MR. GAVIN NEWSOM: Gavin Newsom, Mayor of San Francisco. Thanks for -- thanks for being up this early in the morning. I was with some of you last night so I know. I know what you were up to.

I'm mayor of a city that probably was best described as 47 and a half square miles surrounded by reality, which is a nice way of saying we've always been a city of dreamers, a city of doers, a city of entrepreneurs, a city of innovators, a city that's always been on the leading and cutting edge of new ideas, a city that I am very proud to call home; and a city that is proud to be part of the innovation that we, I hope, collectively want to seek as it relates to the issues of the environment and environmental stewardship. And I have been given the great honor and privilege of introducing a friend of mine and someone who is a real champion and a friend of the environment, Van Jones.

I told Van, I said it's always dangerous to have politicians introduce you because they end up giving speeches rather than giving introductions, but I -- but he said he's willing to allow me to break a little bit of precedent and kind of do a halfway version of the speech introduction. And I -- I wanted to do that because it does weave in to how I met Van and why I was honored to be asked to introduce him.

I had the opportunity a number of years ago having just been elected into office in 2004 to announce that San Francisco was to become the first city in the history of the United Nations world environment efforts to host in America its national conference.

2005 was an important time for San Francisco, because at the same time we were also honoring and recognizing the 60th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations in our city and so we had the opportunity to host over a 120 or so mayors from around the word that came in to discuss the environment.

It was also an important time because not only were we celebrating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, but we were also marking the first time in human history more people on the planet were living in urban centers than in rural and suburban communities. Meaning over half of the world's population had marked during that last few years, around 2005, a unique status of now living in urban cores.

We reflected on the fact that a million to a million and a half people every single week were moving into cities. And already in 2005, these numbers need to be updated, we were consuming two-thirds, some had suggested three-quarters of the earth's natural resources in these same cities and polluting roughly equivalent of the amount of the planet. And so it was an opportunity to focus on the responsibility and opportunity of cities to be fundamentally part of the solution to the issues of climate change.

It was there that I met Van Jones. It was there at this conference where I had finally met a guy that was well-known to all of us out in the bay area because of his leadership and stewardship at Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, and I finally got a chance to meet him, which is an extraordinary organization.

But I finally got to meet a different Van Jones because he was moving away from social justice issues as it relates to crime and violence and beginning to focus on social justice issues related to the environment.

It was also a time of real change in consciousness, because it was a time -- and I referenced it in the context of San Francisco, where we recognized we had to stop dreaming and we had to start producing real results. We had to actually move away from talking about the problem and pointing fingers to trying to solve it. And it was then in San Francisco that we decided rather than just state the obvious that it was sad and unfortunate the United States had advocated real leadership as it relates to Kyoto Accords that we would like other cities put together our own local climate action plans. Ours calls for reducing our CO2 emissions 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. It actually goes twice as far as the Kyoto Accords. And we're proud that I had that planned. But it seems everyone's got a plan. How do you measure it and how do you deliver it? And I want to, in the context of introducing Van, introduce you to some of the things briefly that we're doing.

We, in just 10 days, will be announcing where we are as it relates to that plan. We actually had our CO2 footprint and our inventory brought to a third party, because I don't trust politicians when they come to conferences like this. They always tend to overstate what they've done. And there is really no way of measuring what you've done unless you have a third party really analyze as opposed to politicians analyzing what they've done. So we're about to come out and give you a midterm report on our plan and I won't share that necessarily with you. But the reason I'm bragging about it is to suggest we're well on our way to reducing our footprint. We've done that by doing real things.

We have the most aggressive solar plan in the United States of America with the highest rebates of any city in the country. We provide up to $6,000 for individual rebates for people that want to get solar installations. You match that with what California is doing and our current tax breaks no one else in the country comes further.

We have always initiated some of the most aggressive green building standards in America, not just for municipal buildings but for all private sector buildings. You want to build a residential or commercial structure in San Francisco you've got to meet LEED certification going up to LEED gold standards just in a few years, the most aggressive in the United States.

