CNN’s Van Jones is forced out of his own woke criminal justice agency after a dramatic fallout with bosses – two years after Jeff Bezos gave him $100million to funnel into the charity
- CNN commentator Van Jones was kicked out of his own nonprofit after a fall from the top ranks
- Jones was hailed as an extraordinary leader and presented $100 million to Jeff Bezos for his philanthropic efforts in 2021
- The fallout is due to disagreements over the direction of the nonprofits
CNN commentator Van Jones has been kicked out of his own nonprofit after a fall from the top ranks.
Jones was hailed as an extraordinary leader and received $100 million from Jeff Bezos for his philanthropic efforts in 2021, but now faces the humiliation of being fired from his own organization.
The liberal quit the Dream.org board after a blowout with senior management, the Daily Beast reported Thursday night.
The fallout is due to disagreements over the direction of the nonprofits, multiple sources connected to the organization said. Jones was expelled rather than voluntarily leaving the sources claimed.
Van Jones was hailed as an extraordinary leader and awarded $100 million to Jeff Bezos for his philanthropic efforts in 2021
Van Jones is best known as CNN’s featured commentator and has founded several non-profit organizations
It is unclear with whom the disputes took place, but neither Chairman of the Board Jamie Lunder nor CEO Nisha Anand have made any public statements following the reports.
A subsidiary of Dream.org is also said to have laid off staff despite Bezos’ climate fund – a separate grant of $10 million over three years in 2020.
Several former employees said the group spent money with little results, and that Bezos’ nonprofit did not renew the grant.
“A number of people have questions about Dream.org’s budget management,” said CeCe Grant, former director of government affairs at Dream.
A spokesperson for Jones did not deny he was ousted from the board, but said, “Van continues to work in the justice innovation space and beyond.”
“He is a proud supporter of their work at all levels. With the support of Dream.org, he is working on the launch of a new complementary initiative, which will be announced soon.
A spokesperson for Dream said Jones stopped managing day-to-day business in 2019, but “continued to be a valuable resource to us, and we’re excited to support the launch of his next initiative.”
Jamie Lunder, chairman of the board of Dream.org, has not made a public statement since the announced ouster of Jones
Nisha Anand, chief executive of Dream.org, has not spoken publicly about this.
Van Jones was hailed as an outstanding philanthropic leader by billionaire Jeff Bezos in 2021
Jones, 54, is a star CNN commentator and has sparked a lot of controversy over the years.
Earlier this year he sparked a backlash for suggesting the cops who beat Tire Nichols to death in Memphis in January were “racist-driven” – despite being all black.
Jones wrote following the incident that black people “are not immune” to the effects of anti-black racism and that stories of police brutality should never be as simple as “a white cop kills a unarmed black man”.
“Society’s message that black people are inferior, unworthy and dangerous is pervasive,” Jones wrote.
“Over many decades, many experiments have shown that these ideas can infiltrate black as well as white minds. Self-hatred is a real thing.
He said that kind of thinking could cause a black store owner to “view customers of their own race with suspicion.”
“Black people can harbor anti-Black feelings and can act on those feelings in harmful ways,” Jones added.
He went on to suggest that the problem is that black cops are “socialized” into police departments that treat neighborhoods as “war zones” and claims that cops of all races “internalize” the idea that few officers are punished for acts of brutality.
Jones co-founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which focuses in part on police brutality, and was founding CEO of REFORM, which works to reshape America’s approach to prison sentences.
