Award-Winning Social Justice Leader to Speak at Luncheon Honoring New OSI-Baltimore Community Fellows

BALTIMORE—Van Jones, a visionary, award-winning human rights lawyer who founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, is scheduled to speak in Baltimore on Friday, April 27, about his entrepreneurial work on social justice issues, including the incarceration of youth. Jones' advocacy efforts have led to groundbreaking successes in establishing the largest network of parents of incarcerated children in the nation, encouraging investment in education and communities rather than new juvenile detention facilities, and curtailing police abuse in Northern California. Jones also is campaigning to ensure that low-income people benefit economically from new jobs in green construction, clean technology, urban agriculture, and the energy sector.

For 10 years, Jones' Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, based in Oakland, Calif., has addressed issues plaguing urban communities, such as Baltimore. The Ella Baker Center is a strategy and action center that promotes alternatives to violence and incarceration and works for justice, opportunity, and peace in urban America.

Jones long has served as a passionate advocate for social justice. When he was just 27, the Yale Law School graduate convinced the California State Bar Association to license him to launch the first certified lawyer referral service for police abuse victims in Northern California, earning him the 1998 Reebok International Human Rights Award. Since then, Jones has led efforts to reform California’s juvenile justice system to focus on rehabilitation, to involve youth in promoting peace on Oakland streets and to create more job opportunities for people leaving, or at risk of entering, prison.

“Van Jones shares the spirit of our Community Fellows in using entrepreneurial, innovative approaches to addressing social justice issues,” said Diana Morris, director of Open Society Institute-Baltimore.

Jones spoke at a luncheon honoring the newest class of OSI-Baltimore Community Fellows who have received $48,750 stipends to work full-time for 18 months on creative projects to revitalize underserved communities in Baltimore. This year’s class consists of eight fellows, ranging from a prominent chef training former inmates in culinary operations to a bicycle mechanic providing affordable transportation for city residents. This new class joins 78 other past fellows who continue to do outstanding work in Baltimore.

Jones, who graduated from Yale Law School in 1993, has received many honors for his work, including an Ashoka Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship and recognition as a Global Leader for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum. His organization, the Ella Baker Center, is a grantee of the Open Society Institute. Jones also is serving as the guest editor of Baltimore’s Urbanite magazine in April. He most recently has focused on creating opportunities in the “green economy"–jobs in renewable energy, alternative fuels, and green construction, for instance–to lift people out of poverty.

OSI-Baltimore launched the Baltimore Community Fellowships in 1998. The program now receives support from OSI-Baltimore and several other foundations and individuals, including the Alison and Arnold Richman Fund, the Cohen Opportunity Fund, The Commonweal Foundation, The Foundation for Maryland’s Future, the Gloria B. and Herbert M. Katzenberg Charitable Fund, The Hoffberger Foundation, the John Meyerhoff and Lenel Srochi Meyerhoff Fund and The Lois and Irving Blum Foundation.