Joshua B. Hoe talks to Van Jones about his work at the REFORM Alliance
Full Episode
My Guest: Van Jones
Van Jones is a U.S. media personality, the founder of multiple social enterprises and a change maker. He is a three-time NY Times bestselling author, he hosts two shows on CNN: “The Van Jones Show” and “The Redemption Project.” He is the host of CNN’s “Incarceration, Inc.” podcast series. In 2013-2014, Van was a co-host of CNN CROSSFIRE, along with Newt Gingrich; he later hosted a special event series on CNN called “The Messy Truth.” Van has co-founded a series of social enterprises, including the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, ColorOfChange.org, GreenForAll.org, Rebuild The Dream, and the Dream Corps. Today, Van is also a board member of the REFORM Alliance, an initiative founded by Jay-Z, Meek Mill, and six billionaires to transform the criminal justice system.
Notes from Episode 100 Van Jones
The books Van recommended were:
Shaka Senghor, Writing My Wrongs
Brittany K. Barnett, A Knock at Midnight: A Story of Hope, Justice, and Freedom
Full Transcript
Josh Hoe
Hello and welcome to Episode 100 of the Decarceration Nation podcast, the podcast about radically reimagining America’s criminal justice system.
I’m Josh Hoe, and among other things, I’m formerly incarcerated; a freelance writer; a criminal justice reform advocate; a policy analyst; and the author of the book Writing Your Own Best Story: Addiction and Living Hope.
Today’s episode is my interview with Van Jones about his advocacy for reform of our criminal punishment system. Van Jones is a US media personality, the founder of multiple social enterprises, and a change-maker. He’s a three-time New York Times bestselling author, hosted two shows on CNN – the Van Jones Show and The Redemption Project – and he’s the host of CNN’s Incarceration Inc. podcast. In 2013-2014, Van was co-host of CNN’s Crossfire along with Newt Gingrich. He later hosted a series of special events on CNN called The Messy Truth. Van has co-founded a series of social enterprises including the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights; colorofchange.org, greenforall.org; Rebuild the Dream, and The Dream Corps. Today Van is also a board member of the Reform Alliance, an initiative founded by Jay-Z, Meek Mill and six billionaires to transform the criminal justice system.
Welcome to the Decarceration Nation podcast Van Jones, and thanks for being my guest on the 100th episode of the podcast.
Van Jones
Well, it’s an honor, and I just appreciate everything that you do and that you stand for. I think you’ve done everything you can to use your voice and your reach to stick up for people who don’t have a voice. So I appreciate you, brother.
Josh Hoe
Thanks so much, Van. I always ask the same first question, and it’s kind of a comic book origin story question. And since I know a little bit about you, and I know you’re a fan of comics, you know what I mean by that. How did you get from wherever you started in life to where you are now, on television, creating social enterprises and working to reimagine our criminal justice system?
Van Jones
I mean, I don’t know.
Josh Hoe
That’s the first time anyone has said that. I like that.
Van Jones
I mean, I don’t know. I have my pat answers, I guess – I get interviewed a lot – that I usually give, but now it’s a bit of a mystery. Think, you know, how anybody winds up doing anything. I know that when I was a child, I was super-sensitive, super-nerdy. I used to – we lived out in essentially the boonies on the edge of a small town – so you’d often see stray animals or the animals hit on the side of the road, and I would always get upset about it or want to take them home and just all kinds of stuff like that. So I’ve always been, I think, an especially sensitive and compassionate person, even as a kid. I think being a bully magnet, which I definitely was growing up – I mean, Urkel looked cool when I was growing up – I developed a lot of empathy and sympathy for the underdog. And it just seemed to me that when I got older, if I could do something to help people, if I could do something to fight back, and as a comic book nerd, I don’t know, I guess, maybe fantasies of, you know, superhero-ness, or I don’t know, man. But, for whatever reason, law school. I never had any interest in being a corporate lawyer or anything like that. I wanted to right wrongs and stick up for little folks and take on left-wing causes. I graduated from Yale Law School in ‘93; I moved to the Bay Area, mainly because of the young woman I was dating at the time, even though she dumped me a few weeks later. And, you know, I started suing cops and coordinating litigation against police departments in the Bay Area, and trying to close prisons. I spent 10 or 15 years in the Bay Area; I’ve taken on some of the toughest causes, and then accidently wound up in the White House and on national television. But my origin story has a lot more to do with left-wing, grassroots protest politics and suing cities for killing black folks, than it has to do with cable news.
Josh Hoe
Was there a time where you remember that starting for you, the protest politics end of it; like where you first got involved in that?
Van Jones
When I was in college, I was in college in the late 80s. And AIDS was a big issue, anti-apartheid, free Nelson Mandela, even though I was going to school in the South. My girlfriend at the time was a Black Student Alliance president at Vanderbilt University. I went to University of Tennessee at Martin; for whatever reason I got involved in some of those causes. I mean, of course in those days, all you had to do was put a bumper sticker on your car, and go to one rally and you were an activist; there was no social media and there wasn’t a lot to do. But I cared a lot about some of these issues. I was a young reporter, as a college student, as a college journalist, and got exposed to a bunch of stuff. It is no one big moment. That’s the thing . . . when I was in kindergarten, I remember my kindergarten teacher crying because the student asked a question about Bobby Kennedy. And I didn’t know who the hell Bobby Kennedy was, but she started crying, and it really stuck in my head because I didn’t even know that grown people could cry. Because I grew up with people always telling you, when you’re kids, stop crying, stop crying. It’s almost like, Well, you know, they never cry. But to see a grown person cry was a big shock to the whole kindergarten class. And it had a big impact on me, you know, and I love Bobby Kennedy to this day. But did the other 19 kids in that kindergarten class have the same reaction to it? No. So I don’t know, I don’t have a big origin story. I’ve always been a nerd. I’ve always cared about politics; I’ve always wanted to do what I’m doing. And now I’m in my 50s, and I still don’t have a good answer.
