By now you’ve learned of Van Jones stepping down as an adviser to President Obama. Across the internet, the print media, and the radio the militant right is reaching out to find quotes and statements from the environmental movements sites that cast doubt on Van’s ability as an adviser to this President. “Why is this guy in our government anywhere near the President?” came out of Glenn Beck’s mouth, because he was able to pull up a video on YouTube, a video that I published years ago with the best of intentions, and has used it as a tool to put this great man down, to cast doubt on his ability to create Green Jobs and battle poverty.
Lying in bed tonight, I hopped up knowing that I needed to share these thoughts with you. Something as simple as Van Jones asking for “a new system” of re-usable energy, has been used to put pressure on the Obama administration, to cause even more chaos amidst the battle over health care reform. Something created by all of you, something published by videographers on this very site just like me, has become a weapon of the militant right and has been used in an assault on a good man that we all respect.
This story, and so many like it, I hope, will be a wake up call to many of you because YOU ARE THE NEXT VAN JONES. You are studying now, you are changing your neighborhoods and creating greener school systems, greener offices, greener cities, spreading the idea that energy independence and conservation should occur regardless of your feelings about a couple of floating polar bears. The same way that celebrities are burned for sending racy photos to their boyfriends, that wind up online, we need to be cautious about our own messages, about our own statements, and speak from a place that cannot be twisted and cannot be used against us by the very people who want everything to stay the way it is.
Every time Van referenced race or ethnicity in a speech, that speech has now been broadcast in fragments on Fox News. Every time Van referenced changing the system, that quote will be paired with a quote of Obama’s to make him look like an extremist. We need to rethink how we broadcast ourselves, how we communicate with our precious names at the top of a page, because if the general public can take something we say out of context, because we were passionate young leaders now? We may jeopardize our chance to make change, and what has happened to Van Jones tonight, must not be allowed to happen again.
In the end, Van’s owns words in his resignation letter are what we should heed. “On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me,” Van said in his resignation statement. “They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide.” Van stated that he cannot in good conscience ask his colleagues to spend time and energy defending or explaining his past.
Van is right. The topic at hand is health care reform, and this very act of attacking Van’s good image, is a diversionary tactic to cast doubt on Obama for choosing Van as an adviser. Well, if Obama is going to hire a communist, if Obama is going to hire a radical, maybe he himself believes similar things? So maybe I shouldn’t listen to him when it comes to Public Health Care. These thoughts are why this kind of content is published, to cast doubt, to divide, as Van said, to distract.
Don’t be a victim of Glenn Beck, continue to educate your peers about health care reform, and reach out to family and friends and engage in a positive conversation about our options. Talk about the policies, not the person writing them. We will not be divided, we will not be distracted. We are the leaders of the next generation, and we will not be victims of our own enthusiasm.
Quotes taken from The Washington Post Online.
Thank you for this article! The thought that these “Good Christian”, Republicans continue to attack progress (CHANGE) sickens me. I came across a quote the other day, “God Himself does not propose to judge a man until he is dead. So why should you?” When will the craziness stop? People wake up before there is nothing left thanks to those that only think of themselves and their pocket books! It’s ALL about the dollar, the Iraq war/oil, health care reform/contributions! etc, etc, etc! Follow the money trail and you’ll find a ‘right wing nut’ trying to stop CHANGE! I will stand up now and in the future, as I have in the past, for progress (CHANGE). Our president was elected by a large majority who wanted (CHANGE) now we have to stand behind our vote and our president and stop this craziness when and where we can!!!
Not since Joe McCarthy shuffled off this mortal coil in 1957 has anyone made a career by accusing people of being communists. Glenn Beck has resurrected the practice. Not only has he found a cabal of secret communists, he has uncovered an entire communist corporation chock full of commies. The name of this company, you may ask?
THE NATIONAL BROADCASTING COMPANY!
You heard me right, boys and girls. The network that gave us Uncle Miltie and Ma Perkins has apparently been secretly sending subliminal messages endorsing Marxist doctrine since it was formed in 1926. This would make perfect sense to me. Every time I watched the Rockford Files I had an unexplainable desire to read Das Kapital. But seriously, folks. Twenty years after the fall of the Soviet Union, red baiting not only seems silly, it’s also kind of nuts. It’s not-at-all surprising that an organization would give this idiot a forum (after all, he’s on FOX Noise). What’s really stunning is the fact that his ratings are relatively high and that so many Americans take his word as gospel.
All kidding aside, half-witted ideologues are a dime a dozen. What separates Glenn Beck from his peers is the fact that he is doing some serious damage to the country he professes to love so much. For all of the comparisons to the Nazis he likes to make with regard to Liberals, Beck’s program has much in common with Adolf Hitler’s 1923 screed, Mein Kampf. Eighty-six years ago, Hitler attempted to arouse the anger of his fellow Germans by spouting half truths and utter nonsense – exactly what Glenn Beck is doing in 2009. So much of the insane dialogue that has been spewed forth at these Town Hall meetings across the country in recent weeks might have been lifted straight from a transcript of any of Beck’s programs.
Beck and his twisted ilk have done the seemingly impossible. They have deflected the blame for America’s current economic distress toward Barack Obama. An incredible feat when you take into consideration the fact that the President is one of the few people in government today whose guilt in the matter is almost nil. They have also let loose with a vengeance the very worst angels of the American nature. Opening this Pandora’s box was relatively easy. Closing it might prove to be a bit of a problem.
Deep in their hearts
They do believe
That they shall undermine someday….
http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com
Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
We can not allow the fear mongers to censure our voices… lest we hand them our lives.
