By Jonathan Nack
In response to the red-baiting and smear attacks against ACORN and Van Jones, the CCDS organized an educational event on Nov. 5, 2009 at La Peña Cultural Center in Berkeley.
Two members of Oakland ACORN, Martha Daniels and Annie McKinzie, who have both been evicted from their homes, spoke movingly how they are working with ACORN to organize community resistance to evictions. They vowed to defend ACORN against right-wing attacks and
continue their organizing.
CCDS members Jonathan Nack and Marty Price spoke, respectively,about the redbaiting attacks on Van Jones (which caused him to resign his position as Pres. Obama’s “Green Jobs Czar”) and the way to respond to such attacks against our leaders, organizations, and movements.
The article that follows is a fuller exploration of this subject.
Predictable, anyway, to those who understand that Cold War anti-communism—in other words McCarthyism—still defines the bounds of acceptable politics in this country.
The attacks on Jones were, of course, also blows aimed at the Green and environmental justice movements, young activists of color, and the Obama administration. A classic McCarthyite strategy: oppose social movements by their red-baiting leaders.
Glen Beck, the radical rightwing television and radio demagogue, led the charge against Jones. Beck accused Jones of being a self-avowed communist, a radical Marxist, and a revolutionary. He provided audio and video evidence of Jones’s public remarks in which Jones described himself as all that and more. Beck charged Jones was using the Green Jobs movement to infiltrate the government.
Beck, the Fox network, and the radical-right media hammered the Obama administration intensely for weeks over Jones. They honed in on Jones having signed a petition demanding an inquiry into what the government knew about the plot that caused 9/11 prior to that terrible day. Jones was also accused of calling for the freedom of Mumia Abu Jamal. Then they found a recent clip of Jones calling Republicans assholes.
Neither President Obama nor any other politician of stature rose to Jones’s defense. How could they? The charges were in their views indefensible and proven. The very facts that Jones had so recently called himself a revolutionary and a communist, that he had questioned what was known beforehand of the conspiracy that resulted in 9/11, that he had called for the freedom of a convicted cop killer were all proof enough for them that Jones’s judgment and suitability were questionable.
It didn’t matter that the main source of the attacks on Jones came from Beck, the face of proto-fascism in America, backed up by the Fox News network—the closest thing yet to a fascist TV network. Forget that to cave in to these right-wing demagogues is exactly the wrong way to respond to this type of McCarthyism. Never mind that Jones’s expert knowledge, proven managerial skills, and leadership abilities made him perfectly qualified for the job.
President Obama and the Democrats promptly thanked Jones for doing the right thing in resigning in the interests of the Green Jobs programs.
To his great credit, Jones has not denounced his past radical views. Whether his views have changed, as many people’s do, and to what extent are besides the point.
The other day, I received an e-mail that contained an open letter from Jones to his supporters, dated September 15. Jones calls on them to continue to support President Obama and Green Jobs initiatives, and he even weighs in on behalf of Obama’s health care proposal. Jones writes that Obama’s election was not the finish line but the starting line in the fight to renew America. Jones explains his silence since his resignation on September 6, “I have remained silent since then—in keeping with my promise not to be a distraction during a key moment in the Obama presidency.” He says, “In due course, I will be offering my perspective on what has happened—including correcting the record about false charges.”
Van Jones was way too radical for the government crowd. Fighters for social justice and truth tellers can only get themselves into trouble in that great fraternity. Radical leftists are pariahs. Meanwhile, radical rightists, such as Beck, are not only welcome in Washington, but they play a privileged role as attack dogs for the Republican Party,
Who Is Van Jones?
Who is this man Washington politicians uniformly reject?I know a little something about him. I’ve known him for well over a decade as a fellow activist in the San Francisco Bay Area. I've never known Van Jones well, but I have met him many times and attended numerous rallies, marches, forums, and meetings he’s spoken at, organized, and led. Over a stretch of years I supported many projects Jones initiated and played a leadership role in, including the non-profit Ella Baker Center for Social Justice, which is based in my hometown of Oakland.
I first heard of Jones back during the resistance to the first Gulf War in the early nineties. He was among a generation of young activists of color who opposed that war. I then connected with him in the movement to demand freedom for Mumia Abu Jamal, a revolutionary journalist and Black Nationalist who was framed as a cop killer.
Jones immediate impressed me with his soaring oration, sharp intellect, and radical message. Soon thereafter, I attended a meeting which Jones ended with a prayer. I learned he was a deeply spiritual man with an interest in the ministry. There were obvious echoes in Jones’s message from the Black church in the days of the civil rights movement. He is a product of the social movements, his Ivy League law degree notwithstanding.
I'm a couple of generations older than Jones, but my circles in the Bay Area left were quite supportive of the work he and other activists of his generation did. During the 1990s, we consistently supported their projects while leaving them to do their own things. I recall contributing funds so that a group of them (I think Jones was included) could visit South Africa. I also recall Jones speaking at one event which we dubbed “a dialog of the generations.”
Over the course of the next decade, Jones consistently rose in prominence. He founded the Ella Baker Center and learned how to get grants. I became aware that Jones was beginning to engage in electoral politics when he joined Arianna Huffington’s campaign for governor in 2003. Through growing connections to Huffington and others, Jones gained entry into elite circles.
In recent years Jones co-founded Color of Change, wrote a best selling book, The Green Collar Economy, founded another non-profit, Green For All, and was named by Time magazine as an environmental hero. Then President Obama appointed him as his Green Jobs czar. I was pleasantly surprised when he was appointed, but I wondered how someone as publicly radical as Jones could manage in government.
It turned out he couldn’t. Jones had a big bull’s-eye on his back and was an easy target for those on the right who are looking to take down the Obama administration and trying to prove that there really are reds working with the president to support their claims that Obama really is a socialist. Jones was a easy target of opportunity, “socialist” apparently being the worst name the right can think of to publicly call President Obama.
In Washington Jones was called names and was undefended. We in the movements for social and environmental justice have two other names for Van Jones: brother and leader. We continue to expect great things from him, and he can count on us to have his back.
The Moral of the Story
Jones’s brief experience in federal government is a cautionary tale to any non-repentant radical who’s been very public (unless it was at least twenty years ago). If you take a high-ranking government position, you will be very vulnerable. You’ll be vulnerable until we can open the political boundaries of what's acceptable in Washington, until radical left ideas are accepted as part of the legitimate public discourse, until we break through the boundaries set by Cold War anti-communism.
Jonathan Nack has been a journalist and activist since 1984. He resides in Oakland, California.
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