Here's the original source for the Van Jones quote about the time he spent in jail following the Rodney King/LA riots (Jones was arrested in "peaceful" protests in San Fran). It was in a 2005 interview he did with East Bay Express. They of course (what else?) claim he "renounced his rowdy Black Nationalist ways" since then (yet he's calling for "complete revolution" in Aug 2009!):
But in jail, he said, "I met all these young radical people of color -- I mean really radical, communists and anarchists. And it was, like, 'This is what I need to be a part of.'" Although he already had a plane ticket, he decided to stay in San Francisco. "I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary." In the months that followed, he let go of any lingering thoughts that he might fit in with the status quo. "I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th," he said. "By August, I was a communist."