>>Van Jones: Well, good morning.
It's an honor to be here.
I am not a technological genius like many of you.
I don't have an Oscar or any of those things.
But I think that what we all have in common in this room is that almost all of us are
products of something that is now under grave threat.
And that is what we used to call the American dream.
Mr. Chenault was beginning to bump up against that.
My father was born in abject poverty in rural Tennessee, under the most brutal kind of segregation
imaginable.
My dad joined the military in the middle of a conflict.
He got out.
He put himself through college.
He put his little brother through college.
He put his cousin through college.
He put me through college, and my sister through college.
My dad single-handedly, we often say, got our whole family out of poverty, the American
dream.
But whenever we would tell that story about his single-handed accomplishment, he would
say, "Hold on a second.
I know a little something about getting folks out of poverty.
I did it myself."
He says, "I don't agree with you liberals."
He said that to me.
And I don't agree with the conservatives, either."
He said, "You can't give a kid anything that's going to stop him from being poor.
You can't give a kid any money and stop them from being poor.
If they're still poor in their heart and mind and spirit, they'll be poor again tomorrow.
You can stop them from being broke with some money, but not from being poor.
So I don't believe what the liberals say.
But I also know that that child who has a responsibility to climb the ladder out of
poverty him- or herself has to meet that responsibility while grown folks meet another responsibility."
The child has a responsibility to climb the ladder out of poverty him- or herself on their
own efforts so they stay out of poverty.
But grown folks need to make sure there is a ladder for the children to climb.
That's the responsibility of grown people.
In other words, the American dream has always been coauthored by two generations, both meeting
their responsibilities.
And we are now in a situation where I believe our generation is failing to make sure there
is a ladder for the next generation to climb.
What am I talking about?
I'm talking about the fact that we have a generation of young people who don't get in
trouble.
We always talk about the ones that do get in trouble.
Let's talk about the ones that don't get in trouble.
Let's talk about the ones who do what we tell them to do.
Stay off drugs.
Yes, sir.
We say stay in school.
Yes, ma'am, staying in college.
We say going to college.
Yes, sir, signing up to college.
And then they graduate off a cliff into the worst economy since the great depression,
often with massive debt.
You say to yourself, "I graduated with debt myself.
It took me several years to pay off those $5,000."
We have young people graduating now with undergraduate degrees, 60-, 70-, $80,000 in debt, those
are kids that did the right thing.
Where is their ladder?
Half of the kids who graduated this spring are unemployed, from college.
There is a challenge that we are facing to get this young generation plugged in.
And yet, this is one of the most impressive generations we've ever seen.
It's the biggest generation in American history, bigger than the baby boomers.
We know the changes they brought forward.
The most technologically savvy, thanks to many of you.
The most diverse.
They have the genius and the wisdom of all people in one generation.
If you think about that, I go to countries, many of you guys go to countries, they have
two ethnic groups, and they fight all the time.
I say to myself, you guys have got two?
You can't get along with two?
[ Laughter ] >>Van Jones: My kid goes to school, there
are 30 languages spoken in his elementary school, 30 languages.
I'm from California.
So they are a miracle in what they're able to do.
And they want to work.
Here's our other big promise with them.
This generation has already made history politically.
When they stood up in 2008 for President Obama, they made history.
When they sat down in 2010, they made history again, the other direction.
Then the next year, they got mad and some decided to lie down in the streets and occupy
Wall Street.
They made history then.
So if they stand up, they make history.
They sit down, they make history.
If they lie down, they make history.
The question is, what kind of history can we help them make?
And why are they not in their great numbers with their great genius, with their great
enthusiasm, participating in our political system?
Well, I have a grid I want to show you.
And I think if we take this grid seriously, we'll have some insight in how we can begin
to tap the wisdom and the genius of the next generation of Americans that want to participate
in our economy but are not able to right now and want to be a part of a political system,
but right now, they find the political system difficult to navigate.
Let's go with my slide.
Now, this is genius.
I just want you to know.
[ Laughter ] >>Van Jones: This is it.
People say, "I don't understand politics.
I don't understand what is going on."
This is all of it explained to you on one slide, because I am a genius.
Now, be here we are.
All politics on one slide.
Politics goes from, in most people's minds, from political concept to political action.
You have an idea.
Why don't we cut taxes.
Then you take action.
You do a citizen or an elected official do something about it.
That is only one dimension.
The dimension that we get tangled up on is the other dimension, which is what I call
the rational-to-emotional dimension of politics, or more provocatively, the elitist to populist.
This is what liberals and aggressives and idealists -- they listen to NPR, watch the
BBC.
They just want a good idea to get implemented and go home.
That's not how politics work.
In this top quadrant, you have what I call the head space.
And that's where most of us are comfortable.
That's where you have the think tanks, the policy wonks.
That's where, you know, NPR -- but that's not where most politics is.
Most politics is not just in your head.
It's also in your heart.
The heart space is where you saw President Obama when he was Candidate Obama light up
the world, inspire a generation.
Nobody went to any of those speeches and came away saying, "I just saw President Obama,
and I feel so informed.
I just feel so informed.
All those numbers that he had just were so amazing."
That wasn't what moved that young generation.
It was people felt inspired.
And this is a generation for whom authenticity and inspiration and truth-telling matters
a great deal.
When politics is only about the minutia and the elbow-throwing at the subcommittee level,
they don't feel that they can get involved.
Also, politics isn't just about what the lobbyists do and the elected officials do, it's also
about what I call the outside game.
