Van Jones and STORM

Who is Van Jones, and What was STORM?

Van Jones started his career as a staunch critic of capitalism, by the late 1990s Jones's views were evolving. Today, he has emerged as one of the foremost champions of green business, entrepreneurship and market-based solutions. In his book The Green Collar Economy, Jones wrote:

We are entering an era during which our very survival will demand invention and innovation on a scale never before seen in the history of human civilization. Only the business community has the requisite skills, experience, and capital to meet that need. On that score, neither government nor the nonprofit and voluntary sectors can compete, not even remotely.

So in the end, our success and survival as a species are largely and directly tied to the new eco-entrepreneurs — and the success and survival of their enterprises. Since almost all of the needed eco-technologies are likely to come from the private sector, civic leaders and voters should do all that can be done to help green business leaders succeed. That means, in large part, electing leaders who will pass bills to aid them. We cannot realistically proceed without a strong alliance between the best of the business world — and everyone else.

Speaking to the East Bay Express, Jones explained that as a young person he became further politicized in the wake of the Rodney King verdict. Jones was still a law student at Yale Law School at the time. While volunteering as a legal monitor during a peaceful protest in San Francisco following the Rodney King trial, Jones was arrested along with other legal monitors and some protesters. He and the other detainees were released after being illegally arrested; the charges were later dropped and Jones was financially compensated by the City of San Francisco's Attorneys Office for the unlawful arrest. In jail, however, Van Jones said,

"I met all these young radical people of color -- I mean really radical, communists and anarchists. And it was, like, 'This is what I need to be a part of.' I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary. I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th. By August, I was a communist."

In 1994 the group of activists Van Jones was involved with Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), a collective which "dreamed of a multiracial socialist utopia".

What is and was STORM?

STORM initially included anarchists, communists and revolutionary nationalists, but after some struggle the anarchists left and STORM become more communist-oriented. STORM was also different than its predecessor group RAW because it had white members, whereas RAW was comprised only of people of color. While STORM had some white members, its membership was always more than 60 percent women and 75 percent people of color. Most of STORM's membership had never previously been in other revolutionary organizations. STORM officially dissolved in December 2002.