Josh Hoe
It’s still a pretty good answer, though. That’s a pretty good bridge. I like what you said there, about adults crying because I definitely remember growing up and being told all the time never to cry. And it definitely does have a really big impact. And it’s a good bridge to – we just celebrated the Day of Empathy – which is something you’ve helped create. And I’ve been personally part of every single Day of Empathy here in Michigan. What can you tell us about where that came from, and where that started?
Van Jones
You know, I helped to found something called the Dream Corps, which you mentioned; it’s kind of a legacy organization for Rebuild the Dream, which still exists as a (c)(4), but our (c)(3) we changed to the Dream Corps a few years back, and Jessica Jackson was working with me there, and we had just tried to restart some criminal justice work. I’d done criminal justice work, as I told you, police reform, criminal justice, all that stuff. And I’d moved away from that, and I was doing a lot more climate solutions, what we call green jobs, not jails, trying to get urban youth jobs in the solar industry and organic food industry and that kind of thing. And it was important to me to get back to some of the direct work on criminal justice. But what I had learned and discovered, having worked in the Obama White House for a while, having worked and started working at CNN, was the importance of getting Republicans and Democrats to work together, especially on an issue like criminal justice reform; there was so much fear, and so much racial bias and so much – it’s such a toxic bi-partisan history of throwing people who are in trouble with the justice system under the bus scoring points – you really had to get both parties on board. It took both parties to get us into this situation, and it’s gonna take both parties to get us out. And because I worked at CNN, I knew a bunch of Republicans, because at that time, especially, we really were kind of – Republicans and Democrats – more or less equally balanced. And I met Newt Gingrich and a bunch of other people. I knew that they had some interest in, some openness to the question of criminal justice reform, from the right, from the idea of, you’re wasting a bunch of money. You have a big unaccountable government bureaucracy in the prison system, gobbling up liberties, gobbling up money, no accountability, no sense of redemption, which a lot of people on the religious right really care about. And I saw an opening, an opportunity to get something done. But I knew that we couldn’t start with the head, we’re going to have to start with the heart. And so I was talking to Jessica about it, that we need to have a National Day of Empathy where we just, without any legislation, without you gotta sign this bill tomorrow or we’re going to protest against you, or whatever it is. Just go to the state capitals, and bring stories. I’d even wanted to bring some virtual reality and digital media and just really work on getting the heart in the right place for lawmakers. I didn’t know if it was gonna happen in 30 years, or 10 years or 5 years. I certainly didn’t think it was gonna happen that year. But yeah, Jessica Jackson is a real go-getter, and I think she thought it was all supposed to happen right away. So she was trying to get it going. And then she double-checked; she said, where do you want this happening? I said, I don’t know, all 50 states, which technically I guess, is impossible, but what we figured pretty quickly was, some of the people who had come around the Dream Corps in our Cut50 Campaign, they were so new; they didn’t really know what was possible, what was impossible, how long stuff is supposed to take. Again, I’m thinking years from now. So she goes out and the first year we do like 30 or 40 states. And so they just ran out there and did all kinds of stuff, including the Day of Empathy, which has now become kind of an institution. But it wasn’t like we went and got a big grant from the Ford Foundation or from Pepsi, and now had some master plan; like a lot of things at The Dream Corps – The Dream Corps kind of creates a permission structure for people to do crazy stuff in the name of justice, creative stuff, you’re working with celebrities, working with grassroots, working with elected officials, working with technology, people, whatever. And I love The Dream Corps. I’m so proud of it. I’m glad to be a board member there and a donor. But yeah, so the Day of Empathy was just one of those crazy ideas that we had at the Dream Corps and now it’s an institution.
Josh Hoe
And over the many years now of Days of Empathy, do any stories in particular stand out to you?
Van Jones
Well, I mean, honestly, how it got started. I mean, if you had told me that year, we would be in 30 or 40 states . . we had no budget, we had no . . . I think a lot of people think because I’m relatively well-known by being on TV and stuff that somehow the Dream Corps is just rolling in 10s of millions of dollars, we have a budget like the ACLU or Greenpeace or something, $100,000,000 budget. I mean, the entire time that we were fighting to pass the First Step Act, I think we may have raised a million dollars, maybe, all total. I mean, that’s a lot of money. But when you think about what we pulled off, working with our allies and stuff like that, I mean, not that much money at all, a fraction of a project budget for some of the bigger organizations. And so, just the fact that it happened; and also this year, the fact that even with COVID, we couldn’t go everywhere, we still figured out some good, logical, zoom-type solutions and kept it going. I think that’s also a good thing.
Josh Hoe
And so what brought you from the Dream Corps to the Reform Alliance?
