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Sometimes we overemphasize the political system. There are other ways to make a difference. There's technology, there's media, there's business.
Van Jones -
In other words: we can fight pollution and poverty at the same time, with the same method. We can beat global warming and the global recession at the same time, with the same method. We can do this by putting people to work re-powering America with clean energy.
Van Jones
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The problem that we have is that most Americans don't even study American history, let alone Pinochet, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin and all these guys.
Van Jones -
Even if we can solve the carbon problem for coal, it is still a non-renewable resource. At some point, coal supplies will drop.
Van Jones -
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 Jones -
That we could live in a country with no rules for the rich, no rights for the poor, and no middle class to speak of, is wrong; it's a crime against the next generation and we've got to do something about it.
Van Jones -
It's a tremendous challenge now: to make sure the green economy is big enough that there is enough labor demand that people who've been thrown out of work can be re-employed AND people who are new to the workforce can be employed. And that is going to be very difficult.
Van Jones -
Americans need to see people who are honestly trying to learn from each other, even as we make our own points powerfully and fight for our own values and policies.
Van Jones
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We need a more diversified portfolio of change-making tools so that we don't just get so freaked out by whatever's happening in the political corner.
Van Jones -
Keith Ellison is an organizer's organizer.He's one of the only Muslims in Congress, so you have a big statement there.
Van Jones -
God chooses community sometimes to bear an unfair burden to force us to rise to the next level of consciousness and understanding.
Van Jones -
The problem that we have in America now is, some people only see the positive stuff and wave off the toxic stuff, and some people only see the toxic stuff and wave off the positive stuff. You can't have an honest conversation.
Van Jones -
There's the God within and the God without, and you have to attend to the alignment of the two of them.
Van Jones -
Ninth generation American, ma'am, and I'm the first one in my family born with all my rights. I'm a ninth generation American. And so we have not escaped because I went to Yale all the problems of this country.
Van Jones
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People can tell if you don't like 'em. African Americans can tell we're not welcome in the Republican Party no matter how many times they say we are. All the signals that it's a party that tolerates anti-black racism is very clear.
Van Jones -
I think it would be good to get somebody a job. Right now we're in a bubble of green rhetoric and a bowl of actual green investment and job creation. So my goal for next year is to move from inspiration to implementation on this stuff.
Van Jones -
The boundless capacity of the African American spirit in this country to say Hallelujah anyhow, to use our joy as a weapon, to use our creativity as a weapon, to use our moral clarity and our deep experience as a weapon not just to save Black people but to save all of these people.
Van Jones -
This [2016] election was lost because a total of 70,000 people - out of 120-130 million votes - in the Rust belt, but as a result America is in the calamity.
Van Jones -
Donald Trump understood the dynamics of the new media system better than the people who ran the old media system.
Van Jones -
Former brownfields, depressed urban areas, and hard-hit rural towns blossom as eco-industrial parks, green enterprise zones, and eco-villages. Farmers' markets, community co-ops, and mobile markets get fresh, organic produce to the people who can't afford to shop at health-food stores.
Van Jones
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People in red states and blue states can agree that if we can fight pollution and poverty at the same time, letting people work their way out of poverty without undermining community health, we have a moral obligation to do so.
Van Jones -
All the old rules - if you say some crazy stuff you get your show canceled or you get your campaign ended - don't apply in the world of social media. They don't apply in the world of reality TV.
Van Jones -
There are some cities that are doing good stuff, but there aren't enough of them. If you don't fight for what you want, then you deserve what you get. And in politics, if you don't ask, you don't get at all.
Van Jones -
America should be leading the world in green and clean solutions, and human rights. We shouldn't be leading the world in wars and incarceration rates and pollution. We can be a better country. I think we're going to be a better country.
Van Jones