How One Man is Rescuing the Forgotten in War Zones—Jason Jones’s War for Peace

We lost a lot of people, a lot of Afghans we were trying to rescue. When I founded this organization, I was naive. I just, I always saw success. I never imagined I would fail. We worked very hard, but there was nothing that we could do. I mean, even our government, at one point, I mean, I'll say, right now, we have more people in safe, more Afghan allies in safe houses in the United States government, my organization. Wow. Probably for the past year, we've been sheltering more Afghans in the United States government. Our Bay Area Innovator today is Jason Jones, film producer, author, and founder of the Vulnerable People Project. His work spans from award-winning films like Bella, to organizing humanitarian efforts in some of the world's most dangerous regions, including Afghanistan and Gaza. In this episode, he shares how a short story by Hemingway inspired a decades-long filmmaking journey, what it takes to evacuate civilians in crisis zones, and how he's using media and logistics to support those most at risk. This is Bay Area Innovators, and I'm your host, Steve Ispas. Jason, welcome to our program. Steve, thanks for having me. Well, thanks for being here. Behind and before the cameras, before your missions, and before all your work, what would you say is the defining factor that made you get involved and fight for vulnerable people? Thanks for that question, Steve. As a filmmaker, when I began studying screenwriting, I looked at my own story, as I think anyone who studies the monomyth or the art of storytelling, there's what's called the inciting incident. What you're asking me, as a filmmaker, I hear, you're asking me, what's the inciting incident of my journey? All of us are on a hero's journey, and all of us have the call to adventure. The call to adventure is when we witness or experience a great injustice. For me, very clearly, I know when my call to adventure was. In filmmaking, it'll often be a phone call, or you receive a letter, and something like this in most screenplays. For me, it was a phone call. I was a 17-year-old soldier. I was in basic training, and my high school girlfriend was pregnant. It was a Sunday morning, but I wasn't supposed to be getting calls on this Sunday because I had extra detail, extra duty. I was cleaning pots and pans at Fort Benning, Georgia, and a friend came running in to say that my girlfriend had called, and that she was crying. I ran out, and I answered the phone, and she was crying like I've never heard anyone cry before or since. The only way I can explain it is that her soul was crying. She kept saying, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it wasn't me. Then her father grabbed the phone and said, I know your secret, and your secret's gone. I took Katie to get an abortion. Wow. As soon as he said that, a drill sergeant reached over my shoulder and hung up the phone. I wasn't supposed to be on the phone, and I punched the drill sergeant. Another drill sergeant grabbed me by my collar and dragged me into my captain's office. I was kind of losing control of myself. For me, I was lucky to have a great chain of command, very understanding sergeants, and a captain who felt empathy for me. I didn't know that abortion was legal. I barely knew that it was a thing until I lost my first child to a forced abortion. I would say that was my inciting incident. Then within 90 days, I graduated basic training. I was an infantryman, and I graduated infantry school. I was already off to my unit on my first deployment within about 90 days of this phone call. I was participating in something called Cobra Gold in Thailand on a mission, training exercise. In a very remote part of Thailand, I saw a young boy dying of malaria. His father was just kind of holding him as they were leaning up against a fence. I'd asked the translator what was wrong with the boy. He said that he probably had malaria, and it looked like he wasn't going to make it. I saw the look in the father's eyes, and as he was holding his son as they were leaning on this fence, these American soldiers in the middle of nowhere on the border of Cambodia were marching by. When I looked into his eyes, I felt as if I was looking into my own soul. How I felt about the abortion and was still hurting from, I saw the same sorrow in his eyes. I would say it was really at that moment I realized how privileged and powerful I was as an American citizen. Even though I was a high school dropout, an E1 private, M60 gunner, sort of at that moment I realized I was privileged, and I wanted to order my life to defend the vulnerable. And at that moment, really at that time, I thought it was by becoming the best soldier that I could be. And then the more I studied and thought about it, my ideas developed. But initially, I thought I was going to be the best warrior in the history of the world and defend the weak from violence. That was sort of my inciting incident. Well, yeah, so first of all, we thank you for your service in the military, but you've gone so much farther beyond that. And you've been in places like Sudan and Ukraine and