In Midst Of Racial Hatred, Van Jones Still Pushes Love
On the same night that torch-bearing white nationalists wound up staging a rally at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Van Jones stood at a podium, in the nation's capital, telling a theater full of supporters why they should let love rule in the face of racial hatred. The timing was sheer coincidence — the ninth stop on the CNN pundit's 14-city WE RISE tour had been scheduled well ahead of Friday night's prelude to the violent Unite the Right protest — but one that speaks to the reason why Jones' #LoveArmy crusade has been met with criticism from the very circles he's hoping to corral.
"A lot of people are asking, 'Why are you doing this?' " Jones said Friday from the stage of D.C.'s Warner Theatre. "I am sick of you guys being stressed and depressed since this past election."
Deemed "a star of the 2016 campaign" by the New York Times shortly after blaming "whitelash" for President Trump's election, Jones quickly earned the liberal left's ire after characterizing Trump's State of the Union address as "presidential." Since signing with JAY-Z's Roc Nation management firm earlier this year, however, he's earning cred among a different constituency: generation hip-hop. The first political activist on an artist roster ranging from Big Sean to DJ Khaled and Damian Marley to Rihanna, Jones recently got stopped in the airport by a young TSA agent who said she recognized him, not from the cable news network, he tells me, but for appearing in Footnotes for 4:44, the Tidal-exclusive short doc series complementing JAY-Z's latest album.
"JAY-Z's platform is bigger than CNN's platform for this new generation coming up," Jones says by phone.
Though he admits his own hip-hop bona fides are less up-to-date — "I mean, I know Chance the Rapper," he adds — Jones is using his Roc Nation affiliation to fuse a tighter relationship between artists and activists. During his Atlanta stop, he talked to T.I.
