Rebuild the Dream

Copyright © 2012 by Van Jones

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jones, Van, 1968–

Rebuild the dream / by Van Jones.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-56858-715-8 (E-book)

1. United States—Economic conditions—2009–   2. United States—Social conditions—21st century.  3. United States—Politics and government—2009–   4. Political participation—United States.  5. Social movements—United States.  6. Protest movements—United States.  I. Title.

HC106.84.J67 2012

330.973—dc23

2012002255

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

O
N THE NIGHT THAT
S
ENATOR
B
ARACK
O
BAMA
was elected president of the United States, I was not among the hundreds of thousands of well-wishers in Chicago who flooded into Grant Park to cheer him on. I was in Oakland, California, far from the center of the action. I watched history unfold on a flatscreen television, sitting with my family on the sofa at a friend's house. The Bay Area had been my home for fifteen years, and I had no plans ever to leave it. If anyone had suggested that night that I soon would be relocating to serve a tour of duty in Obama's White House, everyone would have chuckled. It would have seemed impossible.

But then again, impossible things were happening all over America. The top contenders to become the leaders of the free world had been a white woman and a black man—an unthinkable
scenario in 1968, the year I was born. That evening an African American candidate for president had won a general election match-up against a white war hero, beating him in North Carolina and Virginia, of all places. Miracles were becoming commonplace. The air felt pregnant with possibilities that had been unimaginable just a few months earlier.

I woke up early on November 4, 2008, filled with anticipation and pride. My wife and I put our infant son and our preschooler into her car. We headed to a nearby schoolhouse, which doubled that day as our polling station. As we got out of the car, we saw a dozen or so strangers. They were beaming and giving each other high-fives in the small parking lot. Grown men were bounding out of the building with tear-streaked faces, pumping their fists in the air. Parents exchanged smiles and nods, as they drug their children inside to watch them vote, wanting their kids to be a part of something historic. Inside, my hands shook as I videotaped my four-year-old son slipping my ballot into the machine for me. He was so excited, and I was overcome with emotion. For Oakland's black community, the pain of past centuries was lifting a bit. Many had doubted they would see a black man elected president in their lifetimes. It was a glorious day.

That night, I sat glued to the television. As Obama and his beautiful family walked out onto the stage, victorious, I clutched my older son in my lap. I whispered into his ear, over and over, “This is history, son. This is history.”

My son wriggled free from my grasp and climbed up onto his mother's lap. “Mama, what
is
history?” he asked. “And why does it make Daddy cry all the time?”

Everyone laughed. I smiled and wiped my face with a party napkin. There were a lot of tears that night. In truth, mine flowed from wellsprings of joy
and
sorrow. Even in the midst of all the jubilation, something was missing: my dad.

MY FATHER, WILLIE ANTHONY JONES
, did not live long enough to witness Obama's victory. That was a tragedy. As he lay dying in the hospital that spring, only two things could make my father smile: one was spending time with his youngest grandson, whom I would sneak into the intensive care unit as nurses pretended not to see. When he saw my son, Daddy's eyes would light up, and he would mouth the words, “Little Dude. How's my Little Dude?”

The other thing that thrilled him was looking up at the TV set above his bed and seeing Obama, running for the highest office in the land. Like many African Americans of his generation, my father had overcome earlier suspicions and doubts to embrace Obama fully. Whenever the senator appeared, my dad would look over at me and give me a weak thumbs-up. Once, he heard a pundit caution that Obama could still lose the nomination. But my father shook his head and croaked out, “He's gonna make it.”

Obama did make it. My father did not. His bout with lung cancer was one of the few battles I ever saw him lose. He had been a fighter all of his life. Born into poverty in the racially segregated South, my father had made it out of the Orange Mound neighborhood of Memphis, Tennessee, by joining the U.S. Air Force and becoming a military cop. He got an honorable discharge, returned to his home state, got married, and put himself through college. Later, he helped put his little brother and a cousin through college.

Along the way, my parents got jobs as teachers in my mother's hometown of Jackson, Tennessee. My mother's father had been president of the city's black institution of higher learning, Lane College. On the edge of that small town, my folks reared my twin sister and me. We lived a modest life: public schools, church on Sunday, and Bible study in the summertime. Under pressure from
the NAACP, the school district appointed my father as the principal of a troubled middle school, which served a very low-income population. He was one of the first African Americans in my home county to be named to such a high post.

My father was a tough son of gun who did not suffer fools. The school had a reputation as being a dumping ground for bad teachers. He fought with the superintendent to get rid of the bad apples; built up a team of young, creative faculty; and partnered with local businesses to add computers and other programs. He held his poorest students to the highest standards, because he knew that the only effective weapon against bigotry was excellence. He succeeded in transforming Jackson Middle School. When he retired as an award-winning educator, the institution was recognized as a model in the state.

When my father sent me off to Yale Law School, he was proud of our family's accomplishments, proud of his generations' civil rights gains—and proud of this country.

I saw him the weekend before I left for Connecticut. He told me, “When I was your age, they would not have even let me on the grounds at Yale. You are going there as a student, to sit next to the kids from big-time families. The next time I see you, you will know a lot of things that I don't know. You will be smarter than me, about a lot of things. I accept that.”

But he had one admonition for me. He said, “There are only two kinds of smart people in this world, son. There are those smart people who take simple things and make them sound complicated, to enrich themselves. And there are those who take complicated things and make them sound simple, to empower and uplift other people. The next time I see you, I want you to be that second kind of smart guy.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. I took those as my marching orders.

It was a powerful send-off from the original bootstrapper, a man who had worked hard, beaten the odds, and lived the American Dream.