We converted our vehicle fleet 100 percent of it to B20, to biodiesel-20, and we've gotten it through a grease cycle program not through the ethanol programs but a grease cycle program that comes from our restaurants where we recycle all that grease and we begin to convert it back in to our engines. And now we've got Google and Stanford University also participating in that grease cycle program.

Interestingly, we have ambulances running on biodiesel and fire engines, which is interesting, because it's been a public safety that's always been a little bit concerned about this environmental movement getting in the way of getting those ambulances and fire engines showing up on time but proving the concept that we can do things differently.

Already two-thirds of our vehicle fleet -- and that is our public transportation is on alternative fuels. We were the first city to advance our efforts on taxi cabs. You probably didn't know that because you know that Mayor Bloomberg did that in New York. He announced it on the Today Show, I announced it on local cable Channel 26. But we did it a year prior to New York City and we're very proud of that and we're well on our way of converting that entire fleet into alternative energy sources.

(Audience applauding)

MR. NEWSOM: We also have the highest recycling rates. I am very proud of this. People don't know this. 70 percent recycling rates in the city and county of San Francisco. Highest in America. And few people believe this. We did this without a mandate. We just did it through incentives and now we're going to be well on our way we hope by 2010 at 75 percent. We want to get to 0 waste by 2020 and we absolutely are convinced we can do it. No one thought we'd hit 50 percent. Few cities in the world -- few cities in the world have hit 50 percent. San Francisco is at 20 percent -- or 70 percent.

You know that we did something about plastic bags in our city, which we are quite proud of symbolically but also substantively. And if you work for Coca Cola and Pepsi, you know what we're doing on water bottles and you're not very happy with us, but it's time we address the water bottle issue in the context of the environment as well. Styrofoam containers on take-out, San Francisco's been there, done that, leading the cutting edge, restricting the use of those things.

The point, I guess, I'm saying long-windedly is we're taking responsibility not to talk about the problem but try to solve it, and that's what Van Jones is all about. He's about doing. He's about taking action. He's about measuring efficacy of programs. He's moving away from just the big fancy plans to how we actually make things happen. And I'm very proud that in San Francisco we've had the pressure of folks like Van Jones to say, You've got to do more than talk, Mr. Mayor. You've got to do more than talk about energy efficiency and solar rebates and all these things. You've got to demonstrate a capacity to deliver; that's why we're going -- doing a big title project at the mouth of the Golden Gate Bridge. We're actually putting a wind turbine underwater at the mouth of the bay right when you come in under the Golden Gate Bridge to harness the energy of mother nature. I'm putting a buoy in two weeks off of Ocean Beach in San Francisco, the first wave energy demonstration project in California's history, we're doing in San Francisco.

(Audience applauding)

MR. NEWSOM: And some of you have already blogged about this, but we've got urban wind farms in the city. In a city we're doing wind generation in our Bernal Heights community, in Castro and others. And I think this is a great opportunity. We've got this great new work group on wind generation.

So while Al Gore talks about these things and we're proud of it, let's not forget that right now wind and solar is just 1 percent. One. We've got to get to 100 percent, right, in 10 years. If we want to achieve that goal, we've got a lot of work to do. And so we've got to manifest this ideal and we've got to take action and take risks and try different things. And we've got to disenthrall ourselves of the notion that cities should not lead on this. Cities must lead in terms of moving this environmental agenda forward.

But there's an area beyond wind and solar, beyond green buildings, beyond the emissions coming out of tailpipes, beyond what we are doing even on geothermal -- and I hope that someone asks me more some other time about what San Francisco is doing on geothermal -- that is so fundamental to the speaker that is coming up and that is the issue of environmental justice.

So often you go to conferences like this and you see environmentalists give speeches and they all kind of look like me, and you start looking around the environmental movement and it's kind of a certain type of person that talks about the environment. And it was Van Jones who started showing up at all these events I was having saying, "Mr. Mayor, you're missing something, you're missing something." I said, "Well, wait a second, recycling, biodiesel, all these" -- he said, "You're missing something." I said, "Well, what is it?" He goes, "Well, you remember at the UN World Environment Day we talked about social equity, we talked about the opportunities to create real jobs for real people that had been locked out of the industrial economy and make sure they are locked into this new green economy."

