest bishop in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, and Jones often accompanied his grandfather's religious conference, where he sat all day listening to the adults' in these churches warm, moist black . Jones was a young fan of John and Bobby Kennedy, and pin photos to a bulletin board in your room at special defined "Kennedy Section." As a child with Star Wars characters with the Kennedy political era was Jean Luke Skywalker, Han Solo was Bobby, and Lando Calrissian was Martin Luther King, Jr.
He graduated from Central High School Jackson-Merry in 1986. Jones received his BA 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 Times of Shreveport (Louisiana) and the Associated Press (Nashville Office). He also helped start and run a series of independent publishing efforts on campus. These publications included in the fourteenth Circle (University of Tennessee), the Periscope (Vanderbilt University), the proposed new covenant (the entire state of Tennessee), and the third eye (Nashville African-American community). Jones credits UT Martin to prepare for life on the world stage :
UT Martin I left convinced that I could meet a challenge and do well on it if I studied hard and worked hard and kept my nose clean. I think you can get absolutely nothing in UT-Martin. . . because of the quality of care and individual attention.
After graduating from UT-Martin, Jones left his home country to attend Yale Law School. In 1993, Jones received his Juris Doctor degree and moved to San Francisco, California.
Social Activism And Environmental :
Early Activism :In 1992, while a law student at Yale, Jones has participated in a voluntary legal opposition to follow the Court of Rodney King in San Francisco. He and many other participants in the protest were arrested. The district attorney later dismissed the charges against Jones. Protesters were arrested, including Jones, won a small legal solution. Jones said later that "the incident deepened my disaffection with the system and speed up my political radicalization." In October 2005, Jones said he was "troubled the nationalist" before the Court of the King was declared, but in August the same year (1992), was a Communist. His activism was driven by witnessing the racial disparity in New Haven, Connecticut: "I see young people use drugs at Yale, and talk about it openly, and have nothing happen to them or, if necessary, can be sent ... And then there was in rehab to see kids three blocks, housing projects, doing the same drugs in smaller quantities, go to jail.
When he graduated from law school, Jones gave the plans to take a job in Washington, DC, and moved to San Francisco instead. He has been involved in this act together to organize a revolutionary movement (STORM), where Jones began to actively protest police brutality. storm was a socialist group whose official points of unity "has maintained the revolutionary democracy, feminism, revolutionary, revolutionary internationalism, the central role of the working class, urban Marxism, and communism in the Third World , who built relationships with other organizations to organize events, including wars and against police violence.
In 1995, Jones began PoliceWatch Bay Area, only the area of Bar-certified lawyer referral and hotline services to victims of police abuse. The hotline began receiving calls daily fifteen . PoliceWatch began as a project of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights. "We designed a database, the first of its kind in the country, allowing us to track problem officers, exacerbate the problem, the practical problem, so a mouse click, we can identify hot spots and troublemakers" said Jones. "It gave us a great advantage to try to understand the scope and magnitude of the problem. Now, of course, just because someone calls and says," and therefore, the officer does something to me, is not say what really happened But if you get two, four, six phone calls over the same official, then you begin to see a pattern. It gives you the opportunity to try and take positive action.
In 1996, Jones founded a new NGO umbrella, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which" consisted of a closet-like office and a computer that Jones had brought from his apartment.
From 1996-1997, Jones led police eve of a campaign that was successful in obtaining an officer Marc Andaya from the San Francisco police. Andaya was the senior officer charged with the death in custody of Aaron Williams, an unarmed man black. In 1999 and 2000, Jones was a leader in the unsuccessful campaign to defeat Proposition 21, which triggered a student who made national headlines. In 2001, Jones and Ella Baker Center Books not Bars campaign. From 2001 to 2003 led Jones and the books are not bars, a campaign to block the construction of a proposed "super-jail for youth" in Oakland in Alameda County. Books not bars later went on to launch a campaign to transform the entire state of California's juvenile justice system.
Color Change :
After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Jones and co-founder James Rucker of a Web-based organization as a basis for addressing Black called Color of Change. Color of the mission to change, as described on their website is "to strengthen the voice ColorOfChange.org U.S. policy Black Our goal is to provide our members with Black Americans and our allies to make the government more responsive the concerns of blacks. Americans and make a positive change for all social and political. Within two years of co-founder of the organization, Jones went to other occupations, but the color remains in the Change the site as "former officials".
Switch In The Ecology And Green For All :
In 2005, Jones had begun to promote eco-capitalism and environmental justice. In 2005, the Ella Baker Center expanded its vision beyond the immediate concerns of the police, saying "If you really want to help our communities to escape the cycle of incarceration, they have begun to focus on job creation, wealth and health. "[23] In 2005, Jones and the Ella Baker Center has produced the" Social Equity Track "for the United Nations celebration of World Environment Day, which this year s will be held in San Francisco. This was the official start of what became the Green campaign Ella Baker Center for jobs.
