Anthony K. Jones

Senior Fellow, Green Opportunity Initiative, Center for American Progress (since February 2010)

Why He Matters

If you've heard the phrase "green job" before, it's probably because of the work of one man: Anthony "Van" Jones. Jones took his crusade all the way to the White House under President Obama, but was forced to resign in September 2009 after a series of controversial statements and associations came to light.

Before his ouster, Jones rose from near obscurity in the Oakland, Calif., grassroots organizing scene to the leader of a national movement to spur the green economy. Jones, 40, is an author, speaker, and organizer, as well as a pioneer in bridging the gap between economic concerns, environmentalism and social justice. He became seriously involved in green job hunting as a prison-reform advocate who wanted to help low-income people of color.

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Background

At a Glance

Career History: Special Adviser on Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation in the Council on Environmental Quality (N/A 2009-September 2009); Founder and president, Green for All (January 2008-March 2008); Founder and executive director, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights (1996-2007); Co-Founder, Color of Change (2005)
Birthday: Sept. 20, 1968
Hometown: Jackson, Tenn.
Alma Mater: B.A., communications and political science, University of Tennessee,1990; J.D., Yale Law School, 1993

Spouse: Jana Carter
DC Office: Council on Environmental Quality, Executive Office of the President, The White House
Website

Path to Power

Jones was born in Jackson, Tenn., where his father was a high-school principal and his mother a teacher. He gave himself the nickname "Van" as a freshman in college at the University of Tennessee's Martin campus.Jones earned degrees in communication and political science in 1990, and went on to earn a law degree from Yale in 1993.

Jones interned at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco while he was in school and became a legal observer during the Rodney King trial. When the not-guilty verdicts were handed down, he was arrested during the citywide protests that followed. Having planned to move to Washington, Jones instead decided to stay where the action was in San Francisco.

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In jail "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,'" he said in 2005. "

"I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the [Rodney King] verdicts came down on April 29th," he said. "By August, I was a communist."

Through the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, Jones created the Bay Area PoliceWatch, a hotline where people could report police misconduct.

Ella Baker Center

In 1996, PoliceWatch grew into the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. The organization tackled state and local ballot initiatives that aimed to treat minors as adults in courts and prisons and led efforts to encourage the government to fund inner-city schools rather than juvenile detention facilities. Later, the group would expand its work to include the "Green jobs not jails" idea, advocating for programs that would train and provide jobs for young people in the environmental field.

In 2005, Jones led the "social equity track" at the United Nations' World Environment Day summit. Jones also co-founded the group Color of Change, an effort to strengthen online political organizing in the black community after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in fall 2005.

The Ella Baker Center's work led the city of Oakland to approve funds for a green jobs corps in 2007, which will help trains residents for jobs in the environmental field. Later that year, Jones worked with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) office and then-Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif.), who now serves as the secretary of labor, to get a national green jobs measure included in the 2007 energy bill. The act directed $25 million-per-year toward job programs that target low-income communities.

Green for All

In late 2007, Jones announced that he was leaving the Ella Baker Center to form a new, national group dubbed Green for All that would focus on creating green job opportunities. In that capacity, Jones has toured the country, speaking about green jobs at a number of national forums.

In April 2008, his group organized the Memphis "A Dream Reborn" conference designed to unite civil rights and environmental leaders. Jones published his first book, The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems, in October 2008, which became a New York Times bestseller.

Jones appeared as a panelist at the first meeting of the Obama administration's Middle-Class Task Force on Feb. 27, 2009. He was tapped to join the Council on Environmental Quality, headed by Nancy Sutley, on March 10, 2009.

Controversies

In summer 2009, Jones found himself in hot water with conservatives. Color of Change, which he co-founded in 2005 to strengthen online black organizing following Hurricane Katrina, made headlines when it demanded advertisers boycott Fox News host Glenn Beck's show after Beck said that Obama was a racist with a "deep-seated hatred of white people or the white color." Beck has since amended that statement to say that while not a racist, the president is a liberation theologist who believes in collective social and economic justice that us anathema to Beck's political philosophy.

Beck later devoted a segment of his show to attacking Jones as a "rowdy black nationalist," "committed revolutionary," and "self-professed communist." Conservatives also see Jones as part of dozens of "czars" in the Obama administration who are not subject to Senate confirmation, and thus public review.

