Tami Simon: You're Listening to Insights at the Edge. Today Is a Very Special broadcast. Sounds True Produced a 30-part Series That Aired in the fall—called Waking up in the World—that Looked at The

And so, I think ... I don't know what to do about these hate groups, but I know that adding hate to hate doesn't give us less hate. I challenge them and us to come out of the hateful nonsense. I need you. You're a white guy, you're 52 years old, you've got a skill, you've got a trade. We have a lot of young men in the inner city who need role models, who need help. Come. Don't sit here and watch Fox TV—I don't call it Fox News—don't sit here and watch Fox and talk about, "Oh, those people in Chicago are shooting each other. Why do they care about police brutality? People in Chicago are killing each other." You're talking about people in Chicago, you aren't talking to people in Chicago. You've never been to one funeral. You've never held the hand of one grandmother who's putting to bed, who's burying, a 16-year-old. Come to Chicago. Come to these communities. Be a part of this conversation and you'll learn and we'll learn, too.

I took five leaders from South Central Los Angeles—four African-American, one Latino—who had been working on the addiction crisis, with crack cocaine initially. I put them on a plane and I took them to West Virginia. And we sat in West Virginia with five leaders from Appalachia who had been working on the opioid crisis. Those five white leaders had voted for Donald Trump. They were as conservative as possible. They were going to funerals every week because people are dropping like flies from opioid overdoses in West Virginia. And those African Americans and Latino leaders had been to a lot of funerals as well. And when you put those two face-to-face—black and Latino Hillary voters from California with white Trump voters from West Virginia—and had them talk about what they were going through, it was literally the same story. And they fell in love within ten minutes.

We're going to take that group to the White House and we're going to take that group to Capitol Hill, because that's how you deal with hatred. What's the pain? Can we work together on the pain? Can I show you how you've got a better shot at getting legislation done to help your community if you work with my community, and vice versa?

You've got to build the bridges where the pain is. And then the hate will just have less room to maneuver, and we're doing less work giving them materials—feeding what we're fighting. That's the long answer to a short question. That's how I think about it.

TS: Thank you.

Van, I know you're working with Valarie Kaur, who's also in this online event series and others, in creating what's being called a "Love Army." And first of all, I thought that was interesting, the juxtaposition of those two words. Tell me what you mean by the "army" part and then the "love" part, too.

VJ: I was surprised by a lot of liberals' negative reactions to the idea of a Love Army. I mean, they were just really passionate about being hateful. I was shocked. These are the liberals that say they love Dr. King and love Gandhi and love civil rights and love peace and they've got their tie-dye shirts and that sort of stuff. And I said our response to this hate army that took over our government is [that] we're going to launch a Love Army. "I don't believe in love. It's not the time for love." I'm like, "Wow, really?" And I said, "Look, the love you have in your life must be real weak. That sounds like a personal problem." Love … [laughter] I mean, that Mama Bear loves those cubs. You'd better not mess with those cubs. Because with the love she has for those cubs, she's going to stand up and defend those cubs, not out of hatred for anybody, but out of love for those cubs. You don't mess with those cubs, she's not going to mess with you. But, you mess with those cubs, she's going to mess with you.

That's love. That's what I'm talking about—that Love Army—not just love as a weak thing, but as love as strong stance. And listen, we have to get out here and fight. I mean, there's some stuff we just can't back down on. Human rights abuses against immigrants, against transgendered people, against Muslims? No, we're not going to ... We'll fight until the last dog barks on that. But we can't only fight and still have a country.

There also are areas where we should be able to work together, despite our differences. Now, this is now considered just insane talk. But it's only insane talk because people are so triggered and traumatized that they're not thinking rationally. Nothing I'm saying is particularly profound. This is stuff that your mom would have told you. This is stuff that is literally kindergarten and third-grade stuff. But people are so triggered and traumatized, and we haven't put in the work to get healed enough to meet this challenge. You have to get through a lot more healing to meet this challenge. When we talk about the Love Army, that's what we mean.

TS: I think part of the reason that it's such a reach for people is because of what you said about the resistance bubble. I mean, anytime you're in a bubble, anything outside the bubble is foreign to you, and eye-opening.

