Van Jones, 'Green Jobs Czar', a self-described 'communist' arrested during Rodney King riots

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http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-722-Conservative-Politics-Examiner~y2009m7d17-Van-Jones-Green-Jobs-Czar-a-selfdescribed-communist-arrested-during-Rodney-King-riots

July 17, 9:58 AMConservative Politics ExaminerKathy Shaidle

Van Jones is President Barack Obama's newly appointed "Green Jobs Czar."

Jones' official title is Special Advisor on Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation for the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

The 41-year-old Yale Law School graduate and civil rights lawyer is also the founder of California's Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, "a non-profit agency for justice, opportunities and peace."

Sounds idyllic, but Jones' past isn't so pastoral.

The Ella Baker Center was connected to STORM (Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement), a "multi-racial activist collective with Marxist influences" with which Jones was involved.

In 1992, Van Jones founded another STORM project, Bay Area PoliceWatch, a "hotline and lawyer-referral service for victims and survivors of police abuse." This is fitting, perhaps, since Jones was himself arrested and detained briefly during a protest after the Rodney King verdict that same year.

Jones told the East Bay Express in 2005:

I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th [1992], and then the verdicts came down on April 29th. By August, I was a communist. (...)

I met all these young radical people of color – I mean really radical: communists and anarchists. And it was, like, 'This is what I need to be a part of.' I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary.

Like a character out of The Big Chill, Van Jones seems to have evolved from radical activist to Establishment insider. Perhaps only a left-wing administration incapable of recognizing irony would put a self-described communist in charge of creating jobs.

Luckily for Van Jones, and Obama's many other "Czars" with dubious credentials and troubling backgrounds, his new job was not dependent upon making it through Congressional hearings.

http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2009/04/obama-file-72-obama-appoints-former.html

Obama File 72 Obama Appoints "Former" Communist To White House "Green Job"

Obama File 71 here

A few short years ago Anthony (Van) Jones was a Bay Area radical agitator-a committed Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, waging war on the police and capitalist system.



Today Van Jones holds a key position in the US government and has the ear of President Barack Obama.



According to the White House Blog March 10th, 2009

The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) Chair Nancy Sutley announced yesterday that Van Jones – an early green jobs visionary -- will start Monday as Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at CEQ:

Van Jones has been a strong voice for green jobs and we look forward to having him work with departments and agencies to advance the President’s agenda of creating 21st century jobs that improve energy efficiency and utilize renewable resources. Jones will also help to shape and advance the Administration’s energy and climate initiatives with a specific interest in improvements and opportunities for vulnerable communities

Jones is the founder of Green For All, an organization focused on creating green jobs in impoverished areas. He is also the co-founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and Color of Change, and was the author of the 2008 New York Times best-seller, The Green Collar Economy.


Today Van Jones mixes not with street level militants, but with the cream of the left "establishment".

But who is Van Jones? Has he really abandoned his communist beliefs?

Van Jones first moved to San Francisco in the spring of 1992, while studying law at Yale, when the leftist Lawyers Committee for Human Rights hired several law students to act as legal observers during the trial of policemen charged with assaulting Rodney King.

Not guilty verdicts in the King case led to mass rioting-which Jones joined in.

Arrested and jailed, Van Jones met a whole new circle of friends.

From the East Bay Express November 2nd 2005

"I met all these young radical people of color - I mean really radical, communists and anarchists. And it was, like, 'This is what I need to be a part of... I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary...I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th..By August, I was a communist."


The communist organisation Van jones went on to lead was called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM).


According to the leftist blog Machete 48

Returning to Van Jones, with all the shimmer associated with a rising star, many forget that a man now advising the president was a member of a revolutionary organization in the SF Bay Area called STORM (Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement). Throughout the group’s history, Van Jones was seen as a public figure within the Bay Area left and a leading member of STORM.

