no one. is around to do it with the global machinery of city where we had a state controlled capitalism is called sackfuls when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more.

welcome back to the big picture i'm john arbonne 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 advisor 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 ben jones offers up some insights on what we can do about it

moving forward. 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 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 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 democratic convention in chicago and they really tried to kill hope. and i remember being in kindergarten nineteen i guess seventy two and one of my classmates asking my kindergarten teacher who was bobby kennedy. and mrs brown starts across you choked up trying to

explain who he was and. i've never seen a grown person cry of lisa had a didn't 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 maybe 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 out put himself through college but he put his little brother through college to 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 after get out of military educating some of the tough as rough as kids in our county as they assisted principal in a public high school and the press would you know the 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 rather. that you're right you know i grew up in this kind of red white and blue household with my dad you've been a cop in the military and he was a tough. little school principal when. i got a bit 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 within a couple weeks of 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 and nine hundred ninety two the rodney king verdict came down i was 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 in the hallway jury acquitted those officers the wrong doing and there were disturbances across america i at the time being a young law student was asked by the civil rights group i was working for to go out and monitor to see what was going on and days later i went back out to monitor and there were peaceful demonstrations by that point seven cisco but the police arrested everybody as a clued in legal money like myself and i said look there's something desperately wrong with our country we have videotaped evidence of falling off of police violence and then here i am a yale law student little glasses and little dreadlocks out there with my clipboard trying to monitor police activity and i want to get you arrested myself ever done nothing wrong and so i moved to what i call the left side of pluto politically

for several years before five become a back road 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 price were inspired to get back involved to really believe we could do something in two thousand and eight and i think we got to go on from hope to heartbreak and i want to be a part of bringing some hope back yeah absolutely you. can you co-founded the founded the elevator 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 will. as a response to katrina and really james rucker took the lead after american activists had been a part of move on dot org and helped out of katrina build an african-american

version of move on dot 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 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. bed the state was spending one hundred fifty thousand dollars per year per kid to lock a kid up and we did the math of the time you could sit for kids to yale for the cost of sitting one kid to jail he 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 spinning one hundred fifty k. per year per kid lock them up and then these kids come out eighty five ninety percent of them wind up in adult prison so why are we running a hundred fifty thousand dollars

a year prep schools for adult present we said look give the communities that money you give any community leader one kid in a hundred fifty thousand dollars their 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 four prisons and stopped the building of the super g. or for kids and oakland california and 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 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

and trouble for us or us you and i have both been trashed by glenn beck on his t.v. show you much more across from the really and much more publicly oh yeah and. here hey well this is this is this to me this is just a quick question but arguably color of change was responsible for taking one back off the air initiating. 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 we first started we were focused on katrina and then once we got that up and running i've went back to work on the ella baker center and eventually created something called green for all because of fuel talk about james kept growing that organization and took it in different directions and he did take on glenn beck and fox news for. that being responsible abusing i would say the airwaves and putting out things that were not true about me

but probably about you know so many other people and eventually. i think that it's a been occasioned of our system of our system of american society you can't just abuse the airwaves and can 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 they're 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 on put our brands next to yours and eventually he was . made a decision to get off the air. i am 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 and 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 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 yes that's the high point for me best six months of my life by the office 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 and shoot thousand and eight and we were excited nearby he 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 there talking to our friends talking to our neighbors going to the farmers markets going to the laundromats having rallies in the when the things that makes a democracy function and because we try day outsource democracy to one person in the white house the other side camp will fight their efforts and i think we have suffered at the country as a result of we have had a very one sided conversation now for almost two years i'm not met 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 d.c. will be better when the american people are specially those with more humane and bell. views are more active you wrote an amazing book just before that time the green collar economy that probably part led to your brain around the white house about how to desmond here would take us out of the pollution based grade i mean into a health and you green economy and speak to the. shore i mean i think the argument still holds right now we are. still clinging figures into those to bill last centuries pollution based economy using fossil fuels that are based on good things in the past meanwhile now our friends in china and china are racing past us and

they are using. the sort of the use of fossil fuels but they are now head 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 they also put themselves up wind turbines don't manufacture themselves a bio crops a bio fuel crops they'll 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 and beat the global recession and global warming at the same time that's the basic argument in my book the green collar economy that they could be are going to even more true now than it was it so so very well said we will i want 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 and just as. you like are he should we to the world go online and check out our brand new internet through with official our chief. question our peter. automatically 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 reid build the dream banier now spearheading this program rebuild the dream tell us about. well it's exciting to me. as i am from the white house that 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 studied the tea party i studied the the tactics they use the techniques and i came away actually really impressed i think these people have bigger doubts 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 realigned them rebranded them and really presented them to the american people as something new and exciting and suddenly people went chasing after that bunny rabbit and frankly i think now into 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 under the bus and so security under the bus and teachers under 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 american families don't say we've got a budget problem let's start grandma that's not how american families think we take a listen. let's cut back on the non-essential and then let's go have jr go get a paper route or. susie will start doing here on the side and we'll bring in some 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 what america's government to pursue the same approach which is to cut back on nonessentials they'll cut fat and muscle and bone and marrow which is the tea party

program but it 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 either 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 with 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 on the 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 in 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 about five hundred to a thousand good ideas we didn't get five hundred ideas didn't 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 chief party with started and 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 now going to have eight hundred house meetings we're going to have one thousand five hundred and eighty of poor almost twice as many as the tea party started out with so we think they were 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 save jobs not cuts had 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 best americans are exceptionalism we think those people who still believe the american dream are the super majority in america and rebuild the dream daikon is about supporting those people come and of course i have to say it is. it's absolutely astounding to me i have sat through so many. organizing meetings activist meetings 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 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 all this together. i tell you what i can tell you

one thing. but 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 immaturity across all of 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 few thousand to and 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 have a big mouth but so many leaders have been saying let's go ahead and get together and defend our values 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 of marbles the contract for the american dream that is or 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 each of those. well you know the reason 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 keep 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 forward or think i have been baltics for

a long time maybe not as long as you get a well government point of view and i'll tell you something the ideas are so creative ways for it's instead of saying to corporations we'll give you a big tax break you know 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 its act 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 a couple of ideas of course we often mostly bad. we believe that once the american people have spoken we can take those best ideas forward we can 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 powered based on principles and with forward momentum

a campaign stop any talk about how the when you analyze 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 you know alexander hamilton's model for building building modern industrial state for example that he put forward in seventy ninety one of the washington post racial largely ratified seven hundred ninety three and and held until the late one nine hundred ninety s. i'm curious as to what. the stuff that you're getting the ideas that you're getting and the direction they think you're thinking about going or for 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 ever actually worked we we have about three minutes left or right. well i think the ideas are inspired 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 five hundred even and thousand ideas 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 fundamental i think inspiration is that any one particular thinker is of particular value is a value that 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 working in the factories and by it was being trashed and some patriots looked 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 can have

a more perfect union than this and decade after decade goes deeper patriots moved america to become the literal in view of the world the 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 is going 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 or grandparent. fought for from 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 yeah 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're clinton obama came out of nowhere then the tea party came out of nowhere and madison came out of 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 in tomorrow that ends this week you 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 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 visit our web sites at tom hartman dot com free speech tonight or an archie dot com and don't forget democracy begins with you get out there and get active tag your it say next week.