UPDATE: Also cross-posted on HuffPo!

After smearing White House special advisor Van Jones for days on his show, Glenn Beck said on August 27, 2009: “I want to point out the silence; no one has challenged these facts — they just attack me personally.”

Well, the White House is wise to stay above the fray but someone has to set the record straight. And as the person who first hired Van Jones, initially as a legal intern and later as a legal fellow, I am in a unique position to know the truth.

And the truth is: Beck is fabricating his facts.

For instance: several times on his show, Beck has said or implied that Van went to prison for taking part in the Rodney King riots.

NO CRIMINAL CONVICTIONS

Van has never served time in any prison. He has never been convicted of any crime. And just to be clear: Van was not even in Los Angeles during those tumultuous days.

I know because he was working for me – in San Francisco – when the four Los Angeles police officers were acquitted in the beating of Rodney King. I was the Executive Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area when Van was an intern.

The verdicts came down on April 29, 1992. I remember Van (who was then a legal intern working with me from Yale Law School) coming into my office in San Francisco. Many of us, including Van, sat there together, listening to the news and weeping. We were all in a state of shock. That night, TV showed the tragic images of LA burning.

The next day, when an initially peaceful march in downtown San Francisco devolved into chaos, Van left the area in tears. He was not involved in any destructive activity. He even penned an essay despairing of the violence and the state of the country.

So how can Beck make such unsubstantiated claims?

THE TRUE STORY (FROM SOMEONE WHO WAS THERE)

This is what really happened. On May 8, 1992, the week AFTER the Rodney King disturbances, I sent a staff attorney and Van out to be legal monitors at a peaceful march in San Francisco. The local police, perhaps understandably nervous, stopped the march and arrested hundreds of people – including all the legal monitors.

The matter was quickly sorted out; Van and my staff attorney were released within a few hours. All charges against them were dropped. Van was part of a successful class action lawsuit later; the City of San Francisco ultimately compensated him financially for his unjust arrest (a rare outcome).

So the unwarranted arrest at a peaceful march – for which the charges were dropped and for which Van was financially compensated – is the sole basis for the smear that he is some kind of dangerous criminal.

Van has spoken often about that difficult period 17 years ago – and its impact on him, as a young law student. But to imply that he was somehow a rioter who went to prison is absurd. Beck also bizarrely claims that Van was arrested in the Seattle WTO protests. That is just a flat-out falsehood.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Arrests and convictions are all a matter of public record. Beck is at best relying on internet rumors or even inventing claims to boost his ratings.

Beck is no more accurate with present facts than he is with past ones.

NOT A MYSTERIOUS “CZAR”

Beck has said repeatedly that Van is some kind of a mysterious “czar,” accountable to no one but the President. A simple internet search shows that this claim is false. A March 10, 2009, press release announced that Van was hired by the Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality – to work on her staff as a “special advisor.”

In other words, Van is within the normal White House chain of command, reporting to an office confirmed by the United States Senate, just like most White House staffers. Media outlets sometimes use the “czar” shorthand. But the facts show that Van has no mysterious role or extra-constitutional powers.

Beck has implied on two occasions that Van Jones and other Obama appointees were not vetted by the FBI. False. I was interviewed in my own office by an FBI agent, dutifully vetting Van. Yet another fabrication on the part of Mr. Beck.

Beck also claims that Van has somehow gained control over $500 million in Green Jobs Act funding and can hand out millions of dollars at his whim. Again, that is patently ridiculous.

NO AUTHORITY TO HAND OUT BILLION$

The law is clear that the Department of Labor has authority over the program, with normal rules governing the funds. Anybody who thinks that a lone government official can pass out money, arbitrarily and without oversight, knows nothing about our legal system. A blizzard of lawsuits would stop any such scheme in its tracks, if one were ever put in place.

Perhaps more importantly: final authority at the Department of Labor lies with the Secretary of Labor. Anyone who thinks that a Senate-confirmed, Cabinet-level Secretary would cede control of a $500 million program to some mid-level White House staffer knows nothing about our political system. It is ridiculous.

