Here’s a fun fact: Recently deceased popstar Prince was a major funding force behind former White House green jobs czar Van Jones’ environmental group, Green For All.
“There are people who have solar panels right now on their houses in Oakland, California that don’t know Prince paid for them,” Jones, who’s now a contributor on CNN, said Sunday, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Pop star Prince Rogers Nelson, who was found dead Thursday at age 57, was apparently a major funder behind Green For All, an environmental group founded by Jones in 2007 to “make sure people of color have a place and a voice in the climate movement,” according to the group’s website.
“He did not want it be known publicly, and he did not want us to say it,” Jones said. “But I’m gonna say it because the world needs to know that it wasn’t just the music. The music was just one way he tried to help the world, but he was helping every day of his life.”
Jones founded the group shortly before joining the White House as President Barack Obama’s green jobs czar. Jones, however, was forced to resign from the Obama administration in 2009 after his past statements and activism was exposed by talk show host Glenn Beck. Republican lawmakers soon started to call for Jones’ resignation.
Jones was forced to issue at least two apologies for signing a 2004 petition from the group 911Truth.org and for his involvement with a radical group with Marxist roots, called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement.
Jones also advocated on behalf of death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of shooting a Philadelphia cop in 1981.
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