Van Jones's speech begins at approximately 21:00
This speech is probably the apex of this years' Netroots Nation conference. Watch Van Jones call for a new movement to recapture the American Dream, call out the Tea Party, and send a special message to Glenn Beck.
I say "probably" because the closing keynote isn't underway yet, but I'm betting it will not top this.
(Nicole:) Van Jones delivered the keynote address to the crowd of progressives at Netroots Nation 11, including our own David Neiwert, Susie Madrak, BlueGal and Driftglass. There is perhaps no better symbol of the battering the progressive movement has taken than Van Jones: smeared, demonized, marginalized and abandoned by the White House in an effort to diffuse the caterwauling conservatives. But rather than licking his wounds and going gently into that good night, Jones has continued to fight against the darkness.
Jones comes to this group of diverse liberals with their pet causes and urges them to rethink our fight. It is exactly the kind of cajoling that we need as we daily prove that we are not members of an organized party and building a game-changing progessive movement is almost exactly like herding cats. So Jones calls for progressives and liberals to rally around not a charismatic individual but around the meta-campaign to protect the American Dream.
Now, some of you all are liberal, you might have a few progressives in here, so let me make sure you understand what I mean when I say killing the American Dream. I’m not talking about killing the American “Fantasy”, okay? The American Fantasy: everybody’s gonna be rich, you buy a lot of things, you’ll be happy? No, that’s an American Fantasy, which means it’s the American nightmare. That needs to go. That needs to go. We don’t believe in that. We don’t believe in that at all.
I’m talking about something much, much deeper than that. Something that we had in this country until the commercializers turned it into something else. The American Dream was simply the idea that hard work should pay in our country. That you should be able to get up in the morning in America, and if you willing to and are able to work, walk out your front door, go to a dignified job, put in a good day’s work and come back home with a paycheck that you can feed your family with and give your children a better life. That’s the American Dream. That’s what our parents fought for and our grandparents fought for and we should not let it be taken away from us on our watch. That’s the American Dream.
And we have Dream killers. Dream killers, who have a wrecking ball agenda for our country. A wrecking ball for America. But they painted that wrecking ball red, white and blue. And they think we’re going to salute their red, white and blue wrecking ball? They got another thought coming in the United States of America. No. It’s time for the deep patriots to stand up to the cheap patriots. It’s time for the deep patriots who love this country and who love everybody in this country, no matter what color you are or who you want to marry or what kind of piercing you got in your nose, we love everybody, we are the deep patriots. They’re the cheap patriots and I’m tired of them questioning us and what we stand for.
So are we going to stand together?