It's what the organizers do, the activists, the community people.
During the 2008, people felt empowered.
Frankly, after Obama was elected, people who were part of the Tea Party, they felt empowered.
They got involved.
They got excited.
We haven't figured out how to have a politics of continual engagement at the heart space
for young people and letting them stay involved.
Instead, we want them to get a bunch of emails, often, to be a part of what's this inside
game, where all the lobbyists and the subcommittees go.
This strikes young people as boring, and bossy.
I told you it was going to be genius; right?
[ Laughter ] >>Van Jones: This is high political science.
Boring and bossy doesn't work for the young generation.
They want inspired and empowered.
And if we can take this simple observation and get our next generation moving here, all
of this can change.
People ask me all the time when I put this up, which of these boxes is the most important
for lasting change?
Whichever box we're not doing well in.
You have to have great ideas.
You have to have great elected leadership.
But you also have to have the people engaged.
So let me tell you some of the things that we are seeing that are beginning to work.
And we need your help in taking these kind of things to scale.
When I say the young people have the power to move politics, I don't just mean during
the election cycle.
There was only one issue this entire year that Obama and Romney agreed on publicly and
passionately and quickly.
The issue was the question of student loans.
The student loan rate was about to double, from 3.4% to 6.8%.
Our organization, Rebuild the Dream, we have 600,000 members online, which for you guys
is a very small number.
But in politics, if you're not a political party, you've got a million members, you're
massive.
So we have 600,000 members.
We noticed this.
We noticed that there was going to be a sledgehammer to fall down on this young generation.
Most people are borrowing at 0 or 1%.
These kids to go to college in America were going to have to borrow at 6.8%.
It was going to wipe out a whole generation.
It was going to happen this spring.
And, unfortunately, it turns out high school seniors don't have a big lobbying presence
in Washington, D.C.
So this thing was just sailing through.
And we pointed out to this emerging generation.
And they got busy.
And from a pure social media standpoint, it was a phenomenon.
And you literally had Obama and Romney rushing over each other to get to a microphone to
say they were going to put an end to it.
And they were able to.
Now, this is just one issue.
There is a passion these young people have for their own future.
But it's too Episodic.
I want -- I'm going to run out of time.
I want to tell you one story, though, about what we just did in Chicago and then I want
to talk to you about what I think we have to do going forward.
Chicago, August of this year.
What happens when you start cutting out basketball programs?
What happens when you start cutting out sports programs and art programs?
What happens to you, you're 13 years old?
You've got 40 kids in the classroom?
Six books.
No chalk.
Many of us wouldn't have even gone to school if there hadn't been some extracurricular
activity, choir, something.
What happens when two summers go by, three summers go by, and there's literally nothing
to do?
What if you hadn't had camp to go to?
Tell you what happens.
Chicago this summer, 55 murders.
More Americans died in Chicago in the month of August than died in Afghanistan this summer.
55 murders.
55 funerals.
Many of them young people.
We went to Chicago.
We brought a guy with us named Prince.
Artist now presently known as.
[ Laughter ] >>Van Jones: Why him?
Because he could get all the parents together and the grandparents together because they
like his music.
[ Laughter ] >>Van Jones: And whereas the young people,
he's not their favorite artist.
He's their favorite artist's favorite artist.
And so Jennifer Hudson game, and Janelle Monae or whatever came.
We got 60,000 people together over the course of three days, brought in 26 organizations.
They were inspired.
One of the young men came from a group called Inside Arts.
He was wearing a suit.
He shook me hand and said, "Thank you, Mr. Jones.
It's the first time I've worn my suit in my life not at a funeral."
The organizations showed up.
And we learned from the young people that the best way to get them engaged is to gamify
it.
So we gamified the event.
We gave them a card and said, "If you go and get the card stamped by enough groups, you
can put your card in a little raffle.
We'll pull it out, and one of you will get a chance to be on stage next to Prince."
They all got involved.
And we signed up thousands of people.
And we helped to build up those organizations.
I say that because we're at a point now where red and blue doesn't mean a whole lot anymore
to this generation.
Neither political party has done very much for them.
And they have a politics that goes beyond the food fight in Washington, D.C.
They actually believe that they should be fighting against the worst in our government
but sticking up for the best.
They want to fight against the worst in the business community, but they want to be entrepreneurs
themselves.
They don't fit into any of the old boxes.
And they have dreams for themselves and for this country that if they succeed, we will
have another Great American century.
If they fail, we may not have a 22nd century at all from a climate point of view.
And so we have to -- a responsibility to stand with them.
I think we're at a choice point.
And the choice is simply this: As Americans, are we going to turn to each other or on each
other?
Are we going to turn to each other or on each other?
There is a generation that is bigger than the baby boomers right behind us.
They have your technology, but left to their own devices, some of them are just doing flash
mobs and committing acts of violence.
They don't create the American dream on their own.
No generation has.
But with those same tools in their pocket, if we turn to them and say, "We want to create
a nation of neighbors.
We think the next American dream will be coauthored by both our generations together.
We can work together," the key was to kick start with all these brands.
This shouldn't just be an excess economy, it should be the access economy.
It should be the opportunity for us to stand together.
There is a generation of young people that desperately needs work.
And there is a great deal of work in our country that needs to be done.
If we can connect this generation that desperately wants work with the work that most needs to
be done, we can build a new American century, we can put that ladder back up, and we can
keep the American dream alive.
Thank you very much.
[ Applause. ]