hello and john are going to washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture global activist and former green jobs adviser to president obama van jones joins us for a first half hour of conversations with great minds discuss his new project to rebuild the american dream and how we got to worry is and as we get closer august second more bad news is surfacing about the country's debt our credit score so what kind of damage has standard and poor's threatened us with if the republicans keep

behaving like children and regardless of what the right wingers might have think medicare is not bankrupting our country i'll give you my take on why the insurance program needs to remain on hard for the sake of all americans. for tonight's conversations in the great minds and joan joined by van jones are glad to globally recognize human rights activist and advocate for clean energy reform he's the co-founder of three nonprofit organizations that are making a direct impact on america's social and political spectrum the elevator center for human rights color of change and green for all he also served as the green jobs advisor in the obama white house in two thousand and nine and is currently a senior fellow at the center for american progress and is also a distinguished visiting fellow at both the center for african-american studies at

princeton university and the program in science technology and environmental policy at the woodrow wilson school public and international affairs an honor and pleasure to welcome van jones to our conversations with great minds of and welcome. good to be here thank you great to have you with us i want to get into some detail about your new project rebuild the dream but first i would like to learn a little bit more about van jones what has informed you or inspired you throughout your life. well you know i was born in one thousand nine hundred sixty eight that is the year you know they really tried to assassinate hope in america they killed bobby kennedy they killed dr king they beat up a bunch of young people who were at the democratic convention in chicago and they really tried to kill hope off and i remember being in kindergarten nine hundred seventy two and one of my classmates asking my kindergarten teacher

who was bobby kennedy. and miss brown starts to cry choked up trying to explain who he was and i had never seen a grown person cry at least if i had i didn't it didn't register with me but it really hit me that something bad had happened here i was born so i've always been interested but really my father probably was a person who may be really aware of the world and the need to stand up for justice he was born in abject poverty on the edge of memphis tennessee joining the military to get out of poverty got out put himself through college then he put his little brother through college and help put a cousin through college then he put me and my sister through college and he was one of those original kind of bootstrap or guys that he spent his whole life i forgot the military educating some of the tough as rough as kids in our county. assistant principal in a public high school and then a president in

a public middle school and you know i grew up with that kind of service and that kind of dedication and i've just been that way my whole life was extraordinary it seems like the rodney king was an initial tipping point for you becoming an activist do i do i have there. that you're right you know i grew up in this kind of red white and blue household with my dad you know you've been a cop in the military and he was a tough. middle school principal and. i kind of went off to yale for law school for him i think that was his happiest day of his life the proudest day you kind of lived the american dream he was really glad i got new haven connecticut and within a couple of weeks i was pretty mad because i saw so much poverty and injustice which i wasn't prepared for and decided really i wanted to do something about it which is the bay area and while i was there in one thousand nine hundred king burdick's came down the younger viewers may not know about this but there was

a guy african-american man videotaped being. beaten mercilessly by four white police officers and an all white jury acquitted goes off his wrongdoing and there were disturbances across america i at the time being a young lost student was asked by the civil rights group i was working for to go out and monitor see what was going on. and days later i went back out to monitor and there were peaceful demonstrations by that point same sisko but the police arrested everybody. including legal managers like myself and i said look there's something desperately wrong with our country we have videotaped evidence of a lot of police violence and then here i am a yale law student a little glasses and and little dreadlocks out there with my clipboard trying to monitor police activity and i was getting arrested myself have done nothing wrong and so i moved to what i call the left side of pluto politically for

several years before finally coming back around so my dad's tough minded american idealism but that journey i think a lot of people have taken in american life and i think now many people who had been maybe out of politics out of public life were inspired to get back involved to really believe we can do something in two thousand and eight and i think we kind of gone from hope to heartbreak and i want to be a part of bringing some that hope back here absolutely you. can't you co-founded the fount of the i will make a speaker center for human rights and started the books not bars program and then you co-founded color of change was color of change in response to katrina. color change was a response to katrina and really james rucker took the lead on that use after you hear activists have been

a part of move on thought org and helped to out of katrina build it an african-american version of move on to work using some of those high tech tools and techniques to amplify the voices of people who are concerned about what was happening to the victims of katrina but also after americans in general are very proud of that also proud of the ella baker center for human rights which is also still going forward you know we discovered in california. that the state was spending one hundred fifty thousand dollars per year per kid to lock a kid up and we did it mad at the time you could sit four kids to yale for the cost of food and one kid to jail we said this is ridiculous these kids in the classroom don't have books they don't have chalk summer programs are being cut but we're spinning a hundred fifty k. per year per kid locking them up and then these kids come out eighty five ninety percent of them wind up in adult prison so what have we run

