Under the Tree: A Seminar on Freedom with Bill Ayers

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..

The Invisible Institute—with its evocative and mysterious name—exists in the proud tradition of “guerrilla journalism,” a difficult to define or pigeon-hole practice of human rights inquiry and documentation. This dazzling collection of journalists, archivists, writers, thinkers, organic intellectuals-without-portfolio, organizers, activists, data analysts and other collaborators pioneer a form of journalism based on long-term relationship-building, deep inquiry, and on-going interrogation of our shared social/political world. They are  investigative reporters, multimedia storytellers, human rights champions, and facilitators of difficult public conversations. The Invisible Institute has won two Pulitzer Prizes, and produced a film that was a finalist for a short documentary Academy Award. They also won a landmark court decision, Kalven v. Chicago, in 2014 establishing that in Illinois police misconduct files are public information. We’re joined by two brilliant members of the Invisible Institute team, Maira Khwaja, Director of Public Strategy, and Trina Reynolds-Tyler, Director of Data.

Thousands of student visas cancelled by the government! Legal residents snatched off the streets by masked agents, detained and deported! Federal research grants to universities scrapped! The government asserting a special right to oversee academic departments and curriculum decisions!The frequency of events like these across the country are dizzying, and the pace is accelerating. Academic freedom is in the cross-hairs. The First Amendment says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”Academic freedom falls within that scope, but goes far beyond: academic freedom is the right to interrogate the world, the right to teach, and the right to learn. Academic freedom is the right to think at all. We’re joined by Katherine Franke, renowned law professor, courageous scholar, and human rights champion who has endured a relentless campaign of threat and harassment because of her intrepid support of Palestinian rights.

In this engaging discussion, Anita Say Chan, a feminist and decolonial scholar, dives into the complex intersections of big data and eugenics. She highlights the historical roots of data practices that echo harmful ideologies, urging a shift to community-centered approaches. Anita critiques tech billionaires' alignment with oppressive agendas while advocating for justice-driven alternatives. She also emphasizes the limitations of statistics in capturing individual dignity, promoting empathy over data in our quest for a more inclusive society.

What is your North Star? What are you fighting for, and what are you struggling to overcome, or leave behind? The goal is not a precise and detailed roadmap—that way lies dogma, orthodoxy, and worse—but rather a vision and a hope with which to gauge and partially frame our work in the here and now. The great Uruguay revolutionary, Edwardo Galeano, tells a story of being confronted by a person accusing him of being a utopian, and asking contemptuously, “What good is Utopia?” Galeano says, “It’s true that if I walk 2 steps toward Utopia, Utopia walks 2 steps away, and if I walk 10 steps toward her, she walks 10 steps away. So what good is Utopia?” His reply: “It’s good for walking.” We’re joined in conversation by M.E. O’Brien and Eman Abdelhadi, authors of Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune 2052-2072, a novel that is so imaginative, so challenging, and so surprising that it reorders our conception of what’s possible to write—and to think.

When a popular leader emerges from the whirlwind of a struggle for justice, power always stands in opposition—ignoring the rising demands where possible, ridiculing and coopting, and eventually fighting with everything in their arsenal. When the popular leader is gone—murdered or passed on—power makes them into a mythical hero while simultaneously working furiously to strip away the radical content that energized and guided the struggle. Joining us this week are Jeanne Theoharis and Erik Wallenberg, one of Pilsen Community Book’s worker owners who co-authored a dazzling guide to Chicago’s Black Freedom Struggle which appeared in The Chicago Tribune. Jeanne is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College, and author of the bestselling book The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, and the new King of the North: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Life of Struggle Outside the South (The New Press). 

James (Jimmy) Soto was released from Stateville Prison in November, 2023, after suffering 42 years and 2 months in custody for a crime he did not commit. A month before his release he had received his bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University. He and his co-defendant, Tyrone Ayala, also exonerated, were the longest serving wrongfully convicted people in Illinois history. At our Homecoming Party for Jimmy several men toasted him, and thanked him for the legal research he did as a jailhouse lawyer for them while inside. Knowing that Jimmy was planning to pursue a law degree, one of his compatriots said, “I saw what this brother did with a yellow pad and a pencil, now with a law degree, Look Out!” After his release, Soto said he felt “elated” but also full of “righteous anger…It should not have taken 42 years for this to happen.” A talented writer, artist, public speaker, and thinker, Jimmy Soto is a Justice Fellow at Beyond Prisons at the University of Chicago, and a paralegal at Northwestern School of Law.