OK. There are ten principles of being part of a Love Army, and there was one that I wanted to talk to you about, Van. "Amplify the unheard." And I thought if anybody knows what voices have not been heard that we need to hear, it's Van Jones, because you're someone who listens and—at least that's my perception of you—you've made a commitment to listen to people who are marginalized and unheard. What stories do you think it's really important for our listeners of Waking Up in the Worldto hear?

VJ: Well, it's hard to know because I don't know all your listeners.

TS: Sure.

VJ: But if I were to stereotype, I would assume college-educated people, probably.

TS: Yes, Prius-driving, NPR-listening ... I think you've got it.

VJ: Yes, exactly. My favorite folks. Honestly.

You know, there's a double danger for well-meaning liberals who are affluent. One is being disconnected from people of color—who may even have college degrees, but have a completely different experience of life just walking into a store, walking into a restaurant, walking down the street. Completely different, like-a-horror-movie different. [They can] just be completely, blissfully unaware of the racial dynamics, and want so much for racial dynamics not to not exist, and want so much for racial oppression to be over, that they actually contribute to it by denying what's actually happening. And so it's really important to listen to people of color, even in our upset, even in our pain and frustration, and especially so, to realize ...

Hey, look man, I used to live in a flat in the Mission District of San Francisco—no, Bernal Heights in San Francisco, and I thought I understood that neighborhood pretty well. And there was one apartment on the second floor where I lived and there was one below me on the first floor. I lived there a couple years. And then I lost my keys and I couldn't get in my front door, but I knew my back door was open. So I went downstairs, knocked on the door, and said, "Can you guys let me go through your apartment so I can go up the back and into my apartment?" And when the door opened, unbeknownst to me, the entire time, living just below me, was a home for undocumented workers, so-called illegal immigrants, who were stuffed in there like sardines—I mean, literally on top of each other. This is where they would pay my same landlord—who was so kind to me, I had this wonderful flat above—would pay exorbitant prices just to be able to lay down on a little dirty pillow and a little dirty mat. I walked through there and I realized, I know nothing about this neighborhood. I get up in the morning. I brush my teeth. I walk down the street and say, "Hi, hello." I never thought to ask where these undocumented workers lived, who were standing on the street corner waiting for someone to come and give them work. I never thought about it. It was in my face the whole time. I'd catch my little bus. I go read my newspaper. [Inaudible] what it is to be affluent. To be radically ignorant about basic facts and to not know it.

So I think the first thing is to listen to the women and the people of color and the LGBTQ folks, and the Jewish folks and the other folks in your life. Really listen to what they are going through and don't argue with them about it and try to shut it down and explain, "Well it could be this or it could be that, maybe it's not that …," Just let it flow over you and try to get to the emotional reality of it before you start. You know, your brain cuts in and starts trying to defend and knock down, trying to have some kind of rational, "Well, what about this?" You know, that's not as useful for your own development and education.

The other thing is, it's also just become fashionable to be completely, outlandishly bigoted toward people who are in the Red States, who are Republican voters: to call them ignorant, to say they're all bigots, that they're all sexist, that it's all "Dumbfuckistan" out there. "These people are so stupid." That's perfectly acceptable now to say. To develop a colonial view of the Red States—this is how colonizers talk—that the Red States are these backwaters for unwashed heathens that need to be either conquered or converted to the NPR religion. They need to be force-fed some kale out there, because they're just all unworthy ignoramuses.

And that, A) It's not true. And it diminishes and demeans us to even say stuff like that. But it's become common. A lot of us that grew up in the Red States have a lot of pain from our experiences, but we're grown folks now—quite successful, most of us—and can have some damn grace. There's a lot of wisdom in the Red States. There's a lot of damn smart people in the Red States. There's a lot of good, hard-working people in the Red States and they're people who can sense our contempt at a thousand yards. You're not going to be able to lead a country that you don't love. Period.

Donald Trump can only lead 46 percent of the country because he hates the rest of us, and no matter what he says or does, the rest of us are not coming. But it also works in reverse. "All this false equivalence. Oh my God I can't stand this Van Jones. This false equivalence."

I'll admit it's 80/20. Sometimes it's 90/10 as far as our right wing, our friends, driving the intolerance. But we aren't innocent. We aren't innocent. We're not perfect. We get tricked and traumatized and triggered, too, and add to the conflict in ways that don't serve us or anybody else. And we have to focus on that, because we have control over that. So let's take responsibility for our ten, 20 or 30 percent and get to work.