(Audience applauding)

MR. NEWSOM: And I'll never forget, I was sitting there at some fancy desk with all these fancy environmentalists and we're all pontificating, patting ourselves on the back, every one is feeling good and all of a sudden Van walks up to me quietly and gives me a piece of paper. And on there he writes -- I still have that piece of paper -- and on there he just was scribbling and he wrote the most eloquent speech. And he said, "I'm sick and tired of telling you this, I've written it down for you." And it has become -- I just re-read that. It has become the framework for a book that he has finally written that will be out this October about green color jobs and about the
to make real his commitment and his vision about environmental justice.

And to reconcile the fact that four out of five toxic waste dumps in the United States of America are in predominately African-American communities where your prostate cancer rates, your breast cancer rates, your cervical cancer rates are two to four times the federal average. Where your asthma rates are exponentially greater. Van not only gets this but he has a plan and it is real.

An Apollo type plan, a Manhattan Project type plan, but a real plan nonetheless that twins our vision and passion and purpose, but also the collective wisdom of all of you and so many others on the work force training side, on the job development side, these are the jobs you can't outsource, these are the jobs that will change not only the environment but create wealth and opportunity for those again that haven't been part of our economic prosperity to date.

No one is more eloquent on this topic than Van Jones. No one is more pointed and critical on this topic than Van Jones. And no one, I think, is going to bring more people together on this topic than the person that is about to speak. You guys know Van. We certainly know him out in the bay area in California. And I know he told me, he said don't give me one of those speeches where you overstate what kind of guy I am. I said tough luck.

This guy is a superstar in a world where there's an increasing number of superstars out there. And he's not one of those guys that's just going to make you feel good, he's going to be one of those guys that challenges you and that's what makes him a superstar, to think differently but to more importantly act differently. His book will be the catalyst for that change, but he's here today to preview it, and I couldn't be more proud of who he is and what he has become and what he is going to challenge all of us to do.

If you guys could put your hands together, a big round of applause for Van Jones.

(Audience applauding)

MR. JONES: Hello. Well, first of all, I want to thank Gavin. He's been a great leader, a great inspiration and a great friend. I also want to thank you-all for getting up so early. Some of you-all are -- wake up. Stay up, man. You got here. Good to see you.

Well, I have a little bit of whiplash. 36 hours ago I was in the Arctic with Jimmy Carter.

(Laughter)

MR. JONES: And it's not a joke. It sounds like a joke, right?
(Laughter)

MR. JONES: Did you hear the one about the black guy in the Arctic with Jimmy Carter -- no. I was really --

(Laughter)

MR. JONES: -- in the Arctic, man. The Abominable Snow Negro. No, I was really there.

(Laughter)

MR. JONES: And the reason I -- so I'm a little bit -- I'm still a little bit jet-lagged. But I want you to know, if you didn't know, it was kind of kept quiet until it was over. But a number of people, huge dignitaries all got on a boat and went to the Arctic. We spent eight days. Jimmy Carter was there, Madeleine Albright, Tom Dashel, Larry Page from Google. But not just liberals and progressives. The head of Dupont was there. Eight days on a boat to look and see if what's happening with climate change is real. The head of Monsanto was there. We had Republicans and Democrats, young people, old people, faith leaders, Catholics, Evangelicals.

And I want you to know that after eight days of looking with our own eyes on what's going on, looking at the glaciers receding, looking at the animals and life up there that is suffering, watching the actual results and impacts of global warming that every single person who was a part of that delegation Left, Right and otherwise, agreed that Al Gore has been right the whole time, global warming is real.

(Audience applauding)

MR. JONES: We have to do something about it. Nobody who goes and looks at this thing has come to any other conclusion and you need to understand that. This is our moment. This is our opportunity.

Before I get to my -- my comments, though, since we're here, I want to tell you about my personal experience in the Arctic.

First of all, they had us on this boat, man. Black people have bad experiences with boats, man. You know, we -- it brought back memories, man. I was like I don't like this.

