“I’ve never seen a bird fly with only a left wing,” said Van Jones as he talked about the differences between the country’s two major
political parties. “Never seen a bird fly only with a right wing. We need each
other. It takes two wings to fly.”
Jones used that metaphor first with a roomful of students, many
of them interested in journalism, and then in front of nearly 600 people in the
Grand Theatre at Salt Lake Community College’s South City Campus. The Dream
Corps founder and CNN political commentator was the featured speaker at the 2018
Tanner Forum on Social Ethics.
During the Oct. 9 forum, Jones choked up when talking about
trying to live up to the legacy of his late father, Willie Jones, who was
passionate about helping others. “How can I, his son, with a Yale law degree, do
less than my dad,” Jones said. “I’m never going to live up to Willie Jones, but
I’m going to keep trying.”
Below are photos and quotes from the evening, during which
Jones mixed humor with hope amid a country he described as being politically
polarized and divisive.
“If you don’t eat kale, you might not be invited back to
whatever Democrats are doing.”
“Right now, both political parties suck. … They are both
hypocritical, and they are both failing the country. And it means that you
don’t have a home that works for you, most of you.”
“We’re a messed up, terrible country, but we’re still the
best country in the world.”
“It’s the disrespect – that’s the problem.”
“We’ve got a lot of dumb, mean people in both parties doing
dumb stuff. The main problem is not the dumb, mean people. The main problem is
that we have got a bunch of good people in both parties in all races who just
don’t know what to do yet and haven’t found a way to help each other yet. And
that’s a problem we can solve.”
“It’s hard to vote for people who disrespect you – simple as
that.”
“I think the next great leaders will be women.”
“If you’re a working-class kid here at a community college,
doing the best you can and you got these dreams inside of you that just seem so
big they hurt, and you’re writing stuff down in your journal and you’re scared
to show somebody because they seem so grandiose and so crazy – good. Good.
Because that little dream is going to bug you and bug you and bug you and keep
you going and keep you striving and keep you trying and keep you learning. And
then what you do is, you try to find people who are ahead of you in line and
see if you can get them to give you a little bit of their time and attention.”
“You need your setbacks. Your successes give you confidence.
But your setbacks give you your character – and your character is the most
important thing.”
“I try to be as helpful as I can be.”
“I fundamentally feel that we spend a lot of time in
mainstream media setting our hair on fire about what Trump just did.”
“I think mainstream media is going through a midlife crisis
of epic proportions.”