PROMOTING BUSINESS-BASED SOLUTIONS

But I have to take on the worst one: Beck repeatedly and mistakenly asserts that Van is presently a communist.

Once again, this charge is easily refuted – most obviously by the pro-business, market-based ideas Van has promoted for years, including in his best-selling book, The Green Collar Economy. Van’s book is a veritable song of praise to capitalism, especially the socially responsible and eco-friendly kind.

Yes, for a while, Van and his student-aged friends ran around spouting 1960s rhetoric and romanticizing revolutionary icons. But that was years ago. Way back then, I counseled him to rethink his tactics and to work for change in wiser ways.

In time, he jettisoned his youthful notions and moved on to seek more effective and attainable solutions.

Fortunately for all of us, it looks like he has found some. Over the past several years, Van has emerged as the perhaps the nation’s chief proponent of using business-based solutions to create jobs and clean up the environment. In his book and his speeches, he highlights the key role of entrepreneurship in solving our nation’s problems.

THE ‘GREEN’ JACK KEMP?

Van believes in government clearing the way for private-sector innovation. In a YouTube clip, he said recently that progressives and conservatives should work together to find common ground and create a clean energy economy.

Van said: “We are not promoting welfare. We are promoting work. … We are not expanding entitlements. We are expanding enterprise and investment. … We are not trying to redistribute existing wealth. We are trying to reinvent an existing sector, so that we can create NEW wealth – by unleashing innovation and entrepreneurship. This should be common ground.”

He has been preaching that gospel, in various forms, for years and years. Van Jones is the nation’s “Green” Jack Kemp – using business-based solutions to attack poverty.

I found it interesting that Bill O’Reilly in his interview repeatedly asked Glenn Beck whether Van Jones’ youthful views had changed over time. Beck never answers those inquiries and instead keeps insisting that Van has championed these ideas recently. Again, that is simply not true.

QUOTES TAKEN OUT OF CONTEXT

Upon investigation, it turns out that Beck is quoting (out of context) an article that in fact makes the OPPOSITE point.

The 2005 profile that Beck is flogging actually makes it crystal clear – even in the headline – that Jones has “renounced” his earlier views, matured and moved on. Van’s transformation is the entire point of the piece, and it is impossible that Beck does not know this.

Fortunately, O’Reilly seemed to sense the truth. I remember seeing O’Reilly interview Van Jones some time ago and was struck by how much respect O’Reilly showed for Jones. Perhaps O’Reilly’s knowing queries were prompted by that encounter.

When Van worked for me, he did exhibit that “know it all” quality that so many of us – myself included – have when we are young. Over the years, I have enjoyed watching him grow and blossom into a loving father and husband – and a creative, effective leader.

VAN JONES: A TRUE PATRIOT

Mr. Beck’s unfounded attacks are misleading and false. All of us who know Van are so very proud of him and the work he is doing to improve the lives of ALL Americans. He has touched and improved thousands of lives in the course of his career. Now he is in a position to help millions.

He will do well because Van is a true patriot, who loves his country. He has dedicated his life to trying to make it better – especially trying to uplift the poor, the left-out and the left-behind.

In his book, Van draws a distinction between “cheap patriotism” and “deep patriotism.” I highly recommend that chapter to Mr. Beck.

I do hope Van is keeping his head up, walking tall and continuing to fight for green businesses and green jobs. Our country needs more of them – and more people like Van.

“Why am I compelled to write?… Because the world I create in the writing compensates for what the real world does not give me. By writing I put order in the world, give it a handle so I can grasp it.” – Gloria Anzaldua

I have been thinking a lot about the role of artists and writers in this new era of our American democracy. As we emerge from an eight year period where any form of dissent was inherently labeled “un-American,” you can feel our country struggle to regain its footing around how best to move forward. Newspapers are shutting down at a rate previously unseen and everything about how we think and get our information is shifting in ways that requires creative thinking and a visionary ability to see things that have never yet be.

O, let America be America again — The land that never has been yet –

And yet must be — the land where every man is free.

