Press Clips
Saving the Working Class with Green-Collar Jobs
Time Magazine (20 October 2008)
Van Jones does not look like your typical environmentalist. He doesn't wear Birkenstocks. He's African-American in a movement that tends to be overwhelmingly white. His background is in civil-rights activism — specifically prison reform — a cause he champions in Oakland, Calif. But Jones, the head of the non-profit Green For All and the author of the new book The Green-Collar Economy, could represent the future of environmentalism in America and a way for the movement to survive and even thrive through the coming recession.
Green the Bailout
The New York Times (28 September 2008)
The Bush team says that if this bailout is done right, it should make the government money. Great. Let's hope so, and let's commit right now that any bailout profits will be invested in infrastructure — smart transmission grids or mass transit — for a green revolution. Let's "green the bailout," as Jones says, and help ensure that the American Dream doesn't ever shrink back to just that — a dream.
Van Jones, Hero of the Environment 2008
Time Magazine (25 September 2008)
Green for All puts Jones in the vanguard of a necessary change in the green movement. In the past, environmentalism in the U.S. has been a mainly white and white-collar phenomenon, one that had little resonance among the working class and minorities. Timber workers thought that greens valued the spotted owl over their livelihoods; on car assembly lines, criticism of fossil fuels won you no favors. But Jones points out that recent environmental catastrophes in the U.S. have hit the poor hardest. It was African-Americans in New Orleans who suffered most from Hurricane Katrina, and it's Latino farmworkers in California who lose out when wildfires burn their homes.
Bringing Green Jobs to the Urban Poor
FastCompany.com (11 April 2008)
The cheering would begin soon enough. Dressed in a slim-cut gray suit and green tie, Van Jones ascended to the stage grinning and blowing kisses to the crowd. Jones, 39, a 6-foot-1-inch Yale Law grad, was appearing at a summit in San Francisco called "Advancing a New Energy Economy in California." The city's charismatic mayor, Gavin Newsom, was among the presenters, along with corporate bigwigs such as PG&E chief executive Peter Darbee. But no one would outshine Jones.
Black and Green
GOOD Magazine (9 April 2008)
For Van Jones, a 39-year-old civil-rights lawyer in Oakland, California, watching these events unfold was frustrating, but not surprising. What environmentalists fail to realize, he says, is that "for people who live in personal crisis, telling them about a planetary crisis is just demoralizing. You need to talk to these people about opportunity."
Van Jones: Creating a Green-Collar Workforce
Edutopia.org (19 March 2008)
The way you "create a green pathway out of poverty is, you line up your green-job seekers with your green-job trainers with your green-job creators," Van Jones says. It is, Jones believes, not merely the key to a sustainable future but also the future, and a highly worthwhile one, for the many underprivileged young people entering the workforce without college degrees.
Bring Eco-Power to the People
Time Magazine (21 November 2007)
You couldn't create a better advocate for the green-collar movement than Jones. A Yale-educated lawyer who founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, the magnetic Jones moves easily between worlds, at home preaching to inner-city high school students or mixing with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. But everywhere Jones goes, he repeats a simple message. "Give the work that most needs to be done to the people who most need the work," he says, and solve two pressing problems--pollution and poverty--at once.
The Green-Collar Solution
The New York Times (17 October 2007)
Van Jones is a rare bird. He's a black social activist in Oakland, Calif., and as green an environmentalist as they come. He really gets passionate, and funny, when he talks about what it's like to be black and green.
