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Law students boycott classes
New Haven Register (CT) - Friday, October 12, 1990
Author: Pamela Coyle
As many as half of the students at Yale Law School boycotted classes to attend workshops on racism Thursday, and one student expressed his feelings in a sculpture showing an opened grave where racism no longer remained buried.
The events came in response to recent incidents at the school, most notably a hate letter left in mailboxes for 10 black students last month.
Organizers billed the day a “strike against racism” and said they will plan a similar boycott for the entire university later in the year. About 300 students and a handful of professors attended a morning workshop on racism run by a non-profit group from New York City.
Before classes, several members of Yale unions representing clerical and maintenance workers joined the law students on a picket line that circled the Law School’s entrance, at 127 Wall St.
“Until we all have a piece of the pie, none of us have a piece of the pie,” Van Jones , a second-year law student and one of several students who organized the day’s events, told students as the picket line broke up.
“We need to build a community,” he said.”This school is closed for construction.”
The school, however, was not closed. Many professors held their classes, although some videotaped them or offered make-ups for the boycotters, and many students arrived at school with hefty casebooks under their arms.
Guido Calabresi, dean of the Law School, taped his first name over the word “strike” on his “strike against racism” button. He said he canceled his class so he could be available throughout the day - not because he supports the idea of class moratoriums.
Calabresi questioned whether canceling classes was an effective tactic and said calling a moratorium for every conflict dilutes the evils under attack and hampers students’ classroom education.
“If we want to sacrifice something, why should we not sacrifice our relaxation time, our fun and games?” he asked in a two-page written statement. “Why not hold the workshops, teach-ins and debates on weekends or even on the first day of vacation?”
Calabresi, who had strongly comdemned the hate letter and called it “the stuff of Hitler,” said professors could do what they wished and the school would not interfere. But he also said, “Faculty are hired to teach.”
One student who joined the picket line said the idea of making a greater sacrifice by holding weekend workshops misses a key point.
“Whoever wrote the letters is a member of the Law School community and should see this,” said Marc Brunner, a first-year student who missed classes in constitutional law, torts and procedure Thursday. “This shows no one secretly supports (the author).”
The Law School recently hired an independent handwriting analyst to help trace the authors, and two campus police investigators have been assigned to the case. The letters, which apparently were in response to the sexual assault of a female law student by two black men, stated, in part, “Now do you know why we call you NIGGERS?” They were signed “ Yale Students for Racism.”
Yale officials have not yet determined the author or authors were students.
About 9.3 percent of the law school’s 545 students are black, said spokeswoman Catherine Iino. Blacks, Native Americans, Asian-Americans and Hispanics make up 20 percent of the students in the regular program.
Staff members from Project Reach, a non-profit group in New York, conducted a workshop on racism with a multiracial audience of nearly 300 people Thursday morning.
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Caption: PHOTO Arnold Gold/Register - Dean Guido Calabresi, at right, listens as Van Jones , a second-year Yale law student, foreground, addresses the rally. (Black and white photo) Workshops on racism held at Yale to counter hate letters sent to blacks
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30 from Yale take up Haitian cause
New Haven Register (CT) - Thursday, March 4, 1993
Author: Fred Laberge
Nearly 30 Yale Law School students kicked off a hunger strike Wednesday by holding a noon rally to highlight the plight of Haitians being held at a U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
About 200 people gathered on Beinecke Plaza to listen to speakers who excoriated a U.S. policy which has kept 264 Haitians - many of whom carry the AIDS virus - in what they called concentration camp conditions.
“I’ve been to Guantanamo. It’s an HIV death camp run by the United States,” third-year law student Michael Wishnie told the crowd, which at one point chanted, “HIV is not a crime, why are Haitians doing time?”
At issue is a Bush administration policy - continued by President Clinton - which returns Haitian boat people to Haiti without a hearing on whether they are political refugees. Many with the AIDS virus have been kept at a military installation on Guantanamo.
Clinton, who is a graduate of the law school, criticized the policy during the presidential campaign but has decided to continue it for fear that thousands of Haitians would take to the seas.
Van Jones , a third-year law student and rally organizer, said the fast is in part designed to embarass Clinton into changing the policy.
“We can’t blame Pic Botha or Saddam Hussein for this,” Jones said. “This is an American problem. We put Clinton in office to make a change. Now we will force him to make a change for what is right.”
The hunger strike also is in solidarity with Haitians on Guantanamo who have been fasting since Jan. 29 to protest the conditions there.
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Jones said the hunger strike will continue indefinitely with participating students keeping a 24-hour vigil in the corridor of the law school, at 127 Wall St.