- Langston Hughes

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for after all, or so we have chanted and been told. I remember the night Obama first uttered that line — in his speech on Super Tuesday, as our nation realized that the Democratic primaries would draw on for some time. As soon as he said it, the historian friend I was with turned to me and we both shouted at the same time: June Jordan!

The late great June Jordan is still one of the most published African American authors you’ve likely never heard of, and she originally wrote that line at the close of one of her poems about the role of women in the unrest of an Apartheid controlled South Africa.

And who will join this standing up

and the ones who stood without sweet company
will sing and sing
back into the mountains and
if necessary
even under the sea:

we are the ones we have been waiting for.

It was a poet who gave our nation, and new President, the words that led to our visioning of how this time of potential and possibility could become real. Back when few thought a black man named Barack Hussein Obama would become President, we needed some visionaries out in cold Iowa, door knocking and caucusing, to remind us of what was potential. June’s words later came in to give us a way to speak about what we were doing.

As we deal with a financial crisis, the level of which we have not seen since the Great Depression, and as we emerge from a time of secrecy and torture, the role of artists is becoming more prominent as the nation re-envisions itself.

Elizabeth Alexander became the fourth poet in the history of this nation to read at an Inauguration when she read her Praise Song at Obama’s historic Inauguration. Obama believed a poet was needed in this time.

As an active Obama supporter and poet, I had cause to think about Elizabeth Alexander when Obama chose the anti-gay Rev. Warren to give the invocation at the Inauguration. I, like many of my LGBT peers, was displeased, to say the least. After years of too little sleep and campaigning in all sorts of states in all sorts of weather, always as an out lesbian, I felt betrayed by the decision.

The LGBT community — as is too often the case — was in many ways the first case study of how a community responds when they feel as if a President they supported let them down. Some decided to boycott the Inauguration. Others brushed off the decision and said that it would politically be a poor idea to express any discontent.

I was not happy with either of those options, particularly as I had spent so long convincing my community to actively support Obama, because I believe he would actively support us. And I got my fair share of angry or hurt emails and voicemails from friends and supporters. As a poet, and one trained by the late June Jordan that poetry is often urgent and the most necessary form of protest, I wrote a poem expressing how I felt, and then proceeded to post it everywhere online and send it to everyone I knew. In fact, I also sent it to a few folks I didn’t know, including Elizabeth Alexander, whom I had read also was a poet mentored by June. Elizabeth read my poem and wrote in response in minutes.

Dissent is a tricky art. As is the visualizing of a nation that is better than the one in financial ruin that we have inherited. Taking Obama’s suggestion, I say we call in the artists.

Justin Bond, formerly of the Tony-nominated Kiki and Herb, has been traveling the country, singing original songs about the state of our economic crisis and using his songstress ways to, as he puts it, “cast spells,” for a better America. In between cabaret songs, he banters about how he hopes some of the bailout money serves to get him health coverage, and bemoans some of what he sees as Obama’s missteps, before declaring to his audience that Obama is not some “Post-Modern slave sent to do all the work to save us from our own crisis.” And then he sings Marat/Sade. That’s one way of viewing it.

Or there are the words of punk musician and poet, Patti Smith, posted on her blog on Inauguration Day:

“We pray he will be a good man and we a good people.”

In every community and everywhere you look, artists are leading the way in visualizing how we can emerge from this time and actively engage in pushing a government so many of us support, so that it can be a government we are also proud of. There is the “Change You Want to See” Gallery in Brooklyn, offering a space for this thinking. And the gloriously beautiful and insightful blog meets artwork series In The Pursuit of Happiness, penned by Maira Kalman in the New York Times. All over this country, writers and musicians are pausing in their lives of trying to survive, like we all are, in this harsh economic crisis, to pen ideas of how we can be a better collective people than we’ve most recently been.

There is no simple policy answer for how we get from this point to a better place. There is also no simple answer for how a country relearns to be democratically healthy and engaged in the continual crafting of a government, particularly during the times between elections. But, for what it’s worth, I would suggest we take time to head the words of the artists around us. As the writer Rachel Syme put it as we entered into 2009, “This year is one where we need beauty and innovation and smart people and new ideas more than ever.” Here’s the valuing those things, wherever we are lucky enough to find them.

