| − | Van Jones first moved to San Francisco in the spring of 1992, while studying law at [[Yale]], when the [[leftist]] [[Lawyers Committee for Human Rights]] hired several organizers to be on hand for the trial of policemen charged with beating [[Rodney King]]. Not guilty verdicts in the officer's case resulted in [[riot]]s which left 55 dead.<ref>[http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/19/national/19king.html ''12 Years After the Riots, Rodney King Gets Along''], J. Emilio Flores, ''[[The New York Times]]'', September 19, 2004.</ref> Although Jones had been working for the [[communist front]] organization STORM for one year, Jones and the truthout.org web site put forward a cover story that made it appear Jones experienced a jailhouse conversion to communism. Like another [[Obama]] associate, [[Bernardine Dohrn]], Jones is a lawyer, avowed communist, associated with communist front organizations, and arrested in the aftermath of a deadly riot. The truthout.org site gives this biographical information on Jones:
| + | On April 29, 1992, more than a year after the founding of STORM, members of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) looted and trashed the downtown and government districts of [[Los Angeles]], triggering the infamous [[Rodney King]] riots. The RCP is known as the premier Maoist party in the United States.<ref>[http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6197 Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP).] Retrieved from dicoverthenetworks.org, March 8, 2010. In 1962 a group of Maoist radicals split with the [[Soviet]] spnosored [[CPUSA]] and formed the Progressive Labor Movement (PLM). By 1966, the PLM renamed itself the [[Progressive Labor Party]] (PLP), which joined forces with the [[Students for a Democratic Society]] (SDS). PLP tried unsuccessfully to take over SDS's National Office, thereby pushing SDS even further to the left -- toward hard-line Maoism. Opposition to PLP tactics led to the formation of yet another Maoist faction, the Revolutionary Youth Movement, which eventually split into two -- one becoming the notorious terrorist group [[Weatherman]]; the other spawning a 1969 splinter group called the Bay Area Revolutionary Union (co-founded by H. Bruce Franklin, Robert Avakian, and Charles Hamilton), which would become the Revolutionary Communist Party in 1974."</ref> During the days immediately preceding the violence, RCP, which maintained close ties to the L.A. gangs known as the Crips and the Bloods, circulated throughout South Central Los Angeles a leaflet featuring a statement by RCP National Spokesman Carl Dix, titled ''It's Right To Rebel,'' a quote popularized by [[Mao Zedong]]. Encouraged by Dix, RCP activists helped lead the riots that would leave 58 people dead and more than 2,300 people injured.<ref>[http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/19/national/19king.html ''12 Years After the Riots, Rodney King Gets Along''], J. Emilio Flores, ''[[The New York Times]]'', September 19, 2004.</ref> |
| | {{Cquote|I met all these young radical people of color - I mean really radical, communists and [[anarchist]]s. And it was, like, 'This is what I need to be a part of.'...I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a [[revolution]]ary.... I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th. By August, I was a communist.<ref>Eliza Strickland, [http://www.truthout.org/article/eliza-strickland-the-new-face-environmentalism ''The New Face of Environmentalism''], November 2005.</ref>}} | | {{Cquote|I met all these young radical people of color - I mean really radical, communists and [[anarchist]]s. And it was, like, 'This is what I need to be a part of.'...I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a [[revolution]]ary.... I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th. By August, I was a communist.<ref>Eliza Strickland, [http://www.truthout.org/article/eliza-strickland-the-new-face-environmentalism ''The New Face of Environmentalism''], November 2005.</ref>}} |