We Americans are still suffering from cowboy syndrome. Shoot any thing that moves behind the “BUSH”. How many millions of dollars of tax payers money is wasted for so called security check for a “shoe bomber” or “tooth paste filled with explosives”. Have seen the kids taking off shoes and putting in the security baskets, along with their back pack with potentially explosive toothpaste? The shoe bomber might become “Hat Bomber” or “Hair Bomber”. What next? My hats off to these clever politicians selling their snake oil and millions of us buying that. Basically they are all dirty minded and lack logic.
so, what is wrong with identifying and working with neo-marxist or radical movements? the groups that jones worked with organized against police brutality in communities terrorized by the oakland and san francisco police. that’s a good thing. i didn’t see the democrats doing something about it.
i’m not quite sure why “we” allow the right to out-organize us. i’ve been hearing since the Clinton years about the need to “rise up” to people like glen beck and rush limbaugh. there’s not movement building only power building for the democrats. if you really care about things like health care, clean energy and racism in this country, then get off the internet and build a movement, not power for a corporate party.
color of change has done some kick ass work in getting over 45 of beck’s sponsors to drop him. that’s the power of a group working outside mainstream politics and party structure. however, the democrats and their “movement” have allowed union-busting corporations to nearly kill the employee free choice act (legislation that would have empowered unions and working people to truly build power), they have backed down to big pharma’s agitating at town hall meetings and removed the public option from the healthcare plan, allowed big oil and big coal to cripple ACESA and now let the right wing media to devour van jones. the democratic party is not part of the movement for social change, they are the compromisers who move in once the real movements have scared the status quo into thinking something radical is about to happen.
screw the democrats, get into the streets and communities and work to build power and as community organizer friend of mine says “know your history. organize your people fight to win.”
Maybe instead of watching our words because we’re scared the right use it against us, we should make it very plain how a lot of us feel… That only a radical departure from the system as it is– is going to solve our problems. Why do we keep on running around the truth??
-Environmental problems demand a radical rate of change.
-Therefore I am a radical.
-Free-market Capitalism is destroying the world.
-Therefore I am not a capitalist.
There you go Mr. Beck.
Something that Obama has been stressing a lot lately is working with methods that can achieve change. Fight the battle we can win. This is an important statement.
It is so easy to fight hard, loud, and proud, and put on a good show about your beliefs, but clearly getting a President like Obama into office was only part of the battle.
Persons inside the movement spend so much time around likeminded people, that we forget that we still must convince the general public in order to vote for change. This is what so many of my peers seem to forget, that this is still politics, and if we set out to make a new policy, we’ll need to be well received enough by our enemies that they cannot cast our efforts in this kind of negative light.
If we are naive, and try and make the rules for ourselves, we fail. This is a game, a big chess game, and Glenn Beck is just another piece on the board. Don’t work against the movement by being so extreme that your voice is written off by the masses.
I don’t think that worrying about everything we say will deprive them of ammo to throw back at us. Van Jones said “we need to work on how we treat each other” and Glenn Beck turned it into “social justice” and “making up for the past”. No matter what we do they will find some little thing and twist into something bad.
If we self censor ourselves while they are free to promote hate speech then they have won. We need to keep speaking our mind, speak it louder, and speak it clearer.
1. Perhaps he could have been more effective in the administration, but perhaps he will be more effective once again in an activist, movement organizer role. I lean towards the latter. Also, given the system from which is resignation arises, his resignation is not outrageous. It makes sense that someone dedicated to real social justice, racial justice, and empowerment of oppressed people would be run out of government. What Van stands for – ecological sanity and social justice – is not compatible with the pillars of this empire. Nor are they compatible with communism, but that’s a different conversation. His foray into national politics was an exercise in optimism that made some sense – if Obama’s rhetoric of change, empowerment, sustainability etc. were paired with an agenda to make such thing real, then Jones could have played an enormously powerful role in bringing that about. Given the gains we imagined possible at the time of his election, it made sense to give it a try. However, change of the sort I assume you and I want does not come from the national government. The sooner we all realize this, the sooner we can stop wasting our time focusing a disproportionate amount of our energy playing the game on their terms.
2. Van was nailed because he spoke the truth and he spoke it with clarity. You say, “Every time Van referenced race or ethnicity in a speech, that speech has now been broadcast in fragments on Fox News. Every time Van referenced changing the system, that quote will be paired with a quote of Obama’s to make him look like an extremist. We need to rethink how we broadcast ourselves, how we communicate with our precious names at the top of a page, because if the general public can take something we say out of context, because we were passionate young leaders now? We may jeopardize our chance to make change, and what has happened to Van Jones tonight, must not be allowed to happen again.”
Are you counseling that we shy away from issues of racial justice? Or that in the face of a system that is causing global ecological collapse, climate change, and exploits most people in the present, we should not say such things? What then, should we say, and what is there then that could distinguish our message from corporate green wash? I recognize the concern you express, it’s the familiar, “watch out, what you say could come back to haunt you.” But if what you say is the truth, then it needs to be said, and acted upon.
If your goal is to take up the reigns of power, then by all means, censure yourself, but the reigns of power Van got to experiment ever so slightly with, are designed to maintain the status quo and crush social movements. If the status quo were good, then that would be wonderful, unfortunately the status quo is a steady rate of change towards ecological collapse and decreasing quality of life for most people. This is not to say never employ inside the beltway tactics, but to say always use them towards the ends of erasing the beltway and cutting the reigns that hold so many under the weight of oppression. Even that however, seems increasingly implausible.
I’ll echo Mark – we need to speak and act clearly towards what we stand for. It might work, it might not. But if we don’t, then we will certainly never attain either of Van’s, yours and my, goals of ecological sanity and social justice.
The time has passed to play by their rules.
We can not hold back the truth.
If we let them silence us, then we lose.
It’s time to stop tip-toeing around the tulips.