Afghanistan. I'll probably just pick a few. Let's start with Afghanistan. I think you were there when the withdrawal of the U.S. troops happened. Tell us a bit about what happened. What did you see on the ground and what transpired? Yeah, my work in Afghanistan actually began in this office. It was early August as Afghanistan was beginning to collapse. Actually, in July, prior to the collapse, July 6, I think President Biden gave a speech saying that Afghanistan was never going to fall. You'll never see a Hanoi moment. You'll never see helicopters on an embassy roof. Obviously, within less than 60 days, we saw helicopters on an embassy roof. And in early July of that year, when President Biden made those comments, already 85 percent of the districts in Afghanistan had fallen to the Taliban. But I was kind of running other projects and doing other initiatives. And in early August, I was in this office on my couch with COVID pneumonia, really kind of fighting for my life. And I got a call from a filmmaker, my producing partner, Jennifer Kadena. And she had asked me if I could rescue— our organization, the Vulnerable People Project, had the ability to rescue an Afghan woman in her early 60s. Her son had made anti-Taliban documentaries but was in Los Angeles. He was an Afghan director. And so I was on prednisone. By the way, if you need to get something done, even if you're dying, prednisone is really helpful on that because you can't sleep and gives you a lot of energy. So I just sat in this office trying to build out teams and systems to evacuate. I knew that planes were going to be sort of a fool's errand. A lot of the larger organizations and veterans groups were really banking on planes, knowing—and that's because they've worked with, for, and with and through the U.S. government. But I knew that we weren't going to be there very long, and there were 180,000 Afghan special immigrant visa recipients. And there was no way that in less than 30 days that we were going to get 180,000 people out. So then together with my team, we began building overland routes. And to this day, we have a network of safe houses, and I have teams of people that work for me, and not only in Afghanistan but across Central Asia. Almost all of our team members are former Afghan allies that work for the United States. And it's something I'm—just this morning, my wife asked me about Afghanistan because I'm still there. She said, how come Afghanistan is so important to you? She said, you work with such intensity, such passion and intensity on Afghanistan. And I work with passion and intensity. I think what I make up with intelligence, maybe I have passion. But I said, well, you know, it's about honor. These people, my country gave a promise to in exchange for their service, and they saved a lot of American lives, and they made a lot of American soldiers' lives a lot easier in really challenging situations because they're not interpreters. People call them terps or interpreters, but they're really translators. They are the bridge between worlds. It's more than just translating language. And so they really made our missions successful and saved a lot of American lives. And to this day, it's something that weighs on me very much that so many of our former allies, their families are starving, they're living in fear. So it's a project that's four years later. I thought it would be about two weeks. I signed a book deal the day Afghanistan fell, and I told the publisher, I got about two weeks in Afghanistan. I'll finish this up, and I'll get right on that book. And four years later, we're still working in Afghanistan. And I'll be going back to Afghanistan this summer as well. Now, you're combining the big screen. You produce movies with your work for vulnerable people. Please tell us about, I think Bella was probably your, you know, the most important movie you made. Tell us about how you combine this work and what it means, how you're able to do your work through the big screen. This Bay Area Innovators episode is sponsored by Peter Cassara Clothiers, an Italian menswear store that brings timeless European style with a modern edge to Sunnyvale and the Bay Area for over 50 years. From top Italian suits and shoes to the exclusive Tami Bahama line, they've got your look covered. Check out their website at petercassaraclothiers.com to find out more. And now, back to our interview. Well, you know, stories. If I came here from another planet and I met human beings and I tried to figure out what made human beings unique is we're storytelling creatures, creatures that tell stories, myth. And that's what moves us. I've always loved movies. As a boy, my mother had me when she was a teenager and was a single mother. And, you know, we lived in relative poverty, you know, in the United States, whatever that means. Challenging circumstances. And so I would always go to the movie theater. I would collect bottles on the side of the road and I'd go to a theater and I'd get a small popcorn and a Coke and I'd be, you know, Raiders of the Lost Ark or Star Wars. Or I remember in eighth grade going to see Clint Eastwood's Pale Rider, you know, and it