Green-Collar Jobs campaign was the first joint effort by Jones' to merge his desire to improve the economic and racial equality in his later desire to mitigate environmental concerns. It 'started as soon as its task the establishment of the nation's first "Green Jobs Corps" in Oakland. 20. October 2008, the city officially began in Oakland in Oakland Green Jobs Corps, a public-private partnership, which "provides a local Oakland residents job training, support and experience, so you can independently monitor the new energy economy. "
In September 2007, Jones Clinton Global Initiative and announced its intention to launch Green for All, a new national NGO dedicated to the creation of greenways poverty in America. The plan comes from the work already done at the local level in the Ella Baker Center. Green for all would be to take the mission of the Campaign for green jobs - to create greenways poverty - national.
Green for All will be officially opened on January 1, 2008. In its first year, green for all organized "The Dream Reborn," the first national conference of green, where most of the participants were people of color. He is co-organized with 1Sky and the We Campaign, a national day of action for the new economy called "green jobs now." He launched the cities green collar to help cities build local economies and Green started the Green for All Capital Access Program to help green entrepreneurs. Under the Clean Energy Corps Work Force launched a campaign for a Clean Energy Corps initiative that would create 600 000 'green' jobs, while the renovation and modernization of more than 15 million U.S. buildings . UU.
Reflecting on the green for the first year, Jones wrote: "A year later, all is real green -. And we help create green jobs in the map ... We have a long way to go, but now have a strong organization to help us get there. "
Jones advocates a combination of conservation, regulation and investment as a way to encourage environmental justice and reverse environmental racism. In an interview with "Democracy EON Series in-depth interviews," Jones spoke of a "third wave of ecology":
The first wave is a kind of Teddy Roosevelt, conservation era has had its day and then, in 1963, Rachel Carson wrote a book, Silent Spring, and speaks of toxic and environment, and really kind of opening a whole new wave. So not only conservation but conservation and regulation, to try to regulate the bad, and such waves are further developed and has achieved a kind of update of 2.5 aa community justice because of the environment said, "Wait a minute, you're in control, but not too white regulate polluters and environmentalists are mostly white poison control in communities of color, because they are part of racial justice." ... Now there's something new begins to grow, and therefore the conservation of poor control, increased investment in the right ... start putting money in solutions as well as trying to solve the problem.
Jones has served on the board of several environmental organizations and nonprofit organizations, including 1Sky, the Apollo National Alliance, Social Venture Network, Rainforest Action Network, Bioneers, Julia Butterfly Hill "Circle of Life" organization Free Press. He was also a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and a member of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. He was the guest speaker at the conference of youth exchange energy in 2009 and 2011 in Washington, DC
During the 2003 election in California gubernatorial recall, Jones served as Arianna Huffington, director of the statewide database.
Green Collar Economy :
On October 7, 2008, published the first book HarperOne Jones, Green Collar Economy. The book describes his "substantive and viable plan to solve the major problems the country l'économie-deficient and our devastated environment." The book received positive reviews from Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, Laurie David, Paul Hawke, Winona LaDuke and Ben Jealous .
In the book, Jones argued that the invention and investment will take place in an underground economy based on pollution and a healthy new green economy Jones wrote:
We are entering an era in which our very survival requires the invention and innovation on a scale unprecedented in the history of human civilization. Only the company has the necessary skills, experience and capital to meet this need. On this point, not the government and the nonprofit sector and volunteering in a position to compete, even remotely.
So in the end, our success and survival as a species are largely and directly related to the new eco-entrepreneurs and the success and survival of their businesses. Since almost all the necessary environmental technologies is likely to come from the private sector, civic leaders and voters must do everything we can do to help green business leaders succeed. This means, in large part, the choice of leaders to pass bills to help them. Can not really be done without a strong alliance between the best company in the world and around the world.
Jones had a limited advertising budget and a national platform for media. However, a viral, marketing strategy based on the Web won the book of beginnings No. 12 on the bestseller list of The New York Times. Jones and Green for all use "a combination of e-mails and phone calls to friends, bloggers, and a network of activists" to reach millions of people . Nature's marketing campaign targeted base is not calling Jones a victory for him but for the whole movement of green collar jobs. Jones appeared on the popular radio program, changing radio del Mar, talks about the book and the creation of a "new clean and green economy ... in a way that is inclusive." The Green Collar Economy is the first environmental book written by an African American to make a list of The New York Times best-seller