a hundred fifty thousand dollars a year prep schools for adult present we said look give the community that money you give any community leader one kid and hundred thousand dollars that kid is going to never be in trouble again because you could give the kid therapy you could take him to europe you could do anything and have money left over and so we started that books not bars campaign and our objective was just to close the youth prisons in california people that we were crazy but we will end up by doing simple smart things and making sure the money was spent better helping to cut california's youth prison population by about thirty percent working with other partners we close about four prisons and stop of the building to fit the super deal for kids and oakland california and i had no increase in youth violence so we. proved that you could take those dollars and listen to the parents listen to the grandparents listen to the young people and devise

a much smarter ways of helping kids who got in trouble to get out of trouble rather than spending money to keep them in trouble for us there was you and i have both been trashed by glenn back on his t.v. show you much more a question of really and much more publicly oh yeah and. here hey well this is this is just a maybe this is just a quick question but arguably color of change was responsible for taking one back off the air initiating a campaign that led to his leaving leaving your i'm curious just your thoughts on that that whole thing that whole era. sure you know i was with color of change when first started we were focused on katrina and then once we got that up and running i went back to work on the l a baker center and eventually created something called green for all which of fuel talk about james kept growing that organization and took a different direction than he did take on. beck and fox news for. not being responsible for abusing i would say of year waves and putting out things that

were not true about me but probably about you about so many other people and eventually. i think that if the cation of our system of our system of american society you can't just abuse the airwaves can't just abuse the public trust and expect the american business community to stand with you and pay for ads on your show when you're saying things that are not true that are defamatory and that are misleading the american people so it wasn't just a james rucker stood up and said the american business community stood back and said we don't care how many eyeballs you can get with this type of programming we're not going to put money put our grades next to yours and eventually he was. made a decision to get off the air cliff back did i am excited about the ability that people have now because a little little david's of the world like

a james rucker to use new technology to. fight for real change and to bring the truth forward and i hope that we'll be able to keep net neutrality and open free internet so that people like james rucker and others can do those kinds of services for our country you know that is going to be a challenge going forward you worked in the white house as a green jobs czar and i'm curious your thoughts on just that experience in general and perhaps. not i was going to say more importantly it's probably the wrong phrase but. i'm also curious about your thoughts on the obama presidency you were right there you know front row center. how do you think things are gone yet. well first of all you know i got a chance to surface six months in the white house that will always be my highest honor there is no higher honor in american life than to serve in the white house. no matter what else i do in life best that's the high point for me best it's months

of my life by the toughest two weeks what i chose to resign but what i would say about the obama presidency is that given the mess that obama inherited from the prior administration any president was going to struggle and i think that the american people forgot that when we were out there and she thousand and eight and we were excited and everybody was talking about hope and change the slogan was never yes he can the slogan was yes we can and i think over the past couple years we slacked off we haven't been out here talking to our friends talking our neighbors going to the farmers markets going to laundromats haven't rallies and doing the things that makes a democracy function and because we tried outsource democracy to one person in the white house the other side amplified their efforts and i think we have suffered as a country as a result of we have had

a very one sided conversation now for almost two years i'm not man at the end of the day for the more right wing perspective being so loud i'm frustrated that the more progressive point of view the maybe the more humane more bells point of view being so quiet and i think that the obama presidency and all of these he will be better when the american people are especially those of us with more humane and balanced views are more active you wrote an amazing book just before that time the green collar economy that probably led to your being around the white house about how to desmond here would take us out of the pollution based grade i mean into a healthy new green economy and speak to that. sure i mean i think the argument still holds right now we are still clinging figures in sos to the last century's pollution based economy using fossil fuels that are based on dead things from the

past meanwhile now our friends in shock and china are racing past us and they're using. the sort of the use of fossil fuels but they are now ahead of us in wind and solar and using those things that are renewable and based on. a living source of energy like like a living sun and my view is that everything that is good for the environment is a job so if it was up with themselves up wind turbines don't manufacture themselves by all crops biofuel crops no growth themselves everything that's good for the economy is a job and so if we want to put people back to work let's connect the people who most need work to the work that the earth most needs to have done which is repairing humanity on a clean basis and fight pollution and poverty at the same time and beat the global recession and global warming at the same time that's the basic argument of my book the green collar economy i think it's the are going to be even more true now than

it was it so so very well we will i want i want to get into your new project rebuild the dream project right after this break more with van jones on this conversations with great minds just as. the website needs twenty four seventh's live streaming news times what to do about the ongoing financial crisis unlimited free high quality videos for download. and stories you never find on the street. that will sell me the. most you aren't. just.

