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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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Van Jones
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: September 20
Civil Rights Advocate
Environmentalist
Human Rights Activist
Lawyer
Motivational Speaker
Pundit
Jackson
Tennessee
Anthony Kapel Jones
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Went
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More quotes by Van Jones

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Listen, here's reality. It is completely unfair and absolutely necessary that people who have been oppressed and marginalized have to lead everybody. That is MLK, that is Dolores Huerta, that is Fannie Lou Hamer, that is Ella Jo Baker, that is Nelson Mandela. You walk down the line.
Van Jones
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We're getting back what we're putting out.
Van Jones
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I had this radical idea that the police should obey the law. My view was that any human system without adequate checks and balances will tend towards corruption and abuse. That's why you have meat inspectors. Not because you hate butchers, but because of an understanding of human nature.
Van Jones
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People are going to have to do a big reset. But this is a big wake-up call to the entire establishment, including the Democrats. And not just because of the failure.
Van Jones
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We need a national renewable energy goal. Such a goal, sometimes called a renewable energy standard (RES), would spell out what percentage of our power America plans to get from renewable sources.
Van Jones
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...we're going to be in an economic slowdown for a couple of years. So to take three months, four months, six months to spend this money the right way-we're not going to get a chance to spend a trillion dollars again! Ever. So let's do it the right way.
Van Jones
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Trump is holding together the shakiest coalition that you could conceivably govern on. It is a conservative, populist alliance that agrees with itself on very little.
Van Jones
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Religion has gotten a bad rap for good reasons. Often, there are a lot of people - women, LBGT, and others - you know, hierarchical monotheism has been a real source of a type of oppression.
Van Jones
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In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we did create Color of Change, an organization which focused on African-Americans in particular, because we felt that there was a big gap there in terms of online advocacy which had left the black community particularly vulnerable.
Van Jones
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Now we stand at our own crossroads, looking out upon two futures: one with rising temperatures, rising oceans, and rising violence on a hot and strip-mined planet and another with expanding organic harvests, growing solar arrays, and deepening global partnerships on a green and thriving Earth.
Van Jones
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I think there's going to be a tug of war in this country over who are the real patriots because at a time of national crisis, economic collapse and calamity, ecological peril and social dislocation, the American people deserve to be a partner to the American government.
Van Jones
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Now, here's a good question: should serious people focus on global political instability - terrorism, failing states, nuclear weapons - or should we focus on global climate instability - droughts, floods, extreme weather? Here's the correct answer: yes, both, because climate disruption will make every other national security problem worse.
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We should use the transition to a better energy strategy as an opportunity to create a better economy and a better country all around.
Van Jones
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Clean energy independence should be an area of common ground.
Van Jones
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The dirty energy crowd can be offset only by the power of the rising clean energy sector and the American people, aroused across party lines.
Van Jones
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A one-sided analysis of anything always leads you into the wrong direction.
Van Jones
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I think the Muslim community is now being asked to bear an unfair burden to save a great faith from the fundamentalists and a great nation from bigotry.
Van Jones
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A family-friendly eco-populism can mobilize and unite millions who, at this point, would be turned off by a more extreme set of demands. The momentum will build, through these early efforts, for more comprehensive solutions.
Van Jones
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Any successful long-term strategy will require that the green wave fully and passionately embrace the principles of eco-equity.
Van Jones
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[Hillary Clinton] was going to have a very difficult pathway going forward anyway.
Van Jones