Source: Leigh Vogel / Getty
Veteran political commentator Van Jones should be every bit of the representation that Black America could hope for — he’s an Emmy winner, Obama supporter and stands at an assertive 6’1 frame that could’ve easily landed him a modeling contract in another life.
However, that’s not exactly what the frequent CNN correspondent represents to the culture at this current time. He notoriously came under fire for working across party lines with the Trump Administration back in 2018, documented in the
recent Prime Video documentary The First Step. He was also oddly linked to dating Kim Kardashian during her marriage to Kanye West, and most recently was reportedly “ousted” from his founding position at Dream.Org following “disagreements” with the leadership team.
However, Van seems to be on a path of reversing his reputation amongst the people by taking what’s left of that huge $100 million grant he received from Jeff Bezos in 2021 to, as he exclusively told
Us Weekly, “disrupt the for-profit prison system” and “disrupt the systems that put a lot of pollution in our communities and lead to poverty.”
Love 97.9 The Beat? Get more! Join the 97.9 The Beat Newsletter
We care about your data. See our privacy policy.
While his efforts are indeed valiant, does he realistically have the means, not just financially, to make it all come to fruition or are we in the midst of a ploy to detract from his growing PR nightmare?
RELATED: Op-Ed: Who Appointed Van Jones To Be Chief Ambassador Of The Black Delegation?
To understand what Jones is officially trying to do, take a look below at his future financial plans via the aforementioned exclusive with
US Weekly:
“Jones invested in Philadelphia-based non-profit Beat The Block, a paid training program that works with men ages 18 to 24 to aid them in accomplishing their personal and professional goals.
‘We found an unbelievable program [Beat The Block] that was incentivizing peace on the streets by going to folks who were hanging on street corners, getting in trouble and saying, ‘We will pay you for a 100 days to get off the street corner [and] come up with a plan for your life,” he explained. ‘My theory now is that the financial incentives to do bad are very high in a lot of the communities I care about and the financial incentives to do good are very weak. That’s what I want to go after.’
‘If you want to change the outcomes, you’ve got to change the behaviors,’ Jones continued. ‘If you want to change the behavior, you’ve got to change your financial incentives. For instance, negative people will pay kids in our community to shoplift en mass and sell drugs. Positive people don’t pay our kids to do anything. Why aren’t the positive people willing to pay kids to act?’
Jones said out of the 58 young people who participated in Beat The Block, 88 percent got jobs, 57 percent started their own business and 100 percent registered to vote.
‘These are the hardest to employ young people,’ he said. ‘That’s a miracle.’”
While those plans and others laid out in the feature in regards to his self-described “miracle money” sound amazing on paper, others close to the situation aren’t quick to share the praise for Jones. As
The Daily Beast noted in a starkly different exclusive report, former Dream colleagues stated that Jones can’t “stay at anything for longer than a few years before passing it off,” and is known for “moving on to the next thing, and possibly not creating the best infrastructure before he leaves.”
The outlet was quick to note that Jones’ exit from Dream was not by choice, and that internal overspending proved be a huge red flag. Allegedly, Dream subsidiary Green For All — Van co-founded it in 2007 — received a separate, three-year $10 million grant out of the Bezos climate fund that’s reportedly been “tore through” since it was first received in 2020 with “little to show for it” according to several ex-employees. Not only has Bezos not renewed the grant, but Dream has since laid off a handful of linked staffers.
“If you look at Black Twitter… they are consistently dragging Van Jones,” asserted one ex-employee. Well, let’s see about that.
Take a look below to see what many are saying on social media about Van Jones, Dream.Org, the $100 mill in question and what that type of money could mean for our culture if allocated the right way and to the right ones:
