Thank you Van Jones! Thank you for being a selfless person. Thank you for remaining in the fight for health care reform, and thank you in the pursuit of green jobs for people often over looked. 

At the annual Bioneers convention in 2007, Van Jones described to an audience of scientists, activists and environmentalists how he had spent 20 years trying to get Americans to pay attention to the urban poor.

"We would call newspapers, television stations, saying kids are dying, we're going to funerals every weekend. 'Not interested.' We'd say we've got kids going to school in Oakland, 30 kids in the classroom, six books, no chalk. 'Not interested.' "

Finally, the Yale Law School graduate turned community organizer told the crowd, "We said, 'Well, we want green jobs and not jails for our youth.' And they said, 'Green? Green? Green! Give that man a microphone!' "

"Green," at least in the beginning, was a marketing term to Jones, a means to an end. But the deeper he got into it, the more he realized that the environment was central to the social justice he cared about.

For the affluent leftists in the audience, he teased, environmentalism might be about polar bears and other "charismatic megafauna." But "in the poor part of town, when they say, 'Oh, the environment is terrible,' they're talking about air pollution, asthma, cancer clusters and birth defects."

Stay strong brotha!