 I have the distinct honor of being a black man in a suit, introducing another black man in a suit, which never happens here. So, first of all, those of you who are watching via live stream or YouTube, this is not the BET Awards or the NAACP convention, this is SoCAP 2014. My name is Kalima Pryforce and I'm the co-founder of Kino Labs. And we make hackathons. We run hackathons around the country that emphasize inclusion, empathy, and playing. When I was selected to be a 2013 Echoing Green Fellow in Black Male Achievement, they asked me, which Echoing Green Fellow would you like recognized as being a change maker? That someone who personally inspires you. And I chose Van. I chose Van for the same reasons that many of you would choose Van. In fact, I represent hundreds of organizations under YesWeCode who choose Van for being an optimist. Van believes that human beings can be better by doing better for low opportunity youth and for our planet, for being a pessimist, for believing that Washington D.C. can never do for us what we can do for ourselves. And for being a realist by believing that you can't have justice without jobs. Oakland Activist Van, CNN Crossfire Van, Green Jobs Van, whichever Van you choose, we choose him because he's a magical thinker and a magical doer. So ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Mr. Van Jones, a mentor, champion and friend to us all. Selima, first of all, give that brother, I'm a brag and I'm doing a speech, but give him a round of applause. That brother's an unbelievable hero. Proof of there's genius in group homes. There's genius in foster care. There's genius in homeless kids. And you just saw one. So give him another round of applause. That is an unbelievable success story. Now, look, I'm gonna talk about Yes We Code in a minute, but I'm not on TV, so I can say what I want. And I don't know what it is about SoCAP. Last time I was here, it was right after Trayvon. And now here we are right after what happened in Ferguson. I was covering what happened in Ferguson for CNN, I guess last week. For those of you who don't know, there's a young African-American man shot six times, including once in the head, unarmed by a police officer there. I had to cover it. It was tough. I kept a straight face. I kept it right down the middleman. I did good. But now I'm with y'all, and I'm gonna say this, it would be a compliment to call the police and the city leadership of that town racist. That would be a compliment. That's something they should strive to achieve because racism requires higher order thinking, you see. It's like abstract conceptual thinking is required. This was some of the stupidest stuff that I've ever seen, and I just wanna say, I'll move on to my thing. Very first minute of the very first hour of the very first day of your gun safety class. I'm not talking about police academy. I'm not talking about in the military. I mean basic gun safety. What do they tell you? First minute, first hour, first day, what do they tell you? Don't point your weapon at anybody unless you plan to shoot that person. To give you a sense of why I say it would be an achievement for them to get to the higher order thinking required to actually be racist. The entire police force, the entire time I was there, was pointing weapons at everybody. It was literally like, how are you? How are you? It's like, I was doing better before you pointed the gun at me, just to ask it. Okay, so that's the backdrop. That's terrible. But the heartbreak for me actually didn't come until I got home. I hated seeing the family suffering. I hated seeing the community suffering. But what happened to me was when I got home, I was watching the funeral on my laptop, and my son walked in. 10 year old son, not political kid at all, brilliant as soccer. And he watched me watching the funeral of this young African-American boy you've been killed. And he listened to the eulogy. He came over my son, and he put his hand on my back. And he got very quiet. And when it was over, I didn't know what to expect, because it's not a politically involved child at all. And he said, you know, Daddy, you said when you went to Ferguson, the reason that you went was because it was a tragedy for the whole country what happened to that child. I said, yeah, it was a tragedy. He said, well, Daddy, why would there no white people at the funeral? Now I usually have a lot to say. I couldn't form a sentence. And the reason I couldn't form a sentence was because I knew that there was a seed that had just been planted in my son's mind that was actually a false seed. In his mind, the fact that there were no white people at the funeral meant that maybe white people didn't care about kids like him. And in fact, that is not true. In fact, there were people, including people in this room, who if you could even stand to look at what was going on, because most of us just got the TV off, or just changed the radio. It was just too hard to even look at it, but whose hearts were breaking of every color. In fact, it turns out the tragedy in this country at this point is not those small number of white people who may still have ill will. It's a massive number of white people who care so much they can't even stand it and don't know what to do. I think we're actually faced with a massive design failure because the good will that people have in this country toward people like that child that was killed in Ferguson, toward young