Van Jones joins the call for a nation-wide progressive push back, beginning Saturday.
Van Jones (right) with Center founder Jim Sheehan at the Center's Jazzed for Justice event in 2006.
Years before Van Jones was picked for a top post in the Obama Administration–and quickly became the target of a right-wing smear campaign–he was a mentor and inspiration for Jim Sheehan and the Center for Justice.
First through his work fighting against police misconduct and for civil rights in Oakland, and then as a leading thinker and organizer for the Green Collar Economy, Jones’s work exemplified and exalted the values that our law firm has been committed to for the past eleven years.
In March of 2009, President Obama appointed Jones to be the Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation for the White House Council on Environmental Quality. His appointment came two years after his best-selling book and a year after Time Magazine named him one of its “Heroes of the Environment.” He resigned his government post in September 2009, after Glenn Beck and other conservative broadcasters launched a campaign that painted him as a closet “full-fledged radical” and revolutionary.
Since then, Jones has gradually been re-emerging as an important voice on the economy, justice, and the environment with positions at Green for All in Oakland and at the Washington, D.C.-based, Center for American Progress.
Today, in his boldest stroke since leaving the White House two years ago, Jones is out with a column in the Huffington Post entitled Introducing the ‘American Dream’ Movement.’
The piece is framed by the recent Republican/Tea Party-fueled initiatives to slash state and federal funding for non-defense government programs, and the continuing mass protests in Wisconsin where state workers and their supporters are rallying against a measure that would end collective bargain rights for most public employee unions in the state.
This conflict, Jones writes, is the sign of a nation facing a serious crisis.
“America will not make it through this crisis healthy and whole if—at the first sign of trouble—we are willing to throw away millions of our everyday heroes,” he argues. “Our teachers, police officers, firefighters, nurses and others make our communities and country strong. Their daily work is essential to the smooth functioning and long-term success of our nation. An attack on them is an attack on the backbone of America.”
In response, Jones is imploring people who agree with him to enlist in MoveOn.org’s “50-State Mobilization to Save the American Dream.” The mobilization is a call to organize emergency rallies in all fifty U.S. state capitals this coming Saturday, February 26th.
Beyond Saturday’s mobilization, Jones lays out the steps he says are needed “to renew and redeem the American Dream:”
• Increase revenue for America’s government sensibly by making Wall Street and the super-rich pay their fair share.
• Reduce spending responsibly by cutting the real fat – like corporate welfare for military contractors, big agriculture and big oil.
• Simultaneously protect the heart and soul of America – our teachers, nurses and first responders.
• Guarantee the health, safety and success of our children and communities by leaving the muscle and bone of America’s communities intact.
• Maintain the American Way by treating employees with dignity and respecting their right to a seat at the bargaining table.
• Rebuild the middle class – and pathways into it – by fighting for a “made in America” innovation and manufacturing agenda, including trade and currency policies that honor American workers and entrepreneurs.
• Stand for the idea that, in a crisis, Americans turn TO each other – and not ON each other.
Image via Wikipedia
–Tim Connor
