Van Jones - Multiplying Our Impact

Selections from Van Jones keynote at the 2007 Pegasus Systems Thinking In Action Conference.

As founder and president of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, a racial justice organization based in Oakland, California, Van Jones has been a passionate advocate for positive alternatives to incarceration and violence in urban America. Recently, he has become a leader in the movement to engage nontraditional constituencies on the issue of climate change--and in the process create economic opportunity. At the 2007 Pegasus Conference, Van spoke about his vision of a healthier future and described how he is amplifying his impact by building on the success of local initiatives.

As Van explains it, "We've done a lot of street level, grassroots, neighborhood work, and now we're getting a chance to spread some of our lessons and some of our hopes to higher up places and farther away places." In his recent transition from executive director to president of the Ella Baker Center, which will continue to focus on a range of urban issues locally, Van will be taking on more responsibilities at the national level.
The Promise of a Green Economy

Van launched Green For All, a national campaign that promotes a systemic solution to the challenges of poverty and sustainability by creating green-collar jobs for low- income people. The ambitious program sees the federal government making a $1 billion commitment to get a quarter-million people out of poverty through green-collar job training, green employer incentives, and entrepreneurial training.

"We are committed to an approach that combines restorative justice with restorative economics--really using economic activity to restore the environmental health of the planet," says Van. "We don't have any throwaway resources or species, and we don't have any throwaway children, or neighborhoods, or communities either."
Van envisions a green economy that's strong enough to lift people out of poverty, one that can restore hope and create a shared mission across societal divisions. "If we want to hold the country together through the economic and ecological shocks that lie ahead, we have to demonstrate what's possible when business, labor, racial justice folks, and environmentalists focus more on their overlapping interests than on their areas of disagreement. I think people are hungry for a cease fire in American society so that we can be more united in meeting the big challenges of a new century."

Directed and Edited by Jay Fedigan for Pegasus Communications

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[cbaultman]

I love Van Jones. Thanks for sharing!