Van Jones

Anthony Kapel "Van" Jones (born September 20, 1968) is an American political analyst, media personality, lawyer, author, and civil rights advocate.

He is a three-time New York Times bestselling author, a CNN host and contributor, and an Emmy Award winner.

Anthony Kapel Jones and his twin sister Angela were born in Jackson, Tennessee, on September 20, 1968, to high school teacher Loretta Jean (née Kirkendoll) and middle school principal Willie Anthony Jones.

His sister said that as a child, he was "the stereotypical geek—he just kind of lived up in his head a lot."

Jones has said as a child he was "bookish and bizarre."

His grandfather was a leader in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, and Jones sometimes accompanied him to religious conferences.

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 1986.

He earned his Bachelor of Science in communication and political science from the University of Tennessee at Martin (UT Martin).

During this period, Jones also worked as an intern at The Jackson Sun (Tennessee), the Shreveport Times (Louisiana), and the Associated Press (Nashville bureau).

He adopted the nickname "Van" when he was 17 and working at The Jackson Sun. At UT Martin, Jones helped to launch and lead a number of independent, campus-based publications.

They included the Fourteenth Circle (University of Tennessee), the Periscope (Vanderbilt University), the New Alliance Project (statewide in Tennessee), and the Third Eye (Nashville's African-American community).

Jones later credited UT Martin for preparing him for a larger life.

Deciding against journalism, Jones moved to Connecticut to attend Yale Law School.

In 1992, 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.

The arrested protesters, including Jones, won a small legal settlement.

Jones later said that "the incident deepened my disaffection with the system and accelerated my political radicalization".

Jones was deeply affected by the trial and verdict.

Jones was affiliated with the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, which had brought him to the city as a legal observer in 1992.

After graduating from law school with his Juris Doctor in 1993, Jones moved to San Francisco, and according to his own words, "trying to be a revolutionary".

He became affiliated with many left activists, and co-founded a socialist collective called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM).

It protested against police brutality, held study groups on the theories of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, and aspired to a multi-racial socialist utopia.

In 1995, Jones initiated their project of Bay Area PoliceWatch, the region's only bar-certified hotline and lawyer-referral service for victims of police abuse.

The hotline started receiving fifteen calls a day.

Jones described the development of the project:

In an October 2005 interview, Jones said he had been "a rowdy nationalist on April 28th" before the King verdict was announced, but that by August 1992 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."

Jones served as President Barack Obama's Special Advisor for Green Jobs in 2009 and a distinguished visiting fellow at Princeton University.

He founded or co-founded several non-profit organizations, including the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Color of Change, and the Dream Corps.

The Dream Corps is a social justice accelerator that operates three advocacy initiatives: Dream Corps Justice, Dream Corps Tech and Green for All.

Jones has hosted or co-hosted CNN shows including Crossfire, The Messy Truth, The Van Jones Show and The Redemption Project with Van Jones.

He is the author of The Green Collar Economy.

He is the co-founder of Magic Labs Media LLC, a producer of the WEBBY Award-winning Messy Truth digital series and Emmy Award-winning The Messy Truth VR Experience with Van Jones.

He is a regular CNN political commentator.

Jones was formerly CEO of the REFORM Alliance, an initiative founded by Jay-Z and Meek Mill to transform the criminal justice system.

He was also a longtime colleague of, and advisor to, musician Prince.