(Laughter)

MR. JONES: It was tough, man. And then boats are not big things. They're not like airplanes, you know, it's like, I guess, it's left over from the days of scurvy or something, they're small and -- okay, I busted my head open. Man, I'm serious, I busted my head open on a bulk head like the first day, which was not very impressive. So, you know, I was a little bit woozy.

The other thing that happened was we had this -- well, we had a meeting with them, we had a delegation -- a meeting of -- a delegation of polar bears and, you know, they were very polite, the polar bears. Us, talking to the polar bears. We didn't allow them on the boat. And, you know, they were very friendly and we tried to talk and whatever and obviously a lot of people go up there now to look at the thing. And I was surprised the polar bears were not as skinny and scrawny as I expected. They were definitely smaller than they were supposed to be, but they also looked -- some of them looked pretty healthy. And so I -- you know, I said what's going on, you guys look a lot healthier than I expected and nobody said anything, the polar bears they got quiet.

(Laughter)

MR. JONES: And the only polar bear that spoke up was the black one.

(Laughter)

MR. JONES: Oh, see you didn't know there were black polar bears and I'm telling you, man. Racism every where.

(Laughter)

MR. JONES: But the black polar bear was honest, man. He said, Look, tell you the truth, the seals, they are getting kind of scarce up here, but we've been snacking on these camera crews you-all keep sending. So tell Gore to keep giving the speeches, man, the camera crews are tasty.

So I say that because it's so important that we do more than just send delegations to the Arctic and talk about it and worry about it. It's time to take some real action. And I want to talk with you about our action plan. And I want to talk with you about the importance of it. Because one of the things that I saw when I was there was up close and personal with Jimmy Carter. And I think a lot of times in the progressive movement we kind of almost go along with the conservatives in making fun of Jimmy Carter, almost turning him into a punch line. But I want to say seeing him day after day he's one of the truly great human beings that's ever lived on this earth --

(Audience applauding)

MR. JONES: -- and we need to give him the respect that he's due.

(Audience applauding)

MR. JONES: Jimmy Carter -- Jimmy Carter was talking about the oil crisis, he was talking about solar power, he was talking about wind and energy 30 years ago. And if we had stayed with his program, if we had stayed with his policies, we wouldn't be where we are today. So he deserves the utmost respect from all of us. We need to rehabilitate Jimmy Carter. If -- if conservatives can rehabilitate Ronald Reagan, we can certainly rehabilitate Jimmy Carter.

And I want -- I want to say -- again, we're all friends here and it's early in the morning we may as well talk seriously, we have to learn the lessons, too, from his presidency, because we're about to go into a very similar situation.

Many of you are excited about the Democratic nominee. Many of you are excited about having a Democrat back in the White House and think that you're efforts may lend a hand toward getting him elected. I want to say to you you're excitement is understandable and your ability to get him elected is not in doubt. You probably can get this nominee elected. You probably cannot get him re-elected. I'm going to say it again. You can probably get him elected but you probably cannot get him re-elected unless we are very intelligent starting right now.

Now is the time to think about the re-election of this president not just the election. And the last time we had a Democrat in the White House, Democrats controlling the Senate, Democrats controlling the House, energy prices through the roof, jobs going down was Jimmy Carter. And we had four years of that and 12 years of Reagan-Bush. If we are not careful, if we are not smart, this could be four years as a precursor to the kind of right-wing backlash that will make us miss John McCain. Make us miss George W. Bush. Don't think it's not possible. There are dragons on the Right who in their anti-immigrant hatred, in their war mongering jingleism, in their commitment to drill and burn their way out of our energy crisis will make you miss John McCain.

So it is serious now that we have to figure out what is the set of policies and the program and the plan from the bottom up as well as the top down to insure that we have four years, eight years, 12 years, 24 years, a hundred years to fix the past eight; that's what we need. We need a -- a strategy for that.

(Audience applauding)

MR. JONES: Let me suggest to you that the term that we most must address as we talk about energy and climate is not a term about polar bears. It's not a term about polar bears. It's not a term about ice caps. It's a term from deep in the bowels of economics. The worst, scariest, most frightening, the most horrific term in all of economics, the term that killed the presidency of Jimmy Carter, the term that could turn this country over to the far Right in a very short period of time and that term is "stagflation." Stagflation. And it's something that we haven't had to talk about for 30 years, but it is a term that sends shivers down the -- the spine of anybody involved in politics.