STORM had its roots in a grouping of people of color organizing against he Gulf War in the early 1990’s and was formally founded in 1994. The group’s politics had a number of influences, but evolved towards what could be best characterized as third worldist Marxism (and an often vulgar Maoism). The group grew in influence until its disbanding in 2002 amid problems of internal dynamics and especially controversy around the leadership roles that members played in the youth movement (such as the fight against Proposition 21). Nearly the entire membership of the organization was staff members for various social movement non-profits in the Bay Area, many linked to the Ella Baker Center, which Van Jones steered.

While never large, STORM was one of the most influential and active radical groups in the Bay Area, controlling numerous front organisations including Bay Area Police Watch, one of several anti police activities Jones was involved in.


Van Jones right, "interacting" with San Francisco police

Other STORM fronts included a Marxist training organisation-School of Unity and Liberation (SOUL) and an unemployed rights group-People Organized to Win Employment Rights(POWER).

Jones and STORM were also very active in the anti Iraq War demonstrations of the early 2000s.


Jones supporting International ANSWER-a front for the pro North Korean Workers World Party

While way out on the left STORM also worked with "mainstream" communists.

Bay Area left identity Elizabeth (Betita) Martinez was close to Jones and helped "mentor" his Ella Baker Human Rights Center.


Betita Martinez

Martinez was a long time Maoist who went on to join the Communist Party USA breakaway organisation Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS)in the early 1990s.

Martinez still serves on the CCDS advisory board alongside radicals such as Angela Davis, Timuel Black (a personal friend of Barack Obama who served on his 2004 Senate campaign committee) and musician Pete Seeger (who performed at Obama's Washington Inauguration Concert.

Martinez is also a board member of Movement for a Democratic Society, the radical parent body of Progressives for Obama.

Martinez and Jones worked together on several projects including attending a Challenging White Supremacy workshop which much impressed Jones;

“To solve the new century's mounting social and environmental problems, people of color activist and white activists need to be able to join forces. But all too often, the unconscious racism of white activists stands in the way of any effective, worthwhile collaboration. The Challenging White Supremacy Workshop is the most powerful tool that I have seen for removing the barriers to true partnerships between people of color and white folks. If the CWS trainings were mandatory for all white activists, the progressive movement in the United States would be unstoppable.”

They also both worked together with another STORM member Adam Gold on the organizing committee for anti Iraq War newspaper War Times.

STORM also had ties to the South African Communist Party, with three "core" comrades attending the SACP Congress in 1998.

STORM also very much admired Amilcar Cabral the late revolutionary leader of Guinea-Bissau and the Cape Verde Islands


Amilcar Cabral right

STORM may have learned about Amilcar Cabral from the SACP which also revered him.



A tribute to Cabral from the SACP's African Communist, No. 53, second quarter 1973.

"How is it that we, a people deprived of everything, living in dire straits, manage to wage our struggle and win successes? Our answer is: this is because Lenin existed, because he fulfilled his duty as a man, a revolutionary and a patriot. Lenin was and continues to be, the greatest champion of the national liberation of the peoples."

These were the words addressed to the delegates attending the seminar on "Lenin and National Liberation" held at Alma Ata, capital of Soviet Socialist Republic of Kazakhstan, in 1970 by Amilcar Cabral, Secretary-General of the PAIGC, who met his death on 20th January 1973 at Conakry, Guinea, at the hands of a traitor, Innocenta Canida, an agent of the Portuguese colonialists who had infiltrated into the ranks of the movement three years ago.

These words reflect the revolutionary thinking and life-work of this utterly dedicated patriot, outstanding African revolutionary of our time and the father of the new independent sovereign State of Guinea in the process of birth. It was the cognition of the scientific theory of revolution, of Marxism-Leninism, to which he was introduced by his contacts with the Portuguese Communist Party during his student days in Lisbon which was to combine within him, in the words of the statement of the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party, "a deep understanding of the processes of the African revolution with an untiring devotion to practical struggle."

Van Jones has named his three year old son Cabral-in honor of his hero.

Jones reportedly uses a quote from Cabral in every email he sends;

“Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories. . . . Our experience has shown us that in the general framework of daily struggle this battle against ourselves, this struggle against our own weaknesses . . . is the most difficult of all.”

Is Van Jones living up to that quote?

Is Van Jones hiding "nothing from the masses of our people"?