Under the Tree: A Seminar on Freedom with Bill Ayers

Just as the US Department of Defense should change its name back to the more accurate and honest War Department—its true function and its title from 1789 until 1947 when it morphed into the National Military Establishment (NME), and then, with mad-help from a PR offensive in 1949, the DoD—state and city organizations with names such as “child welfare” and “family services” should stop air-brushing their true functions—the Departments of Family Policing. We’re joined in conversation today with Erin Miles Cloud, the mother of two dazzling kids, a civil rights attorney, and co-editor of a new book from  Haymarket called  How to End Family Policing: From outrage to action. 

The severe challenges and unforeseen possibilities facing humanity today cry out for clarity. We need it all: poetry and politics, art and the people’s army, agitation and organization, theory and practice, deep study and sustained action, joy and justice, both the moments of quiet contemplation and the times of swift, sharp thrusts, dreams as well as deeds. We’re delighted to be joined from Santiago, Chile by Vijay Prashad, a preeminent Marxist theorist and activist intellectual. His work continues the initiative of the Tricontinental Conference in Cuba which brought together revolutionary movements from Africa, Asia and Latin America. Today Vijay is the executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, and an advisory board member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. Vijay is refreshingly dialectical in his thinking and writing—witness a dangerous mind in ongoing argument with itself.

In 1922 a commission made up of prominent citizens—six Black men and six white men appointed by the governor of Illinois—issued a report about the 1919 Race Riot entitled The Negro in Chicago: A Study on Race Relations and a Race Riot. Eve Ewing’s dazzling poetry collection, 1919, excerpts small bits from the report as epigraphs for each poem, comments like “…the presence of Negroes in large  numbers in our great cities is not a menace in itself,” and “the sentiment was expressed that Negro invasion of the district was the worst calamity that had struck the city since the Great Fire.” Today the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project (CRR19) aims to ignite conversations about white supremacy in Chicago and around the country and the world. Formally launched on the 100th anniversary of the riot, CRR19 remembers the worst incident of racial violence in the city’s history, and the events that swept the city and set the framework for racial segregation to this very day. We’re joined by Franklin Cosey Gay and Peter Cole, co-directors of CRR19 on the eve of their annual commemoration and slow-rolling south-side bike tour. 

If you were ever an enthusiastic reader of “Calvin and Hobbes,” “Peanuts,” “Blondie,” “Doonesbury,” or the “Boondocks,” you have a treat coming your way: “Mafalda,” a six-year-old comic book character created by the artist Quino in Argentina, is now available in English in a dazzling translation by Frank Wynne. Mafalda is a precocious kid—Frank describes her as “six going on sixty”—who observes the world around her with fresh eyes, and then asks the kind of queer questions that the grown-ups in her life can’t or won’t answer. Mafalda’s concerns focus on humanity and world peace, and her innocence shines a bright light on the conflict between what adults claim to value, and how they actually live. Think of her as a socialist “Nancy.”  We’re joined from London by Frank Wynne, a former Chair of the Judging Panel of the International Booker Prize and the award-winning author, translator, and editor of two major anthologies, Found in Translation: 100 of the finest stories every translated, and QUEER: LGBTQ Writing from Ancient Times to Yesterday.

Big time college sports have distorted the intellectual mission of colleges and universities for decades—and we’re in a particularly volatile period as athletes organize themselves into unions and demand a share of the riches that they’ve created with their labor, as well as the fashioning of a system that makes intercollegiate athletics increasingly indistinguishable from professional sports. The “Transfer Portal,” the “Name/Image/Likeness” deals that athletes sign with third parties, and now direct payments to athletes on top of their scholarships (which typically cover tuition, housing, and health care) create a Brave New World for universities, perhaps a kind of crossing-the-Rubicon moment. We’re joined by Rus Bradburd, a writer who spent 14 seasons coaching college basketball, followed by16 years as a university professor, in conversation about his subversive and hilarious novel, Big Time, as well as the state of the field.

