In Defense of Van Jones

All I have to say about this is how interesting Van Jones, the man put in charge of pushing forward the green economy on President Obama's behalf, becomes unemployed the day before Labor Day.

Irony?

From his resignation letter:

"On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me. They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide. I have been inundated with calls -- from across the political spectrum -- urging me to 'stay and fight.' But I came here to fight for others, not for myself. I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past. We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future."

The case against Van Jones:

...Jones, who joined the administration in March as special adviser for green jobs at the CEQ, had issued two public apologies in recent days, one for signing a petition in 2004 from the group 911Truth.org that questioned whether Bush administration officials "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war" and the other for using a crude term to describe Republicans in a speech he gave before joining the administration.

His one-time involvement with the Bay Area radical group Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), which had Marxist roots, had also become an issue. And on Saturday his advocacy on behalf of death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of shooting a Philadelphia police officer in 1981, threatened to develop into a fresh point of controversy.

Fox News Channel host Glenn Beck launched the drive against Jones and all but declared war on him after a group Jones founded in 2005, ColorofChange.org, led an advertising boycott against Beck's show to protest his claim that Obama is a racist...

In Defense of Van Jones

He is one of the most dynamic activists of our time, and he has a track record to prove it.

From Wikipedia:

Jones founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in 1996, a California non-governmental organization (NGO) working for alternatives to violence. In 2005, Jones co-founded Color of Change, an advocacy group for African Americans.[1] Formerly based in Oakland, California, Jones founded Green For All in 2007, a national NGO dedicated to "building an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty."[2] His first book, The Green Collar Economy, was released on October 7, 2008, and reached number 12 on the New York Times Best Seller list.[3] In 2008, Time magazine named Jones one of its "Environmental Heroes".[4] Fast Company called him one of the "12 Most Creative Minds of 2008."

From a tech perspective, Jones has set the standard for online book marketing.

From Huffington Post:

Social and environmental activist Van Jones felt he had important message about the economy, energy prices and global warming to impart in his book "The Green Collar Economy," which was published this month. What he didn't have, as a first time author with an almost non-existent marketing budget, was the kind of money and name-recognition that typically helps place a book on the best sellers list and in the national conversation. So he improvised.

Using a Web-based, viral marketing strategy, Jones and Green For All, an environmental organization he recently founded, worked to get the word out about his book far and wide. The result was a place -- number 12 to be exact -- on the New York Times best sellers list in the book's first week...

I'm not worried about Jones, he will fair well. He might be more effective as an organizer than a policy wonk.

But I worry more for the people who brought him down.