Van Jones
Well, you know, it really comes back to Prince; before he passed, he had been such a strong supporter of my work at the Dream Corps, YesWeCode, GreenForAll, we were quite close. And a lot of the stuff that I was doing publicly, he was backing privately because he didn’t want his name out there. He really didn’t believe in bragging on himself and getting a lot of attention for his charitable work. So I was kind of the public face of a lot of that. Well, when he passed away – he and Jay-Z had become close – and Jay-Z’s team at Roc Nation reached out to me and said, Hey, you know, you should be over here with us. Let’s make sure that you’ve got some support and love and protection and all the things that you need when you’re running around trying to make change. And about the time that that was happening, or very shortly after that, Meek Mill, who at that time was not represented by Roc Nation, but was close to Roc Nation, got sent back to prison for two years. He was supposed to go back for two years because he had popped a wheelie, having been on probation for 15 years with no new crimes. And it shocked Jay-Z, it shocked Desiree Perez, who’s now the CEO over there, but has always been one of the big bosses over there. And so we joined forces with Mike Rubin and a few other people and fought like hell to get Meek Mill out, and expose the fact that the judge was pretty corrupt; that the initial charges even 10 years back had been fabricated; and got him completely exonerated; not just off, not just out of prison, but no criminal record, not on probation, not on parole, no record. And Jay-Z said that he wanted to honor what Meek had said; Meek said we should go from Meek Mill to millions, because there’s so many more people who are impacted. And once Jay-Z said that, and he said he wanted to back Meek Mill up on it, and Michael Rubin said he wanted to back Meek Mill up on it, I looked at the Dream Corps, and I looked at Cut50, and said these are pretty sturdy operations. But if Jay-Z and Meek and Rubin and others are going to try to stand up something brand new – I’ve built four or five successful social impact organizations – let me go and help because I know how to do it. And it’s hard to find people who know how to do it at that scale and who already believe in all this stuff and know all the players. And so I went over; it was always that I was a startup CEO, I never planned to be the CEO forever. But, I knew I was gonna need to put in a good one, two or three years to get it up and running, and ultimately brought Jessica over there to help build it out. And, you know, the Dream Corps has continued to grow; Cut50 has become Dream Corps Justice, with a great new leader over there.
Josh Hoe
My good friend Janos.
Van Jones
Yeah, exactly. And he’s unbelievable, we wound up with two for the price of one. And now we got Dream Corps Justice and Reform Alliance with slightly different missions. But you know, a lot of love for each other. And, I’ve done 25 years, man; January 1, 1996, where we started the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, California to sue cops and coordinate litigation against the brutal police officers; then to colorofchange.org, right after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 – I believe – 2006; and then greenforall.org, trying to get solar jobs in the hood in 2008; and then Rebuild the Dream, Dream Corps in 2011. And now Reform Alliance. And skipping a few along the way. Yeah, you know, five, highly-impactful social change organizations over a 25-year period; 1000s of jobs created; dozens of bills passed; 10s of 1000s of people freed. You know, I feel like my soul is rested. You know, there are people who might criticize some of the choices I’ve made, how I’ve done some stuff, some stuff I’ve done, that’s all good, that’s all fair. You know, I’m an open book, I live on live television, everybody can see every emotion; every thing I’ve ever said is all out there. Most people get a chance to think privately; every feeling I have is recorded forever and put up on YouTube for people to evaluate; that’s perfectly fine. But my soul is rested. The only reason I didn’t do more, or didn’t do better, is because I just didn’t know how to. Whatever mistakes I’ve made, came out of trying hard. And maybe not knowing the best way all the time. But I never, I never made a mistake from not putting it all on the line; I wear my heart on my sleeve. I say what I think; I’m willing to take risks. And my soul is rested. And I hope the next 25 years, I can continue to make an impact. Thinking now maybe, is there something I can do on the private sector side? You know, do we need some kind of fund created to move capital? I’ve moved Congress enough times. Should we try to get Wall Street and Silicon Valley to move some capital someplace? I’ve been thinking about stuff like that. I love CNN; I also want to build out my own, maybe digital media, kind of like stuff you’re doing. You know, there’s a lot more to get done. But what I would say about my journey so far is that I can’t find a year or a quarter or a month, or really even a week, in that whole 25 years where I wasn’t trying to do something to help our communities. And I hope I never do find that week.
Josh Hoe
I think one of the big swings you took was a show that I really loved called The Redemption Project, which was a CNN show that highlighted restorative justice conferences between people who did harm and people who were harmed. How did that show come about?
Van Jones
Well it’s very hard to get a primetime show. Very, very difficult, especially a primetime TV show that does not have quote/unquote, “innocent” people. That’s always been the thing, innocent people or non-violent people or that kind of stuff. I wanted to do a show where people actually did bad stuff. And now it’s 10 years later, 15 years later, or 20 years later. Where are they now? And what about the people who really want to make amends? What about the people who have been hurt? Who want more information? Who want some closure? That story never gets told; mostly it’s true crime things. It’s like a whodunit. Well, what happens when we know who did it and it’s 20 years later? I wanted to do that show. And I’ll always appreciate CNN for giving me the green light to do it. And I’ll always appreciate the Dream Corps for making it available for free. You can go to thedreamcorp.org and just search for Redemption Project and you can watch it yourself for free; all you gotta do is sign up and get eight stories in primetime – in Anthony Bourdain’s old slot – where people really had done bad stuff, you know, vehicular homicides and shooting cops, I mean, like really bad stuff. And yet, when you walk through those stories, you get to the end of that hour – they don’t all end with a happy ending and a hug – but you see something, you see some humanity, you see some grace, you see some strength. And the hope is you turn the TV off and think, geez, if those people can sit down and have that conversation, across that much pain, what conversation can I not have in my own life with my ex-spouse, or an estranged relative, or a friend from high school who is on the wrong side of politics from me now? Because what we wanted to try and do is just to show an Olympic-level performance, literally Olympic-level, performances of grace and mercy and moral courage. And it wasn’t a big rating success. We were up against the last season of Thrones.
