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Does anybody know exactly why Van Jones was arrested during the Rodney King Riots?
He wasnt arrested during the Rodney King riots.
"In 1992, while still a law student at Yale, Jones participated as a volunteer legal monitor for a protest of the Rodney King verdict in San Francisco. He and many other participants in the protest were arrested. The district attorney later dropped the charges against Jones. The arrested protesters, including Jones, won a small legal settlement."
"On May 8, 1992, the week AFTER the Rodney King disturbances, I sent a staff attorney and Van out to be legal monitors at a peaceful march in San Francisco. The local police, perhaps understandably nervous, stopped the march and arrested hundreds of people -- including all the legal monitors.
The matter was quickly sorted out; Van and my staff attorney were released within a few hours. All charges against them were dropped. Van was part of a successful class action lawsuit later; the City of San Francisco ultimately compensated him financially for his unjust arrest (a rare outcome).
So the unwarranted arrest at a peaceful march -- for which the charges were dropped and for which Van was financially compensated -- is the sole basis for the smear that he is some kind of dangerous criminal.
Van has spoken often about that difficult period 17 years ago -- and its impact on him, as a young law student. But to imply that he was somehow a rioter who went to prison is absurd. Beck also bizarrely claims that Van was arrested in the Seattle WTO protests. That is just a flat-out falsehood.
You don't have to take my word for it. Arrests and convictions are all a matter of public record. Beck is at best relying on Internet rumors or even inventing claims to boost his ratings."
Yeah, but it's illegal for whites to advocate for a white issue isn't it? The rate of poverty is much higher for blacks than whites. I don't believe there would be any blacks living in poverty if it weren't for racism. If the racists would just swing with Obama here on his agenda it would all but eliminate black poverty.
Grammy, I notice that the libs are ignoring your post. The silence is telling.
Not much they can spin or twist here, so safer to ignore it, I guess.
Maybe because it's a tired old statement that may be news to grammy but likely no one felt like spending time on. Dr Alveda King is an R and is entitled to her POV, but there is no proof that MLK was either a D or an R.
(There are many black Republicans; the chairman of the RNC is a black man, for example. This surprises people who for whatever reason had been under the impression that all blacks vote in a bloc.)
The rumor that MLK was an R most recently springs from a billboard claiming so, put up by a pastor in Texas who (now) says (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/07/14/billboard-claiming-martin-luther-king-republican-angers-activists-houston/ - broken link) he was trying to get "a conversation started, to make people think about their political affiliations." He does not stand by the billboard's claim.
The leader of the Black Panther Party was incensed by the claim and threatened to call a press conference over it; the sign company chickened out and removed it.
The BPP leader said in reference to the billboard, "Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would not be with the party of Newt Gingrich, he would not be with the party of Sarah Palin, he would not be with the party of Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage or Sean Hannity."
Dont know about you or grammy but I agree with that.
Billboard Claiming Martin Luther King Was Republican Angers Black Activists in Houston - Political News - FOXNews.com (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/07/14/billboard-claiming-martin-luther-king-republican-angers-activists-houston/ - broken link)
Now, THAT's a great way to improve life for everybody, black and white, and to prove that one isn't racially motivated. How is that supporting Obama's professed goals of rising above hatred, petty bickering, partisanship and racial differences? Color of Change is actually increasing the racial divide.
I wouldn't be surprised if people start seeing a backlash.
You might like to see a backlash, but I dont see any mention of "racial motivation" anywhere in the quote you posted. You made the leap.
ColorOfChange actually got onto Beck only after he called Obama a racist. They didnt do anything about his faux-hysteria over Van Jones that he'd begun a few days earlier -- only when he took out after the president did they say something.
Van Jones reflects on his time his STORM, â€I met all these young radical people of color — I mean really radical, communists and anarchists. And it was, like, ‘This is what I need to be a part of.’ I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary.
Van Jones also sat on the board of the Apollo group, a group currently lead by former member of the domestic terrorist/domestic murderer outfit the Weather Underground, Jeff Jones, and whose other board members are self-indentifying socialists, Gerry Hudson of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), former Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) supporter Carl Pope and Joel Rogers-founder of the radical New Party-which Barack Obama joined in Chicago in 1995. source
Van Jones also helped found Ella Baker Human Rights Center, to advocate civil justice. Elizabeth Martinez, another STORM member, helped Jones to establish Ella Baker Human Rights Center. Martinez was a longtime Maoist who went on to join the Communist Party USA breakaway organization Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, or CCDS, in the early 1990s. Martinez still serves on the CCDS council and is also a board member of the Movement for a Democratic Society, where she sits alongside former Weathermen radicals Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. And my point to this relationship: Van Jones and Martinez also attended a "Challenging White Supremacy" workshop together.
Lastly, in his own words, Van Jones admits he is a commie. In an interview with the East Bay Express, Jones said he first became radicalized in the wake of the 1992 Rodney King riots. "I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th. By August, I was a communist."
Good work! Some additional information that I didn't already know.
I have asked you on several occasions, but you refuse to EVER back up your claims with support.
You can't just state "Van Jones is a disgrace" without providing supporting documentation.
Do you disagree with the book he wrote on using the free-market to build a sustainable future and end our economic crisis?
Please, RobertGibbs, we can have fruitful discussions but you have to break out of this attack mode. All it does is force others to play down to that gutter and no one gains anything. We don't live in a world where one ideology is right and the other is wrong. We never have. The U.S. has always possessed a tension between socialism and capitalism (You act as if this is the end of the world, but I bet you didn't know that during WWII the federal government comprised over 1/3 of the GDP).
I think if you listened to some of the tapes that have been posted recently of Van Jones, you would find that he isn't a "free marketer" at all, but he will use the free market to ultimately achieve the Progressive ends. In other words, a ruse. These people know that they cannot just walk in the "front door" and totally change our system overnight. They will use the "back door", and Van Jones has specifically said that they will "work within the system", but change it they will. He also commented that it may take time, but that he didn't think it would take that long. He really believes that they are almost there, and that with Obama, they will make it happen.
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