Bringing Green Jobs to the Urban Poor

More than any other single figure, [Van Jones] has ushered the phrase "green-collar jobs" into the political lexicon -- and economic reality. Last year, Jones led a coalition of business, labor, and environmental groups that persuaded the Oakland City Council to provide $250,000 in seed money for the country's first green-collar-jobs corps, which will train low-income youth in the renewable-energy, organic-food, and green-construction industries. The organization he founded and heads, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, also helped draft the Pathways out of Poverty legislation for the federal Green Jobs Act of 2007, which pledged $125 million to train 35,000 people a year in green-collar jobs. And in February, Jones launched Green for All, a national advocacy organization whose goal is to procure $1 billion in federal funding by 2012 for green-collar programs, and lift as many as 250,000 Americans out of poverty. "We speak for the least empowered folks, the people who didn't finish high school, the people with criminal convictions, the victims of Hurricane Katrina," Jones says.