Show Notes
"[Homelessness] has become a humanitarian crisis. It has become an emergency that I believe needs to be addressed with the same mentality that you would address a natural disaster. I mean, this is Los Angeles. We have the skills, the knowledge and the resources." Karen Bass is going back to where it all began: Los Angeles, California. After an extensive and impressive tenure in Congress, Karen Bass is running for Mayor of LA. She has big goals and tangible plans to make them happen. At the top of her list is solving the homelessness crisis in LA. This week, Karen joins Van to explain how understanding the “why” is at the root of resolving homelessness, how her grassroots background prepared her for this moment, and why there’s a reason for hope during these uncertain times.
New episodes of Uncommon Ground with Van Jones release weekly, every Wednesday. What assumptions are you challenging? What do you wish officials knew about your own community? Call 347-770-2785 and leave Van a voicemail. Your comment or question will be recorded, and may be played and answered on a future episode of Uncommon Ground! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
More from Uncommon Ground with Van Jones
In this final installment of the podcast, Van thanks the Uncommon Ground community for joining him on this journey. Some doubted that anyone could do a successful podcast based solely on finding positive solutions, deepening understanding and bringing people together across lines of difference. But we're happy to report: measured by downloads, Uncommon Ground wound up in the top 2 percent of all podcasts! Our success with this podcast over fifty episodes has shown that people do respond to intelligent, uplifting content when it’s offered. The reception from our listeners showed that people yearn for more depth and nuance. We hope this podcast satiated some of that yearning. Van must take his leave to prepare himself to cover the upcoming presidential season and contest. But he encourages everyone to stay involved in building unlikely communities. One way to do that is to support Dream.Org — which carries on the work of fostering deep conversations and finding solutions even across large divides. We hope folks will listen (and relisten) to the episodes we aired this season. There is enough love, hope, wisdom and insight in these episodes to get us through the coming storms—and beyond. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
“Yes, the system is broken. But the solution lies not in dismantling it or burning it down, but in finding solutions that have been shown to work. We should focus on the bread-and-butter issues. Most rank-and-file Democrats are practical and not ideological. Most of them have no Twitter accounts. They worry about the cost of housing, healthcare, and higher education.”
In this season’s final bonus episode, we wanted to make sure you got a chance to hear from some incredible young people who are trying to save the Earth.
It is exceedingly rare these days for two national voices on opposite sides of the political spectrum to come together and have an honest, respectful exchange of views. Many on the right believe that progressives want to abuse government power to punish them for their views. Many on the left feel under constant assault from the right. It is increasingly easy for each side to dismiss the concerns of the other. But in a democracy, we need to try to understand those who think differently than we do. Even when we fundamentally disagree.
In this special bonus episode, Van moves into the guest seat for an interview with comedian and author Chelsea Handler. The conversation took place in 2018 while Chelsea was filming her Netflix documentary: Hello, Privilege. It's Me, Chelsea.