![]() Sacramento, Calif., Mayor Kevin Johnson |
Sacramento, Calif., Mayor Kevin Johnson has invited city employees to prepare for a new "Green Initiative" by joining him in reading a book from radical communist and former Obama appointee Van Jones.
Johnson – the mayor at the center of the "Walpingate" scandal – instructs in an e-mail to city employees, "Read one chapter a week and meet with my staff and me as we discuss Van
Jones's plan for solving two major challenges in the U.S. – socioeconomic inequality and the destruction of natural resources."
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Jones, as WND reported, had described himself as a radical communist and "rowdy black nationalist" who confessed his environmental activism was a means to fight for racial and class "justice."
Now Johnson is encouraging his city's employees to read Jones' book "The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems" as a preparation for making Sacramento into "the Emerald Valley - the greenest region in the country and the hub of green technology."
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Johnson's office verified to WND that the e-mail is genuine but declined to comment on the details of the mayor's Green Initiative until its formal unveiling next week.
Johnson's invitation is an apparent fulfillment of predictions by fellow "progressives" that Jones' radical agenda would only gain steam after his resignation as Obama's "green jobs" czar.
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Don Hazen, executive director of the Independent Media Institute, a "progressive" alternative media outlet heavily funded by the likes of Teresa Heinz Kerry's Tides Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation, said last year that Jones' talents were actually wasted in the position of green jobs czar.
![]() Van Jones |
"The liberation of Van Jones will give him the opportunity to fully explain his blueprint on green jobs, but also connect it to the political economy and the need for resources to train young people in the skills needed to bring a green economy to the U.S.," says Hazen.
But will Jones' message be tainted by the revelations that his "green" plans are fueled by a socialist agenda, the same revelations that led to his resignation?
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Hazen doesn't think so.
"Fame is a valuable commodity in our society," he predicted last year. "And now, it is clear that Jones is a celebrity. In a short time, people will have a hard time remembering exactly what made Jones famous, but famous he will be. And he will have a major pulpit – thanks to his oratory gifts and to how the media treats notorious celebs."
Hazen says that in American society, "fame seems to trump radicalism and scandal."
Jones quit his appointment after pressure mounted over his extremist history first exposed by WND.
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Last year, WND Jerusalem bureau chief Aaron Klein broke the first major story on Jones and his history of tying radical communism and black nationalism to a "green" agenda.
Succeeding revelations by WND included:
- Jones
previously served on the board of an environmental activist group at
which a founder of the Weather Underground terrorist organization is a
top director.
Jones was co-founder of a black activist organization that has led a
campaign prompting major advertisers to withdraw from Glenn Beck's
top-rated Fox News Channel program. The revelation followed Beck's
reports on WND's story about Jones' communist background.- That Jones and other White House appointees may have been screened by an ACORN associate.
One day after the 9/11 attacks, Jones led a vigil that expressed
solidarity with Arab and Muslim Americans as well as what he called the
victims of "U.S. imperialism" around the world.- Just
days before his White House appointment, Jones used a forum at a major
youth convention to push for a radical agenda that included spreading
the wealth and "changing the whole system." - Jones' Maoist manifesto while leading the group Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM, was scrubbed from the Internet after being revealed by WND.
- Jones was the main speaker at an anti-war rally that urged "resistance"
against the U.S. government – a demonstration sponsored by an
organization associated with the Revolutionary Communist Party.
In a 2005 conference, Jones characterized the U.S. as an "apartheid
regime" that civil rights workers helped turn into a "struggling,
fledgling democracy."
Jones signed a petition calling for nationwide "resistance" against
police, accusing them of using the 9/11 attacks to carry out policies
of torture.
While talk radio and some cable television shows such as Glenn Beck's picked up WND's reporting and increased pressure on the administration to cut Jones loose, there was no significant press coverage of the scandal by the major U.S. news media until it became apparent Jones would be forced to leave.
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