President Obama’s controversial green jobs czar –a self-described “rowdy black nationalist” and “communist”– is a co-founder of the same unsavory left-wing pressure group that is urging an advertiser boycott of Glenn Beck’s TV show after Beck did several unflattering news packages on the czar. Not surprisingly, Big Media haven’t noticed the connection.

The czar in question is Van Jones, a founding board member of Color of Change, an extremist racial grievance group that tries to stir up racial antagonism in order to promote a socialist agenda.

As Jeff Poor noted here at NewsBusters, Color of Change isn’t happy that Beck did several news packages on Jones in which he threw a spotlight on the radical views that Jones apparently still holds. And as Sam Theodosopoulos wrote on this blog, a World Net Daily article titled “Will a “red” help blacks go green?” Jones said his environmental activism was a way to fight for racial and class “justice.” Jones was also “a founder and leader of the communist revolutionary organization Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM,” WND reported. (Green really is the new red.)

The race-baiting conspiracy theorists of Color of Change appear to be enjoying some success in their campaign to convince advertisers to boycott the “Glenn Beck Program,” which airs at 5 p.m. Eastern time on Fox News Channel weekdays.

The group’s co-founder James Rucker gloats in an op-ed at the Huffington Post that Progressive Insurance and several other advertisers have dropped Beck’s show since Color of Change started promoting a boycott. Of course it’s not all that surprising that Progressive Insurance dropped Beck. After all, the company was founded by left-wing philanthropist Peter B. Lewis.

Rucker is a former MoveOn.org organizer. He is also a co-founder of the Secretary of State Project, the group that helped to elect Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie. Ritchie, a former community organizer who has worked hand in hand with ACORN, helped set the stage for Sen. Al Franken (D-ACORN) to steal the 2008 Senate election in Minnesota.

Now that Van Jones is in the news all the time, Color of Change doesn’t want you to know he helped start the group. Maybe having an avowed America-hating totalitarian radical on the group’s board is bad public relations.

The group deleted references to Jones on its “about” page. That page used to say, “James Rucker and Van Jones came together in the wake of [Hurricane] Katrina to use the organizing power of the Internet to give Black Americans and our allies a renewed and strengthened political voice.”

But now it doesn’t.

The old page still exists in the Google cache.  (The cache will eventually be cleared, so for safekeeping, I made a PDF of the page here.) The 501(c)(4) group’s 2006 and 2007 tax returns (IRS Form 990) show Jones as a director.

Jones was also on the board of the Apollo Alliance, a hard-left environmentalist group that is now running large chunks of the Obama administration. Beck pounded away at the Apollo Alliance and Jones on a recent show.

Here is just one outrage committed by Color of Change. On its website, Color of Change invited people to sign a petition to spare the life of convicted multiple murder Stanley Tookie Williams. From the petition:

Stanley Tookie Williams has become a true asset to our community. As a co-founder of the Crips, Tookie created untold suffering and death. There is nothing romantic or glamorous about the kind of violence the Crips unleashed. But Williams has taken responsibility for the harm he’s done. And since then, he has saved the lives of countless young Black males. He will continue to do the same—but only if he’s allowed to live. It would be senseless for the State of California to kill a man who is working every day to stop the madness of gang violence.

This article by Matthew Vadum appeared August 12, 2009, at NewsBusters.