We are living in very important times for progressives, Van Jones told TPM Monday. The left’s dream of a movement similar to the one that has transformed the Republican party into an instrument of its most ardent activists many finally be here.
If there’s to be a liberal tea party, Jones said shortly after a rousing keynote at his Take Back The American Dream conference here in Washington, it’s going to happen now.
“Something is happening this month. You can feel it,” Jones said. “And I think it’s a pain threshold that’s been hit. And all of us [in the progressive movement] constituents that are not being served by what’s happening in DC and on Wall St.”
In his morning keynote, Jones sketched out what he said was the key to progressives snagging even a fraction of the attention/influence of the tea party, which he pointed out has essentially resurfaced existing conservative causes under a new catch-all banner.
“We made a mistake, we thought that was just about one person,” Jones said to the crowd of lefty activists here. He said that after President Obama won, liberals all but sat back with a bag of popcorn waiting for the change to unfold in front of them.
That was a mistake, Jones said.
“I’m not mad at the tea party for being so loud,” he told the crowd. “I’m mad at us for being so quiet for the past two-and-a-half years.”
In his interview with TPM, Jones outlined a lot of parallels between what’s happening with the angry left this month and what happened on the right in 2009. People are out of work, and somewhat unclear protests no one expected — the Occupy Wall Street movement — have sprung up, showing the left is ready to coalesce the way the tea party did around Obama’s health care law (and fears he’s not an American, etc.)
“This is not something that’s a trick on television or something like that, or just based on what activists want to do. The pain threshold has been hit. On the economy and jobs, people just don’t see any hope on the horizon,” Jones said. “You’ve got people sitting on a white-hot stove for three years. And they’re starting to holler.”
At the start of the tea party, traditional conservative groups latched on to grassroots protests fueled by CNBC personality Rick Santelli’s on-air attack on the idea of government assistance for people burned by the mortgage crisis. Existing groups like Americans For Prosperity and FreedomWorks jumped in, and Fox News helped throw fuel on the fire.
Jones sees the potential for something similar to happen with the Wall Street protests. His Take Back The American Dream movement has been around for months now, and was up and running well before the Occupy Wall Street protests began. In his keynote address here, Jones said he studied the tea party closely and tried to ape some of its aspects (many of which the tea party aped from progressive movements of the past) in order to form a new unified progressive push.
It’s too early to tell if Occupy Wall Street will be the spark that catches Jone’s kindling aflame, but he told TPM that he sees a chance for the two movements to come together.
“I think it’s the same spirit. I mean we have to respect the integrity and autonomy of that those young people and struggling folks are doing on Wall St,” Jones said. “But i think it’s inspiring a ton of other people. And i think it’s the same basic spirit, which is that we can’t wait on Washington, DC and Wall St to fix the problems they’ve made.”
The passion that put Obama in office isn’t gone, Jones said, and it’s not like it’s been adopted by the already-existing conservative infrastructure on the other side.
“The people who were hugging and kissing when Obama got elected…those people didn’t join the tea party and they didn’t leave,” he said. “All those forces are now coming back together.”
The time to see if it all comes gels and leads to the left’s own tea party is now, Jones said.
“This is a big deal,” he said. “You’re going to look back on this month — really from Sept. 17 when the kids really started doing stuff on Wall Street and everyone ignored them — through October and into November…you’re going to look back and say, ‘holy crap, something major happened in America where forces that have been quiet for three years came back.”
