Van Jones: We Must Prepare for Battle 

We went from We Are One to We Are Done, Jones tells a D.C. 
audience; it's time to stop waiting for cues from Washington. 

By Adele M. Stan
Progressive America Rising via AlterNet 
Nov. 9, 2010

http://www.alternet.org/story/148764/

In a darkened space bedecked with impressionistic portraits
of the progressive movement's great heroes, Van Jones --
community organizer, environmental activist and erstwhile
presidential adviser -- steps onto a tiny stage that has just
been warmed up by two local teenage poets and graced by Amy
Goodman, the voice of Pacifica Radio's "Democracy Now!" The
audience is filled with Washington activists, including the
comedian and civil rights leader Dick Gregory, CodePink
founder Medea Benjamin and Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr.,
president of the Hip-Hop Caucus.

The room is packed, and a line snakes along the sidewalk
outside Busboys and Poets, a restaurant designed as a
gathering place for progressives, even as the event begins.

In a passionate speech focused mainly on the costs and
horrors of America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Goodman
sets the stage for Jones' talk by imploring activists to
organize. While a portrait of Rosa Parks by Anna Rose Soevik
glimmers behind her, Goodman debunks the mythology
surrounding the woman whose refusal to give up her seat on a
bus sparked the civil rights movement. "Yes, she was a tired
seamstress," Goodman says, "but Rosa Parks was an organizer."

It's the evening after the big Rally to Restore Sanity hosted
by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, and an odd mixture of
exhilaration and anxiety fills the room -- the thrill of
having been part of a gathering of like-minded people who
flooded the National Mall in a repudiation of the harsh
rhetoric of the Tea Party and cable news media, and anxiety
about the Republican tide about to come crashing into the
nation's capital in the midterm elections.

Jones has taken the temperature; he knows the score. But he's
not about to let anybody off the hook.

"Now, here's our problem," he says. "Most of the people who
are in this room have given away, over the past two years,
almost all of our power. The reason the country is in the
shape that it's in is not just because bad people created a
hate machine; it's that good people shut down the hope
machine." Hard as it is to argue with that, Jones makes no
mention of the impact on hope machine operators by his own
ascendence to the White House and abrupt purge from its
ranks, thanks to a smear campaign conducted against him by
Fox News and Americans for Prosperity, the astroturf group
that organizes Tea Party activists.

Perhaps no one in the progressive movement can ignite the
passions of his listeners like Van Jones; that's one reason
why AlterNet's Don Hazen welcomed his untimely exit from the
White House because it returned Jones to the community,
releasing him from the bonds of rhetorical restraint that
come with a job inside the power structure.

Although this recently built Busboys and Poets in a formerly
down-at-the-heels Washington neighborhood is a sprawling
space for a city restaurant -- it features a fair-trade gift
shop, a performance space, and a large bar-in-the-round --
the venue is minuscule compared to the big conference stages
where I've seen Jones speak in the past. His manner here is
in keeping with the atmosphere, which somehow manages to
convey the intimacy of a jazz club, but one infused with the
politics of its diverse clientele: hipsters and buppies, gay
activists and hip-hop poets, anti-war crusaders and pillars
of the progressive establishment.

Forgetting Our History

Jones' remarks veer from admonishment (with a subtle note of
self-recrimination), to pep talk, to prescription. Partway
through the talk, his aim becomes clear; he has come not just
to commiserate with the Washington contingent, but to
organize its members to do battle as power changes hands in
the halls of Congress. After pointing the finger at his own
allies in the room, he tells them they have forgotten their
own history, then buoys them up by recounting that history.

"The politics of hope and change in this country did not
start in Iowa in 2008," Jones tells the faithful. "The
politics of hope and change started in 2003, when we didn't
have a superhero; we didn't have a messiah, we didn't have a
lot of organization, we didn't have a bunch of money. What we
had was one-party rule here in D.C., and an unjust, unlawful
war about to start -- and each other. And with no superhero,
and no messiah, you and me and people that we know took to
the streets. And in six weeks, we organized more people
against that war in Iraq than were organized against the Viet
Nam war in six years. We did that. You did that."

He goes on to recount how the progressive movement almost
stopped George W. Bush's re-election in 2004, coming within
100,000 votes in Ohio of defeating the Republican president's
bid for a second term, and how progressive organizing helped
win Nancy Pelosi the speaker's gavel in the House of
Representatives. The Obama victory, he explains, didn't begin
with Barack Obama inspiring progressives; it began with
progressives inspiring Obama. "So, if there's an inspiration
deficit, or an inspiration gap in America, don't look to
him," Jones says, "let's look back to ourselves."

Two Big Battles Ahead In the coming session of Congress,
Jones tells his audience, there are two major battles he sees
as critical to both the progressive movement and the well-
being of all Americans: the fight to maintain social programs
and the struggle to save the Environmental Protection Agency
from a promised assault by the Republicans who now rule the
House.

"Both parties are likely to unite on the question of shoving
an austerity program down the throats of the American people
as a way to reduce the fiscal deficit," Jones says. "Both
parties are likely to say we're gonna cut back on benefits
for people who need help."

Republicans have already promised an assault on the new
health care reform law that was passed in March. "If we cut
back the health care bill," Jones says, "we're going to let
hospitals and clinics start closing around the country
because we can't afford to keep them open."

