A Quote by Van Jones

It's time to start bringing the congregations down to City Hall and to ask the mayors, the city councils and the school boards, "What's the plan? What's the local government going to do for us?"
So, right now we have got to defeat Trump, we have to elect Hillary Clinton. We have to elect progressive candidates in the house, and in the senate, and school boards, and city councils. And most importantly, we have got to continue the fight for an agenda to create a government that works for all of us, and not just the people on top. And that's the mission that I will be undertaking.
I want Christians to consider who they vote for. We look a lot at the presidential elections. And that's where so much of our focus is, especially from the media, but some of the most important elections are the local elections - the mayors, city council members, county commissioners, school boards. How important school boards are - and we need to get Christian men and women running for office. We need Christian men and women not only running for office, but voting and getting behind other Christians that are running for office.
And we did it because it's time for City Hall to stop looking out for City Hall and start looking out for the people like you and me who are footing the bill.
In city hall and in local government, you have to get things done without drama.
Big city mayors don't play well with voters outside their city anymore. Just ask John Lindsay, Ed Koch, Kevin White, Tom Bradley, Dick Riordon. Rudy Giuliani is no exception.
I didn't just start with ...local city officials because I knew that they would understand the problem. I started with them because I knew that our cities, towns and counties would be a key part of the solution to this issue. ...there is no one-size-fits all policy or program that can solve this problem. And Washington certainly does not have all the answers. Instead, many of the best, most innovative, most effective solutions start in our city halls and our towns and our county councils.
When I was elected for the first time in '06 I'd never been elected to any body. City councils, school board, community college boards, trustee, water district trustee, class president, ASB president, senior class president - nothing. I was never elected to anything in my life.
Under the Trump tax plan, we are no longer going to subsidize big government in blue states. Now those who choose to live in blue states are going to have to join with their neighbors, collect their pitchforks, and demand tax and spending cuts from city hall and the state capital.
Our government has this three-city concept where Tirupati will be a city of lakes and a tourist destination, Amaravati a blue-green city, and Visakhapatnam a beautiful city buzzing with economic activity and jobs.
I have no doubt that aggressively going after wrongdoing can result in real improvement. Fewer wrongdoers in city government means more honest employees; it means better city services; it means more efficient government. And punishing wrongdoing can have a strong ripple effect that deters others from going down the wrong path.
When we look at the situation in Ferguson, Missouri and the tragic death of Michael Brown, we are reminded of the importance of who we elect to our city councils, who sits on our local board of education committees, who we pick to represent us in Congress, in the Senate and more.
The vicious cycle that is bringing down European states is not going to hit us [the USA], at least not for a while, at the level of the federal government. The same cannot be said of state and local governments.
Most of our competitor nations around the world have a national education system and America is the only major nation in the world that operates off of local school boards. They receive very little direction from state boards of education or from the nation. So local school boards direct basically what happens and too often they're not willing to track or to do the supervision of the education system that will make it world competitive.
I opposed annexing in areas around our city borders, because I knew that if neighborhoods wanted to be a part of the city, well, they would mandate themselves in and invite themselves into a city. That's just one example of even on a local level how dangerous it is for a politician to start thinking they know more than that individual family, that individual business.
What has been happening the last four years in City Hall is that they have been closing recreation centers, closing libraries. We have not looked after our children in City Hall.
The first time I set foot in Boston City Hall, I felt invisible - swallowed up by the cavernous concrete hallways, and shrunk down even more with every checkpoint and looming government counter. My immigrant family tried to stay away from spaces like these.
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