[Vision2020] Van Jones on America's Uprising: It's Going To Be an Epic Battle

[Ted Moffett]

I listened to Van Jones give a speech on CSPAN this past weekend, who
many will recall was forced out of the Obama administration, from his
so called "Green Czar" position
(http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/09/06/van_jones_resigns.html
), that was very politically thought provoking.

At one point he emphasized that he has studied the Tea Party
extensively, and concluded, "There isn't one."  He explained there is
no main office of Tea Party operations, where you can walk in and ask
to talk to the chairman or leader, like the Democratic and Republican
parties, who have top down leadership.

Here is a short excerpt from the article and interview pasted in
below, as titled in the subject heading, that further elucidates his
meaning:

Jones explained the Tea Party's "leaderless" model to the activists
with a PowerPoint showing how the instigators of the Tea Party
movement -- leaders of groups such as FreedomWorks and Americans for
Prosperity -- didn't so much create a top-down organization as they
did a network that fostered the development of local Tea Party
organizations by local activists, who then took ownership of their own
corners of the movement.  "The Tea Party is an open-source brand,"
Jones explained, "that 3,528 affiliates use; none of them own it." For
all their talk of rugged individualism, Jones said, the forces behind
the Tea Party "have enacted the most collectivist strategy for taking
power in the history of the republic."
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http://www.alternet.org/vision/152616/van_jones_on_america's_uprising%3A_it's_going_to_be_an_epic_battle/?page=entire

Van Jones on America's Uprising: It's Going To Be an Epic Battle

Jones talked to AlterNet about the growing social movements for
change, running real progressives in 2012, and how we can train a
million new leaders.

By Adele M. Stan and Don Hazen
October 4, 2011

As the grassroots sit-ins and marches that originated as Occupy Wall
Street spread to other cities, Van Jones, lead evangelist for the
American Dream movement, took the stage Monday at a Washington, DC
hotel where organizers of the institutional element of the progressive
movement converged at Take Back the American Dream. The gathering was
organized by the Campaign for America's Future in partnership with
Jones' new organization, Rebuild the Dream. Jones voiced his support
for the spontaneous Wall Street uprising, and for the U.S. Marines who
agreed, he said, to protect the protesters while wearing dress blues.

Jones said that after he left the White House, where he served as a
green jobs adviser to President Barack Obama, he occupied his time
studying how the Tea Party movement came into existence and marshaled
its power. (Among his texts, he said, was the AlterNet anthology,
Dangerous Brew: Exposing the Tea Party's Agenda to Take Over America.)
Jones had been a target of Tea Party ire, stoked by Glenn Beck on his
Fox News Channel platform, back when Beck served as the de facto
community organizer for media baron Rupert Murdoch, before Beck fell
out of the mogul's favor.

Jones explained the Tea Party's "leaderless" model to the activists
with a PowerPoint showing how the instigators of the Tea Party
movement -- leaders of groups such as FreedomWorks and Americans for
Prosperity -- didn't so much create a top-down organization as they
did a network that fostered the development of local Tea Party
organizations by local activists, who then took ownership of their own
corners of the movement. "The Tea Party is an open-source brand,"
Jones explained, "that 3,528 affiliates use; none of them own it." For
all their talk of rugged individualism, Jones said, the forces behind
the Tea Party "have enacted the most collectivist strategy for taking
power in the history of the republic."

Jones also demonstrated, with modeling schematics, how progressives
had initially, during the 2008 presidential campaign, centered their
movement more around a person -- Obama -- than their own issues. In no
small part, Jones implied, progressives were drawn to the Obama
campaign's branding, with its iconic "O" logo onto which people
projected their own aspirations and beliefs.

"It has been a tough couple of years," Jones told his audience. "We
went from hope to heartbreak in about a minute...We have the wrong
theory of the presidency."

As for the rise of the right, Jones said, "I'm not mad at the Tea
Party. I'm not mad at them for being so loud. I'm mad at us for having
been so quiet the past two years."

With Monday's speech, Jones set out to sell the idea of a more diffuse
and locally directed progressive movement to a gathering of
progressives who are more used to being part of organizing campaigns
launched from organization or union headquarters. What Jones is
offering instead, though his Rebuild the Dream hub (launched in
partnership with MoveOn.org), is an open-source brand for the left,
complete with a logo in the form of a red "A" (for "American Dream")
with a white star at its center, underlined by a blue stripe. It's a
graphic turn on the American flag, part of Jones' call to the left to
reclaim the mantle of patriotism.

