Activist and CNN commentator Van Jones has been spotted in Atlanta a few times over the past year. In June, he participated in the 2017 Andrew J. Young International Leadership Awards and 85th Birthday Tribute at Philips Arena. On Aug. 2, he brought Atlantans out to the Tabernacle for the "Van Jones Presents We Rise" tour in hopes of building a "love army" to battle old and new issues facing the nation.
Last week's event was centered around #cut50, an initiative of Jones' umbrella nonprofit the Dream Corps that works to reduce the prison population through various ways, including legislated reforms, crime prevention and job creation. Jones gave a keynote address, and Atlanta rapper Clifford "T.I." Harris Jr. and Mayor Kasim Reed discussed challenges and solutions on a local and national level. The evening also included musical performances by West Coast rapper Decora and Latinx songstress Karen Rodriguez.
“The ‘We Rise’ tour is Van’s brainchild,” onetime metro Atlanta resident Jessica Jackson Sloan, who co-founded #cut50 with Jones, explained after the show. Sloan, a mayor in Mill Valley, Calif., who is a human rights lawyer with a personal connection to the cause, said: “Post-election, he really felt that it was important to do something big to change the narrative across the country … . He wanted to give (people) hope and inspiration and get them involved in an effort of the Dream Corps to close the prison doors and open the doors of opportunity.”
Including the actual voices of music artists in that effort is important to Jones. “We always want to have an artist and not just have the artist performing,” he explained. “I think we really underestimate our artists. By the time you can get a verse down where the whole world is bobbing their head to it, you’ve put in a tremendous amount of intellectual work.”
Jones said Prince, who connected with him, supporting his activism after he lost his high-profile green jobs position with the Obama administration, opened him up to the unique perspectives artists offered. “Prince could have taught theology and history at Harvard,” he noted.
In conversation on stage with Jones, T.I, who once sold drugs and has been incarcerated, peppered his insights with personal experiences and observations. One bone of contention for the Atlanta rapper, who has joined several protests, publicly denouncing police killings like that of Philando Castile, and released more conscious music like his "Us or Else" effort last year, is the lack of focus on the root causes behind the criminalization and mass incarceration of young black men in particular.
“I don’t think there is enough consideration given to the fact that our communities are being targeted,” he told Jones. “It reeks of entrapment, the conditions and circumstances that our communities are being placed in.”
T.I., who hails from predominantly black Bankhead, which was plagued by high crime rates and inferior schools during his childhood, noted to Jones that “most black people, at least where I’m from, we don’t get to go to college, we go to prison.” He also addressed the sentencing discrepancies for black and white people accused of drug offenses as well as spoke to the challenges ex-convicts and felons face finding legitimate employment.
Reed, in conversation with fellow mayor Sloan, took a different route, focusing on the crime-prevention efforts of his administration. He spoke proudly of the strides made by reopening two-thirds of recreation centers, mostly in poorer neighborhoods. "What it does is it eliminates that idle time where we saw young people engaging in criminal conduct," he said, noting the added benefit of taking "pressure off of that mom" who no longer has to worry about where her child is or pay exorbitant fees for late child care pickups.
Reed also shared the importance of tackling unemployment through the Hire One Atlanta initiative, where local companies do their part in putting Atlantans to work. All these efforts, Reed insisted, are key in reducing crime. “We are on track in the city of Atlanta to have the lowest murder rate in 40 years,” he boasted to Sloan to enthusiastic applause from the intimate crowd.
Overall, Jones was pleased with the evening. “I think (the audience) got as much from hearing from T.I. as they did from hearing the mayor talk about criminal justice even though they came at it from different points of view,” he shared.
As for Atlanta itself, Jones says it has become more vital to his work of late. “Atlanta is going to be an increasingly important city. It’s always been important, but it’s really on the rise right now. It’s one of the few cities that you can point to where you see some positive things happening,” he said.
To learn more about the “We Rise” tour and other initiatives, visit cut50.org and thedreamcorps.org.
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