well i'm happy conversations with great minds tonight i'm talking with van jones powerhouse cultural and political reform also happens to be a distinguished scholar bestselling author and now leader of rebuild the dream and you're now spearheading this program rebuild the dream tell us about. well it's exciting to me you know i took a paradigm from the white house i took a year off i taught at princeton i studied and i really tried to try to understand what happened you know we went from hope to heartbreak. what was the mechanism by

which we lost the moment to really push america in the positive hopeful optimistic direction that we were headed so i study the tea party i studied the the tactics they use the technique and i came away actually really impressed. these people have figured out something in american politics that we need to pay attention to those of us who have different views about the economy they took a bunch of old ideas a bunch of preexisting organizations they realigned them rebranded them and really presented them to the american people something new and exciting and suddenly people went chasing out after that but he read it and frankly i think now into it called the sack. i thought to myself well we actually have good ideas for the economy we don't think that we should throw medicare under the bus and so security under the bus and teachers on the bus and veterans under the bus we think we should actually respect those institutions and invest in them and ask the wealthy people

to pay their fair share and it turns out the bed the super majority of americans agree that we should have a balanced approach to our budget problems american families don't say we got a budget problem let's start grandma that's not how american families think we say hey listen let's cut back on the non-essential and then let's go have junior go get a paper route or you know you know susie will start doing hair on the side and we'll bring as a new revenues you cut back on nonessentials and increase revenues that's how american families handle budget crises well turns out super majority of americans want america's government to pursue the same approach which is to cut back on nonessentials they'll cut back and muscle and bone and marrow which is the tea party program but cut back on nonessentials while we grow some revenues and ask the wealthy people in america to pay their fair share if you do well in america you should be willing to do well by america especially in

a crisis and so we said what is the organization what is a campaign that is carrying that message forward it's a super majority opinion but obviously it's not making a difference in washington d.c. both political parties seem to be off the rails somewhere the whole town of d.c. seems to be stuck on stupid talking about you're austerity or massive austerity but nobody's talking about investing in america creating jobs so who's sticking up for jobs not because who's doing it we couldn't find. an organization we said let's start one. and so rebuild the dream. is a support center for creating a new movement that we call the american dream movement and we have now about one hundred fifty partners including some of the big superstar powerhouse organizations . progressive side of the ledger move on dot org a.f.l.-cio planned parenthood the

center for community change green for all campaign for america's future so many organizations i can name them all have decided to stand together let's put this idea out of having a movement to just be american dream to fight for jobs for middle class americans of people who want to join the middle class and we put the website up we said hey does anybody have any good ideas in america picks me economy but sides just trashing medicare and we hope to get about five hundred to a thousand good ideas we didn't get five hundred ideas didn't get a pal's we got twenty four thousand ideas the first fifteen thousand and three days of americans with brilliant ideas about how to fix our problems we said that's great let's call for house meetings all across america so that people can actually discuss these ideas the tea party what it started in started with house meetings

and they had eight hundred across america people were stunned this weekend the american dream movement supported by rebuild the dream dot com it's going to have eight hundred house meetings we're going to have one thousand five hundred and eighty four almost twice as many as the tea party started out with so we think that we're on to something we think just as the tea party got about three thousand organizations ultimately to stand together under a common banner with a common idea about these massive cuts we think we can get many many thousand organizations. stand together and individuals as well under a common banner of the american dream to say jobs not cuts and to defend american infrastructure from this weeping reckless attack from d.c. the dream killers cannot prevail those who still believe in america who still believe that america is exceptional because we have an exceptionally large middle

class we have exceptionally smart social programs and services essential services that state the net that's american except exceptionalism we think those people who still believe in the american dream i was a supermajority in america and rebuild the dream guy is about supporting those people come in the courts i got to tell you it is absolutely astounding to me i have sat through so many. organizing meetings activist means from literally i'm i'm a bit older than you literally from my days in the s.d.s. in the late sixty's before you were born or about the time you were born to you know what three weeks ago and it's like so often people are competing there they're there there's infighting there's all these these politics and i'm just astounded you were able to pull all those together. i tell you what i tell you one thing. well i'll tell you if you were just be trying to do it it wouldn't work but i think what has happened is that we have

a certain wisdom immaturity across all these organizations you know these organizations remember what it was like in two thousand and eight when we were unified and we were a member who was like a two thousand and ten where we were not unified and that is the big teacher and so you know i'm proud to be one of many many union leaders have a big mouth but so many leaders have been saying let's go ahead and get together and defend our values and because we've already gone through the process of two thousand and eight people it's just like putting back on that old jersey that old ills those leakers are still so good and that's really i think the reason for the success yeah you've done a marvelous job contract for the american. bream that that is or the rebuild the dream program seems to be from the from the time i spent on the website subdivided into basically four categories strong communities we all pay our share working democracy and good jobs now why those four and could you speak to each of those.