What is stagflation? Stagflation is a -- is the worse possible outcome in market economics. Energy prices go up. And when they go up, they push up all prices because it takes energy to make everything, but there's a particularly pernicious effect on energy prices going up. It's that the prices of everything go up but jobs go down. Prices go up but jobs go down.

People buy less, they hire less. And over time society gets stretched on the rack of the pain of prices continuing to rise and jobs continuing to fall and good people get voted out of office. That's what happened to Jimmy Carter and it can happen to your nominee. There's only one way out of stagflation and that is to get energy prices down and stable.

Here is our problem. The right-wing has a strategy for getting energy prices down and stable, they want to drill and burn their way out of the problem. And you've heard it now for months. Drill now pay less. That is their strategy and they continue to beat the drum on that and now the Democrats are starting to get weak on the point and we cannot drill and burn our way out of this crisis, if we do we will bake this planet. That is a non-starter. It has to be off the table. We cannot drill and burn our way out.

But here's what we can do. We can say no, we aren't going to drill and burn our way out, but we can invent and invest our way out. We can invent and invest our way out. That's our strategy. That's our strategy. And why is it a good strategy? It's a good strategy because you only have to do two things. Cut demand for energy and diversify supply. Why is that good for us? Because both of those things create jobs.

Cutting demand creates jobs. Why? Cutting demand means conservation. It means weatherizing millions and millions of buildings across the country. Millions of buildings have to be weatherized so they don't leak so much energy. What does that mean? That creates thousands of contracts, millions of jobs, billions of dollars of economic stimulus. We're not building any more houses but we can begin to rebuild the ones that we have right now to save on energy costs. See, that's a way out. And it puts people to work. Cutting demand means a massive investment in public transportation, rail, clean buses, that's -- that's a way out. You cut demand for energy. And you create jobs doing it.

On the supply side diversifying our supply means wind. It means solar. It means all the things that Gavin was just talking about, but that also means jobs. Why? Many of you are going to get on airplanes right now. All of you-all concerned about carbon, you better put a whole bunch up. Me, too.

When you are flying over this country, look down. You'll see house after house after house, no solar panels. Go to sleep and wake up in an hour, you'll still be flying, look down. More houses without solar panels.

The next president of the United States should say we're going to have a World War II level mobilization, a crash program to weatherize and solarize America, put up millions of solar panels on every surface we can find and put people to work doing it. That's a way out. We have the technology. We have not had the political will to unleash that technology. And I'm proud to be part of an organization Green For All, that is in partnership with 1Sky, that is in partnership with Al Gore's Climate Alliance and other organizations to bring this into being.

And so I want to tell you the three things that we're going to be doing this fall and we need your active support and attention on, and then I want to talk to you about your role under this new administration.

Number one, we have to change the terms of debate going through the fall. We have been getting our butts whooped by this drill, drill, drill mantra and it's time for us to seize the terms of debate and show that we have the answers and we have solutions. That is going to be primarily up to you.

We've seen that the mainstream media is willing to follow the right wing down the hell hole of increasing carbon emissions for short-term potential gains and on gas prices. It's going to be up to you to tell a different story.

What is actually happening on our side that's not being covered? Three things: No. 1, we have legislation right now in front of Congress, the Green Jobs Act of 2007 and the Green Block Grant. What would they do? They would put enough money into the Department of Labor to send out to community colleges, vocational schools all around the country, enough money to train 30,000 people a year in green jobs in green trades. That is now being beat up and held up in Congress. We need your help to get the Green Jobs Act fully funded. No. 2, the mayors, the US Conference of Mayors has gotten this Green Block grant. It's called the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant. It is -- was authorized at two billion dollars. That's also being held up and beat up in Congress. That would be two billion dollars with a "B" so mayors like Gavin Newsom could get money to begin this program of weatherization and solarization in every city in America. That should be the number one priority for the entire country instead it's being held up. You can do something about that. You can do something about that.