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NEW GENERATION’S BATTLE - Civil Rights Movement’s Next Phase
THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE - Monday, February 17, 1992
Author: Teresa Moore, Chronicle Staff Writer
EXCERPT
COMMON STORY
Indeed, young black men tell a common story of how white strangers nervously recoil when they approach them on the street.
``I’m a 6-foot-2 black man with dreads,’’ said Anthony Jones , a law student at Yale . ``When I’m walking down the street, white people cross to the other side. Police officers walk up and ask me questions. That’s part of being a young black man in America.
``Racist incidents are never less outrageous because of their frequency, but you do get used to people thinking that you are a thug because of the amount of light you reflect,’’ he said.
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From the grass-roots up: Lawyer sees a green future
Alameda Times-Star (CA) - Friday, April 11, 2008
Author: Sarah Terry-Cobo, STAFF WRITER
OAKLAND - For more than a decade, Oakland has been home to a little-known crusader who has made it his mission to save the planet and the inner city.
In January, Van Jones, co-founder of the local Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, flew halfway around the world to tell the prestigious World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, about a new partnership model that he pioneered, bringing government, business and unions together to create jobs and clean up the environment.
Green for All began as a local, nonprofit campaign to put poor people to work on green projects, such as installing solar panels and weatherizing buildings. Today, the program has grown so large it had to move into its own office space downtown from its original location at the Ella Baker Center at 344 40th St.
Besides being feted at the World Economic Forum, Jones was profiled in ``Time’’ magazine, recorded an episode of the Comedy Central show ``The Colbert Report’’ — which aired April 1 — and saw his work recognized by Hillary Clinton in her opening remarks during the Jan. 21 Congressional Black Caucus debates.
The Oakland program took off after Jones, a 39-year-old Yale educated lawyer, worked with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to win passage of the federal Green Jobs Act, which provides funding for ``green collar’’ jobs.
``In the last century, we could pretend that our energy policy, human rights policy, environmental policy and social policy were all separate,’’ he said. ``In the new century, we have to recognize that it is all interrelated.’’
A lean, soft-spoken man who stands 6-foot-1, Jones has a studious face, sporting wire-framed glasses, a mustache and goatee. But when he speaks, his message is anything but soft: The only way to eradicate poverty is to create honest, dignified employment for disadvantaged people, he said.
What makes Jones’ message unique is its call for an unlikely coalition of business leaders, labor unions, poverty advocates, government officials and environmental organizations to take on big issues.
``I always had more of a public, community-oriented state-of-mind,’’ Jones said. ``That’s the reason why I went to Yale _ I wanted to get a strong credential to be helpful.’’
While he is now often busy with speaking engagements across the country, and as a result, spends less time at the nonprofit, he still is a strong part of the Ella Baker Center’s lifeblood.
``His role is to provide vision and guidance and connect the dots in ways that some of us can’t,’’ said Ian Kim, director of the local Oakland Green Jobs Corps who has worked with Jones for five years.
A born leader
Jones’ journey to activism dates back to his upbringing. He grew up in the South in the 1970s, which partly played a role in his drive for social justice. His parents were public school teachers in the then-rural town of Jackson, Tenn., near Memphis.
The people Jones most admires are Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., John and Robert Kennedy, and others in public service.
A skinny, brainy kid who said he never fit in, Jones studied journalism and political science as an undergrad at the University of Tennessee at Martin.
Born Anthony, he quickly changed his name to Van when he attended undergrad to avoid embarrassing nicknames, fearing Anthony Jones could turn into ``Bony Jones’’ or ``Bony Tony.’’
After scoring well on the standardized tests for law school admission, he took a professor’s advice at Martin and applied to Harvard, Yale , Stanford and Vanderbilt. All four accepted him. He said he chose Yale because of its No. 1 ranking as a law school, among other reasons.
When he enrolled in Yale Law School in 1990, Jones said he finally felt as if he wasn’t out of place.
“I was delighted to arrive at an Ivy League campus where being bookish was kind of sexy _ you know, a good thing,’’ he said.
Jones came to the Bay Area for an internship with a civil rights lawyer in the spring 1992. He said he was motivated by the racial tension that emerged after the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, and stayed through the summer to work.
``I came to help lead the revolution,’’ he said with a smile, pumping his clenched fist in the air. He returned to Connecticut that fall to finish his degree, but moved back after graduating in spring 1993.
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``I feel that I am being recognized for uniting civil rights and ecological movements,’’ he said. ``Someday everyone will shout, `green jobs, not jails!’ just like we used to sing, `We shall overcome.’’’