was just, it was an escape for me. And so I just love movies. When the abortion happened to me, I started going door to door and talking to people about abortion as young infantrymen on my days off. From there, I got a radio show and I began writing and giving speeches. But I thought, how do I reach the world? And it was the big screen. So when I founded my organization in 2002, the Human Rights Education and Relief Organization, we have a very simple mission, defend the vulnerable from violence. We do one thing, that's it. We defend the vulnerable from violence. And we only do it in two ways. We inspire solidarity. We try to inspire people to also stand with these vulnerable communities. And we tell the truth about the human person, their incomparable dignity, beauty, and worth. And so I had this vision that I would make movies. I never thought I would do narrative feature films. I thought I would do documentaries. To me, who does narrative feature films? That was beyond my capability. But I made it my first documentary in 2000 on youth culture in America called The Gates of Hell. But my first narrative feature film was Bella. And I was so blessed. We were a telenovela star, Eduardo Verastegui, a young producer from Fox who had just left, and a young director just out of film school, Alejandro Monteverdi, who's gone on to great success. And our first film, Bella, went on to win in the industry, sort of for insiders, is the most prestigious award that Toronto International Film Festival's Audience People's Choice Award. And we were so blessed. We were the smallest budget film ever in history to win. To me, Bella is special because it's the first major Hollywood successful film that, and it's not what you'd call a Christian film, but it's the first major Hollywood successful film that touches on the abortion issue. In a really beautiful and empathetic way, it looks at the struggles of a young woman and an unplanned pregnancy. And it exemplifies the beauty and dignity of the child in the womb and the courage and the dignity of mothers and motherhood. What is your definition of vulnerable people? And the reason I'm asking that is because there's so many different kinds or different sets of vulnerable people. And we recently had on this program Craig Sawyer, a former Navy SEAL, who was very involved with rescuing kids that are trafficked for sex in the United States and in other countries. For him, those are the most vulnerable. Please tell us about your experience and what your understanding is of the most vulnerable. Well, that's a great question. First of all, you can even look at these young children who are trafficked. I use the word vulnerable, not weak. Because vulnerable people are not weak. They're usually very strong. They're usually tragically often too strong. You can look at the strength of children who are trafficked and how strong they have to become to survive these ordeals. They're heartbreakingly strong. But they've been placed in impossible situations alone. But when we pour our lives into their lives, those impossible situations become possible. And now you have to be willing to become vulnerable yourself to serve them. And no one becomes more vulnerable, just psychologically and spiritually vulnerable, are those that work with trafficked children because it's heartbreaking. And so when you choose to serve vulnerable communities, I always say, well, the French Catholic anthropologist from Stanford, Rene Girard, said, to serve the vulnerable is to become vulnerable. When you stand with the vulnerable, you become vulnerable. Why is that? Because you're beginning to share their burden. And a lifeguard can drown trying to save someone. So you jump into the ocean to save someone or you run into a building that's burning to rescue someone. You cannot do that without risk. So a vulnerable person is a strong person that's been placed in an impossible situation. But through the virtue of solidarity, there really should be no impossible situations for anyone. All these vulnerable communities, there's solutions to their struggles, and the solution is solidarity. I actually like that analogy quite a bit. I'm a pretty good swimmer, and there was one time in the ocean here in the Pacific, actually, that someone was signaling there were big waves, and it seemed like they were drowning. So I went there to help them, and they were grabbing onto me. And I had to make that split decision because I feel like I'm drowning myself. And I had to make the decision, am I going to let them go or am I going to fight it through? And luckily, I didn't have to make the decision because I was able to touch the ground all of a sudden. You know, it was shallow enough that I could touch the ground. But I can absolutely relate to that. And by the way, with the work that we do, they do that, right? Like when someone's vulnerable, whether you're in a war zone. When we were rescuing a community of elderly nuns in Sudan when the civil war broke out a couple of years ago, we rescued an order of nuns and about 800 other Christians that were trapped in the middle of this fighting between two genocidal elements. Some of the