Heyo, SuperForest!
Alright, alright, though I did “meet” him, I guess the title is a little deceiving because it was technically more of a quick shaking of hands, exchanging warm greetings, and introducing myself, followed by an evening consisting of me just soaking up everything he had to say to us. But I’m getting ahead of myself, let me start from the beginning.
For a while now, there had been a lot of buzz around the UCSD campus that, American environmental advocate, civil rights activist and attorney, Van Jones was scheduled to give a major lecture open to all audiences. To my pleasant surprise, a few weeks ago, I received an email from a professor of mine inviting me to meet him before this lecture. Now, apart from knowing he was a New York Times best selling author and that he spent some time as an advisor for green jobs at the White House, I didn’t know much about him so, of course, I was both very curious and excited to learn more.
At around 5:30 yesterday, SuperForester Justice and I entered a room with a select number of students and faculty and chatted for a bit when soon after, Jones walked in, made his way around the room and greeted everyone inside and then participated in an intimate question and answer session with us. So yes, though I did meet him yesterday and all I pretty much did was introduce myself to him, it’d probably be more appropriate to say that that evening, he was fully introduced to me. And boy, what a gift that was!
Van Jones is an individual whose ideas on green jobs and encouraging wind and solar energy might not be new to us, but whose approach to promoting these ideas is fresh and invigorating. It was amazing to see an attorney and environmentalist who works through an economic mindset spew ideas on unity, on love, and most importantly, on how in order to try to create a beautiful planet, we, ourselves, have to embody that beauty by being beautiful people and lead through respect and dignity (and good manners, too!). Introduced to me was a man who spent much of his young adult life as an “activist” who was fighting for justice from a place of anger. Introduced to me was a man who then had to go through an intense period of introspection to learn that “we have to fight the polluter within and without.” Introduced to me was a true SuperForester, someone who inspires and empowers, and most of all, someone who is genuine and truly tries to practice what he preaches.
Here is a bit of the question and answer period I taped while on stealth mode (you’ll have to excuse the poor camerawork, I was literally sitting in front of him and was holding the camera at my hip pretending it was a cell phone so as not to get caught). In this clip, Jones was asked a question that can be paraphrased to something like “In a world where problems are constantly intensifying, how can activists respond when things seem to be getting hopeless? Are the activists doing something wrong?” His answer, basically sums up everything that is so great about him and his message.
A very special thank you goes out to Dr. Martin for inviting me to this event, and to Van Jones himself for all of his work and for sharing some of the knowledge he’s gained from it. It was an evening I doubt I’ll ever forget. As a side note, I did catch most of his actual lecture (about 40 minutes worth) on camera with better sound and angling. Once that finishes uploading, I’ll definitely share that with you, too because it’s definitely worth watching.
Love!
Carla
Recent Comments