I appreciate you reading my book. I think the book, Beyond the Messy Truth, has useful stuff in it. I've been very surprised how many liberals have come up to me and thanked me for the book and said they really felt that they were trapped, that they were imprisoned by a particular worldview that just had them depressed and had them just anxious and upset all the time, and that the book was the first key to getting out of that and getting back to a more productive emotional state.

We've still got to fix the stuff. I mean, we can't let these people run the country into the ground. But, we've got to be in a better emotional state to do our work.

TS: Oh, yes. It was a big IQ increaser, to read Beyond the Messy Truth. I think it's critical reading for people.

OK, just two final questions, Van. You said you can't lead a country you don't love. And one of the things you write about in Beyond the Messy Truth is the difference between the founding vision of our country and the current reality we're in. And I think many people, because of the current reality we're in, don't feel a love for our America. Quite the contrary. You know, the sense of, "I think I might be leaving. British Columbia's looking pretty good these days, maybe someplace in Europe." I've had conversations recently with Sounds True authors who are ... They're done. They're going to go write from a beach someplace. What is it about the founding vision of American that has your love?

VJ: Well first of all, nobody wants your ass in Canada in the first place. I mean, that's like the most American, entitled, bullshit response. Nobody wants your American ass in Canada, and if the things you say you believe—that the country's being taken over by fascists, if that were true, and it's not, but, if that were true—then you stay and fight. If you get driven out of your country, if you get run out of your country, driven into exile, that's one thing. But if you just can't take mean tweets and bad news and just have to flee, then you're as much a part of the problem as anything else.

People have done nothing, literally nothing. I remember in 2016, I was running around— and you may remember this—begging people to take Donald Trump seriously. If you don't believe it you can Google, "Van Jones, Move On Trump," and you will find a piece I posted in June of 2016, explaining exactly how Donald Trump was going to win. It's called "Three Dumb Ideas Progressives Have." They're going to cause Donald Trump to win. I got every state right except for Wisconsin in June of 2016, before either convention, because it was very clear to me that the attitude that liberals and progressives had in 2008, when everyone worked so hard to elect Obama—people went to swing states, people gave money, people had house parties to raise money, people volunteered for phone banks, people put in a lot of work—I didn't see that work in evidence at all leading up to 2016.

We had gone from working very hard for hope and change to feeling like it was in the bag and we didn't have to work. And anybody … Anybody could see that Donald Trump was a disaster, and we don't have to go make the case. All we have to do is insult people, call them bigots if they don't agree. And I said, "This is not going to work." And it didn't work. The same people who did no work in 2016—who didn't go to one swing state, who barely wrote a check, who didn't make one phone call, who didn't go to one phone bank, who didn't have one house party to raise money, who did literally nothing in 2016—now want to leave the country because it's not the country that they want.

Well, hold on a second. That's not how democracy works. Liking stuff on Facebook and tweeting about how outraged you are is not what makes a democracy work. We're in the middle of the most important midterm election in our lives. Look at your Facebook feed. Can you tell that? Or are people talking about Muller and tweets and porn stars?

This is not going to work. Listen, please leave. If the best you can do is just fan yourself and be upset, then just get out and let the rest of us deal with it. That's the wrong attitude. That's the wrong attitude. Democracy is hard work, and when you don't work hard, you lose elections. And that's all that happened. The response should then be, "We need to work harder." The response should be that there are 23, 24 seats that we can pick up in November and then the Democrats will have the house. When the Democrats have the house, they can issue subpoenas 20 times a day to the White House. There'll be 17 committees—this is about democracy now, this is not politics, this is democracy—17 committees that could subpoena the White House every day and put an end to all this stuff.

But we're not talking about that. We're talking about how upset we are because some people don't agree with us. But we didn't go out there and make the case. Do you know these people? Did they go to any Red States in 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016 and make their case? No. They sat in their little resistance bubble, before it was [called] that, and were self-isolated with their little friends and got shocked by reality. Now they want to flee reality again.

It was a flight from reality that caused the problem in the first place. It was a retreat from reality that caused the problem in the first place. And now you want to go to Europe. You know what they have in Europe? A massive right-wing populist movement—anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-Jewish—that would make you run back to the United States if you got a chance to look at that. So then what are you going to do?