people, men, women, Latino, African-American, Native American, low opportunity, high potential young folks like Kalima, the genius in our country, the good will is actually massive. And yet somehow we don't show up. Somehow we miss each other. And I didn't know what to say. If I had to do it over again, I would have told them, I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why. We didn't know to ask, we didn't know how to ask and they didn't know how to offer. And we're still at a place in America where one or the other has to happen for us to come together. So if we are gonna solve this for America, if we're gonna stop wasting genius, if we're gonna stop missing each other, if the incredible genius in low income communities of color is gonna be tapped and the incredible good will, massive, unbelievable levels of good will in this room and across the country is gonna be activated, we have to deal with this design failure. We've got to build an actual mechanism by which we can find each other. And that is a part of what YesWeCode is trying to do. What is YesWeCode and where did it come from? YesWeCode actually was born right here on this stage a year ago. Trayvon thing had just gone down, I was talking to my friend, Jeff Lifer, I was talking to Pandora Thomas, I was talking to Zakiya from Hack the Hood and I said, this is a big moment for America, we gotta do something. We've got to find some way to move beyond the problems that we're seeing on TV every day. And I had just had the opportunity to meet with a friend of mine named Prince. I love saying that, I'm gonna say it again. I was talking to my friend and he had made the observation right in the wake of the Trayvon Martin situation thing that, you know, when you see a young black kid wearing a hoodie, you assume he's a thug. So if you see a white kid wearing a hoodie, you might think it's Mark Zuckerberg. And I said, that's because of racism. And Prince said, no, maybe, but it could be we haven't produced enough black Mark Zuckerbergs. And I would add Latino Mark Zuckerbergs and Latino Mark Zuckerbergs, Native American Marks. It could be that there's a failure that we need to look at. And so Prince challenged me to do something about that. So we began this incredible quest and I'm here to report to you on the success and tell you how you can keep it moving forward. So here's the first thing that we did. First of all, we recognize one thing. I don't know how to code. I don't know anything about the computers. I can barely check my own email. That's not actually a joke. It's true. So the first thing we did was we found people who knew about the computers. First and foremost being Cheryl Conti. Yes, I said Cheryl Conti, you can applaud now. First and foremost being Cheryl Conti. Who agreed to come on Yes We Code as a co-founder. Everybody knows her incredible work as a tech entrepreneur and mentor and fairy god sister for half the people in this room. Cheryl came on board. We also found a woman named Amy Henderson who had worked for Mohammed Eunice who had worked for Bill Drayton and she came in and together we launched this quest and we discovered something that's gonna make you feel very, very good. It turns out that the core components to fix the problem of the lack of diversity at least in tech already exist. I'm gonna say that again. Cause you guys were humiliated and embarrassed and frustrated to see tech company after tech company released their numbers and the numbers were 0.00 no people of color are doing anything or something like that. That may not be exactly accurate but that's what it felt like. And it seemed like this is gonna be an impossible problem to solve. Google released their numbers, Facebook, Apple and it looked like it was gonna be impossible to solve. It turns out that's not true at all. We went on a quest and we found that there are dozens and dozens of amazing organizations with amazing leadership that are actually teaching African-American, Latino, Latina, Native American young people how to code, how to design, how to be builders and that every one of these programs is oversubscribed. The idea that young people don't wanna do this in these communities, completely false. They cannot, literally cannot get enough chairs in the room, enough computers, enough money to teach the young people in these communities who wanna turn their genius into computer products right now today. You'll never see that on television. It's right now. We also discovered that these organizations tend to be underfunded, misaligned and in great need of real help, but are open to being helped. What kind of groups am I talking about? I'm talking about obviously the superstar groups we've all heard of, like Black Girls Code, Girls Who Code, Code.org, et cetera, the Vanguard. But those organizations actually are the tip of a massive iceberg of other organizations and other leaders. For instance, Keeno Labs, Kalima was just up here, Hack the Hood, Hidden Genius Project, the K-PORC Center. And also it turns out that there've been leaders like Catherine Finney who've been plowing the ground in this field for a very, very long time that there's a massive number of organizations that are ready to form a pipeline to connect the hood to Silicon Valley. Because those organizations exist. We went back to Prince. I said we discovered something I think anybody knows. We want to make sure the world knows about it. Prince says, guess what? Now this is gonna make you feel very, very sad. So get ready. Prince says, this summer, let's say this in the winter, this summer is the 30th anniversary of Purple Rain. Yes, you're that old. Okay, I told you, I told you it was gonna make you feel terrible, but it's a part of the story. I can't leave it out. So yes, he said, the 30th anniversary of Purple Rain is coming up this summer. I'm gonna go to the Essence Music Festival, 20th anniversary there, Essence Music Festival if you don't know, biggest African-American festival in this hemisphere, 20th anniversary for them, 30th anniversary for me, I'm gonna go there, I'm gonna do a concert there for 50,000 people to launch Yes We Code and put a spotlight on all these groups. Now that by itself was really cool and amazing, but that's the beginning of the story. Again, started here on this stage, talking to Jeff, talking to Pandora, talking to Zakiya. Went back to Prince, said we're on to something. He says we're gonna do the concert. The people at Essence say, not only we're gonna do the concert, for the first time ever at a major African-American event, we're gonna do both a tech village and a hackathon. Okay, now I want you guys to see some of the pictures from this hackathon, we'll just let them roll and you can see the amazing stuff that happened and it was actually Kalima's organization that led the hackathon. Give Kalima another, I'm in love with this brother. Give Kalima another round of applause. So these pictures will just run, now I'm gonna brag a little bit on the folks that were involved in it and then I'm gonna tell you what you can do to help move this thing forward. Not only did dozens of grassroots organizations come together, not only did Prince and Dr. King's family and Chris Tucker, the actor and Essence and Time Incorporated come together, Google co-sponsored this, Facebook got involved, actually built us a website called YesWeCode.org, which I'll talk to you about and tell you about. You also had the Northern California grant makers jumped in the mix to try to get the philanthropic community in Northern California excited about this. Julie Zee is obviously a huge hero to everybody here. I got the Marin Foundation engaged and talking about all the stuff that is going on and can be going on and here is what we learned and for those of you who think this is all neat but wanna hear the nuts and bolts, here's what we discovered, nuts and bolts. A better tech pipeline is possible. A better tech pipeline is possible. It has, as we are blessed to be able to pull it together, five simple components of pre-existing assets and infrastructure now being optimized by partnership, love, alliance, hard work, a whole bunch of meetings but it's happening, five steps. These hackathons to get young people in the door and I'll talk about that at the close. Step one hackathon, step two, pouring people into the entry level groups that are already out there that need more support. We call them the first mile groups that can convince a young Latina, a young Filipino kid, a black kid, a young woman that she can make an app. Those go into the boot camps. One thing to be able to make an app is another thing to be able to make a living at Apple. Those are two different things. You can make an app but can you make a living at Apple, you gotta have hardcore job training and the boot camps are there to do that and then the fourth step, the employers who have already declared that they wanna be more diverse and the incubators. Hackathons, entry level groups, boot camps, employers, incubators, working together, multi-partner, multi-party alliance, we are building a pipeline from the hood to Silicon Valley. That's yes we code, that's yes we code. Now, our job is to get, oh, is somebody show prints? Can you rewind it? No, I'm just joking. Yeah, that's my friend, did I mention that part? What's our job, what do we need, how can you help, why should you help? Our job is to get 100,000, now most of these are African-American by the way because Essence is African-American, I'm African-American, Prince is African-American. Don't be fooled. The next one is gonna be on the East Coast and it's gonna be almost all Latina and Latina. We got one in the works for Native Americans in Minnesota. I wanna go to Appalachia because it's not just kids of color, you got poor kids in Appalachia, they're geniuses too and they're not going to MIT and Stanford, we're missing them. So yes we code, it's gotta be for everybody but this is where it started. Oh by the way, that was Trayvon Martin's mother. We just flipped past. So what are we gonna do? We're gonna get 100,000, low opportunity, high potential young people to move through this pipeline. We're gonna change the complexion of technology, Silicon Valley, metaphorically and literally, the Silicon Valley's from Austin to Boston, we wanna impact all of them. What's the price tag? We're trying to raise $11 million a year, 10 million of which are gonna go to these organizations. $11 million a year for 10 years, we think with that level of investment, very small but trim tab, we can flip the entire trajectory of 100,000 young lives but also the trajectory of technology. Now the reason I think it's possible is because I went to these hackathons and I wanna say and I've said it before and I'm gonna say it every time I talk about these hackathons that it was transformative for me because I went in with a terrible attitude. When Kalima first pulled together the