well you know the reason for that for those four is that we just we wanted to create some subdivisions to give people a sense of you know where they might be more interested some people might be more interested in the idea of a working democracy and and how we're going to get our democracy back from the these corporations and and stop the union busting so we wanted those people people with a lot of energy to be able to move in that direction in the other categories as well i think the most important thing i can say to the viewers in the time we have left go on the website yourself it's rebuild the dream dot com as a community rebuild the dream dot org is another effort to rebuild the dream dot com is i think. an incredible flowering there are so many creative ideas i mean some of the ideas that have come come forward think i have been in politics for a long time maybe not as long as you but a long time from my point of view and i'll tell you some of these ideas are so creative ways for as if instead of saying to corporations we'll give you

a big tax break now go out there and create jobs why not give the tax credit to the individual american and let that american then go to that corporation say you get a tax break but only if you hire me buddy and that would actually be a much more targeted way to use our tax breaks to create jobs brilliant ideas like that americans are so creative have so many good ideas the d.c. crowd gets so inbred with a couple of couple of ideas unfortunately often mostly bad of late we believe that once the american people have spoken we can take those best ideas forward we could have a movement that will be chewing three times bigger than the tea party and actually give us our movement we had two thousand and eight back but this time people own people power based on principles and with forward momentum that can't be stopped and you talked about how the when you analyzed the tea party what you saw was that they were repackaging old ideas we've had six. yes for ideas in the united states

in the past you know alexander hamilton is model for building building modern industrial state for example that he put forward in seventy ninety one of the washington ministration and got largely ratified seven hundred ninety three and and held until the late one nine hundred ninety s. i'm curious as to what extent. the stuff that you're getting the ideas that you're getting and the direction the you're thinking about going or or suggesting or whatever might be inspired by things like hamilton or like franklin roosevelt or teddy roosevelt for that matter you know just busting up some of the too big to fail organization some of his old old ideas that that actually worked we have about three minutes left or right. well i think the ideas are really across the board ordinary americans are the ones who are going on and uploading ideas like us that we were hoping they will get by a hundred even a thousand ideas to look good our papers will probably get thousands of missions

and we you know we have more than twenty thousand and i'm sure there's a mix the fundamental i think inspiration is that any one particular thinker is a particular value and it's a very you bet the last century but the so-called american century was a century that the progressive patriots like you were not one. ok in one thousand nine hundred we didn't have a middle class we didn't have you know black people couldn't vote women couldn't vote children were working in the factories the virus was being trashed and some patriots looked around today that's fine with me i love it but there was another set of patriots deeper patriots not the cheap patriots the deeper patriots who said look we're never going to be perfect we could have a more perfect union than this and decade after decade bills the patriots moved america to become the literal envy of the world with a big middle class

a safety net equal rights the whole deal we have a long way to go but we went a long way and nobody who i think has gone on that website believes we should repeal the twentieth century that is the agenda of our opponents they want to repeal the twentieth century they want to smash down every american institution our grandparents fought for the labor unions to public education to the safety net to the really the american middle class and we should not let that happen without a big fight the biggest fight in the history of the country to save america's middle class to save the achievements of our grandparents and to make sure that the american century the twentieth century is not repealed so that some corporations don't have to pay their taxes so so very well so in the in the minute we have left here van jones what's. other than a call for action to go to the website what would you say to the american people who are feeling perhaps dispirited. you know things don't seem to be working fast enough. help is on the way first of all change happens fast now

obama seem to come out of nowhere if you go to clinton obama came out of nowhere then the tea party came out of nowhere madison came out nowhere egypt came out of nowhere the next big movement is on its way already it's going to seem to come out of nowhere it's going to come out of the hearts and the minds of the american people go to rebuild the dream dot com tomorrow go to one of these house meetings you are not alone we are the super majority in our country and we just have not had a chance to meet each other and find each other that tomorrow that ends this week and rebuild the dream dot com you can find one of the one thousand five hundred house meetings this weekend and we are going to begin the process not of taking america back of taking america forward van jones thanks so much for being with us i'm honored to be here to watch this conversation again as well as other conversations with a great minds go to our website conversations with great minds dot com.