it's you know you know with the global machinery of city where we had a state controlled capitalism school sackfuls when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more.

welcome back to the big picture i'm starvin coming up in this half hour we have another edition of our conversations with great minds i recently sat down with political activist and former white house adviser van jones to talk about his latest project rebuild the dream and what progressives all around the country need to do to get involved and retake power in our nation with the tea party debt limit deal still leaving a sour taste in a lot of our mouths van jones offers up some insights on what we can do about it moving for. an honor and pleasure to

welcome van jones to our conversations with great minds and welcome. 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. oh you know i was born in one thousand nine hundred sixty eight that is the year they really tried to assassinate hope in america they killed bobby kennedy killed dr king they beat up a bunch of young people who were at the convention in chicago and they really tried to kill hope. and i remember being in kindergarten nine hundred seventy two and one of my classmates asking my kindergarten teacher who is bobby kennedy. and miss brown starts across choked up trying to explain who he was and

i've never seen a grown person cry of these 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 joined the military to get out of poverty got help put himself through college but he put his little brother through college and help 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 toughest roughest kids in our county as they assisted 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 that's extraordinary

it seems like the rodney king beating was an initial tipping point for you becoming an activist do i do i have that. you're right you know i grew up in this kind of red white and blue household with my dad who had 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 two the rodney king verdict came down the younger viewers may not know about this but there was a african-american man videotaped being beaten mercilessly by four white police officers

and an all white jury acquitted those offices of wrongdoing and there were disturbances across america i at the time being the young law 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 when back out to monitor and there were a peaceful demonstration by that point san francisco but the police arrested everybody as excluding legal mundra like myself and i said look this up and desperately wrong with our country we have videotaped evidence of a lot of police violence and then here i am a yale law student with 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

a 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 could 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 hope back absolutely you. can't you co-founded the front of the elevator spanker 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 . the color change was. response to katrina and really james rucker took the lead on that use an african-american activists have been a part of move on dot org and helped out of katrina build an african-american

version of move on but org 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 l a baker center for human rights which is also still going forward you know we discovered in california. bed the state was spending one hundred fifty thousand dollars per year per kid to lock a kid up and we didn't have the decided you could send four kids to yale for the cost in one kid the jail we said is ridiculous these kids in the classroom don't have books they don't have chalk summer programs are being cut but we're spending one 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 when we run a hundred fifty thousand dollars a year fred schools for adult present we said look give the community that money

you give any community leader one kid and hundred to two thousand dollars that kid is going to never be in trouble again because you could get 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 closed about for youth prisons and stuff into building a fifth the super deal for kids and oakland california and had no increase in youth violence so we. proved that you could take bill's dollars and listen to the peers listen to the grandparents listen to the young people and devise 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 it was you and i have both been trashed by klein back on his t.v. show you much more a question of really and much more publicly oh yeah and. 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 area initiating a campaign that led to his leaving leaving here i'm curious just your thoughts on that whole thing that whole era. sure you know i was with color of change we first started we were focused on katrina and then once we got that up and running out back to work on the elevator sitter individual he created something called green for all the true will talk about james kept growing that organization and took a different direction than he did take on glenn beck and fox news for. not being responsible 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 it's the big occasion of our system of our system of american society you can't just abuse year waves you 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 brands next to yours and eventually he was. made a decision to get off the air glivec did i. i'm excited about the ability that people have now because a little little david's of the world like 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 in an open free internet so that people like james rucker and others can do those kinds of services for our country yeah 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 going. well first of all you know i see as the surface six months in the white house that will always be my highest honor there is no higher honor in american life meant to serve in the white house. no matter what else i do in life as the high point for me best six months of my life by the toughest two weeks when i chose to resign but

what i would say about the obama presidency is that given the mess dead 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 in two thousand and eight and we were excited mary but it was you know talk 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 there talking to our friends talking to our neighbors going to the farmers markets going to laundromats have been rallies and doing the things that makes the democracy function and because we tried to outsource that my. because you know 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 mad 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 maybe the more humane more balanced point of view being so quiet and i think that the obama presidency and all of d.c. will be better when the american people are especially those with more humane and balanced views are more active you wrote an amazing book just before that time the green collar economy that probably part led to your being there in the white house about how to best me here would take us out of the pollution based gray economy and into a healthy new green economy. sure i mean i think the argument still holds right now we are. still clinging figures into those to the last century's pollution based economy using fossil fuels that are based on dead things from the vast meanwhile now our friends and shell and china are racing past us and they're using