community began to panic and resist being rescued. And it resulted in a young man who worked for me dying, being shot by the Sudanese armed forces. It would not have happened, but there was an elderly woman who was very sick that stayed back by herself. And this young man and members of our team kept going back, back and back and back, trying to rescue her. And they eventually rescued her, but it was the loss of a team member. And so to serve the vulnerable is to become vulnerable. And then there's just, when I read that from an Asian heart, it really liberated me. Because I used to think there was a way to do this job without becoming vulnerable. I thought I was just doing it all wrong, and I thought I was not very good at my job. And then that quote kind of liberated me and I understood, oh, I am doing my job right. Because I always go, how come every time I go to serve these communities, we become vulnerable too? It's like a friend of mine, Ryan Hendrickson, he has a wonderful organization called Tip of the Spear Landmine Removal. His leg was blown off in Afghanistan by an IED, 27 surgeries later reattached. He went back into Afghanistan, did seven more tours. When Russia invaded Afghanistan, he retired from the military and went right to, when Russia invaded Ukraine, he retired from the military and then went right to Ukraine and began removing landmines in civilian areas. And one of his team members stepped on a landmine and lost his foot. And he joked when he got blown backwards, found one, found one guys. But in a way, he traded his foot for maybe a child's life. And that's what it is. You know, it comes at a cost. Nothing comes free and serving the vulnerable obviously will always come at a cost. But it's worth it. Can you take us to a moment where you felt that everything is collapsing, everything is going the wrong way and somehow you're able to come out of it? And what did that feel like? Yeah, you know, it was a real, I would say that's Afghanistan again. It was a year and a half. I'm going to try not to even get emotional. We lost a lot of people, a lot of Afghans we were trying to rescue. You know, when I founded this organization, I was naive. I just I always saw success. I never imagined I would fail. I think I wonder how many oncologists who become cancer doctors because they lost their best friend to cancer when they were in middle school or something. They envision they're just going to save their friend over and over and over again and only to discover that they, too, will watch children die of cancer. For me, Afghanistan was really a challenge because I became, our organization in a way became, you know, really vulnerable because it was an overwhelming, it was an overwhelming task, you know. And I would say for a year and a half, I was just despondent. We worked very hard, but there was nothing that we could do. I mean, even our government, you know, at one point, I mean, I'll say right now we have more people and say more Afghan allies and safe houses, the United States government, my organization. Wow. Probably for the past year, we've been sheltering more Afghans in the United States government. We're talking about Afghanis who have been working with the U.S. government or have been favoring the U.S. government or were against the Taliban or something like that, right? So the end of this contract, you're going to be given a visa, a special immigrant visa, and you'll be able to emigrate to the United States because you will have to. Otherwise, you're going to die. By the way, that was the deal even during the occupation. So imagine how important it was to evacuate them after the withdrawal. Now, think beyond the soldiers themselves with their families. You have countless, hundreds of thousands of children and wives, widows of Afghan allies who died serving alongside U.S. armed forces. And now their wives and children are widows and orphans in Afghanistan. And they're sort of at the bottom of the social hierarchy. One of the initiatives I'm most proud of, of the Vulnerable People Project, is something we call Cold for Christmas. You know, and the myth is St. Nicholas gives bad kids coal, good kids get toys or oranges or whatever, and bad kids get coal. So I came up with this idea. We want to give coal to the widows and orphans of our Afghan allies to survive the harsh winters and food. And we've distributed tens of millions of hours of heat through thousands of tons of coal distribution all over Afghanistan. And about 10 million meals we've distributed over the past four years since the fall to the widows and orphans of our Afghan allies. And to me, that's very important as a veteran, because I think as a man, I remember as a young infantryman and I became a father as a young infantryman, my greatest fear was I would not be around to protect my family. That was my greatest fear. I remember thinking, I hope I would just want to live long enough that my child would remember knowing me. I remember thinking that. How sad if my child never even remembered knowing me. And so you think, no man is more vulnerable to defend his family than a man who's lost his life. He's helpless. So