At some point, you have to act like the people that you respect. Nelson Mandela didn't run from South Africa. Gandhi didn't run from India. Ella Jo Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, Dr. Martin Luther King didn't run from the United States. People who had real problems, faced some serious genocidal agendas, didn't run. Nobody in the United States who's even thinking about moving to Europe, I imagine, is facing some genocidal threat or some personal threat. They just don't like the people who don't agree with them. But they don't want to talk to those people.

And so this is what's wrong and this is what's not acceptable. In the book, just to be clear, I don't say that America had a good founding vision and a bad current reality. I said American had a good founding vision and bad founding reality. From the beginning, you've had this split between the founding vision and the founding reality. The founding reality was a genocidal, settler-colonial regime founded on stolen land from Native Americans, stolen labor from African slaves. That's the founding reality. And it's ugly and unequal. And even Jefferson said so. Even Jefferson says, "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just." Even Jefferson says the founding reality was horrible.

But that same Thomas Jefferson—the slave-owner, quite ironically—also had that founding vision. And the founding vision from Jefferson, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal," was a contradiction from the beginning: an ugly, unequal founding reality and a founding vision that's about equality.

And what makes us Americans is that we are that unique people in the world. Every generation at least tries to close the gap between that ugly founding reality and the beauty of the dream. That's who we are. It's what makes us Americans. It's never been easy. We fought the bloodiest war in human history at that time, the Civil War, trying to close that gap. The Civil Rights Movement, the Women's Rights Movement, the Labor movement, LGBTQ, Stonewall: [there is] blood in the ground, martyrs in the ground to try to close that gap.

And now you've got people who literally want to leave the country because everybody doesn't agree with them. It has no connection to who we are, to our best traditions, to what has made ... Listen, people say, "Oh, well these liberals don't believe in American exceptionalism." Oh, no, you're wrong about that. America's exceptional. It's exceptional because the people at Stonewall made American exceptional. The suffragettes made America exceptional. Dr. King and Ella Jo Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer made America exceptional. All those labor guys who went out there and got their heads bashed in made America exceptional. America's exceptional. Look at the water, look at the air—the environmentalists have made America exceptional.

And the idea that because you've got some orange nut job in the White House, that you didn't even try to stop, now the whole country sucks and everything's terrible and we should leave? That's the problem. Because there's no relationship between the truth—the deep truth, the messy truth—and that kind of position. The messy truth is: we didn't do our job, emotionally inside, politically outside, and now we're paying a cost because we didn't do our job.

Now the response should be, let's double down on our work, on our spiritual work and our pro-democracy work. Let's double down on our capacity to listen and to love, to say hallelujah anyhow, and on our capacity to win elections and put these people in retirement so we can go ahead and govern in a good way. That's the path. That's the path.

You know, one thing we didn't talk about is [that] I'm spending more time inside the Trump White House than I spent inside the Obama White House after I stopped working there. I was there two days this week. So literally, in the same week I'll be at a jailhouse and then the White House, then a jailhouse, then the White House, trying to help them on their criminal justice work, their opioid work. And I've been really vilified by liberals for that stand. And I say, "Listen, I'll do more than most people criticizing me to get these guys out of here in 2020 and [inaudible] four and eight years off, because Democrats can't win elections."

I mean, you're talking about addiction and prison and funerals ... Those issues don't get to take off four years, and so I'm one of the few liberals that's willing to go work with Jared Kushner on prison reform, work with Kellyanne Conway on opioid stuff. And that's stretched me a lot, to go in that building where I used to work and see Kellyanne Conway sitting behind the desk where Valerie Jarrett used to sit. But the nasty reaction from liberals toward me has been very educational. The fear, the vicious "You're a sell-out and you're a traitor. You're an Uncle Tom, you're a coon," because I'm willing to go and help two hundred thousand federal prisoners who Donald Trump has in the palm of his hand. He can either crush them or let them go. It's been really, really educational to me, and what I've learned and what I'm seeing is that we've created something that has a sickness inside of it. It's a medicine that has a poison in it. What we're doing to try and get people to be more "woke" politically, or more enlightened spiritually ... There's something in the medicine that has a poison in it too. And these conditions now are pulling the poison out. Pulling the poison out.

TS: The poison is the polarization?

VJ: The polarization, the righteousness, the cheap desire to be better than and to look down on and to identify yourself by what you're not …

TS: Yes.

VJ: … and who you're against, rather than who you're for.

