How America Came Apart: Global Trade, Wars, Prisons, Wall Street, Power Politics | Van Jones

How America Came Apart: Global Trade, Wars, Prisons, Wall Street, Power Politics

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Log on to just about any comment section or Facebook thread and it won't take long to see some sort of political argument break out. Those on the conservative right tend to blame Mexicans, blacks, and what they perceive as "takers" (i.e., the poor). But while the Left likes to think that it is above that kind of finger-pointing, nothing could be further from the truth. The Left demonizes white and rural in both party messaging and in policy: it's a very easy argument to make if you just tally up Hillary Clinton's travel—or lack thereof—to white, rural areas during the 2016 election. So how do we break the cycle? Van Jones shows us the mirror, and we may not like what we see in it. Van's latest book is Beyond the Messy Truth: How We Came Apart, How We Come Together.

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VAN JONES:

Van Jones is a social entrepreneur, CNN political contributor and host of The Messy Truth with Van Jones. Famous for his heart-felt election night coverage, Jones showed up as “the voice of reason” for people in red states and blue throughout the volatile 2016 political season. In response to much civil unrest and energy post-election, Jones launched the #Love Army -- a values-based movement that is working for an America where everyone counts.

Jones has founded and led numerous social enterprises engaged in social and environmental justice, including The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Color of Change, and The Dream Corps.

Jones is a Yale-educated attorney. He is the author of two New York Times best-selling books, The Green Collar Economy (2008) and Rebuild the Dream (2012). The second book chronicles his journey as an environmental and human rights activist to becoming a White House policy advisor.

He was the main advocate for the Green Jobs Act. Signed into law by George W. Bush in 2007, the Green Jobs Act was the first piece of federal legislation to codify the term “green jobs.” During the Obama Administration, the legislation has resulted in $500 million in national funding for green jobs training.

In 2009, Jones worked as the green jobs advisor to President Barack Obama. In this role, Jones helped to lead the inter-agency process that oversaw the multi-billion dollar investment in skills training and jobs development within the environmental and green energy sectors.

Jones has been honored with numerous awards and spotlighted on several lists of high achievers, including: the World Economic Forum’s “Young Global Leader” designation; Rolling Stone’s 2012 “12 Leaders Who Get Things Done”; TIME’s 2009 “100 Most Influential People in The World”; and the Root's 2014 "The Root 100." In 2017, Van Jones signed a management deal with Roc Nation, becoming the first political commentator & activist in their family. Jones lives in the Los Angeles area with his wife & two children.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Van Jones: When people ask me how we got here, how did we come apart in the first place, I don’t blame any one politician or party.

There was a bipartisan elite consensus in the 1990s into the 2000s that really wrecked the middle class potential aspirations in the country. Both political parties said we could have these trade deals and they would be great for everybody. It was great for some people, but the industrial heartland just got kicked in the stomach. Both political parties said we could deregulate Wall Street let the banks do whatever they wanted to and it led to this massive crash that wiped out about a trillion dollars worth of wealth, millions of homes were lost. Both political parties said we could build prisons everywhere that would make the country better. It didn’t. Both political parties said we could get in these wars overseas and everything will work out fine. It hasn’t. So when you have repeated elite failure at the top of both parties a rebellion in both parties is justified and that’s really what you saw in 2016. You saw the Bernie Sanders rebels and frankly the Black Lives Matter rebels on the left and then you saw the Trump rebellion on the right. And as a result the political establishment got dumped on its butt and that is the context that you then have to try to figure out a way forward. Unfortunately when you have this level of elite failure and crisis people can either turn to each other or on each other.

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