In an April 3rd appearance on the left-wing Democracy Now TV show, Van Jones has offered his own behind-the-scenes take on an incident that made race a political issue three years before the Trayvon Martin case. As Jones describes it, the infamous “beer summit†on the White House lawn was a case where President Obama was “forced†into a meeting with a “racist†police officer.
In July 2009, while Jones was working at the White House, Sgt. James Crowley responded to a call of a possible break-in at a Cambridge, MA home. In reality, the person a neighbor thought might be a burglar was the homeowner, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, with another man helping him enter the house. [...]
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Van Jones: The right wing and the law enforcement establishment brought the wrath of God down on the White House, I was there, and suddenly he’s forced to do a beer summit to sit eye to eye with a racist police officer . . . as a black man, even the most powerful man in the world, can not speak about race and if he does he’s then forced to sit humbly across the table from a racist police officer.