. some of the uses of fossil fuels but they are now ahead of us in wind and solar and using those things that are renewable and based on. you know living sources of energy like like a living sun and my view is that everything that is good for the environment is a job so if they also put themselves up wind turbines don't manufacture themselves a bio crops a biofuel crops though grow 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. the global recession global warming at the same time as the basic argument of my book the green collar economy i think the argument even more true now that it was it so so very well said we will i want to get into your new project the rebuild the dream

project right after this break more with van jones on this conversations with great minds just as. you like our t.v. show within the world go online and check out our brand new internets it was official our chief. question our team. automatic conversations with great minds tonight i'm talking with van jones our house cultural and political reform also happens to be a distinguished scholar bestselling author and now the 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 after a time from the white house it took

a year 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 and i studied the the tactics they use the techniques and i came away actually really impressed i think the obese people have figured out something in american politics that we need to pay attention those of us who have different views about the economy they took a bunch of old ideas a bunch of preexisting organizations they rely on them rebranded them and really presented them to the american people as something new and exciting and suddenly people went chasing after that buddy rabbit and frankly i think i went to a cul de sac i thought to myself well we actually have good ideas for the economy

we don't think that we should throw medicare into the bus and so security go to 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 that the super majority of americans agree that we should have a balanced approach to our budget problems you know american families don't say we've got a budget problem let's start grammar that's not how american families think we say listen. let's cut back on the non-essential and then let's go have jr go get a paper route or you know susie will start doing here on the side and we'll bring in some new revenues you cut back on nonessentials and increase the 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 a cup echo not essential so 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 asked 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. themes to be stuck on stupid talking about you there austerity or massive austerity but nobody's talking about investing in america creating jobs so who is 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 system 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 on the progressive side of the ledger move on dot org v.f.l. c.i.a.o. planned parenthood the center for community change a 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 defend the american dream to fight for jobs for middle class. american 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 up five hundred to a pal's and good ideas we can get five hundred ideas then get a thousand 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 cheap already when 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 to 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 we think 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 a safety net that's american so exceptionalism we think those people who still believe in the american dream i would a super majority in america and rebuild the dream guy calm is about supporting those people come in the voice i have to say it is. absolutely astounding to me i have sat through so many. organizing meetings activist means from really 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 be you know latin 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 or was together. i tell you what i said that you

would think it well i tell you if you were just be trying to do it it wouldn't work i think what has happened is that we have a certain wisdom in maturity 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 in two thousand and ten we were not unified and that is the big teacher and so you know i'm proud to be one of many many many leaders of big mouth but so many leaders have been saying let's go ahead and get together and defend our billiards 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 hills those sneakers are still so good and that's really i think the reason for the success. marvel is chop the contract for the american dream that that is over the rebuild the dream program seems to be from the from the time i spent on the web site 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 where they might be more interested some people might be more interested in the idea of a working democracy and how we're going to get our democracy back from the these corporations and stop the union busting so we want. 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 web site yourself it's rebuild the dream dot com as in 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 to come porter it's thing that i have been in politics for

a long time maybe not as long as you get to log on from my point of view and i'll tell you some of the 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 americans and let that american then go to that corporation say you get a tax break but only if you hire everybody 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 a couple of ideas of course we often mostly bad of late we believe that once the american people have it spoken and we can take those best ideas forward we can have a movement that will be two or 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. 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 successful ideas in the united states in the past and you know alexander hamilton's model for building building modern industrial state for example what he put forward in seventy ninety one of the washington astray she got largely ratified seven hundred ninety three and and held until the late one nine hundred ninety s. i'm curious as to what exists. the stuff that you're getting the ideas that you're getting and the direction that 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 those old old ideas that they were actually worked we have about three minutes left or right. well i think the ideas or inspired really

across the board ordinary americans are the ones who are going on in oakland ideas like us that we were hoping they will get by a hundred even thousand idea if you look at our papers we'll probably get thousands of missions and we you know we have more than twenty thousand and i'm sure there's a mix the pun the mental i think inspiration is that any one particular thing is a particular value and it's a value bet the last century but the so-called american century was a century that the progressive patriots like you and i 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 given the factories that barrett was being trashed and some patriots look around today that's fine with me i love it but there was another set of patriots the deeper patriots not the cheaper 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 goes deeper patriots moved

america to become the literal interview 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 in the in the minute we have left here van jones what's. been the 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 medicine came and oh we're easy it 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 in this we can rebuild a dream dot com you can find one of the one thousand five hundred house meetings this weekend and we're going to begin the process of taking america back of take the america forward brilliant van jones thanks so very much for being with us i'm.

honored to be here. that's the big picture for tonight for more information on the stories we covered this at our web sites of thom hartmann dot com free speech tonight org and dot com and don't forget democracy begins when you get out there and get active tag your it see you next week. if. it is easy to get. in.