Josh Hoe
You were up against the largest television show, probably in the history of television.
Van Jones
Yeah, they put us up against Game of Thrones; that wasn’t necessarily the best placement for us. But it still aired, and it’s still available online. And again, one of the things, when you’re in public life, you get a lot of critics, you get a lot of people who look past 99 things you did they may actually have liked, and they’ll focus on the one thing that you said or did they don’t like and that’s kind of where they they stay. I will say that there are not that many people in cable television or television period, that given the opportunity to have a show would say, let’s do that show. Let’s go into prisons; let’s find the people who’ve done stuff you cannot wave to one side – this is bad stuff – and find a way to show the human side of the person who did wrong, and the person who was wronged. And to leave you feeling some sense of hope for humanity. Let’s do that show. I could have done a travel show. I could have done a show where I interview celebrities who did anything. I mean, CNN. That’s the show I wanted; that’s the show that I did. And I said, my soul is rested. It’s a good feeling to be in my 50s at this point. And, warts and all, praise and critics, in large numbers on all sides. But to go back and be able to say, Well, would I have not tried to get Donald Trump to sign a criminal justice reform bill, given the opportunity to possibly get him to not attack our issue for four years, or maybe eight? There’s no scenario in which I wouldn’t have tried. Now, luckily, we actually signed the damn thing. Luckily, there’s 16,000 people who have come home early so far. And luckily, as a result, he did not attack criminal justice. He did a bunch of other terrible stuff. But we kind of took the gun out of his mouth, the weapon out of his mouth, which meant that the Republicans, when they actually divided, fighting among themselves, should they close more prisons, as opposed to being united to open more – first time in my adult lifetime – and the Democrats got stronger on our issue. So luckily I’m a Democrat. So also he didn’t get re-elected, either. So luckily, just from an objective point of view, we kept this issue viable and bipartisan, with stronger Democratic and Republican support at the cost of a couple of selfies that people want to criticize me for, plus 16,000 people home, plus an additional 70,000 people home, at the state and local level; compassionate relief during COVID, which we opened the door to do all that through the reform through the First Step Act process. Hey, look, I mean, I understand, you know, people don’t like the picture, they don’t like Donald Trump showing up, to take advantage of the issue as I see it. But I would rather have Donald Trump with the biggest megaphone in the world, talking about Miss Alice Johnson, than to have George HW Bush talking about Willie Horton. I mean, if the Republicans are gonna talk about this issue, and they’re going to – for 30 years, it was Willie Horton – and if you let black people out of prison, they’re going to kill your grandmother. And we finally got a Republican who actually said, No, I’m going to let a black grandmother out of prison and brag about it. Now, again, you know, I didn’t vote for him. But when you look back over your career, at my age and my stage of life, being willing to take risks with my TV career, be willing to take risks with the advocacy with the hopes it’ll turn out well. I didn’t get an Emmy. I didn’t get great ratings. But I’m proud of what we did. You know, with the First Step Act people said, well, it should have been bigger, it should have been more. I agree; it’s why we call it the First Step Act, not the Last Step. At least we tried; at least we got something, we were all in a very bad situation. So, you know, what I would say is that The Redemption Project is one of many things. Like I said, maybe we could have gotten better ratings. I don’t know. Maybe I should have begged them not to put me up against Game of Thrones, I don’t know. But um, you know you play the cards that are in your hands, and you play them to help the people who don’t have shit. And you wait for that for the next card to be dealt. And you play it again, you keep doing that. And eventually, hopefully, you make a difference.
Josh Hoe
As someone who – like the most popular writing I’ve ever done was about Game of Thrones. And I still watched every episode of the Redemption Project, and then would watch Game of Thrones later because it meant so much to me. I thought it was a great show, and really glad that it happened. You know, I think one of the things that people say – we both worked pretty hard to pass the First Step Act – and I think one of the things people say is that they’re frustrated with it, given that it might have given Trump an issue to win the election on. Do you have any thoughts about that?
Van Jones
Well, look, I understand it, but you’ve got to look at it from the other side as well.
