Van Jones has been inching his way back into the spotlight after his disgraceful exit from the White House - just like Glenn predicted he would! Now, he's hinting at building a progressive organization built around the economy. Sounds great (or scary)....more scary....
"And so I felt that the reason the Tea Party worked and the reason the Tea Party was so good against us was progressives are very good at building organizations around everything but the economy,” he said during a recent appearance at the University of Chicago."
"He says nothing comes to mind because there isn't a progressive economics club or organization. Now, I contend it's the Tides Foundation and it's the Center For American Progress, but what he's saying is there's not anybody out there really making the case that is separate," Glenn explained.
"By his own admission, after years as a civil rights activist and attorney in Oakland, California, Jones began to feel as though his efforts to help the disenfranchised were for naught, as he never saw the underprivileged get a leg up, regardless of how many welfare programs he fought for. Because he's looking for them in welfare programs and he never saw the underprivileged get a leg up? What about him? Was he under privileged or was he born a green jobs czar?" Glenn said.
Glenn read from The Blaze:
By his own admission, after years as a civil rights activist and attorney in Oakland, California, Jones began to feel as though his efforts to help the disenfranchised were for naught, as he never saw the underprivileged get a leg up — regardless of how many welfare programs he fought for. In his book, Rebuild The Dream, Jones recalled a conversation with his father, who believed that it was only through gainful employment that the underprivileged could gain self-reliance, and thus, self-respect.
According to his account, this realization, combined with a series of letdowns in traditional activism prompted Jones to look to the opportunities he believed existed in the newly emerging green movement, and aided Jones in stowing away some of the animus he once harbored for Capitalism, which he came to view as not wholly “evil.” In his mind, Capitalism could now be used for good via leveraging business and job opportunities within the “green economy.” This epiphany is what catalyzed Jones to pioneer green jobs initiatives as a pathway out of poverty for inner city communities, and would later lift him to the heights of an Obama administration “Green Czar.”
" To his mind capitalism could now be used for good via leveraging business and job opportunities within the green economy. What is that? That's totalitarianism. See, this is where the socialists say, oh, he's not socialist. He's not a communist because he's baling out Wall Street, he's getting into bed with big business. That's right. That's the difference between communism as the way it was when we were growing up, total control of absolutely everything, and the new kind of communism which used to be called Fascism in China," Glenn explained.
The Blaze also noted that Jones has expressed serious concern with the fact that there is no progressive economic movement:
“This is a big problem,” Jones said at one point during the panel discussion in reference to the fact that there is no progressive economic movement one can point to.“You go the the laundromat, you go to a sports bar, you go to a house of worship, ask people what the number one concern is. The economy, jobs, economic issues. And we don’t have anything to ask them to join.”
“And so I say since no one seems to have built anything in this space, can we create a movement around economic justice that would be scalable to the traditionally poor and the newly impoverished on the same team?”
The “language” and “rhetoric” of such a movement, according to Jones, would “shock the hard-core liberals and the people in the college towns and the coasts,“ but would be the ”unifying common ground on the economy.” It is at this point Jones admits that he has in fact launched such a campaign and called it: “Rebuild the Dream.”
“We now have 600,000 people,” he added.
“We’re in every congressional district. Growing like wildfire. The book came out. I think we can put up a positive Tea Party. I think we put up at Tea Party movement that’s just as passionate but not spreading fear — spreading hope, spreading love, spreading solidarity. But it has to be taken seriously as a new project. Get the traditionally poor and the newly impoverished on the same page.”
"Isn't that interesting? Van Jones got in and he has said in many interviews since, when he's at his lowest point, that they thought they had everything. They thought they controlled the House, the Senate, they controlled the White House. They thought they were done but then the Tea Party showed up and remember how much they despised us and hated it. What has he done? He's gone out and tried to recreate a Tea Party movement. Now, wait a minute. Didn't we say that that's exactly what he would do, that he would go out and he would be the movement that resembled the Martin Luther King movement or the Tea Party movement that would gather steam and allow the separation between him and Occupy to stand?"
"Van Jones is a very dangerous man. There's more on Van Jones coming. He talks about -- he talks about art and everything else. It's really fascinating to me that this stuff is just coming out now and look what he's doing. The first thing he has been talking about for a long time is you've got to commit, you've got to be ready to commit, you've got to know what you believe, you've got to stand, you've got to be there. Now he's talking about activate. Now he's talking about how we're in 435 congressional districts and we've got to activate, we've got to get out there and we've got to do these things, we've got to be -- that's tonight's episode. Those are our plans. Those are our steps. You watch."
