Van Jones

Van Jones, President Obama's former "green jobs" czar and newly appointed Princeton lecturer, has teamed up with a coalition of extremists to push an environmental activist agenda to "transform the American economy" and bring about "social change."

The groups working with Jones have been described as using the tactics of guerrilla communication, agitation and disruption techniques. One organization working alongside Jones, the radical Earth First! environmentalist group, has a history of violence and sabotage.

Jones spoke Monday at a Northern Arizona University event titled "Challenging America: Achieving Sustainability and Justice Through the Green Collar Economy."

He spoke with Billy Parish, founder of the Energy Action Coalition, a group of 50 organizations promoting a liberal environmental agenda. Green For All, a group founded and led by Jones, is part of the Energy Action Coalition.

At the university event, Parish claimed, "We are reaching the peak and decline of nearly all of our resources. ... We've used more resources since World War II than in all of previously recorded history. Global warming is only one symptom of a much broader crisis, which is that our economy provides goods and services in ways that are unaffordable for most of the world's population and unsustainable for our planet."

Parish added that "major changes are necessary to transform the American economy into one that practices sustainability of dwindling resources and the environment."

Continued Parish: "To solve the climate crisis and build healthy communities, we need to transition every single system of our economy into a more tough and sustainable fashion. ... From how our food is grown and processed, to how our energy is generated and delivered, to how we do laundry – every part of how we live and how our economy functions needs to make this transition."

Parish reportedly said there is a "parallel" between the "history of technological advancement and what he perceives to be the world's present challenges."

"This transition to a green economy is the new industrial revolution of our time. ... That is, it is leading to a new basis for job creation and social change. Every single one of us is part of the problem – literally every breath we take – and every single one of us can be a part of the solution. ... In every single sector of the economy, in every profession, we can build this transformation into a green economy."

Jones told the audience there are "two needs to revitalize the economy and make it more sustainable are not only intertwined, but also inseparable."

"An economic

crisis and an ecological crisis – how can you make a difference in both at the same time? ... Because if you try to solve one without solving the other, you are going to get an 'F' in the college known as life. You can create a bunch of stuff, throw it in the garbage can and call it economic growth. The problem with doing that is that we'll be living on a strip-mined planet."

Jones's solution?

"America could greatly benefit by producing its own wind turbines and solar panels," he said.

"I'm excited about wind turbines. ... Imagine Boeing-level engineering – a jet engine in the sky that can turn the wind into raw power, as much fuel as 23 cars. A need for 8,000 finely machined parts that would put the entire Midwest back to work. We could ship and sell those parts all over the world and bring our economy back. That can be done in America right now."

Guerrilla communication, agitation and disruption techniques

Parish's Energy Action Coalition, meanwhile, is composed of Jones' Green for All as well as a slew of extremist organizations, including he Ruckus Society, which states that it provides "hands-on direct action tactical skills and strategy at [its] training camps, skillshares," or it will bring its training to your location.

David Horowitz's Discover the Networks states:

"The Ruckus Society's mission is to provide 'environmental, human rights, and social justice organizers with the tools, training, and support needed to achieve their goals.' Toward this end, it trains activists in 'direct action' and 'guerrilla communication' techniques for the promotion of radical agendas. Viewing the United States as a nation rife with 'injustice and oppression,' the Ruckus Society 'struggle[s]' to 'prioritize the voices and visions of youth, women, people of color, indigenous people and immigrants, poor and working class people, lesbian, gay, bisexual, gender queer, and transgendered people, and other historically marginalized communities.'

Also, DTN reports:

"Since its inception, the Ruckus Society has trained thousands of activists in the use of 'agitation and disruption techniques.' The training sessions contain 'cerebral elements as well as physical, classroom-style instruction for action planning, communicating with the media, building leadership and political analysis, and nonviolent philosophy and practice.' Among the topics taught are 'street blockades,' 'police confrontation strategies,' and 'using the media to your advantage.'

"Trainees learn ways to goad police into overreaction and to cause problems for those they target. Dozens of leftist groups send their elite protestors to Ruckus Society trainings. Many of the trainees are members of the Rainforest Action Network, Earth First!, and the Earth Liberation Front."

Earth First! is another member of the Energy Action Coalition alongside Jones' organization.

DTN says Earth First! is a "Radical environmentalist group with a long history of violence and sabotage." It "pioneered sabotage tactics like tree sitting and tree spiking to thwart logging and development."

The Rainforest Action Network is also in the Energy Action Coalition. Rainforest, DTN says, is an "Activist organization that conducts negative publicity campaigns and boycotts of companies whose activities it deems harmful to the environment."

Education to make students 'revolutionaries'

Jones served as Obama's "green jobs czar" until he resigned in September after it was exposed he founded a communist revolutionary organization and signed a statement that accused the Bush administration of possible involvement in the 9/11 attacks. Jones also called for "resistance" against the U.S. Jones previously stated his advocacy for green jobs was part of a broader movement to destroy the U.S. capitalist system.

Princeton last month announced Jones has been appointed a visiting fellow in the Center for African American Studies and the Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy at the university's Wilson School.

