Born the same year Mar­tin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assas­si­nat­ed, Van Jones is a cham­pi­on of the poor, the envi­ron­ment and – since launch­ing a new nation­al cam­paign in June – the Amer­i­can Dream. Jones, author of The Green Col­lar Econ­o­my, served in the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion as ​“green jobs advi­sor” in 2009, until Glenn Beck false­ly accused and vehe­ment­ly attacked him for being a 9⁄ 11 truther. He resigned his post and began study­ing the Tea Par­ty movement.

Now, two years lat­er, Jones has part­nered with pro­gres­sive orga­ni­za­tions like MoveOn, labor unions, advo­ca­cy groups and blogs to devel­op the Rebuild the Amer­i­can Dream cam­paign – basi­cal­ly, a lib­er­al ver­sion of the Tea Par­ty – which tries to shift polit­i­cal lead­ers’ focus from bud­get aus­ter­i­ties to strug­gling Amer­i­cans. I spoke with Jones at a Clin­ton Glob­al Ini­tia­tive meet­ing in late June, and fol­lowed up with him a month lat­er to dis­cuss his lat­est pro­gres­sive project.

You were demo­nized by the right and forced out of your job. Do you think pro­gres­sives should use sim­i­lar tac­tics (with the truth, rather than lies) against conservatives?

I think that we should be will­ing to tell the truth with the same audac­i­ty that they are will­ing to tell their lies. That said, I don’t think we are ever going to out-ugly our oppo­nents. I think that what we need is a tough-mind­ed ide­al­ist – a Bob­by Kennedy. Some­body who won’t back down from a fight but who is clear­ly moti­vat­ed by high­er ideals than just being in the fight.

What is the Amer­i­can Dream and how should it be rebuilt?

Dr. Mar­tin Luther King says in his speech, ​“I have a dream.” Then he says, ​“It is a dream deeply root­ed in the Amer­i­can Dream.” He was talk­ing about the idea that an ordi­nary per­son, with­out a fan­cy name, could work hard and get some­where in our coun­try and give their kids a bet­ter life.

That’s the Amer­i­can Dream – but there are peo­ple in this coun­try who are try­ing to kill it. These dream-killers have wrapped them­selves in a man­tel of cheap patri­o­tism, but their agen­da is a wreck­ing ball to every insti­tu­tion that has made Amer­i­ca great. A wreck­ing ball for the unions, a wreck­ing ball for the safe­ty net, a wreck­ing ball for pub­lic edu­ca­tion, a wreck­ing ball for every­thing that has made Amer­i­ca excep­tion­al. My view is that the Tea Par­ty used the tools of democ­ra­cy very well to hijack the con­ver­sa­tion and make the solu­tion to every prob­lem more cut­backs. I think we should use the tools of democ­ra­cy to take the con­ver­sa­tion back.

Is that going to take pol­i­cy changes?

It will take ideas and solu­tions that res­onate with the Amer­i­can peo­ple. For exam­ple, tax those light­ning-fast trades run by com­put­er algo­rithms on Wall Street. If you tax them at one tenth of a pen­ny you could take tens of bil­lions off of Wall Street and use that to invest in Amer­i­ca. There’s not a sin­gle per­son in Amer­i­ca who doesn’t work on Wall Street who’s going to say that’s a bad idea. We could go back to the Clin­ton era tax rates on wealthy peo­ple and get $80 bil­lion in two years. That’s not social­ism, that’s the ​’90s.

What about mov­ing back to pre-Rea­gan-era tax rates?

Well, sure, just as long as we don’t stay stuck on stu­pid. I mean, where you draw the line is a func­tion of both pol­i­cy and pol­i­tics. You can increase rev­enues. You can also reduce expens­es. But no Amer­i­can fam­i­ly would say, ​‘We got a bud­get prob­lem, let’s starve Grand­ma. … Let’s starve the dog and the kids.’

Imag­ine if you had $3.3 bil­lion – one week of expens­es in Iraq and Afghanistan. We could take that $3.3 bil­lion and do some nation-build­ing right here in Amer­i­ca. Unbe­liev­able amounts of greed and malfea­sance from Wall Street and neglect from D.C. … have left ordi­nary Amer­i­cans lost, con­fused and angry. Peo­ple in red states and blue states agree that we are a bet­ter coun­try than this. If you make it con­crete – how can we make Amer­i­ca bet­ter? – peo­ple get excited.

Why try to revive a con­cept – the Amer­i­can Dream – that may nev­er have been a real­i­ty for most Americans?