Ellee Koss, Eva Paterson, Netroots Nation, Keith Kamisugi, Rebecca Prozan, Matt Haney and Dexter Ligot-Gordon invite you to join us for a fun and stimulating evening to welcome to the Bay Area Mike Lux of Progressive Strategies and OpenLeft.com on Sunday, February 15, from 6-8 p.m. at Mercury Lounge, 1582 Folsom Street, San Francisco.

In Nov. 2008, Mike was named to the Obama-Biden Transition Team. In that role, he served as an advisor to the Office of Public Liaison and has helped shape the White House Office of Public Liaison.

On January 14, Mike released his first book, The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be (http://www.theprogressiverevolution.com). Books will be available at the event for purchase and signing.

Event is free, but please RSVP on MyBO, Facebook or through this form. You can also download a PDF flyer of the event here.

ABOUT MIKE LUX

Mike Lux is the co-founder and CEO of Progressive Strategies. Mike has launched a number of important projects, including American Family Voices, and the Progressive Donor Network.

Mike was a co-founder of Americans United for Change, Center for Progressive Leadership, Grassroots Democrats, Progressive Majority, Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, and Women’s Voices/Women Vote. He also played a role in helping launch the Center for American Progress and Air America. Mike was Senior Vice President for Political Action at People For the American Way (PFAW), and the PFAW Foundation. He oversaw lobbying and legal advocacy, field operations, state and regional offices, voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts. He helped launch the PFAW PAC and the PFAW Voters Alliance in 1997. He was also responsible for coalition building with other organizations and interest groups.

From January 1993 to mid-1995, Mike served as Special Assistant to President Clinton for Public Liaison in the White House. Prior to his service at the White House, Mike served as Constituency Director on the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign and the presidential transition team. In the 1988 cycle, Mike was a member of the senior staff for the Biden and Simon presidential campaigns. In the 1984 cycle, he played a major volunteer role in the Iowa Mondale campaign.

In July of 2007, Mike launched OpenLeft.com with bloggers Matt Stoller and Chris Bowers. OpenLeft.com is a news, analysis and action website dedicated to building a progressive governing majority in America.

A Black man born in Hawai’i with an Asian sister was sworn into office Tuesday as our President. He took the oath of office on the same bible used by Abraham Lincoln for the exact same oath 148 years ago, realizing the dreams of countless African Americans and others who previously never imagined this moment.

President Barack Obama now leads our country into uncertain and troubled times. But he begins work on our nation’s ills with unprecedented numbers of Asian Americans in substantive roles in this Administration.

Japanese American Peter Rouse is White House Senior Adviser. Chinese American Chris Lu is Cabinet Secretary. Former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki is Secretary of Veterans Affairs. Nobel prize winner Steven Chu is Secretary of Energy.

We now have a First Family that includes Asian Americans. The President’s sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, is half Indonesian. Her husband Konrad is Chinese American. Their daughter Suhaila is hapa.

This roster of Asian names is significant because the halls and backrooms of power in our nation’s capitol have for too long been dominated by monochromatic men. It does not mean we have arrived. It means we’ve only just begun.

For many of us, the most urgent unresolved Asian American and Pacific Islander issues are not always those that touch our everyday lives, but our desire to resolve those issues reflects our belief that an injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere. We must reach outside of our individual realities to understand the plight and tragedy that prevents millions of Americans, Asian Pacific or not, from realizing their true potential.

Our government’s brutal treatment of undocumented immigrants is not just a Latino issue. When Sin Yen Ling and the Asian Law Caucus work to recruit more attorneys to represent victims of raids against immigrants in homes and workplaces and when Sophya Chum and Khmer Girls in Action fight against the unfair deportation of Cambodian youth, we see that immigrant rights is as much our battle.

