Former White House Special Advisor for Green Jobs and CNN Political Commentator Van Jones said that it wasn’t “provable” that Michael Brown had his hands up and that “the facts don’t bear out what many people feared” in the case, although he maintained that “something strange happened” on Friday’s “Anderson Cooper 360.”
“I think it’s important to acknowledge that some things are possible and some things are provable. It is certainly not provable that Mike Brown had his hands up, and I think it’s important for people who care about facts to be willing to talk about that in a straightforward manner. We’ll never know what happened. Something strange happened, you did have that video of those construction workers who were white and watching. They put their hands up after the shooting and said something happened that was wrong. But much more importantly, this thing was about Mike Brown for about two weeks. After that, it became a cry of a generation that feels that it is criminalized and guilty until it’s proven innocent, rather than innocent until proven guilty all too often. And so it became a rallying cry for a generation of people trying to say, ‘look, we can’t be innocent. Just because we have black doesn’t mean you should assume that we are guilty.’ 90% of all African-Americans are not involved in crime as victims or as perpetrators. And so, I think it was a generational cry that we can be innocent. But, I do think we have to deal with the facts. in this case, the facts don’t bear out what many people feared” he stated.
Later in the segment, Jones did criticize police officers for focusing more on what protesters said that the problems found in DOJ’s report on the Ferguson PD.
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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