We are not try­ing to cham­pi­on the Amer­i­can fan­ta­sy that every­one is going to be rich and buy­ing things is going to make you hap­py. Most Amer­i­cans see the best of the Amer­i­can Dream as part of our iden­ti­ty. In a cri­sis we don’t turn on each oth­er, we turn to each oth­er. For ordi­nary Amer­i­cans, that is the cor­ner­stone of their expec­ta­tions about what it means to be an Amer­i­can. For that to be thrown under the bus, main­ly so rich peo­ple and cor­po­ra­tions don’t have to pay tax­es, is heart­break­ing for tens of mil­lions of people.

What are the spe­cif­ic goals of your new campaign?

The first goal is to con­sol­i­date all of the causal­i­ties of the present eco­nom­ic cri­sis and turn them into cham­pi­ons for eco­nom­ic solu­tions, all under a com­mon ban­ner. That con­sol­i­da­tion is key. Lots of eco­nom­ic fight-backs are hap­pen­ing across Amer­i­ca. Work­ers are fight­ing against union-bust­ing, vet­er­ans are fight­ing for bet­ter treat­ment com­ing home, young peo­ple are try­ing to keep their tuition down and get their job oppor­tu­ni­ties up. But the fights are scat­tered. If we keep fight­ing alone, we are going to keep los­ing alone.

The sec­ond goal is to use this crowd-sourced pol­i­cy agen­da we are on the verge of releas­ing, the Con­tract for the Amer­i­can Dream, to get elect­ed offi­cials and oth­er influ­en­tial peo­ple to sign on for an agen­da of pros­per­i­ty rather than aus­ter­i­ty. We had 127,000 peo­ple crowd-source a jobs agen­da with 10 main points of action. This came from 70 orga­ni­za­tions across the coun­try, 1,600 house meet­ings – twice as many meet­ings as the Tea Par­ty when it launched in 2009. This con­tract will have tremen­dous moral author­i­ty because of the lev­el of par­tic­i­pa­tion, and tremen­dous polit­i­cal impact because it will give peo­ple a sane eco­nom­ic agen­da to ral­ly around.

How do you cre­ate a pro­gres­sive ver­sion of the Tea Par­ty when there’s no pro­gres­sive ver­sion of Fox News to deem your group newsworthy?

Our move­ments are more dynam­ic than that. What you are going to see is real inno­va­tion in com­mu­ni­ca­tion where we once again match the con­ser­v­a­tive dis­in­for­ma­tion machine. It is a huge mis­take to under­es­ti­mate the cre­ative capac­i­ty of progressives.

Why do we need an answer to the Tea Par­ty? Why would we want that?

Just two years ago, most of us were feel­ing at least some­what opti­mistic and encour­aged about America’s future. Now we are most­ly sad and morose. The main rea­son for that is the suc­cess of the Tea Par­ty at hijack­ing Wash­ing­ton D.C.

We have to do every­thing we can to give the Amer­i­can peo­ple a coher­ent alter­na­tive – the Amer­i­ca we thought we were vot­ing for in 2008. Most peo­ple don’t under­stand that the Tea Par­ty pro­gram … is real­ly a rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the sta­tus quo of cor­po­rate rule.

I don’t think we should be dis­cour­aged at all. The right wing has this lop­sided pro­pa­gan­da war against the achieve­ments of the New Deal, … and they are los­ing in the polls. We should be quite hope­ful that in an econ­o­my like this, when we haven’t put up a coher­ent alter­na­tive in the face of the most deter­mined onslaught that we’ve seen in our life­times, that we are still at 60 to 70 per­cent in the polls.

What kind of lead­ers does this cam­paign need?

The good thing about the lead­er­ship of the Amer­i­can Dream move­ment is that it looks like Amer­i­ca. We’ve got every­body from Planned Par­ent­hood to Faith­ful Amer­i­ca to the Sier­ra Club inside one net­work fight­ing for a bet­ter econ­o­my. Once we release the Con­tract for the Amer­i­can Dream, more voic­es will ral­ly around it. More will lift it up and say this would be good for my com­mu­ni­ty – I’m Lati­no, I’m les­bian, I’m a stu­dent, I’m Asian, I’m a farmer, but this con­tract would help me.

So the con­tract will lay out the goals. Is that how you expect groups to have their own spe­cif­ic lead­ers under one banner?

That is exact­ly the strat­e­gy. Part of what Rebuild the Dream is try­ing to be is a sup­port cen­ter to help this mas­sive move­ment con­sol­i­date. Part of what we have to learn is a new way of con­sol­i­dat­ing and realign­ing our best ideas.

How will this move­ment put peo­ple into posi­tions of pow­er so they can enact need­ed changes?

The Tea Par­ty is a great exam­ple: It got peo­ple togeth­er based upon val­ues and prin­ci­ples first, and then some peo­ple ran for office, some pri­maried Repub­li­cans, some peo­ple just focused on com­mu­ni­ca­tions. The thing is, you have to be clear on your prin­ci­ples and values.