I don't identify myself as being against conservatives. I identify myself as being for the poor and for the marginalized and for the people who are being brutalized. They say, "Well what side are you on?" I'm on the side of people who are suffering. And people who are suffering, they need more friends and fewer enemies. So for us to have a politics that requires us to go make enemies of everybody who voted against us—I've got to go out now and create 80 million enemies, when I need 80 million friends to help people—doesn't make any sense.

But you would think I was talking in Martian. I mean, I'm talking about very good people—liberals, very good progressives—who have spent their whole lives fighting for justice, who are so upside down now and they don't understand that Trump is making them be like him. Trump is small-minded and now they're becoming small-minded. Trump is ADD and now they're ADD. Trump is horrible to his opponents and now they're horrible to their opponents. They're becoming what they're fighting and this is a great danger: that we come through this crucible bitter, not better. The whole point of coming through a crucible is that so many things that you believe in and love fall away. They're destroyed. But they're not bitter.

And it's on the bubble now. Donald Trump's not on trial. Everyone knows what Donald Trump is. We're on trial: liberals, progressives, spiritual people. We're on trial and it's not clear. Look, Donald Trump will probably be there for eight years and after him, Ivanka for eight more if we keep this up. And until we change, nothing's going to change out there. That's all baked in. You think there's anybody out there that doesn't know that Donald Trump is a dishonest, mean person? I mean, you think you've got to go spend another billion dollars on ads for that? You think you've got to go and spend another billion hours arguing for that on Facebook? Everybody knows that.

He's not on trial. We're on trial. Do we love the country? Do we love ourselves? Can we understand? Can we learn? Can we grow? Can we extend our arms? That's the only thing happening in this movie. If you're putting your resources towards helping people to pass our test ... Once we pass this test, we'll govern for 30 years and it'll be wonderful. We'll tackle all the environmental stuff. I mean, it's always tough to govern, but our ideas, our beliefs, the people we care about will be honored in government for 30 years. And all this stuff will look like a very bad nightmare.

But if we don't, ourselves, become better and become bigger and grow: three centuries of darkness. It's that stark.

TS: Very strong.

One final question, Van: hallelujah anyhow. In the very beginning of this conversation, before we went live, you told me you have a deep peace inside in the midst of all the work you're doing on so many different fronts.

VJ: Yes.

TS: Tell me here in conclusion, that hallelujah anyhow, the deep peace, how it's rooted in you.

VJ: Well you know, I grew up in the black church and of course, I'm male and heterosexual, so I have privilege in that institution. But at the same time, the black church was the one place that our community could congregate in peace for 300 years. I'm a ninth-generation American. I'm the first person in my family born with all my rights recognized by this government. OK, so let's not forget, slavery and segregation was a centuries-long stain and a stench in the nostrils of God that just ended right before I was born. Let's just be clear about that. "Oh, you guys keep talking about race." Nine generations. I'm the first one born outside of that system. The black church had to develop spiritual resilience in people who were going to leave and go back out into hell. And I stand in that tradition quite proudly. And those songs and rituals ground me.

My ancestors would look at me and laugh and say, "This is your problem? I mean, we're being lynched, dogs are being sicced on us, fire hoses turned on us, our leaders killed and assassinated and you guys can't deal with mean people on social media? That's your problem?" I mean, they wouldn't even entertain most of this agita that takes up all of our ... I mean, it's just ridiculous.

And so, I rest in the bosom of a great resistance tradition that's spiritual and political—the most sophisticated spiritual, legal, and political human-rights tradition, probably, in human history. For enslaved people to turn a slave state into a democracy, which is a great achievement of the entire African American journey—literally property, less than a chicken or a cow. For those people to hang on to their humanity long enough to elect a black president and to, at every turn, push this country more toward human rights and more toward democracy is a huge, huge, huge achievement and we made America America. I'm not going to leave America, give up on America, crap on America. Everything that's good about America came from the oppressed—came from the workers, came from the women, came from the LGBTQ folks, came from enlightened intellectuals, white and otherwise. And we should be proud of that and we shouldn't easily let orange idiots take it away from us.

TS: Van Jones, you are calling us all up. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for giving your time to this series. You've touched me and inspired me and I know our listeners, too. Thank you so much.

VJ: Well, thanks for the opportunity. I appreciate it.

TS: Van Jones