Under the Tree: A Seminar on Freedom with Bill Ayers

None of us wants to be labeled as one-dimensional and shunted off to a musty museum to be put on a shelf, and so we resist curation. On the other hand, we are each the collector of our own memories, our own struggles, our own lives, our own rebellions and resistances—we can and should curate resistance. We are joined in conversation by the intrepid educator, activist, and radical social critic Therese Quinn, Director of Museum and Exhibition Studies, and Affiliated Faculty with Gender and Women’s Studies and Curriculum Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She coedits the Teachers College Press Series, Teaching for Social Justice, and is the author of several books including School: Questions About Museums, Culture and Justice to Explore in Your Classroom, and Flaunt It! Queers Organizing for Public Education.

We have a choice: we can save the planet, and life on Earth, or we can save racial capitalism, white supremacy, extraction and exploitation. Which will it be? We’re joined in conversation with Peggy Shepard, an activist and organizer, a community educator and a leading figure in the fight for environmental justice. She is the founder and director of WE ACT for Environmental Justice, a nonprofit environmental justice organization based in Harlem.

The US is a rich country with a shitty health care system. What went wrong? The short answer: capitalism. Good medicine at its heart requires trust and an assumption of honesty and good intentions; the market requires nothing more nor less than profits for shareholders. The corporate capitalist capture of health care destroys the natural underpinnings of care and compassion. We’re joined today by Howard Waitzkin, a primary care physician and sociologist who has taught social medicine at a wide range of clinics, colleges, and universities, including the United Farm Workers Clinic in Salinas, California; La Clínica de la Raza in Oakland; Stanford University; Massachusetts General Hospital; and the University of California.

We’re excited to be joined in conversation with Ash-Lee Woodard-Henderson, an activist and organizer, extraordinarily innovative educator, an intensely forward thinker and a powerful doer, and for several years now, co-executive director of the Highlander Research and Education Center, one of the most storied social justice and activist centers in the country. The pedagogy employed at Highlander is the classic Freedom School approach: problem-posing and question-asking, from the people and to the people.

The Indian novelist Arundhati Roy says, “The trouble is that once you see it, you can’t un-see it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing becomes as political an act as speaking out. Either way, you’re accountable.” And implicated. Our guest today is Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of the classic An Indigenous People’s History of the United States, whose lifework has been an ongoing project to shake us awake, to rouse us from the deep, deep American sleep of denial, to invite us to face history in all its glory and horror.

The predatory heart of capitalism is the rage to accumulate, to expand, and to overrun all boundaries. Racial capitalism demands growth— unleashed and unchecked—but the Earth objects. Violence and aggression are the inevitable accomplices of predation, and when the casualties of cataclysmic capitalist climate collapse resist—as they inevitably will—they are labeled “illegal aliens,” “lawbreakers,” “terrorists,” and “fanatics.” We’re joined today by Eleanor Stein and Jeff Jones, two brilliant freedom fighters and anti-racist organizers whose central work focuses on environmental justice.

There’s a vast delusional gulf between the world as it is, and the world as each one of us thinks it is. I’m not being negative or accusatory, but simply stating the obvious: here we go, mistaking our self-constructed little world for the whole wide world. If you believe emphatically enough that the world of your perception and mental construction is in fact the whole wide world, and if you’re willing to act with full force upon that misperception—well, god help us all. Arrogance and self-righteousness, bossiness and obnoxiousness, authoritarianism, autocracy, fascism, and more. What to do? We start by recognizing the obstacle, and continuing to wonder, reflect, discuss, debate, and keep on wondering. We can talk to strangers, and assume that everyone we meet is a three-dimensional creature, just like ourselves. We can learn to listen to other voices, and we can attune ourselves to ambiguity, doubt, skepticism, agnosticism, and uncertainty—always willing to question, and question, and then question some more. To help us along the way, we’re joined in conversation by two dazzling teachers, writers, activists, and Oral Historians, Cliff Mayotte and Claire Kiefer from Voice of Witness, editors of Say it Forward: A Guide to Social Justice Storytelling.

The capacity to see the world as if it could be otherwise unleashes yearning and liberates desire—we are freed (or condemned) to run riot. Our lively imaginations can be rowdy, and can tend toward disruption and subversion—opening up alternatives always calls the status quo into question. Suddenly the taken-for-granted becomes a choice and not an echo, an option and no longer a habit or a life (death) sentence. The seeds of discontent are sown. I’m delighted to be joined today by adrienne maree brown, women's rights activist and black feminist based in Detroit. adrienne is the author of Emergent Strategy and Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, and an editor of the Octavia Butler Strategic Reader, and Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements.

Sometimes we ask, What can one person do? The first step is to stop being one person. Move away from “me,” and take steps toward creating a “we.” From one to two, from two to three, step-by-step toward an irresistible movement for justice and peace, powered by love—the organizer’s credo. We’re honored to be joined by Mariame Kaba, educator and legendary abolitionist organizer who’s been building social movements for racial, gender and transformative justice for years. The founder of Project Nia, author of Prison Culture, the popular blog that shines a bright light into the carceral state and the punishment bureaucracy, her recently released book, We Do This ’Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice, is a powerful guide to justice organizing and abolitionist politics.

The stories people tell and share can become powerful tools against propaganda, political dogma, and all manner of impositions and stereotypes. Seeking honesty and authenticity in stories means oral historians become attuned, to contradiction—to disagreements, silences, negation, denials, inconsistencies, confusion, challenges, turmoil, puzzlement, commotion, ambiguities, paradoxes, disputes, and uncertainty. Oral historians (like teachers) dive head-first into every kind of muddle, the wide, wild world of human experience. We’re profoundly pleased to be joined in dialogue with Adam Bush, activist and organizer, oral historian and teacher extraordinaire, co-founder and provost of an innovative college that works both inside and outside carceral spaces to ensure that all adult learners are valued as scholar-practitioners, and have a pathway to access a Bachelor's degree.