The LA Times is reporting, Glenn Beck goes after Color of Change co-founder Van Jones
Glenn Beck used his popular Fox News show this afternoon to attack the background of Van Jones, a White House environmental advisor who co-founded an African American political advocacy group that organized an advertising boycott of his program.
During his 2 p.m. PDT show, Beck did not address the boycott spearheaded by Color of Change to protest the talk show host’s remark last month that he believes President Obama is “a racist.”
Instead, he spent a large share of his program suggesting that Jones, who co-founded Color of Change in 2005, is a radical. Jones now serves as a special advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
During a six-minute biographical profile, set to ominous music, Beck said Jones was twice arrested for political protests and has described himself as a “rowdy black nationalist.” The talk show host cast the piece as part of a broader examination of Obama’s “czars,” special advisers to the president who “don’t answer to anybody.”“Why is it that such a committed revolutionary has made it so high into the Obama administration as one of his chief advisers?” Beck asked.
Christine Glunz, a spokeswoman for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, noted that Jones has been lauded as an environmental hero and said his entire focus is on “building clean energy incentives which create 21st-century jobs.”
“Glenn Beck is trying to change the subject,” said James Rucker, executive director of Color of Change, who noted that Jones has not been active with the group in almost two years. “The issue is his baseless fear mongering.”
Van Jones, author of NY Times Bestseller The Green Collar Economy How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems is a long time civil rights and environmental activist and was the founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland CA.
The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights is a strategy and action center working for justice, opportunity and peace in urban America. Based in Oakland, California, we promote positive alternatives to violence and incarceration through our four cutting-edge campaigns.
Ella Baker, for those of you not familiar with her, is one of my Sheroes.
The granddaughter of a slave who was beaten for refusing to marry a man her master chose for her, Ella Baker spent her life working behind the scenes to organize the Civil Rights Movement. If she could have changed anything about the movement, it might have been to persuade the men leading it that they, too, should do more work behind the scenes. Baker was a staunch believer in helping ordinary people to work together and lead themselves, and she objected to centralized authority. In her worldview, “strong people don’t need strong leaders.”
I have lived my life to her battle cry “We Who Believe in Freedom Cannot Rest” immortalized in song by Sweet Honey in the Rock. She was a mentor to many of us youngsters in the movement, always there encouraging and supporting us, when others advised us to go slow.
Kudos to Van Jones for continuing her legacy.
Glenn Beck obviously doesn’t think black folks, or poor folks should have a role in the green revolution.
He believes only in the acrid green bile he spews of hatred, and the green of fat cat dollars that fund his campaign of venom.
Those of us who are proud of the work of Green For All see things differently.
Green For All is a national organization working to build an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty.
Our Mission
Green For All is dedicated to improving the lives of all Americans through a clean energy economy. We work in collaboration with the business, government, labor, and grassroots communities to create and implement programs that increase quality jobs and opportunities in green industry – all while holding the most vulnerable people at the center of our agenda.
Why America Needs a Clean Energy Economy
A clean energy economy will move America past some of our most pressing challenges. By making us energy independent, it will improve our national and economic security. By radically reducing pollution, it will improve the health of our families and neighborhoods, as well as repair our deteriorating atmosphere. And by creating millions of quality jobs and careers, it will pull America out of the current recession, better protect us from future economic turmoil, and save lives here and abroad.
More than that, building a clean energy economy is a chance to reinvigorate and reinvest in the best part of the American dream: the idea that everyone gets a chance to succeed and be happy. By ensuring that every community has equal access to the opportunity of the new economy, we can lift millions of people out of poverty.
Last year, Van Jones spoke at Netroots Nation.
Van Jones at Netroots Nation 2008
Van Jones has neither hidden nor eschewed his history of organizing and activism.
Born in 1968 in rural West Tennessee. He graduated from Jackson Central-Merry High School in Jackson, Tennessee, in 1986. After earning his B.A. from the University of Tennessee at Martin, Jones left his home state to attend Yale Law School. In 1993, Jones earned his J.D. and moved to San Francisco.In 1995, Jones started Bay Area PoliceWatch, the region’s only bar-certified hotline and lawyer-referral service for victims and survivors of police abuse. PoliceWatch began as a project of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, but by 1996 had grown big enough to seed a new umbrella NGO, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.
From 1996-1997, Jones and PoliceWatch led a successful campaign to get officer Marc Andaya fired from the San Francisco Police Department. Andaya was the lead officer responsible for the in-custody death of Aaron Williams, an unarmed black man. In 1999 and 2000, Jones was a major leader in the failed campaign to defeat Proposition 21, which sparked a vibrant youth and student movement that made national headlines. In 2001, Jones and Ella Baker Center launched the Books Not Bars campaign. From 2001-2003, Jones and Books Not Bars
led a successful campaign to block the construction of a proposed “Super-Jail for Youth” in Oakland’s Alameda County. Books Not Bars later went on to launch a statewide campaign to transform California’s juvenile justice system. That campaign is still winning major reforms.
I applaud President Obama for his appointment. I applaud Van Jones for his commitment to social, economic and environmental justice. He is part of Ella Baker’s legacy.
Read some of the vile comments attached to the LA Times Article. The haters are out in force. Let him know we got his back.
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Cross-posted at Daily Kos
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