Number one, if the only way that Democrats can win elections is to make sure that people who are locked up don’t get any help – if that’s the key to your success, to make damn sure that no Republican helps anybody behind bars, especially not a Republican like Donald Trump, 180,000 people who are in federal prison, and throw them under the bus and be willing to abandon them for four or eight years, just to make sure that you don’t have to deal with Donald Trump – there’s something wrong with your party, there’s something wrong with your strategy. I know Trump did so many dumb things, and some things that are just inexcusable, that would get you thrown out of kindergarten. [If] you can’t figure out a way to beat him without abandoning people who – by the way, my constituency, our constituency, the people we care about, who are locked up in prison, they can’t vote, they can’t march, they’re locked up, they can’t tweet, they’re locked up – so you’re just gonna tell me that the only way we can get Donald Trump out of there is to make sure that the most vulnerable people, getting zero help for four or eight years, tell them to wait for four or eight years? I just think that’s a terrible strategy for the Democratic Party. But also, I just don’t think black people are stupid. A big part of it was well, now the black people don’t all go vote for Donald Trump; well, maybe some will, maybe some won’t. But in general, you’re telling me that you think black people who have gone from property to the presidency, in this country – no parallel in human history – are not sophisticated enough to realize that, you know, a decent bill on criminal justice, a decent bill on opportunity zones, and some help for black colleges, is probably not enough to make up for I don’t know, 8000 other things. I mean, I just don’t think black people are that stupid. And it turned out that black people were not that stupid. But we actually were able to do two things; we were able to get the Democratic and Republican parties to both be better on the issue, which is better long-term. And we were also able to mobilize black voters to have a change of government. So I just had a lot more contempt for the sacrifice of 180,000 people in federal prison for eight years, if you have to approach that; I thought it was despicable. And also not necessary. I also just have a lot more confidence, at least in the black community, to figure this thing out. And so, but here’s what I will say, easy. Here’s what I will say: driving up to the Trump White House, knowing about the kids at the border, knowing about the Muslim ban, knowing about whatever, you know, 27 outrages were happening that day, and getting out of the Uber to walk into a building where I had worked, walk through a building where my friends had worked, and, seeing people, some of whom I have respect and regard for, but a lot of whom I didn’t – you got to swallow hard, and you got to sit down, you got to think, hold on a second; if I’m not willing to go in here, and I damn near lived at the Obama White House after I left, damn near lived there, even after I left, talking about criminal justice reform when I liked the president. If I’m gonna say, you know what, screw it. Let all these people suffer in prison; let both parties get worse on the issue; I’m just personally not going to do this. And was I really about the issue during the Obama administration? Or was it about me having access to a president that I love and worship, and being a part of something that is historic, the first black presidency, that kind of thing? Or was it really about the people? And I say to myself, you know what, now everybody can make their own choice, other people who are just as committed to criminal justice made other choices and bless them. But for myself, I said, there’s no way. And I also, having worked in the White House and knowing the power of that building, there’s no way I’m going to leave those doors locked for four to eight years, from people with our perspective, if I can go in there and get one person out, let alone 1000’s out; I felt I had responsibility to do it. And other people saw it differently. But I don’t know, do facts matter? At the end of the day, we passed the bill and Trump didn’t get re-elected.
Josh Hoe
That’s definitely a fair point. We have a new administration now. And I think a lot of people are still not sure, because of President Biden’s history with mass incarceration. Having been involved in a lot of this stuff, and knowing a lot of the players, what do you see as possible now?
Van Jones
Depends on how hard we fight. You know, I love Biden, I worked for Biden when I was in the Obama administration. He headed the Middle-Class Task Force, I was on that task force. I was responsible for $80 billion in clean and green economic stimulus money. And he was the guy ultimately, that we reported up to; love the guy, respect the guy. He was never particularly progressive on these issues. And I think, frankly, here’s the ironic thing. The fact that Donald Trump tried to eat the Democratic Party’s cookie on this issue, made the Democrats stronger on the issue. Don’t forget that even in 2008-2012, the Democrats weren’t running on criminal justice reform. President Obama was not running on criminal justice reform. The issue wasn’t at that level, that was before Black Lives Matter. I mean, having a black guy at that point running for office on criminal justice reform, might have been a deal-killer with the American people. But the fact that we got to the point where even Donald Trump was reaching over trying to eat that cookie, made the Democratic Party a lot stronger, or let the Democratic Party get a lot stronger. So you have people like Cory Booker, who has always been better on this issue than most people. He was able to go out there and be for legalizing marijuana, and nobody even blinks. It wasn’t even a controversy. Can you imagine if Obama had come out in 2012 saying I’m for legalizing marijuana? But that’s how far the democrats were able to move. Because we moved the Republicans, even the Trump Republicans, you know, in the right direction. And so, I put that out there, because hopefully, people who listen to your podcast, I think are pretty sophisticated people. And it’s one thing to jump up and down about abstract theory like, Well, we have to resist everything. If you do anything that legitimates him, then you’re a part of all of his crimes and all that stuff. Yeah. You know what, we’re not playing Tic Tac Toe here. This is three-dimensional chess, getting both political parties better on the issue, even during the Trump period, especially during the Trump period, makes it much more likely for us now that we’re in a different period, with a Biden to say: Hey, you guys got to do at least as much as Trump. You got to pass a bill at least as good as Trump. And if they don’t, then you know, that tells you something. But the Trump administration, on the Department of Justice side, rolled back a lot of positive reforms that I hope that Biden’s DOJ will put back in place. And Obama did pass a couple of bills, you know, the Fair Sentencing Act or whatever. So, you know, early on, he did get some wins, legislatively, and administratively; you got to give the Obamas credit in the second term. Once the country was even slightly ready, Obama leaned forward and got stuff done. So give him his credit. Then, even though Trump rolled back stuff administratively, he did legislatively and politically advance the issue. And so now Biden can look back at both the Obama administration and the Trump administration, as he had two in a row that passed bills that were significant. And you know, the guy that you were serving with had administrative reforms that were significant. So you got to do more. But just to be clear, we’re stronger now on this issue and in a better position to get Democrats to act right, because last time we got Republicans to act right.
Josh Hoe
A couple of quick media-related questions. One of my biggest frustrations as an advocate is media coverage of criminal justice issues. I feel like most of the major news networks have what seem to be hundreds of former Prosecutors and law enforcement experts on call, and very few criminologists, defense attorneys or directly-impacted people. You’ve been an exception in speaking up for criminal justice causes on the major news networks; how can our movement be better represented in big media?
Van Jones
Oh, I think that’s coming. You know, television is the last stop on the train. For legitimation, for lack of a better term. I mean, you can write a bunch of books, and still never have been on television. You can have a great podcast or radio show, or be an incredibly beloved professor, or researcher, or scientist, and still never have been on television. It’s the last stop on the train, often, after you’ve done a bunch of other stuff. That doesn’t mean you don’t have some young people that start out in TV, but in terms of people who are cause-related, and that kind of stuff, usually it’s the last stop on the train. And so I do think that as the country gets more conscious of these issues, and causes – frankly, there’s more television to be done – the streaming services, there’s a lot more TV to be done. I do think you’re going to start seeing people climbing those ranks now. I would love a major cable outlet like CNN, or MSNBC, or even a Fox News, to have someone on who’s formerly incarcerated, and that’s a part of their credentials as to why they’re there.
Josh Hoe
I think that’d be amazing; I would watch that network a lot more just because of that.
Van Jones
Yeah. But you think about it, everybody talks about what’s going on in jails and stuff like that in prisons, when somebody gets arrested, etc. And you said, you hear from the prosecutors and defense attorneys, you never hear from the people who actually have gone through that system. And so what happens is, you wind up with a lot of facts. But you don’t wind up with a lot of truth. I think professionals are very good at finding and presenting facts, but they’re not good at delivering truths. Amanda Gorman, that young black poet from the Biden swearing-in, who’s now a household name, she delivered a lot more truth in her short few minutes than most of us deliver in a year. We’ll deliver a lot of facts, a lot of data, talk about a lot of events, but getting to the truth up underneath all of that, the emotional truth, the historical truth, but the lived truth, that’s not something we do very well, but people who have lived experience often get to that a lot quicker and a lot more reliably. And so, you know, hopefully, someday.
Josh Hoe
I remember you were doing an interview . . . you get a lot of criticism, a lot of it, I think, unfairly. You were doing an interview with Jared Kushner, and I was talking with our mutual friend, Alex. And there was some backlash. And I remember remarking to Alex, how smart the interview seemed to me, because if you had gone in guns blazing and putting Kushner on the defensive, you might not have gotten answers to a lot of the questions about, for instance, Saudi Arabia, because he’s a person who doesn’t do very many interviews. Can you talk about that? You know, there are people like Chris Wallace, who go in hot, and people go into the interview with that understanding, but a lot of people are very reluctant to do interviews, and it’s very hard to get them to talk. Can you talk about strategy, or how you look at that, in terms of interviewing?
Van Jones
Yeah, you’re the first person who ever asked me that question in this context; I really appreciate you. I think people think I’m just an idiot. I’m just like, some really dumb gullible person who just does dumb, gullible things, or maybe, no, I’m a sellout. You know, I’m somebody who sold my soul to Satan. I mean, it’s really, it’s remarkable. You know, for instance, like during the First Step Act, I was a volunteer board member at the Dream Corps, at Cut50; I wasn’t drawing a salary. In fact, I was one of the major donors to the Dream Corps at that time, we didn’t have that much money. Saying you want to work with Republicans and that kind of stuff, the liberal donor committee is not going to be that generous to you. And so not only did I not get paid a penny to pass the First Step Act, not even a salary, nothing, actually, you know, dumped a bunch of my own savings into the Dream Corps to keep it going because we were getting punished by vendors pulling out because they were so outraged that we would even consider working with the Trump administration on something. So why would I do that? I did that because, first of all, I was pretty sure that the election wasn’t going to come down to a criminal justice bill. And that we could actually make both parties stronger, as we did. And I also felt like I owed something, that people were locked up and had no advocate who was willing to go in that building publicly. But you know, same with Jared; Jared had never done a television interview. Never. Nobody knew what his voice sounded like. They just saw his face, and they knew they recognized him. They had never heard his voice. And we were working together on this bill. And so I asked him if he would come to this conference that CNN was doing – which wasn’t even a TV show, it was a conference – and sit down, let’s talk about the bill. I thought that would be good to get him more used to talking about these issues publicly, and also getting more on the record. I mean, it’s clear that he was supporting it. But I wanted to give him the opportunity to be more on the record to show more people that this was a real bill that could really get support. And also, I thought that if he had a halfway decent experience, then he probably would talk to a bunch of other reporters. Now in our world, if you want to have a tough interview, you put in a Chris Cuomo, or you put in a Jake Tapper, and you better eat your Wheaties because those guys are no joke, and they will kick your ass. But if you want to have a tough interview, you don’t put in Van Jones; I interview Oprah and Jay-Z; I do softer interviews. And my interview style is really just trying to help the viewer better understand the person, not agree with them, or disagree with them, not hold them accountable, but help them really get some insight into who this human being is. And so, in keeping with my interview style, if you’ve ever watched the Van Jones show or anything of the podcast, that’s how I am. The only person I ever really went off on in an interview was Ted Cruz, during a Crossfire taping almost 10 years ago, and I felt terrible about it, said I’d never do that again. I just lost it. He was just driving me crazy. But what you put your finger on, nobody noticed, because he [Kushner] was comfortable, because I wasn’t coming in to kick his bike, I was teasing him, I was being soft with him. When we got to talking about the murder of Khashoggi he actually put himself on record saying stuff he had never said before. He admitted that he was still in contact with the leadership in Saudi Arabia, that he was giving them advice about how to handle the situation. He literally was coughing up unbelievable amounts of information about the relationship between the Trump White House and the Saudi royal family. But everyone was so outraged that I was just being nice, and warm toward him. They totally missed the point that I had gotten a major White House official, to not only come and talk about criminal justice reform, which nobody expected the Trump administration to embrace, but also to give invaluable information about what was going on at the level of global politics – and I didn’t have to kick anybody’s ass to tell it. And so I recognize, as a public figure somebody who’s raised my hand and put myself in those chairs, people have the right to criticize me, they have the right to say, Hey, I would have done that differently. What’s he doing? He’s driving me nuts. Why does he do this? Why does he do that? All I ask is if you got to give me an F on my rhetoric, you didn’t like my style, you didn’t like my tone. Why did you smile and take that picture? Why did you say something nice about the president here? Why did you do that? Fine. Give me an F on my rhetoric, give me an F-minus on my rhetoric, that’s fine. You’re perfectly fine to do that. But can you also grade my results? That’s all. If you give me an F on my rhetoric, that’s great. But remember, I’m only on TV a few minutes a day, a few hours a week; the rest of the time, six, seven days a week, I’m working on justice issues. And on those justice issues we now have more than two dozen bipartisan criminal justice bills, that between the Reform Alliance and The Dream Corps, we have passed two dozen bipartisan bills – 10s of 1000s of people out of prison – both political parties better on the issue. And then even with Jared, like he said in that interview, which some people criticize, there was stuff in there that you know, nobody else is able to get on Earth out of the Trump White House at that point. And so I understand the criticism, I’ll take it all day long. I know it hurts people to see a black guy smiling with a white guy inside the Trump White House. And we’ve been trained in white supremacy. If you see a black guy smiling with a white guy, you assume that the black guy is a sucker, that the black guy is being taken advantage of. The black guy is an idiot, doesn’t know what he’s doing. And the white guy is super-smart and is getting it over on the black guy. We’ve all been taught that – black people, white people – if you see a black man smiling, it’s because he’s an idiot. But just consider that maybe every now and again, the black guy is smiling because he’s winning, because he’s winning.
Josh Hoe
Didn’t they used to call that a crocodile smile or something?
Van Jones
Yeah, listen, just consider, maybe sometimes the black guy knows what he’s doing. Maybe sometimes the black guy is smiling because he’s actually getting something done. He’s going into a situation sitting across from the master of the art of the deal, and actually getting something that he wants done. Now, the level of white supremacy and racism on the left, and even among some young black activists, is so blatant that you can’t even see it. But why is it always the case that the black guy is presumed to be the sucker? Maybe there’s no sucker in the picture at all? Maybe it’s a fair deal? Or maybe the white guy is a sucker? How about that? Maybe consider – I’m not saying what’s right, I’m not saying what’s wrong, everybody has their own right to their opinion – but if you never considered that maybe the white guy is a sucker, or maybe there’s no sucker at all, maybe it’s a fair deal, then you might want to ask some questions about the racism of that point of view, no matter what color your skin is.
Josh Hoe
This year, I’m asking people if there are any criminal justice-related books, they might recommend to others; do you have any favorites?
Van Jones
Well, I always lift up Shaka Senghor’s book, Writing My Wrongs. You know, I still think that that book should be required reading. Brittany Barnett came out with a book, I don’t remember the name of it, [A Knock at Midnight] but it’s brilliant and beautiful. And I think Amazon says it’s one of the best books of the year, which is very hard. I mean, out of 10 to 20, hundreds of 1000s of books, they picked out Brittany Barnett’s book to lift up. So I would just probably stick with those two.
Josh Hoe
Yeah, Shak is one of my Michigan brothers; we both got out the same year, and he went on to write a New York Times bestseller, but you know, whatever . . . So this is, as I mentioned, my 100th episode, and I have to indulge myself for once; I have to ask this question. I’ve told you this before, but I’m pretty much a lifelong Prince fan. And I know that you all were close, and I’m eternally jealous of that fact. But is there any story you can share about your own love or experience with this amazing artist, as someone who truly respects and admires him a great deal?
Van Jones
He changed my life. He changed my life. You know, it’s so ironic that we met when the right-wing media was attacking me all the time, saying I was too close to the “Berzerkeley” Bay Area left, and using those fights against me, and I’ve never apologized for those fights. [At] The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, we closed five abusive youth prisons. We reformed the San Francisco Police Department and got a horrible cop fired when it was hard. And we were going up against Democrats, by the way, we were coming from the left going up against Democratic governors and democratic mayors. And so, Fox News and Glenn Beck and a lot of people went back and took those positions and those quotes and used them just to beat the hell out of me. Because I was proudly on the far left as a young person. I’m proud that I came out of Yale Law School and didn’t join the establishment. I joined the counter-establishment. But when the heat got too hot, and I decided to leave the Obama White House under fire for being a leftist, it was Prince who caught me when I fell. It was Prince that reached out to me and invited me to Paisley Park, and sat with me and counseled me, and he said, – I’d been out maybe a couple weeks, maybe a month – and he got me over to Paisley Park, you know, that famous legendary recording studio performance space and home for Prince near the Twin Cities. And he looked at me and said, you know, you look sad. I said, Yeah, I had a pretty good job at the White House, working for President Obama, and now I don’t. And he said, Hey, way worse stuff is going to happen to you. I said, What? He says, Well, I don’t know you, but you seem like you’re somebody who cares about justice and the community. I said, Well, I do, and he goes, Yeah, I can tell. Well, way worse stuff than that happens to guys like you, he said; I wouldn’t worry about it all. Here’s what I want you to do; I want you to go to Jerusalem, and stay there for two weeks. I want you to pray. When you come back, sit down with me and a blank piece of paper. You write down everything you think needs to be done, including – almost like you’re still working in a White House – just everything you think needs to be done. And I will help you do it. I’ll help you do it. And it was a lifeline for me. That took me a year. I mean, I went to Jerusalem and did all that, but it took me a year, really to get my feet back under me. But I had that little star in my pocket, that little bit of hope, that if I figured out anything to do, if I can beat the depression, the shame and the shock of all of it, and all of the stuff that I went through, if I could just get past all that, I at least had somebody in my corner. And he stayed in my corner. A week before he died . . last time I saw him, he was in Oakland. And I brought some young activists from the Black Lives Matter group to meet him and shake his hand. They said, oh, we’re really honored to meet you. And I’m honored to meet you. And I was getting them out of there so he could get back to enjoying himself. And he said, Van. And I said, Yes, he said, Van, bring the boys to Paisley. He had been begging me for years to bring my sons out to Paisley Park, and, you know, school and sports and it’s just – how you going to do it – I never prioritized, I figured I had 30 years. He said, bring the boys to Paisley. And I said, Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I’ll do it. I’ll do it this summer. But that obviously didn’t happen. But even then he’s thinking, I want you and your family to get a chance to experience something that very few people are ever going to experience, to be in Paisley Park. Now you can go there as a museum; I’ll tell you it’s not the same, can’t be the same. You know, it’s just the way it is, they have to change it to accommodate 10s of 1000s of people coming through there. But he cared about the people in his life. And when you’re talking about Janelle Monae, or Alicia Keys or – he cared about the people in his life, Damaris Lewis. So many people who will tell you, they would not be where they are, and/or they wouldn’t know what they know if it hadn’t been for Prince. I wish you could have met him. When he got the Webby Award, he said: everything you think is true. What he was talking about was the power of imagination, the power of intention, which he talked about all the time. But I can say for sure, every good thing you think about Prince is true.
Josh Hoe
Thanks so much for that.
I always ask the same last question: what did I mess up? What question should I have asked, but did not?
Van Jones
Well, look, man, I can’t tell you how much I admire you and how much I appreciate you, and your journey and the process that you’ve gone through, and the stance that you take, and the fact that you continue to use your voice to stick up for what you believe in. And that you’re willing to take some hard shots on behalf of people out here who, like myself, are controversial. And when you disagree with me, you let me know, when you agree with me, you let me know. And I appreciate that. And I don’t think you left out any questions – except it’s given me the opportunity to tell you – hoping the next 100 are just as great as the last 100 if not better, and we need you. Your voice matters. And this community without you would be much less, we’d have a lot less integrity, we’d have a lot less courage, we’d have a lot less wisdom. And I’m glad that we don’t have to contemplate that because hopefully you’ll be here for at least 100 more episodes, if not 200.
Josh Hoe
I really appreciate it. And thank you for all your support and mentorship over the years and really, thanks for taking the time to do this.
Van Jones
All right. Well, to be continued . . . have me back on 200!
Josh Hoe
Absolutely. Will do. Thanks so much.
Van Jones
All right. Peace.
Josh Hoe
Peace.
Josh Hoe
And now my take.
Usually I do a rant here, but this week instead I’m just going to say a lot of thank you’s.
Thank you to everyone who listens to the Decarceration Nation podcast. Thanks to Joel Barson, who was my first co-host when I started this adventure around four years ago, and still remains one of my best friends. Thanks to Andrew Stein, without whom this podcast could absolutely not have ever existed and could not continue to exist. The amount of work he does to help make sure that this happens is incredible, and he deserves a lot – maybe most – of the credit for us getting to 100 episodes. Thanks to Robert Alvarez, to Kate Summers, to Ann Espo and Alex Mayo, who have all been volunteers and donated a lot of their time to this podcast. I also apologize to every single one of them as well. I’m generally pretty easy-going but sometimes unfortunately, they’ve all seen me when I’m grumpy. So thanks to them for all the hard work and apologies to all if at any time, I was a little short. Thanks again, to everyone who has listened over the years to all the guests we’ve had. I really appreciate all of you, and this has been a really interesting journey. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve met people across the country who come up to me and tell me they listen to the podcast, or who I’ve met on social media because of the podcast; it’s been a great way to build an interesting little community of supporters of criminal justice reform, and so I really do appreciate everyone who listens and who has been a part of this adventure.
We’re gonna take a break for a few weeks, and then we’ll come back with a bunch of new episodes after that, to finish out Season Four.
As always, you can find the show notes and/or leave us a comment at DecarcerationNation.com.
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Special thanks to Andrew Stein who does the podcast editing and post-production for me; to Ann Espo, who’s helping out with transcript editing and graphics for our website and Twitter; and to Alex Mayer, who helps with our website.
Thanks also to my employer, Safe & Just Michigan, for helping to support the DecarcerationNation podcast.
Thanks so much for listening; see you next time!
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