Attempts to legalize discrimination against gays and lesbians through constitutional amendments to ban marriage are not just LGBT issues. When Amos Lim, Tawal Panyacosit, Jr. and Chinese for Affirmative Action work tirelessly in Asian American communities to replace biogtry with understanding and tolerance, we see that marriage equality must also be our goal.

An article titled “Why I Hate Blacks” – filled with blatant racism and ugly stereotypes published in a prominent Asian American newspaper was not just an African American issue. When David Chiu, now president of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, attorney Dale Minami and other Asian American leaders worked immediately to have AsianWeek apologize for the column and fire the writer and the editor responsible, we saw that the elimination of racism against Blacks and all people of color must be our dream.

All of these issues and more must be part of contemplating our renewed America with Barack Obama as our President. He cannot fight injustice alone. Let’s stand with him.

TIME’s Peter Beinart in an article titled “Is He American Enough?“: “With their incessant talk about who loves their country and who doesn’t, McCain and Palin are doing something different: they’re using race to make Obama seem anti-American.” [Thanks to David Wilson for bringing this article to our attention!]

From an unattributed blog post, “McCain takes on ‘that one’,” on the Chicago Tribune’s Exploring Race forum: “When I heard the comment, I wondered: Was it racial? (And not in a conscious way. It just sort of had a tinge of “you people.”) … That’s the thing about race: if you’re a person of color and you hear something like that, it can pull you up short and you’re simply left to wonder.”

Politico’s Jonathan Martin thinks that “McCain will be accused of racism regardless“: John McCain is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. He could never mention Jeremiah Wright and ensure his campaign aides don’t either, and he’d still be accused of running a racist campaign. … But is McCain doing anything overtly racist? No. … That doesn’t matter, though, to the outrage industry, ever on the lookout for any sign of racism and quick to pounce even when it’s not there. … McCain has not called Obama “a terrorist.”

Philadelphia Daily News columnist Christine M. Flowers in “Obama camp’s racial decoders” says that “race has become the not-so-secret weapon of the Obama camp, allowing it to both promote the candidate as a historic step forward while at the same time attack his opponents with the bigot label. And the polls say that it seems to be working. I’m not saying that Obama will win or lose because of the color of his skin. He probably won’t.”

Commentary by Dr. David C. Wilson, Assistant Professor of Political Science & International Relations at the University of Delaware:

Who’s on First?….”That One”
 
So-what John McCain is 72, and has grandparent tendencies, Barack Obama is a United States Senator, a presidential nominee, a father, and a human being.
 
What’s most interesting to me about the “that one” comment is that it’s not necessarily the comment that’s indicative of the underlying racial meaning, it’s the use of it with Senator Obama. Saying “that one” to a white male (or a real child) would be relatively fine in context, but if it’s a woman, a racial minority, or other underrepresented political group member (e.g., disabled person), it’s closer to an “ism.”
 
But, to be clear, there is a difference (in social scientific thinking) between “racism” and “racialized” behavior; they are not one in the same. Racism rests on an ideology of a group’s biological superiority/inferiority, whereas racialized behavior is an action that calls attention to race, bringing about consequences that can be intentional or unintentional. I’m not denying that racialized behavior is not influenced by racism (that would be naïve), but McCain’s “that one” statement is closer to racialized behavior.
 
However, by no means should we look at McCain’s “that one” behavior in a vacuum. His “that one” comment, in conjunction with the personal attacks (e.g., “who Obama is” and a lack of reciprocal admiration for Obama’s storied background), and a refusal to look at Obama along with other very cold interpersonal behavior (e.g., no real salutation at the handshake) are all indicators of McCain’s apparent discomfort or antipathy toward Obama. McCain definitely does not respect Obama. We know this because he hasn’t apologized for anything he’s done or said recently.
 
My point is that John McCain is not racist, but regardless of what most people might think, at the very least John McCain displayed a social dominance orientation targeted at something about Barack Obama. Perhaps it was Obama’s height (i.e., Obama is taller), or his party affiliation…..or maybe it’s just plain okay to say McCain sees more of Obama’s race than he thinks (or knows… shout out to all my psychologist friends).