[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 125 (Tuesday, September 8, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H9307-H9308]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        VAN JONES' RADICAL PAST

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Madam Speaker, one of the important functions 
of a President is to make sure that the people he puts into important 
positions have no real background problems that will cause the 
administration to founder. This administration, this President, has 
appointed a whole bunch of czars and special assistants to the 
President, and they really haven't been vetted. They haven't been 
checked out thoroughly.
  One of those is a gentleman who was appointed a special environmental 
adviser to the President. And, Mr. Jones, who we have all heard about 
in the last few days, has been found to be an admitted radical 
communist and leader. Now, that does not reflect well on the 
administration, and it does not reflect well on the entire Government 
of the United States because we are not supportive of the communist 
philosophy.
  Now, Mr. Jones said that he was slandered when he resigned, and that 
was the reason he resigned. So tonight I would like to put some things 
in the Record that show exactly why he should not have been appointed 
in the first place. And I think it's important that my colleagues 
understand that these czars and these people that are being appointed 
really need to be properly vetted. And we certainly don't want people 
that have a radical agenda being put in positions of leadership.
  Jones was a founder and leader of the communist revolutionary 
organization called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary 
Movement, or STORM. That organization had its roots in a grouping of 
black people organizing to protest the first Gulf War. STORM was 
formally founded in 1994, becoming one of the most influential and 
active radical groups in the San Francisco Bay Area.
  The leftist blog Machete 48 identifies STORM's influences as ``third-
world Marxism (an often vulgar Maoism).''
  Speaking to the East Bay Express, Jones said he first became 
radicalized in the wake of the 1992 Rodney King riots, during which 
time he was arrested. He said, ``I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28, 
and then the verdicts came down on April 29. By August, I was a 
communist.
  ``I met all of these young radical people of color--I mean really 
radical:

[[Page H9308]]

communists and anarchists. And it was, like, `This is what I need to be 
a part of.' I spent the next 10 years of my life working with a lot of 
those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary.''
  Trevor Loudon, a communist researcher and administrator of the New 
Zeal Blog, identified several Bay Area communists who worked with 
STORM, including Elizabeth Martinez, who helped advise Jones' Ella 
Baker Human Rights Center, which Jones founded to advocate civil 
justice. Jones and Martinez also attended a ``Challenging White 
Supremacy'' workshop together challenging white supremacy.
  Martinez was a long-time Maoist who went on to join the Communist 
Party USA breakaway organization Committees of Correspondence for 
Democracy and Socialism, the CCDS, in the early 1990s. According to 
Loudon, Martinez still serves on the CCDS council and is also a board 
member of the Movement for a Democratic Society, where she sits 
alongside former Weathermen radicals Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn.
  One of STORM's newsletters featured a tribute to Amilcar Cabral, the 
late Marxist revolutionary leader of Guinea-Bissau and the Cape Verde 
Islands. The tribute is noteworthy because Jones reportedly named his 
son after Cabral and repeatedly concludes every e-mail with a quote 
from the communist leader.
  Jones then, of course, moved on to environmentalism, and that's the 
position that he took with the administration. But there is no question 
he is a radical and a member of the Communist Party and has been for a 
long time and supported their goals and approaches to government.
  So I just would like to say, if I were talking to the President 
tonight, Mr. President, please be careful who you are appointing to 
these positions of leadership. It's important for the country; it's 
important for your administration and the image of the United States 
throughout the world as a beacon of freedom, justice and democracy.

                          ____________________