now his family, who's going to stand with his family? In the Army Ranger Creed, one of the stanzas is, never shall I leave a fallen comrade. And we've abandoned our comrades. And I think even more tragically is that their widows and orphans are suffering because their husbands and fathers died serving alongside our armed forces. And I do hope it's something that the United States takes seriously. You know, my oldest son fought in Iraq. I have three sons that are moving towards military age. Every male member of my family, my father, my brother, my grandfathers, going back to our, you know, on every lineage, we've been in this country, we've served. And my sons are all planning on serving. And it's also I'm working to make sure that my sons and grandsons are safe. If our allies cannot count on us, if we cannot recruit young men to serve as translators in future conflicts, because they know that we don't keep our promises, that's going to put my children and grandchildren in jeopardy. So not only am I working to defend our honor as a country and to serve the men who lost their lives fighting alongside the U.S. armed forces, but in a real way, I really want people to love my country. I love my country, and I want them to be willing to serve alongside us in future conflicts. So I think it's very important that we keep our commitments to every Afghan man who shook a hand, and woman, female SIVs, obviously, every Afghan that looked us in the eye and we signed a contract with them. I think it's the honorable thing to do to keep our word. Jason, I think you are quoted as telling your wife that you have only one skill and that it's pursuing goals for a long period of time. What did you mean by that? Yeah, I just discovered that about myself. I have a strange ability to pursue goals over long periods of time, you know, decades even. And I'll give you an example. I have, you know, when I was 17 I said I'm going to order my life to end abortion. And recently a book just came out on the 50 greatest leaders in world history on promoting human dignity. And it had a chapter on Mother Teresa and Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II and all these great heroes. And there was a chapter on me. And I thought, how did I get into this book? Well, it would talk about how I used film and pop culture to popularize the pro-life position. And there's a film that I wanted to make in college that's coming out and we just went to picture lock last week. It's by Ernest Hemingway. It's called Hills Like White Elephants. And I read that short story as an undergrad in 1995. I went to the theater department and I said, I'd like to make a short film. I met with some of the professors. Can you introduce me to some young talented students that could produce and direct this and kids that can act? And the professor laughed at me and said, well, let me look into this. And he came back and he said, you know, Jason, you'd have to pay for the rights. And it's going to be very expensive. You know, you're not going to be able to, you know, I'm a college student. It's going to cost by half a million dollars to get the rights to make this film. And I said, oh, bummer. You know, oh, well. And he said, or you can wait until 2023 when the rights lapse and you can make it for free. And I said, oh, I'll do that. I'll make it in 2023. I'm sure. It's 28 years later. Yeah, I'm sure he chuckled and said, yeah, have fun with that. But it was always in my mind. Even my lawyer, my entertainment lawyer, she was telling me even 10 years ago, you know, the way it works is you have they'd have to sue you and prove that they lost value by you making this film. And she's like, they wouldn't be able to prove it. They wouldn't do it. I said, no, I'm going to respect their rights and I'm going to wait. And I waited. And last year, we went to Spain and we made this film and I'm very proud of it. It's quite striking and beautiful. We have Jennifer Cadena as the director. She's the one that lured me into Afghanistan. You know, I'm very proud of it, you know. And so I just think that's one example of, you know, pursuing a goal. And over the years, my first book took me 20 years to write. I remember I started it in college and I told people I was going to publish it on the 100th anniversary of World War I in 2014. My friends would always ask me about how my book is going and tease me. Well, in 2014, my book came out. I had a 40-year plan to overturn Roe versus Wade. And people said, why not a 10-year plan? I said, I'm not that smart. The 10-year plan's for you. I'm going to take 40. You know, you figure out the 10-year plan. That's beyond my ability. But I think life is just project management and you need to have realistic timelines and you need to have milestones that you can pursue with discipline, order, and intensity. Just because I have a 20-year plan doesn't mean I don't have milestones every two months or four months or six months. You start every project. What is your goal? And you work your way back and you put the milestones going backwards and you work them forwards. But the key is, you know, again, you need to have those milestones to hold