The mass incarceration system has been dubbed “the new Jim Crow”—there are now more Black men in prison or on probation or parole than there were living in bondage as chattel slaves in 1850. There are significantly more people caught up in the system of incarceration and supervision in America today—over six million—than inhabited Stalin’s gulag at its height. And while the United States constitutes less than 5 percent of the world’s people, it holds over 25 percent of the world’s combined prison population. There’s more, of course, but you get the idea—the tentacles of the criminal legal system touch us all, coming down with especially lethal force against poor and marginalized people who are increasingly deemed disposable in the eyes of the powerful. We’re joined in conversation with Patrick Hoffman, a writer and private investigator based in Brooklyn whose latest novel, Friends Helping Friends, is a dazzling triller and a portrait of two young men living on the borderland of society. Their unwanted contact with a corrupt legal system drags them into a frightening brush with a white nationalist group that tests the redemptive power of friendship.

Thomas Jefferson was the masterly author of the ringing and rousing Declaration of Independence as well as a human trafficker and serial rapist. The second president  embodies James Baldwin’s observation that “American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.” The US is a settler-colonial colossus whose founders committed one of the most massive genocides in the history of the world—violence in the service of wealth accumulation has been a national calling card from the start. It’s also the birthplace of Harriett Tubman, John Brown, Geronimo, Malcolm X, Grace Lee Boggs, and generations of freedom-fighters. The wealth and the power of the US derives from armed robbery, serial murder, stolen land, and forced labor—that’s legacy. And we cannot be free without facing the complexity and the hard truth. We’re joined in conversation with Jesse Hagopian, one of the most brilliant contemporary voices in education, and author, most recently, of Teach Truth : The Struggle for Antiracist Education, an essential text for these troubled times.

The Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE) led by Karen Lewis, a charismatic high school chemistry teacher, was elected to lead the Chicago Teachers Union in 2010.  Lewis was a brilliant, transformational labor leader, and CORE developed a forceful form of social justice union organizing they called “organizing for the common good.” They foregrounded the best interests of the child, and they insisted on raising issues beyond wages and benefits, standing up for the arts, libraries, and nurses in every school as well as for the rights of families and the broader community. Among CORE’s early initiatives were starting a research department, and moving staff away from exclusively servicing the contract toward ongoing organizing of parents, community members, and teachers together. We’re joined by Elizabeth Todd-Breland, an Associate Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and author of both the award winning A Political Education: Black Politics and EducationReform in Chicago Since the 1960s and the recently released memoir, I Didn’t Come Here to Lie,  written with the late Karen Lewis and published by Haymarket Press.

Solidarity takes on many forms but for over four decades one vivid example rose out of a design and print studio in Havana, Cuba. Born in 1966 out of the Tricontinental Conference the Organization of Solidarity of the People of Asia, Africa, and Latin America (Organización de Solidaridad de los Pueblos de Asia, África y América Latina — OSPAAAL) strove to unite liberation movements across the three continents. The Tricontinental magazine and the colorful, multi-lingual posters inserted within became legendary and covered the walls of activists and revolutionaries around the world. Inspired by the intersection of graphic design and political solidarity, the Brooklyn-based Interference Archive hosted an retrospective exhibit of the work of OSPAAAL. Now, publishers Common Notions have released an astonishing and beautiful new book not only celebrating the legacy but inviting us all to explore how we can contribute to this vital work of moving towards social transformation. We’re joined in conversation by two of the editors of the book Armed by Design: Posters and Publications of Cuba’s OSPAAAL, Lani Hanna and Josh MacPhee.

Dave Zirin (“Edge of Sports;” and Under the Tree, Episode #58 ) gave a delightful and provocative talk at a conference a few years ago called “Will There Be Sports Under Socialism?” The short answer—of course!—human beings have played games and sports from the beginning, and there’s no stopping us. But capitalism has distorted and mangled our natural desire and capacity to play in its relentless drive for profit. An ongoing case-in-point is the Olympic Games, flying under the noble banner of internationalism while on the ground exploiting athletes and workers, destroying host communities, increasing militarism, and more. Dave introduced us to Jules Boykoff and the movement to defend local communities against the steam-roller that is the 2028 Los Angeles games. Jules is an academic, author, activist and former professional soccer player whose writing focuses on the politics of the Olympics, social movements, the suppression of dissent, and the role of the mass media in US politics, especially regarding coverage of climate change. He is part of the coalition of community organizations (LA Tenants Union, Black Lives Matter, Sunrise Movement, DSA) founded in 2017 to oppose staging the 2028 Summer Olympics, and the author of  NOlympians: Inside the Fight Against Capitalist Mega-Sports in Los Angeles, Tokyo and Beyond..