[Sosfbay-discuss] Good Commentary about Van Jones

Fri Sep 11 18:10:50 PDT 2009

Dear Friends, 

 So much has been written about the saga of environmental
activist Van Jones, that there is little that I can add. At the top of
the California Greening blog my friend, Wes Rolley, has written "Greens
come from many backgrounds. There are more than a few who were, like
myself, once Republicans and who left that party... or rather found
that the party left them. Right now, having found a political home with
the Greens, I want to make sure that the Green Party of California does
not leave me. I am too old to go through this again." So true. The Van
Jones saga is painful for me personally because even though I do not
know Mr. Jones well, I have followed his career and read his writings
with great interest, because his path has been so similar to my own. 

Accordingly, I will here just post links to my favorite commentaries
about the firing of Van Jones by the cowardly Obama Democrats and
conclude after the jump with the full text of a powerful statement
released by the Green Party. 

Dumping Van Jones: Why Give In To Republicans' Tantrums? by John McWhorter, posted on the web site for (of all media) The New Republic.

Meet the Real Van Jones by Judith Lewis published as an Op-Ed in The Los Angeles Times.

Obama Has Fed His Green Jones to King CONG by Harvey Wasserman posted on Common Dreams. 

* * * * * * * * 

GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES

For Immediate Release:

Thursday, September 10, 2009 

Top Ten Reasons Why Van Jones Should Give Up On Obama and the Democratic Party, Come Home to the Green Party

WASHINGTON, DC -- Green Party leaders invited Van Jones, who stepped
down recently as President Obama's advisor on Green Jobs, to abandon
the Democratic Party and "come home to the Green Party."

Greens called Mr. Jones, who resigned last Saturday after
coming under rightwing attack, the best of what the Obama
Administration had to offer America, but said that Mr. Jones'
principles were bound to clash with President Obama's capitulations to
corporate lobbies and to 'blue dog' Democratic and Republican
ideologues.

"The Green Party invites Van Jones, with his decades of
experience working for justice and the environment, to join a political
party that embraces and defends that agenda and the people who work for
it -- the Green Party. Like the Greens, Van Jones sees green jobs and a
healthy environment as interconnected pillars of a sustainable and just
economy. We encourage Van to bring that agenda into the electoral arena
as a Green Party member, leader and possible future candidate, either
nationally, statewide in California, or locally in Oakland, his home,"
said Mike Feinstein, co-chair of the Green Party of the United States
and former Mayor of Santa Monica, California. 

Greens offered 'Top Ten reasons why Van Jones should give up on
President Obama and the Democratic Party, and come home to the Green
Party"

The Obama Administration's failure to defend Mr. Jones recalls
similar retreats by the Clinton Administration, when Bill Clinton
allowed Republicans and some Democrats to bully him into removing
Assistant Attorney General nominee Lani Guinier and Surgeon General
Joycelyn Elders. The targets tend to be Black -- consistent with
Republican fury over the election of Barack Obama to the White House.

The extremists who sought Mr. Jones' removal see their action as
part of a wider plan to derail measures against global warming and
block greens jobs programs: see "How Van Jones Happened and What We
Need to Do Next," by Phil Kerpen, Fox Forum (Fox News), September 5
(http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2009/09/06/phil-kerpen-van-jones-resign/).
They smell blood, and the Obama Administration and Democratic leaders
are cowering.

Van Jones is a national leader for human rights, public health, and
the environment. As 2004 Green presidential nominee David Cobb said,
"The Democratic Party is the graveyard of progressive ideas." These
ideas -- including green jobs, the 'Green For All' agenda
(http://www.greenforall.org), and other ideas expressed by Mr. Jones --
are thriving in the Green Party.

Among Greens, Mr. Jones need not play down his activism on behalf
of the lives and well-being of Black Americans. He will not get called
"reverse racist" of "anti-white" by Greens for addressing persistent
racial disparities in economics, employment, health, treatment by the
justice system, the response to Katrina and post-hurricane rebuilding,
etc. The Green Party shares Mr. Jones' goals of racial justice.

Among Greens, Mr. Jones will not get scolded for calling former
President George W. Bush a 'crackhead' in the context of Mr. Bush's
obsessive devotion to industries that are feeding America's addiction
to fossil fuel energy.

Among Greens, Mr. Jones need not apologize for questioning the
behavior of the Bush Administration in connection with the 9/11
attacks. (See http://www.gp.org/press/pr_07_29_04b.html)

Mr. Jones has called for an end to coal energy, while President
Obama continues to repeat the myth of 'clean coal.' Mr. Jones' analysis
of the global warming threat and the need for conservation and a green
economy are reflected in the Green Party's platform and principles.
(See also http://www.gp.org/press/pr-national.php?ID=242)

If the epithet that Mr. Jones used to describe Republicans was
offensive, imagine the words people will use later this century, when
the effects of global warming have grown more severe, to describe
Republican (and Democratic) officeholders from 2009 who refused to take
necessary action to curb global warming's advance.

The media have given Glenn Beck and the 'Tea Party' crowd generous
coverage. (Compare the minimal and dismissive reporting on the hundreds
of thousands of Americans who protested the Iraq War in 2003.)
Republicans have benefited from the current political paradigm, which
places extreme Republicans like Mr. Beck at the right end and
'moderate' Democrats like President Obama at the left end of the
spectrum of allowable debate. Van Jones is a target for the same reason
that former US Representative (D-Ga.) and 2008 Green presidential
candidate Cynthia McKinney and others have been dismissed and ridiculed
-- because they offer ideas unacceptable to media dominated by
corporate interests. The emergence of the Green Party is key to
overturning this paradigm, changing the political landscape, and
expanding the public debate.

The Green Party sees no reason to appease Republicans, Fox News,
Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Democratic leaders, or others who've used
their power to serve corporate elites, to the detriment of working
people and America's future. Greens call Van Jones too important for
America to disappear from the public forum.

"As a Green, Van Jones can be a strong national voice for
justice and the environment, independent of the constraints of the
Democratic Party hierarchy, the corporate lobbies that pull their
strings, and the right-wing appeasement and selling out of grassroots
social movements that appears to be their strategy," said Marian
Douglas-Ungaro of the DC Statehood Green Party and the Green Party
Black Caucus.