yourself accountable and you pursue those milestones with order and intensity. And before you know it, you'll have achieved your goal. I look at every movie this way. Movies are really hard to make. Like, it's not easy. Making a movie is a really challenging thing. Mel Gibson said, you know, it's, you know, hitting a baseball, they say a major league fastball pitch is the hardest thing to do in sports. I think producing a movie is the hardest thing to do in business. And then, you know, the average film from script to screen takes six years. The average script takes six years. That's 12 years. The average film takes 12 years to complete. And you get lost in it. Even when you make a film, now you have to get distribution, you know. Then you get theatrical distribution. Now you have to figure out VOD, video on demand. And it almost seems, it almost seems never ending. But then next thing you know, like Bella, that was years and years of our life. And it seemed like it was forever. And you constantly feel like you're failing, but you're failing forward. Then you look back, and now it was 20 years ago, almost, that we released Bella. But when you're in the middle of it, it seems like it's an eternity to accomplish and complete. Now, there's so many crises in the world right now. You've, of course, been involved in Gaza as well. There's a war going on there. There's a Ukraine-Russia war. Now we have riots in Los Angeles and spreading to other areas. You're in the middle of all of this. You're involved, and you're helping, rescuing people. What motivates you every day to keep doing your work? What is it, the one factor that makes you keep going? I'll say what we look to do. You know, you have to, how do I organize my time? And I look to do those things I just don't think anyone else will do. So, what is, what needs to be done that isn't being done? And then when the large organizations with big budgets, you know, the bigger the organization, the more stakeholders. And the more stakeholders you have, the bigger the budgets. They become risk-averse. And I understand that, and there's a lot for them to do. But what we do is we come in in the midst of the chaos. And, for example, I was really hoping large organizations would arrive in Afghanistan. They just never did. They did in Ukraine. So, the days after the war started in Ukraine, days, weeks, and months, we were very much involved. We had insulin trucks going around delivering insulin all over the country. We were really involved in evacuating people to the west from the east, especially orphans. We were involved in helping to fund and launch Tip of the Spear Landmine Removal as a separate organization to do its work in landmine removal. And then the large organizations came, and the funding came. Not as quick as you would hope. And it was a little startling to me how long it took large organizations to really engage in Ukraine, but they did. So, we just look at, you know, where is it challenging? You know, in those Japanese vases where they pour the gold into the cracks. We like to be the gold in the cracks. And the sooner we can leave, the better, you know. We hope large organizations... Because it means the crisis is coming to an end. For example, now we're in Gaza. Just yesterday, we provided hot meals to every Christian in Gaza. We also have 2,800 hot meals a day we've been doing for the past week for orphans. And a lot of folks in Gaza are saying they really want to help VPP be a part of the reconstruction. I said, you won't need VPP for that. You know, the governments of the world will arrive, and the large organizations will arrive, and there'll be all the money in the world. And we're not going to be needed. But we'll be needed somewhere else. You know, it's kind of... Not to romanticize our work too much, but, you know, if you remember the old cowboy TV show, The Lone Ranger. We just like to ride off, you know. Bye. And I always tell them, the sooner I never have to see you again, the better for you. You know, I hope for your sake, we get to part ways soon. But so that's what we look to do. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate all the work you do, and your motivation, and your courage to do all this work. Any concluding thoughts for our audience? Well, no. I would just say this about your network and the work that you do. You seem to have the instinct for ordering your influence in the service of vulnerable communities. So we're doing the same work. And so I just really, I really thank you for that. Because I always oftentimes will feel alone in the work that we do. But I know that I'm not. I can sit down and look at all the donors that support us, and all the news outlets that support us. But you are always there, ordered in the service of the vulnerable, saying the hard thing when it's hard. And that's important. So just thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you for watching another episode of Bay Area Innovators. If you enjoyed this episode, and you know someone who should be on our show, please send us an email at sfbay.epochtimes.com. We would love to hear from you. Thank you, and see you next week.