Number Two, this fall we are going to launch a massive campaign to accelerate, be embraced by people in this country with green jobs.

If you look on your -- your tables there should be a sign-in sheet. Do you see it? Somebody hold it up -- everybody at the table touch your signs, hold it up. Hold it up so you can see it. We need you to sign up to be aware of this campaign on September 27th.

What date?

AUDIENCE: September 27th.

MR. JONES: What date?

AUDIENCE: September 27th.

MR. JONES: September 27th, which is a Saturday. All right. What day?

AUDIENCE: September 27th.

MR. JONES: Saturday. We're going to have the biggest national mobilization for green jobs in the history of the country. We're going to have thousands of rallies, thousands of house meetings all across the country calling for green jobs now. We would love for you to know about it. The only way for you to be fully informed about it is to sign up but that is going to launch this campaign to begin to change the terms of the debate.

This is not -- this movement for climate solutions is not just a solution -- a movement about the crisis. We know about the crisis. We know about the bad stuff. We now need to start talking about the good stuff. That is going to be the key.

Once people in the United States of America understand that this movement that we're trying to build is not just a movement to prevent something bad from happening, this is the movement that will finally get the good things happening. We think that we will be able to build the majority. Why? We want to be able to tell people for the first time guess what? This movement for climate solution is the movement that you have been waiting for your whole life. Why? Because we want to tell your child who might be standing on the street corner right now with no future, your child whose probably gone to more funerals this year if you live in urban America than he's ever going to graduations or proms. Or tell your child, guess what, we want to retrofit, reboot, repower, a nation and we need your help to do it.

We want to give you the tools and the training and the technology to rescue this country. We want to put the green hard hat on you, tool belt, work boots. We want to put you up on a rooftop where you can install solar panels, bring your grandmamma's light bill down. We're tired of your grandmamma sending checks to the PG&E and power companies. We want them to write her a check. See, that's what we want.

(Audience applauding)

MR. JONES: That's what this movement is about. We want them to write her a check. We want to take the asthma inhaler out of your little sister's pocket by closing down these dirty pollution power plants and --

(Audience applauding)

MR. JONES: -- letting her run and play again. We want to let you in on the ground floor of something that's going somewhere. This is not a dead-end job at Wal-Mart. See, once you get in on the ground floor as a solar panel installer doing green retrofits, this is going to be a growing industry and in a couple of years you can be a manager, an owner yourself and help to rebuild your community.

We want to be able to go door to door in America and tell people that this is the movement that will create new work, new wealth, new help, new investments. You see cities as Gavin said, 75 percent of our green house gas emission, there is no way to beat global warming without greening the cities. You can't save the polar bear without saving the poor children, too. It's one movement. It's one movement because it's one solution. That's the opportunity that we have.

The opportunity that we have is to say for the first time we have all this work that needs to be done. We have to build wind farms, we have to build wave farms, we have to build solar farms, we have to weatherize buildings, we have to put up solar panels, we have to plant trees, millions of them and take care of them, thousands of jobs, millions of jobs, billions of dollars of economic investment. This is the work that most needs to be done.

We have the opportunity to connect the people who most need work with the work that needs -- most needs to be done and fight pollution and poverty at the same time and bring this country together and bring the energy prices down. Bring the jobs up.

End forever the need for oil wars and resource wars and bring this country together. That's a promise of this green jobs movement. And we need your active support to evangelize this as a solution. It's not just going to save the polar bears. It's not just going to save the poor kids. It's the only way to save the presidency of the United States. We cannot afford to have two back to back failed presidencies in this country, the world can't afford it.

And the only way to save this new coming president -- people keep talking about his middle name is a problem. We worried about his middle name. Barack Hussein Obama. His middle name is not going to be Hussein if he wins this election. His middle name is going to be "Pinata." He will be Barack "Pinata" Obama. Trust me.

You are going to have the right-wing not in the White House, not running anything in the White House, not running anything in the Senate, not running anything in the House. They are going to have nothing to do but run their mouths against this president and they will ally themselves -- they will try to create a backlash alliance against anything he does on the environment, a backlash alliance between polluters and poor people, to say that the green revolution is nothing but an eco-elite movement trying to put green taxes on poor people to pay for their hybrid revolution. And it will be up to us to stand firm and proud and say no, no, no, this is not a movement we're going to do to poor people, it's not something we're going to do to vulnerable people, we're going to do it for and with poor and vulnerable people to bring them up.

