The people who seem to us to be a very tiny elite, far off and mysterious, actually live in a fairly big world. The way they look at the planet is like they're looking at an index card covered in supply routes. We protestors had imagined ourselves this huge threat. But we were at best bemusing. To the extent that the people inside did care, it was almost like we were paying them a compliment-it reinforced their sense of power.
Van JonesWhen you take the people who most need work and connect them with the work that most needs doing, you save. You save that young personโs life, you save a whole bunch of money, and you save the soul of this country when you invest and give people a chance, give people hope, give people opportunity.
Van JonesPeople forget: solar panels don't put themselves up. Wind turbines don't manufacture themselves. Businesses don't retrofit themselves to waste less energy and water, nor do homes weatherize themselves.
Van JonesTo make sure we aren't training people for jobs that don't exist, the government should provide companies with loans or loan guarantees. And the government should also directly employ people to do things like coastal restoration, land restoration, reforestation and similar programs that absorb carbon and protect America's beauty.
Van JonesSteve Bannon is clearly somebody who has studied not-normal politics and the Constitution and the Electoral College. He is somebody who has studied Hitler and Lenin and a lot of people who have seized power and unleashed blitzkriegs from above and created tiny cabals of power concentrated in a tiny group at the top. That's what authoritarians do. It's right out of the playbook.
Van JonesThat old Bobby Kennedy 1968 form of liberalism where you could be holding hands with the Appalachian family on one day and then be in Harlem the next day and nobody thinks it's weird, that is something that isn't as strong. It was strong in 2008. It hasn't been as strong since then. That's just a reality that we have to deal with that it's not just that the Republicans ran a terrible candidate who had bad ideas, it's also that the circle of love and affirmation that we have as progressives can sometimes just not be big enough.
Van Jones