Rebuild the Dream has already facilitated some 1,600 house meetings of
like-minded people who aim to build a grassroots movement on a par
with the Tea Party. Rebuild the Dream has also issued a "Contract For
the American Dream," built on the model of past right-wing contracts,
which politicians are being asked to sign in order to signify their
willingness to support movement goals in their political and
legislative work. At Monday's event, Jones brought to the stage
members and leaders of some 25 organizations, representing issues
ranging from workers' rights, LGBT rights, corporate accountability,
financial reform -- many from the longstanding l organizations of the
progressive and liberal movement, including labor unions.


Today, the more institutional wing of the left will be represented
among the less-affiliated protesters of Occupy Wall Street, as union
members, artists, hactivists and students join in the mass expression
of outrage at the impunity with which big banks and traders have
turned the economy against everyday Amercans for the benefit of the 1
percent of Americans who own 42 percent of the nation's wealth. A
number of New York union locals are marching in solidarity with Occupy
Wall Street from City Hall to Zuccotti Park, the protesters' base
camp.

Van Jones sat down yesterday with AlterNet executive editor Don Hazen
and Washington bureau chief Adele Stan to share his hopes for the
rebirth of a liberal people's movement.

AlterNet: When you talk about Rebuilding the Dream being a resource
hub for progressives, how do you envision that?

Van Jones: We want to be a support center like FreedomWorks is a
support center [for the Tea Party]. Everybody focuses on the money
from the Koch brothers; they focus on Fox News TV. But they don't
focus so much on infrastructure, and the relationship between the
institutions. So we've tried to focus in on that.

AlterNet: One of the things FreedomWorks did was to create the Tea
Party Patriots, which is a network, as you noted in your speech, and
one that created its own social media infrastructure. Do you foresee
building an American Dream movement social-media network, just as Tea
Party Patriots did for their people? They build communities that way
-- communities that are locally and regionally based, but which are
also tied to the national Tea Party Patriots network and FreedomWorks.
But through the local level of the network, they also bring in new
people who may not have been politically active before.  One of the
reasons some people are saying that Occupy Wall Street is more like
the Tea Party than the folks at this conference is that OWS isn't
directly affiliated with a top-down, long established organization.

Van Jones: People can take too literally the [Tea Party comparison] --
like what is the one effort that is going to be the [progressive
version of] the Tea Party. Then people can start having a tug of war
over it. But, really, I don't think of it like that. I think we're
going into a real period of serious experimentation and innovation,
and even improvisation -- certainly through the [2012 presidential]
election, and probably a couple of years beyond as a couple of things
happen. One, as the economic crisis gets worse -- it ain't gonna get
better -- the formal economy is going to continue to contract. That
means you're going to have a lot of people suffering due to the
economy. That's going to create a need for a response. What are we
going to do? How can we address the ways in which people are hurting
-- immediate needs? That's going to be a driver of innovation, the
economic crisis. People have to eat. People have to live indoors.
People aren't going to just lay down and die because Wall Street wants
to hold up the economic recovery.

But the other driver will be the other process -- which is a global
phenomenon -- of the business model for social change changing, moving
away from the hierarchical and more toward the horizontal. And you'll
see different efforts that reflect different aspects of that. Getting
all these grassroots leaders to align ourselves differently as we
begin to function differently, more in partnership, and also a lot
more open-source efforts.

For example, November 17 is going to be a major protest date. And
we're just letting people take that and run with it. There's no
central group people are going to do this. We're just throwing the
date out there -- November 17th, "Jobs Not Cuts." That's different
from the kinds of coalitional tables that have been set up before
where [groups] try to dictate exactly the messaging, exactly this and
exactly that. So you're seeing urgency because of the economic crisis,
and the opportunity to do things differently, because of the
technology, to create all kinds of new forums. And so it could be, in
some ways, Occupy Wall Street will reflect some of the success model
from the Tea Party. We're talking about the Tea Party because that's
what gets the attention. But we're also studying the Arab Spring.

There's a way that we, as Westerners look at things: What is the one
right answer? Is it the American Dream Movement, or is it Occupy Wall
Street? Which is it? When, actually, we're just glad that the volcano
is starting to erupt. We just want to fight. And there are some
pre-existing grassroots assets that need to be re-aligned or
redeployed; we're trying to do that here. Then there's all this new
energy out there. And what you're going to see happening is that new
explosion of energy will capture and inspire some existing stuff; some
of these new organizations that are started will capture and inspire
some new stuff, and you'll see all kinds of inter-penetrations and
that kind of thing.

AlterNet: So, you as a brand may still say, we're going to build our
own social networking infrastructure.

VJ: We're going to continue to innovate and improvise, and nothing
would make us happier than for this to result in something that's
incredibly useful, and for other things to show up that create
incredible utility. There's not going to be one thing that
progressives do to fix this; we're going to be in a period of
improvisation. Now people are going are, rightly, using your work --
Dangerous Brew and other stuff -- to get insight and a window into the
Tea Party phenomenon, but there are other things.