(Audience applauding)

MR. JONES: You left them behind, we didn't. You put them down, we didn't.

(Audience applauding)

MR. JONES: That's what this movement is about. See, what you have to understand is that the fate of the world, the fate of the republic, the fate of the next president, the fate of the polar bears, the fate --the fate of low income people in rural and urban America and around the world is not dependent on a technological breakthrough. We already have the technology.

Enough sunlight falls on the earth in an hour to power everything in human civilization for a year. We already have the technology. It's not a policy question. We already know the right policies; you got to put a price on carbon, either with cap-and-trade or with carbon taxes, you have to move the government from being on the side of the problem makers in the economy to the problem solvers. But we know the policies, there are reams and reams of policies. It's not a policy breakthrough that is required. It's not a technological breakthrough that's required. It's not a business breakthrough that's required. It's a political breakthrough that's required. That's what's -- that's what's required.

(Audience applauding)

MR. JONES: We've got to get our politics right. How do we do that? When was the last time we had to do it?

Last time the government was this far off track and the people were hurting this much there was a new president named F.D.R., and he proposed this new deal but he wasn't alone. He represented the New Deal Coalition. Check that. He represented the New Deal Coalition. It was farmers, union workers, it was progressive business people and bankers, it was minorities, it was students, it was intellectuals. There was a coalition. And that coalition picked up the government that had been on the side of the problem makers and dumped it out and put it down on the side of the people. That's what this whole Netroots movement is ultimately going to be about.

Everything you've done up until now has just been prologue, it's just been the preface. You proven that you can beat the opposition. You can't have successful opposition movement without opposition media. And you've proven that you can in a very short period of time you built an absolute counterweight to FOX and to Rush Limbaugh, the -- everything the Conservatives built up in 20 years, you were able to match and checkmate and four. It's a huge achievement in the history of human civilization. You did that. You did that. If the republic will be saved, it's because of your efforts, that's true.

But now you done messed up. Now you got a problem. Because you-all are about to win. And I feel sorry for you. Because now you have to prove that your ideas aren't just good for protesting, they're good for governing. See this movement --

(Audience applauding)

MR. JONES: -- represents a hope that this country isn't just waiting for a movement they can critique it, the country's waiting for a movement that can inspire it. And that's your opportunity now and your obligation. See, we've got to now figure out how we govern.

And what I want to say to you is that there is a green new deal coalition. There is a green growth alliance out there waiting to be pulled together but it can't see itself.

The best of our progressive leaders are out there on their own. They're having to scratch and beg for a little tax credit extension for one year. They go year to year begging our wind energy -- industry, our solar industry, they have to beg every year just for a little bit of an extension just trying to keep alive their little companies. Meanwhile we send billions of dollars to oil and coal while they are making hand over fists. They need a movement. They've got the ideas. They need a political movement that can say stop this government from being on the side of the problem makers, the polluters, the war mongers, the Pentagon, the people who get all the money. The government needs to put on the side of the problem solvers but they can't do it by themselves.

The young people in our country in the rural areas, isolated, alone doing meth, committing suicide, the only option is to join the military and they don't want to go. They don't know what to do. The same suicide epidemic that's killing our rural and suburban children -- we have a homicide epidemic in urban America. They need somebody to tell them that there's a role for them and a need for them, that they can be the heroes of this new solar age but they can't figure out how to do that by themselves.

Our labor leaders see their regs dwindling and aging. There's a future out there for them, a labor movement that's browner, that's greener, that's bigger but they can't get there by themselves.

(Audience applauding)

MR. JONES: It's a young people's movement for climate solutions on the campuses but they can't change the country from the campuses alone.

How can we find each other? How can we help each other? How can we hear each other? How can we become a progressive governing majority to build a green new deal that will put this country back to work? Only if somebody can help us connect the dots on a daily basis and keep us from fighting each other and falling out and that's your job. That's your calling. That's your mission.

