The problem isn't that the green jobs aren't sexy enough. It's that they're not plentiful enough. A young person looking for a job isn't looking just for a sexy job, they're looking for any job.
Van JonesI think the Muslim community is now being asked to bear an unfair burden to save a great faith from the fundamentalists and a great nation from bigotry.
Van JonesWith the Democrats, they see themselves, we see ourselves as the party of the working folks, the striving, you know, the good. But, without anybody acknowledging it, there is now this little camp of folks who come across as very elitist, that look down on red state voters, who think that Republicans are dumb people.
Van JonesAll the big ideas for getting us onto a lower carbon trajectory involve a lot of people doing a lot of work, and that's been missing from the conversation. This is a great time to go to the next step and ask, well, who's going to do the work? Who's going to invest in the new technologies? What are ways to get communities wealth, improved health, and expanded job opportunities out of this improved transition?
Van JonesYou have the Republican Party, who see themselves in their heart of hearts as being a party of colorblind meritocracy. That's their great belief about themselves. And yet somehow you also have a party where a lot of racial resentment and a camp of even neo-Nazis have set up camp in their party. If you point it out to them, they get mad at you, not at the neo-Nazis.
Van JonesI've had a chance to meet some of my civil rights heroes and, more recently, members of the young generation around [Barack] Obama, people in their teens and twenties who were determined to make history and who were too idealistic to think that what they were trying to do might be impossible. They proved that visionary pragmatism can win over the majority. That comes from a particular place in your heart that generation Y is offering America. They just can't afford to be naive now, in terms of the ferocity of the opposition.
Van Jones