Wednesday 02 November 2005

Van Jones renounced his rowdy black nationalism on the way toward becoming an influential leader of the new progressive politics.

One week later, while Jones was observing the first large rally since the lifting of the city’s state of emergency, he got swept up in mass arrests. It was a turning point in his life.

Jones had planned to move to Washington, DC, and had already landed a job and an apartment there. But in jail, he 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.’” Although he already had a plane ticket, he decided to stay in San Francisco. “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.” In the months that followed, he let go of any lingering thoughts that he might fit in with the status quo. “I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th,” he said. “By August, I was a communist.”