The hits just keep on coming for Van Jones. Now uncovered by http://www.verumserum.com/, is an anti-war, anti-American record which his organization sponsored and he is featured on. Below is an excerpt of an interview where he mentions the record:
Jones: We've been applying a concept borrowed from South Africa: "Govern from below." We take high school students and college-age people who've decided they don't care about anything and put them through workshops and educational programs so they can become advocates for themselves. We have a reputation for showing up with several dozen young people at city government meetings and turning the mic over to these young people, who then use hip-hop and poetry to describe the conditions they'd like to see changed in their community.
Marable: What's the general reaction?
Jones: Policymakers are usually blown away by the passion and creativity, but also by the pain these young people are speaking about. We've shown we can win reform, not because I have a law degree, but because dozens of young people have truth on their side and can speak it.
Marable: A lot of this is about mass disfranchisement. Anywhere from one-third to half of all adults who are black are not even in the paid labor force. In communities like Harlem, the largest employer is the fast-food industry. The older civil rights leadership, with a few notable exceptions such as Julian Bond, has not yet effectively spoken to new realities that are destroying an entire generation of young black women and men. Not fully and not effectively. That's why I'm so hopeful about this new generation emerging, like Jeff Johnson of the youth division of NAACP. It's this kind of leadership we desperately need to solve the new problems of the neo-political liberal age.
Jones: Amen. When we talk about neo-liberalism, essentially we have a system where there are no rules for the rich and no rights for the poor. Politics of liberation in the new century that [exists] in terms of integration vs. segregation is anachronistic. It has little to do with what's happening today. So we raise new slogans: "schools, not jails"; "books, not bars"; "jobs, not jails." Whereas people in the '60s were protesting on campuses, we have a generation of blacks and Latinos protesting for their rights to get on campuses and have the opportunity to learn. The dynamic is very different. The people we see on a daily basis, when they go to high school the police cars are already there, because they are stationed there. If they get into a push-and-shove match in the hallway, they don't go to the principal's office, they go to the precinct in handcuffs. That's the reality were dealing with: over-policing, overincarceration. Our job is to say, 'Look, we want safe communities.' And the safest communities are not the ones with the most police. The safest communities are the ones with the best jobs and education. We want what works in the suburbs. We want that for our communities. It's a very different fight. At the same time it's a continuation of the fight that started years ago.
Marable: That's right. Every generation must find its own voice and use culture in creative ways to speak to the new realities. In the 1960s you had the Freedom Singers of SNCC. You had [anthemic] songs such as "We Shall Overcome", and now the 21st-century hip-hop generation increasingly uses the most progressive currents as a way of interrogating and challenging the prison-industrial complex, and structural racism, discrimination based on gender, race, class, sexual orientation. [I understand you have] developed a record label, Freedom Fighter Music.
Jones: Yes, we've had one for a little more than a year. Our second CD is coming out this year.
This is an excerpt from an interview from USA Today http://www.usaweekend.com/03_issues/030209/030209BHM-criminal.html
The CD Jones speaks of contains the below music (if you want to call it that) and is titled, "Wartimes:Reports from the Opposition. Ensure all of the kiddies are out of the room when you listen to this, it is most certainly not a family friendly song. Not only was Van Jones the founder/director of the organization which sponsored this record, he is actually featured on this track, with his portion starting at around 3:45 of the Anti-American rant. Thanks to http://www.verumserum.com/ for uncovering yet another example of why Van Jones has no business working for the government in any capacity, much less advising the President of the United States.
For some reason, my video embedding isn't working properly, so I have included the link below
http://www.verumserum.com/?p=8166
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