Noliwe Rooks, associate director

of the Center for African American Studies, told the Daily Princetonian Jones will also conduct research and host discussions on such subjects such as “the next phase of green jobs, environmental policy [and] environmental justice.”

Jones explained in an official university statement he looks forward to "exploring solutions to our nation's toughest challenges with the students and scholars of Princeton.”

“America is at a crossroads, facing economic and ecological crises,” he said in the statement. “The next generation of job-creating, green solutions will be even more challenging to conceive. And they will be even more difficult to implement."

WND reported Jones has a history of sparking protests against universities and previously slammed non-activist students as "worthless people" obtaining "worthless degrees."

Jones previously led university protests and has made controversial remarks about college students.

Jones campus activism traces back to at least 1993, when the activist was a Yale law student. WND found a Boston Globe picture of Jones standing on the steps of a Harvard library with a caption reading he was on the seventh day of a hunger strike, urging Harvard students to protest against the Clinton administration's detention of 264 Haitian refugees with HIV at Guantanamo.

As the founder in 1999 of Bay Area Police Watch, which was accused of anti-police activities, Jones led  protests on California college campuses.

In April 1999, Jones helped lead more than 300 University of California-Berkeley students and community members in a protest vigil and hunger strike in support of the university's ethnic studies department, which was facing major budget cuts and the scaling back of courses.

Jones told the university's newspaper the vigil and attendant hunger strike was a critical point in the movement to defend what has been called the "systematic dismantling" of UC Berkeley's ethnic studies department.

"There are thousands of worthless people here signing off checks to the administration to get their worthless degrees," he said. "You have the sense to know that you've got to fight for what you (really want)."

"History has to be made by young people fighting for a new future," Jones continued. "You're living your history right here tonight."

Jones said budget and faculty cuts in the ethnic studies department signaled that the Berkeley administration is willing to do anything to "prevent you from becoming revolutionaries."

"What's at stake isn't a curriculum any more – it's a vision for a new generation," he said.

Jones in the 1990s was the leader and founder of a radical group, the communist revolutionary organization Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM. The group's official manifesto, "Reclaiming Revolution," boasted "we also saw our brand of Marxism as, in some ways, a reclamation."

STORM was founded in 1994 and disbanded in 2003.

"We agreed with Lenin's analysis of the state and the party," read STORM's manifesto. "And we found inspiration in the revolutionary strategies developed by Third World revolutionaries like Mao Zedong and Amilcar Cabral."

Cabral is the late Marxist revolutionary leader of Guinea-Bissau and the Cape Verde Islands. WND previously reported Jones named his son after Cabral and reportedly concludes every e-mail with a quote from the communist leader.

STORM's newsletter boasted "we also saw our brand of Marxism as, in some ways, a reclamation."

STORM worked with known communist leaders. It led the charge in black protests against various issues, including a local attempt to pass Proposition 21, a ballot initiative that sought to increase the penalties for violent crimes and require more juvenile offenders to be tried as adults.

Speaking to the East Bay Express in 2005, Jones said he first became radicalized in the wake of the 1992 Rodney King riots, during which time he was arrested.

"I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th," he said. "By August, I was a communist.

Jones in the early 1990s also founded and led Bay Area Cop Watch. Jones signed a petition calling for nationwide "resistance" against police.

Jones went on to found the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, named after a little-known civil rights firebrand and socialist activist.

In a 2005 Uprising Radio interview, Jones talked about using "green" jobs to bring down the capitalist system:

"Inside that minimum demand was a very radical kernel that eventually meant that from 1964 to 1968 complete revolution was on the table for this country. And, I think that this green movement has to pursue those same steps and stages. Right now we say we want to move from suicidal gray capitalism to something eco-capitalism where at least we're not fast-tracking the destruction of the whole planet. Will that be enough? No, it won't be enough. We want to go beyond the systems of exploitation and oppression altogether."

Succeeding revelations about Jones by WND included:

• Jones previously served on the board of an environmental activist group at which a founder of the Weather Underground terrorist organization is a top director.
• Jones was co-founder of a black activist organization that has led a campaign prompting major advertisers to withdraw from Glenn Beck's top-rated Fox News Channel program.

  The revelation followed Beck's reports on WND's story about Jones' communist background.

• Jones and other White House appointees may have been screened by an ACORN associate.
• One day after the 9/11 attacks, Jones led a vigil that expressed solidarity with Arab and Muslim Americans as well as what he called the victims of "U.S. imperialism" around the world.
• Just days before his White House appointment, Jones used a forum at a major youth convention to push for a radical agenda that included spreading the wealth and "changing the whole system."
• Jones' Maoist manifesto while leading the group Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM, was scrubbed from the Internet after being revealed by WND.
• Jones was the main speaker at an anti-war rally that urged "resistance" against the U.S. government – a demonstration sponsored by an organization associated with the Revolutionary Communist Party.
• In a 2005 conference, Jones characterized the U.S. as an "apartheid regime" that civil rights workers helped turn into a "struggling, fledgling democracy."
• Jones signed a petition calling for nationwide "resistance" against police, accusing them of using the 9/11 attacks to carry out policies of torture.

With research and reporting by Brenda J. Elliott

www.wnd.com/index.php

March 25, 2010