In September 2009, Jones wasn't helped when a YouTube video emerged from February 2009 when he explained the lack of Democratic progress in passing Obama's agenda as the result of Republican "assholes." Jones apologized for the "offensive words."

Furthermore, Jones was pilloried for signing a 2004 petition linked to the 9-11 Truth movement, which believes that high-ranking government officials helped orchestrate the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and is demanding investigations. He later claimed he didn't read the petition before he signed.

He was forced to resign on Sept. 5, 2009, saying: "On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me...They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide."

"I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past. We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future."

Green Opportunity Initiative

In February 2010, Jones returned to the influential liberal think tank, the Center for American Progress (CAP). CAP founder John D. Podesta announced that Jones would lead a project called the Green Opportunity Initiative.

"Van is a pioneer in the effort to promote a clean, sustainable economy that works for all Americans," Podesta said as he welcomed Jones back to CAP - and back to public life after his scandal. "I'm proud that he's coming back to CAP to focus on creating economic opportunity in distressed communities through the Green Opportunity Initiative and that he will be giving voice to those issues once again."

The Issues

A lawyer by training, Jones started his career as a prison-reform advocate in Oakland, Calif., lobbying for reform of the juvenile justice system and youth-violence prevention programs.

It was through his prison-reform work that Jones became interested in developing the types of opportunities that would keep low-income youth of color out of trouble, which led him to green jobs. "I had to think long and hard about what kind of jobs I thought were legitimate jobs for the young people I want to fight for," Jones said.

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'Greening' the Ghetto

The process led to "Green Jobs Not Jails" and the formation of a movement to use the emerging green economy as a pathway out of poverty for low-income people of color.

By 2005, Jones had begun promoting the idea of green-collar jobs, or manual labor jobs in the environment and sustainability field, as an employment option for low-income, youth of color. After a decade of working in youth-violence protection and juvenile justice reform, Jones says he realized that there weren't many alternatives provided to these young people to keep them off the streets.

Jones says that the country needs to "green the ghetto first." "Give those kids on the corner the opportunity to put down the handguns and pickup a caulking gun instead," he told President Obama's Middle-Class Task Force in February 2009.

Environmental and Economic Justice

Jones argues that low-income people of color have historically borne the brunt of environmental harms, like pollution from the landfills and power plants often located in their communities. He points to Hurricane Katrina as an example of the disproportionate effects that catastrophic weather has on impoverished communities, noting that these types of events would increase with global warming. Jones argues the struggle for access to the clean, safe communities and jobs in the green economy as a continuation of the civil-rights movement.

"It's important that we don't forget the lessons of the last century about the importance of including everybody in our hearts and our minds, and our policy," Jones told the American Prospect. "If Dr. [Martin Luther] King were alive today, he would be standing in the flood waters of Katrina saying that in an age of floods, we can't leave our neighbors to sink or swim," Jones says. "He'd be saying, let's not create a racially- segregated green economy."

Green Jobs as Economic Stimulus

Jones argues that the move toward an environmentally- sustainable economy is the best hope for regaining the country's economic vitality. More green jobs would help create new jobs in construction and save energy through efficiency.

"We're at the end of that long detour from sanity, and we're going to go through a very painful readjustment where we realize we cannot build a national economy on credit cards," Jones told Grist. "We're going to have to fuel the American economy with creativity here in the United States, not credit from overseas, and get back to building rather than borrowing, and doing so in a way that honors the earth and honors people."

"Dirty Greens"

Jones has referred to those politicians and lobbyists who advocate for technologies like more environmentally-friendly fossil fuels like coal, nuclear power and tar sands as "dirty greens." "They'll say out of the one side of their mouth that they want renewables, but then, sometimes in the same sentence, they'll say they want the dirtiest and most-dangerous energy technologies ever heard of," said Jones.

Hailing from the coal-producing state of Illinois, Obama has been supportive of investments in clean coal on the campaign trail, but Jones doesn't think that should be included among green technologies.

The Network

In 2007, Jones worked on the Green Jobs Act with Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif.), who co-sponsored the bill in the House. Solis now serves as Obama's secretary of labor, and is also expected to play a key role in shaping green jobs policy.

At the Center for American Progress (CAP), Jones works for CEO John Podesta, who also headed Obama's transition team. Jones also works under another for Obama administration official, CAP's chief operating officer Neera Tanden.

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