AlterNet: So, you're saying, that even structurally you're not looking
to mirror that movement.

VJ: Not primarily. We wanted to see that if we went through the steps
they went through, with their Contract from America, with the house
meetings, could we do it? You know, they had 800 house meetings; we
had 1,597 -- almost double.

AlterNet: And are those people going to meet again to build the grassroots?

VJ: Yes. Look at the three things we're committed to coming out of
here. One, November 17th -- that's a big deal. That's going to be all
over the country. So, if you look from September 17th, when the young
people took over Wall Street, to November 17th. That's the American
Autumn. You had the Arab Spring; that's the American Autumn...That
process is ongoing, on the theme, Jobs, Not Cuts. Now, the difference
is, there's not all kinds of coalitions zipping around, trying to
dictate all the signs and messaging. We're inviting all kinds of
people, individuals as well as organizations, to jump on board.

Number two -- we're saying protests must lead to participation. We had
those house meetings -- we had, I think, 31,000 people, online and in
person. We're going to be launching a new online platform...where
people will be able to continue that effort. We're also going to be
developing teach-ins, because one of the things we learned from all
those house meetings was that there's a need for some experience.
Because if you go to [a house meeting] that's great, that's great. But
if you go to one that's not so great, it's not so great. So if you
have a teach-in, there's a way to get the best of all possible worlds.
You get a lot of people together, you have some videos or a some main
speakers -- we're going to try that out.

AlterNet: So you start a national conversation and get people talking.

VJ: We're going to try to get a million leaders in America online and
talking with each other. And that's going to be a major piece.

And then there's a third piece, and it's new -- and it seems to have
escaped people's notice -- and that's that we've said we're going to
run 2012 people for office in 2012. Now, that's a big deal.

AlterNet: That's a lot of people.

VJ: And the reason we're able to do is not because [we] have 2,000
people in [our] back pockets. It's because we have groups like
Progressive Majority and the New Organizing Institute [which,
respectively, recruit progressive candidates and teach activists how
to organize issue campaigns].

AlterNet: Then you're talking about local folks, too -- people running
for school board and town council.

VJ: Everybody, up and down. We're talking about U.S. senators who want
to run as American Dream candidates -- soon to be announced. We've
reached out to the House Democratic Caucus; there are House members
who want to run as American Dream candidates. One of the things that's
been missing is, you have Tea Party Republicans: you may not like the
product, but you know what the product is. Right now, you say
Democrat, and you don't know if you're getting Larry Summers or Dennis
Kucinich. So you can imagine at some point that there will be American
Dream Democrats -- or American Dream Republicans, if they want to act
right, or even American Dream independents. They just have to agree
with our Contract For the American Dream -- those 10 things (the
contract contains "10 Critical Steps to Get Our Economy Back on
Track"), and including the preamble that says "liberty and justice for
all," not for some, but for all. So you've got more corners where you
can have a lot of activity happening.

Look, the Occupy Wall Street stuff is a huge, big deal; this is a
huge, big deal; there will be other huge, big deals. There is a big
thaw happening. People have gone through their grieving process, and
people want to fight. Look, if the economy gets worse, there may be a
whole section of Latinos that jump off [and into the movement] --
people nobody expected, because of the horrible things that are being
dropped on Latino communities in the Southeast and Southwest.

I just want to say one last thing, and this is important. A lot of the
people in the leadership of the American Dream Movement just love
Occupy Wall Street. We're in awe of them and we want them to do well.
And what we're struggling with is how do we support it without looking
like we're trying to take it over. Because we couldn't've thunk this
up, therefore we want it to be able to have its independence. At the
same time, [it's important to determine] where they might need a
little bit of support, so you don't jump in and wind up killing
something that is an organic thing.

AlterNet: It's going to be interesting to see what happens when Dan
Cantor, executive director of the labor-aligned Working Families
Party, and other union members join with Occupy Wall Street for the
solidarity march this week.

VJ: Exactly! This is thrilling stuff! This is an epic battle [with]
the dream-killers on Wall Street -- who are so disgusting and so
despicable; they are ingrates who are sitting up there laughing at us.
I mean, every other bloc of capital that has this much weight, they
try to do something to make you like them. Even the polluters, they
say, "We'll get clean coal." They try to do something. But these
people on Wall Street -- they just don't care. So it's just going to
be an epic battle now between the worst people in America, the most
selfish people in America, and the most selfless. And that's going to
be amazing.

Adele M. Stan is AlterNet's Washington bureau chief. Follow her on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/addiestan. Don Hazen is the executive editor of AlterNet.
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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett