Anthony Kapel " Van " Jones born September 20, is an American political analyst, media personality, lawyer, author, and civil rights advocate. He is the author of The Green Collar Economy. He would sit all day listening to the adults "in these hot, sweaty black churches. Jones graduated from Jackson Central-Merry High School , a public high school in his hometown, in He adopted the nickname "Van" when he was 17 and working at The Jackson Sun.
In , in the aftermath of the Rodney King beating and trial , he was among several law students selected by the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights , based in San Francisco , to serve as legal observers to the protests triggered by the verdict.
King had been beaten by police officers in an incident caught on camera. Three of the officers were acquitted and the jury deadlocked on the verdict of the fourth officer. Jones and others were arrested during the protests, but the district attorney later dropped the charges against Jones. Jones later said that "the incident deepened my disaffection with the system and accelerated my political radicalization".
In an October interview, Jones said he had been "a rowdy nationalist on April 28th" [ 12 ] before the King verdict was announced, but that by August he had become a communist.
Jones's activism was also spurred by seeing the deep racial inequality in New Haven, Connecticut , particularly in prosecution of drug use. Jones has said, "I was seeing kids at Yale do drugs and talk about it openly, and have nothing happen to them or, if anything, get sent to rehab And then I was seeing kids three blocks away, in the housing projects, doing the same drugs, in smaller amounts, go to prison. It protested against police brutality, held study groups on Marxism , Leninism , and Maoism , and aspired to establish multi-racial socialism.
