[1] At the age of 13, Jones and his friend Lloyd Newman created a radio documentary for NPR titled Ghetto Life 101.

[2] Jones was contacted by David Isay, who was producing a piece on poverty for Chicago Public Radio station WBEZ.

[5] The two documentaries and further footage from when Jones and Newman were nearing high school graduation were condensed into a book published in 1997 titled Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago.

[5] He studied criminology at Florida State University where he became a member of Kappa Alpha Psi in the Spring of 1998 before transferring to Barat College in Lake Forest, Illinois in 2001.

He ran against Republican Mark Kirk, Democrat Alexi Giannoulias, and Libertarian Mike Labno in the general election in November 2010.

[9] A June survey made by Public Policy Polling saw Jones picking up 14% of the vote[10] behind Mark Kirk's 30% and Alexi Giannoulias with 31%.

[14] Jones has called for the immediate ratification of UNICEF's Convention on the Rights of the Child, a ban on land mines and complete nuclear disarmament.

[16] He has been critical of credit default swaps, derivatives trading and the financial industry as a whole, saying "a bunch of guys on Wall Street have done more to devastate the white community than any black man ever could.