Van Jones Community Quotations

Though the rampant racial injustices throughout the criminal justice system were offensive to me and to millions of other people, I've never drawn a tight circle around the black community to define the limits of my moral concern. But that narrative tends to get imposed on you, if you're an African-American activist.

People in red states and blue states can agree that if we can fight pollution and poverty at the same time, letting people work their way out of poverty without undermining community health, we have a moral obligation to do so.

We know that urban farms require less fuel for tractors and transport, but community gardens don't plant themselves.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we did create Color of Change, an organization which focused on African-Americans in particular, because we felt that there was a big gap there in terms of online advocacy which had left the black community particularly vulnerable.

If you look at my career over the past twenty years, I've always been trying to look around corners for low-income communities of color.

Former brownfields, depressed urban areas, and hard-hit rural towns blossom as eco-industrial parks, green enterprise zones, and eco-villages. Farmers' markets, community co-ops, and mobile markets get fresh, organic produce to the people who can't afford to shop at health-food stores.

The time has come for a public-private community partnership to fix this country and put it back to work.

The surest path to safe streets and peaceful communities is not more police and prisons, but ecologically sounds economic development. And that same path can lift us to a new, green economy - one with the power to lift people out of poverty while respecting and repairing the environment.

Environmental justice is the movement to ensure that no community suffers disproportionate environmental burdens or goes without enjoying fair environmental benefits.