But before allowing Congress to address the federal budget
deficit on the backs of the people, Jones, says, "our
movement is going to have to stand up and say, what about the
moral deficit? The moral deficit, where we give money to
Halliburton while taking money from hospitals in our own
country." "This is not a left-right issue, this is not a red-
blue issue," Jones insists. "You can go anywhere in this
country and ask, do you want 44 kids in a classroom so we can
keep these wars going, and you won't find anybody in red
states or blue states who will say, yeah, I want these wars."

The second big battle, Jones says, is for nothing less than
the fate of the planet -- which is how he sees the assault on
the EPA promised by the GOP. At present, Jones says, EPA
administrator Lisa Jackson has powers granted her under the
Clean Air Act, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, "to start
dealing with greenhouse gases, whether Congress likes it or
not." Having thwarted climate change legislation in the last
session of Congress, Jones says, Republicans will next
attempt to "change the rules to strip that authority away
from her."

Indeed, a number of Tea Party candidates ran on platforms
that include defunding the EPA. "An attack on Lisa Jackson is
an attack on the entire progressive movement," Jones says,
"and we've got to let them know that right away."

"That fight is going to be the most important fight for the
environment on Planet Earth next year," Jones says. "If we
allow the authority that she already has to be taken away,
the planet may be greenhouse-gas attacked."

The Donut Theory of Despair

But as much as Republicans are the opposition, Jones says,
the real enemy is despair. "You know, we went from despair to
hope in America, and then we tried to do the change and now
we're all going back to despair."

"Now I want you to look at your personal life," he continues.
"If you were, like myself, 10 pounds, 15 pounds overweight,
and you say to yourself, I'm overweight, but I'm still going
to eat this donut -- I'll even eat two donuts, right? That's
called despair. That's despair."

"Now, with your fingers still sticky from the donut," Jones
says, wriggling his fingers, "you might be walking through
the mall, and you see a fitness magazine in the window, and
you stand there, you look at the fitness magazine, and you
see somebody with the washboard abs, you know? And they got
the biceps" -- he makes a muscle -- "and they got the
triceps" -- he pulls his arm back to show a tricep -- "and
you say to yourself" -- putting on a faint and geeky voice --
"I could look like that."

"That's called hope," he asserts. "That's hope."

He goes on: "Actually going to the gym, changing your diet,
doing all those sit-ups -- that's called change, right?" The
audience bursts into amused applause.

"You have good days, bad days -- you're up and down, you
know? And in politics, when you do change, you have good
years and bad years; you have ups, you have downs. But the
one thing you know is, if you fall all the way back to
despair, then no change is possible. But if you can just
stick with the hope in the tough times, then all change is
still possible. And that's where we are."

If We Are The Ones We've Been Waiting For, What Are We
Waiting For?

There's been too much focus on Obama among progressives,
Jones says, and not enough on growing the movement on our own
terms, even though, he notes, progressives helped to create
as many jobs in the wind energy industry as there are coal
miners in America -- 80,000 -- and another 46,000 in the
solar energy industry.

"But somehow we became a movement, after our greatest
victory, that sits around munching popcorn, waiting for one
person to give a great speech so we can feel good," tells the
activists. "Now, that's gotta stop."

The inauguration wasn't even the high point of the post-
election euphoria in 2008, Jones asserts. It was brutally
cold, he reminds his audience: "People had snot frozen in
their mustache and beard and nobody told 'em," he says. "It
was horrible. The inauguration was an important day; it was
not a happy day." Far happier, he says, was the pre-inaugural
event two days before -- the star-studded We Are One concert
at the Lincoln Memorial. "Who remembers the president's
speech that day?" he asks, rhetorically. "Nobody."

He raves about being in the presence of Bono and Samuel L.
Jackson. The lineup also included Bruce Springsteen, Garth
Brooks, Beyoncé, Josh Groban, Mary J. Blige, Stevie Wonder
and the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington, among others.

"You had the full beauty of the American people, the full
force of our culture on display," he says. "None of those
people quit the movement and joined the Tea Party. All that
creativity, all that power, all that spirit, all that soul --
it's still here. We went from We Are One to We Are Done, and
we never got a chance to bring that back out. Well, guess
what? The days are now over when any of us can afford to wait
for a politician in Washington, D.C., to set the tone and the
tenor and the face of our movement."

If Jones' talk had a sound track, this is where you would cue
up the orchestra swell for the grand finale.

"Now, once we unleash that force, we are not going to be
stopped ever again. Understand that. That is the great fear,
I believe, that the other side has. They're not concerned
about what's going on in D.C.; they have that under control.
They're concerned about what you represent out there: every
color, every class, hugging and kissing -- November 4, 2008
-- they'd never seen that before; the world had never seen
that before."

"That does not have to be the great exception in the American
story," he continues. "If we decide in this room that that
day, that minute, is going to be the great example of who we
will be every day, we will be able to achieve in this country
every single thing we said we were going to do in 2008, and
much, much more - and, yes, we still can. We -- we -- still
can."

[Adele M. Stan is AlterNet's Washington bureau chief.]

© 2010 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. View this
story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/148764/

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