first one of these hackathons in Oakland, California and asked me to come, I showed up, was happy to show up, happy to be supportive, happy to put on a game face, happy to be PC, happy to give a little, you poor worthless kids can do it speech but I'm gonna tell you the honest to God truth, the first thought in the back of my mind when I walked in there and I saw 90 black kids from Oakland, I hope there's not a fight. Said I hope there's not a fight in here. We got folks from Google and the media, I hope there's not a fight. That was the first thought that went through my mind. Now George W. Bush calls that the soft bigotry of low expectations. The soft bigotry of low expectations. Yes, I'm quoting George W. Bush. That's our shame to myself that I am because these kids were unreal. These kids were unreal. They were extraordinary. The ideas that they had, the creativity that they had, the sticktuteness that they had, it was unbelievable. And the products they designed and the stuff that they came up with, the people from Google and Facebook and all the fancy people, their mouths were literally hanging open saying some of these ideas are literally billion dollar projects. Billion dollar products. Right there in deep East Oakland. Bagathon was in downtown but you had kids from deep East Oakland and they're saying they were literally billion dollar ideas. Right there, genius going to waste. Okay, now I don't want this to be abstract. I'm gonna tell you two of the ideas these young people had to give you a sense of what would happen if these young people had the tools and talent, the tools and training technology and I'm gonna make a request from you. One, just one of the ideas they came up with was an app that would alert them as to when their court dates were. Say it again, because it's heartbreaking but it's brilliant. They wanted an app that would tell them when their court dates were. And one of these kids were terrible kids. All kids, as you know, do all kind of stuff. You say not my kids. Yes, your kids do. Kids do terrible stuff but if you're in the suburbs you might be doing it in your dad's basement. If you're in the urban area you might be doing it on the street corner. I went to Yale Law School. 95% of the kids at Yale Law School would be called nonviolent drug offenders. Todd and Princeton, same thing. I'm a fellow now at MIT, same thing. 95% of those kids are nonviolent drug offenders. They don't go to prison. If you're in D.P. Stokeland, cops see you on the street corner doing it. You get arrested. Now, that doesn't end your life. The problem is somebody gives you a piece of paper that says in three and a half weeks at 315 on the fourth floor of a building you've never been to you have to show up to talk to the judge. What 15 year old, 17 year old kid has seen a piece of paper and kept it? So they said, can we have an app for that? And built it. There was a young girl at the New Orleans one who was in foster care. And she said, some of the young girls in foster care they get these hand-me-down clothes. These loaned out clothes. The clothes don't look good. They don't feel good about themselves. Frankly, some of the girls wind up doing stuff. You wouldn't want your daughter doing to get money just for clothes. They came up with an app design where people could take a picture of the clothes they donate and the girls could find the clothes and pick their own outfits for themselves. Somebody there said that could be a billion dollar business could totally change the way that the closing, that whole end of the closing industry works. Those are just two ideas I can go, I can stand here all night bragging on these kids. So here's what I need from you. Hackathons, entry level groups, boot camps, employers, incubators. Everybody in here can be a part of this pipeline at some level, every single person. Facebook built a website for us called YesWeCode.org so anybody can plug in to this network and help us build this thing. I need your help to do that. I need your help for one more thing. This is what I'll close with. I talked to my boy, my brother, Kalima. I said, look, we gotta go back to Ferguson. We gotta go back to Ferguson. Story can end this way. No matter what happens, the police officer winds up losing his job or going to jail or a dozen or whatever, at the end of the day, this is a tragedy for every other kid in Ferguson who saw one of their own die, who saw a bunch of hoopla, but who right now have no better future than they had before the shots were fired, despite all the media attention, despite Eric Holder going, despite the president talking, but despite all this, those kids have no more hope, they just have one more funeral. We gotta go back to Ferguson. And Kalima, being Kalima, will go back, will do a hackathon, but only if the cops come too. Only if they come too. Only if they sit down with those kids. Only if they help think up new solutions, new apps, new products together. When I say there's genius in foster care, genius in juvenile halls, genius in housing projects, genius on Native American reservations, genius in the barrios. I don't just mean intellectual genius. There's moral genius. That's moral genius. That will solve it. There's moral genius. So listen, we're going back to Ferguson. This time we know to ask. This time you know to offer. We will see you in Ferguson in the next four weeks. Thank you very much. We're going back to Ferguson. Yes, we come. Yes, we come.