So as I move to my close I just want to say that there's been a lot of talk about your need to hold the new president accountable. I agree with that.

Frankly, I think we have been putting too much faith and confidence in our president. Frankly --

(Audience applauding)

MR. JONES: -- I never agreed with that. My basic view is we don't need the president to fix everything, we just need the president to stop breaking everything, that would be my first order of business.

(Audience applauding)

MR. JONES: But the challenge here for you is that you have to figure out a way now as you go from opposition to proposition, from protest to governance, how to hold somebody accountable in a way that doesn't mean beating them accountable, kicking them accountable, spitting on them accountable.

At some point we need to learn as a movement how we hold each other and keep each other accountable. See, that's our moral challenge. How do we hold each other and keep each other accountable? I don't know how we do that, but at some point as we enter this solar age we've got to move from diesel to solar in our own movement.

At some point it's got to not be just about pushing people and trying to force them to do the right thing, at some point we've got to pull people forward by the beauty of our own vision, the clarity of our ideas, the power of our own positive agenda, that's our opportunity.

And so I want to say to you that we can afford now to think like that and talk like that because it's our turn now. It's our turn now.

The people who told us they could bomb and torture our way to a peaceful world has had their turn. It's our turn now.

The people who said we can drill and burn our way to a good environmental and energy outcome have had their turn. It's our turn now.

The people who said they can borrow and spend their way to a healthy economy, they had their turn. It's our turn now and I am so proud of Gavin Newsom.

The people who said that we have to discriminate, the homophobes and the bigots who said we have to discriminate people based on who they love, who said that we had to accept second and first class marriages. Some people can be married, other people just have to settle for a union, you see. Those people have had their turn. And all they did was divide our families.

All they did was drive up suicide rates among our lesbian-gay questioning youth. All they did was create outcast in the neighborhood. Those people have had their turn. They did it all in the name of family values. Well, let me tell you something, we've got family values. And in our -- in our family values --

(Audience applauding)

MR. JONES: -- are very, very clear. Everybody in the family has value and we're not going to mistreat people and disrespect people any more.

(Audience applauding)

MR. JONES: They've had their turn.

(Audience applauding)

MR. JONES: It's our turn now.

(Audience applauding)

MR. JONES: It's our turn now.

(Audience applauding)

MR. JONES: It's our turn now.

(Audience applauding)

MR. JONES: We're tired of it.

(Audience applauding)

MR. JONES: We're tired of people spreading hate in our community, dividing our families.

(Audience applauding)

MR. JONES: We love our families.

(Audience applauding, cheering)

MR. JONES: We love everybody, and it's our turn now.

(Audience applauding)

MR. JONES: It's our turn. And if we're just proud enough we don't have to back down from nobody, they had their turn and they messed it up. And we're going to spend 50 years cleaning up their mess.

I feel sorry -- Barack Obama, whoever is going to be the next president, assuming it's your nominee, is going to have to go in the White House and it's going to be cleaning out a barn with a straw, you know --

(Laughter)

MR. JONES: -- just -- (sounds indicated).

(Laughter)

MR. JONES: I don't know why he even wants the job.

(Laughter)

MR. JONES: But we're going to clean it up and we're going to fix it up. Forty years ago this year Bobby Kennedy is gunned down sticking up for your agenda, peace and justice and opportunity. Forty years ago this year Dr. King was killed. Forty years. I was born that year. 1968. Something died in this country. Still you can feel a heartbreak in the country 40 years later. People stopped believing, gave up hope, but not everybody. And many of you in this room have kept alive the candle of hope for all that time and when it was most important these last eight years, you relit the flame.

Now as we go forward sisters and brothers a new day is coming to this country. It didn't come automatically. You forced the new dawn with your own efforts. And if we do our work right and well now, if we stand together, if we combine causes and look for shared solutions and common ground, we do our work right and well we're going to do a lot more than we said we were going to do in 2004-2006 when we said we were going to take back America. If we stand together, we hold everybody, help everybody move forward this movement when we look back will be the movement that did more than take American back. For the first time in 40 years your movement will be able to take America forward.

Thank you very much.