What Grist readers might have predicted over a year ago, when David interviewed Van Jones, is quickly becoming reality. In October, Thomas Friedman, in a gushing editorial, called Jones a "rare bird" who "exudes enough energy to light a few buildings on his own." Now he's appeared on the Colbert Report where, despite the always-awkward position of Stephen's interviewees, he managed to land "green jobs" in the mental dictionary of millions of young viewers.
I had the privilege of speaking to Jones last month as he cabbed it from Capitol Hill back to the airport. The profile appears in this month's issue of GOOD magazine, and is now online here. Despite seeming a bit exhausted, he was patient, articulate, and just plain kind. Something I wasn't able to include in the piece, but which he took great joy in telling, was how his grandfather, a bishop in the Methodist Church, was a huge inspiration to him, as were the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, Jr. When asked if celebrity, and schmoozing with the big dogs in Washington, might divert his attention from grassroots activity, he responded, "On any given day, I might be in a public high school or in a prison, in D.C. or at a funeral. My life has a lot of sunshine and a lot of shit." On the other hand, he added, "That's what it takes to make a strong plant -- a lot of sunshine and a lot of fertilizer."
One point worth emphasizing, and which Jones has himself has editorialized on, is that green jobs aren't just about empowering the poor and working class with new skill sets and employment opportunities. It's also about uniting activist movements that, in the past, have had little to say to one another:
The power of a solution that bridges economic and environmental development, explains Jones, is that it has the potential to unite traditionally disparate factions of the progressive movement. "For at least a generation, activists of all constituencies have believed they could fix their problems on their own," he says. "But separatism won't work. On the environmental side, you'll end up leaving so many people out that they'll be undoing all the good and undermining your efforts." On the social-justice side, says Jones, boosting wages with the same old dirty jobs inevitably ends up hurting the poor, accelerating problems like cancer and asthma.
Okay, enough self-promotion. In case you missed them before, I've greatly enjoyed Pat Walter's reports from The Dream Reborn conference, and David's posting of the MLK speech Jones delivered at that same event. Kevin Doyle's recap of the Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference last month in Pittsburgh is a great assessment of the green-collar landscape -- and proof that Jones is certainly living up to the hype without letting it go to his head.
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Comments
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lorna salzman Posted 5:33 am
10 Apr 2008
Van Jones
Van Jones and I encountered each other last year on line when he made a broad intemperate attack on American environmentalism, charging it with racism and elitism...an old tune now that really should not be taken seriously. I said that activists and movements of color kept apart from environmentalism because they preferred movements and campaigns initiated and headed by people of color; I think this is true today. Environmentalists were and are the most progressive and the most supportive of social as well as enviromental justice...they need no defense. As for Jones' views on green jobs, he has sidestepped the whole issue of economic growth and the fact that it is cheap energy and cheap goods that have fanned the flames of indefensible overconsumption in this country, and that this will not be resolved until we have full cost pricing, particularly of energy. Jones' promotion of "green growth" to provide jobs for poor communities is also misleading because it implies that all we need is a new concept of production and new technologies to solve our ecological problems, in particular global warming. It is dishonest to avoid the truth: that traditional economic growth in production and consumption must be drastically curbed first, whether through price or regulation, and that the American lifestyle, whether in cars, food, homes, transportation and settlements, rests on the backs of the undeveloped world, at the expense of the natural world. Promises of equity, prosperity and sustainability through "green growth" are meaningless and ultimately unachievable, and the public should not be deluded into thinking otherwise. We need, first, an austerity budget in energy and consumption, and then a commitment to redistribution of wealth, with those overconsumers and overpolluters paying most of the cost. Only then will we have the ability, economically and technologically, to indulge in the idea of a different "green growth" society. Jones needs to balance his understanding of the ecological crisis with this understanding rather than playing into the hands of those who want us to believe that we can greenwash Business as Usual and come out alive and kicking.
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GreenMom Posted 2:12 pm
10 Apr 2008
Good luck with that
I hope you don't mind -- while you're tilting at windmills, the rest of us will be building the green economy with training programs for green jobs, implementing state-level renewable portfolio standards, teaching and promoting energy efficiency, building windfarms, getting the solar tax credit passed, pushing for carbon trading, etc. etc.
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