RAW DATA: Van Jones' Resume

Title: Special Adviser for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality

Appointed: March 2009

Background:

• Rose from the Oakland, Calif., grassroots organizing scene to become a leader in the national movement to spur the green economy.
• Started his career as a prison-reform advocate in Oakland lobbying for reform of the juvenile justice system and youth-violence prevention programs.
• Co-founded a socialist collective, Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM, in 1994, which held study groups on the theories of Marx and Lenin and dreamed of a multiracial socialist utopia. The group protested police brutality.
• Co-founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in 1996 and Color of Change in 2005, which includes Bay Area Police Watch, a group devoted to "protect(ing) the community from police misconduct." 
• Founded Green For All, an organization focused on creating green jobs in impoverished areas. 
• Published New York Times bestseller, "The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems," in October 2008.
• Has law degree from Yale University.
• Worked on the Green Jobs Act in 2007 with then-Rep. Hilda Solis, D-Calif., who co-sponsored the bill in the House.
• Was arrested in San Francisco in 1992 after a protest march that followed the acquittal of police officers in the Rodney King beating. Jones was working with the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco.
• Was arrested in 1999 in the Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization, according to bio in a press release about Jones' 2007 speech at UC-Santa Cruz. Arrest records from the event have been sealed.