Under the Tree: A Seminar on Freedom with Bill Ayers
Under the Tree with Bill Ayers
“Under the Tree” is a new podcast that focuses on freedom—a complex, layered, dynamic, and often contradictory idea—and takes you on a journey each week to fundamentally reimagine how we can bring freedom and liberation to life in relation to schools and schooling, equality and justice, and learning to live together in peace.
Our podcast opens a crawl-space, a fugitive field and firmament where we can both explore our wildest freedom dreams, and organize for a liberating insurgency. "Under the Tree" is a seminar, and it runs the gamut from current events to the arts, from history lessons to scientific inquiries, and from essential readings to frequent guest speakers.
We’re in the midst of the largest social uprising in US history—and what better time to dive headfirst into the wreckage, figuring out as we go how to support the rebellion, name it, and work together to realize its most radical possibilities—and to reach its farthest horizons?
Our podcast opens a crawl-space, a fugitive field and firmament where we can both explore our wildest freedom dreams, and organize for a liberating insurgency. "Under the Tree" is a seminar, and it runs the gamut from current events to the arts, from history lessons to scientific inquiries, and from essential readings to frequent guest speakers.
We’re in the midst of the largest social uprising in US history—and what better time to dive headfirst into the wreckage, figuring out as we go how to support the rebellion, name it, and work together to realize its most radical possibilities—and to reach its farthest horizons?
Episodes
Mentioned books
Oct 19, 2022 • 57min
Teach the Children Well: Ordinary Terrible Things with Anastasia Higginbotham
We want our children to face the world fearlessly, but we also want them to be careful. We want them to embrace all the joy and ecstasy life has to offer them, and also to be aware of the unnecessary suffering human beings endure. We want our children to know the truth, and we want to protect them from the horrors. We talk about all of this and more with Anastasia Higginbotham, author, artist, and activist who created the Ordinary Terrible Things children’s book series. Higginbotham collages her books by hand, and she helps us make meaning out of whatever broken, ragged, unraveling life circumstances we face.
Oct 5, 2022 • 57min
Playing Through Fire with Dave Zirin
We’re joined in conversation with Dave Zirin, the sports editor for the Nation magazine and the creator of the blog, the Edge of Sports. Dave is a ground-breaking sportswriter who brings radical politics, deep critical analysis, and side-splitting humor to a field sorely lacking all three qualities. The author or co-author of a dozen books, including What’s My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States; Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics, and Promise of Sports, and A People’s History of Sports in the United States, Dave is also a long-distance runner in the ongoing fight for more democracy, more justice, more freedom.
Sep 21, 2022 • 1h 7min
Freedom Dreams
Love and imagination, potentially the most powerful weapons in the arsenal of the oppressed, the marginalized, and the exploited, are frequently unappreciated, too often underutilized—and yet still within reach and entirely available. Robin D.G. Kelley foregrounds love, imagination, and generosity in all of his work, including the groundbreaking Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, an original history of Black radicalism and a powerful vision of a revolutionary future. Kelley describes himself as a "Marxist surrealist feminist who is not just anti something, but pro-emancipation, pro-liberation.” We met up with Robin Kelley recently at the Socialism 2022 conference in Chicago where we released our radical imaginations in a generative and wide-ranging conversation.
Sep 7, 2022 • 1h
Portraits of Freedom
What history do you stand on? What future do you stand for? Robert Shetterly’s dazzling series of portraits—“Americans Who Tell the Truth”—cuts through the cotton wool that entangles us, shakes us awake from the deep American sleep of denial, and invites us to move beyond the United States of Amnesia. Here are the peace-makers and the freedom fighters, the dissidents and dissenters, the loving rebels and the justice-seeking radicals—a gathering of citizens from a country that does not yet exist. These are our people, this is a powerful legacy we can all hope to build on. Robert Shetterly joins us to discuss the brilliant work and steady activism of Americans Who Tell the Truth.
Aug 24, 2022 • 45min
With Love at the Center
More than a destination, freedom is a constant struggle, a verb as well as a noun. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous assertion that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice may be true, but only if, as he demonstrated with his entire being, we organize and fight to make it so. We’re honored to be joined in conversation with Heather Booth, a Civil Rights pioneer, peace and justice activist, feminist icon, and legendary community organizer. She was an early leader of Students for a Democratic Society, participated in Freedom Summer in Mississippi in 1964, and was one of the founders of the pioneering clandestine abortion network, the Janes. We talk about Organizing 101, what it takes to commit to the Freedom Struggle for the long haul, and why our organizing has to be built on a moral vision—“with love at the center.”
Aug 10, 2022 • 46min
Mother Country Radicals
We are impatient with radicals who summon up the imagined “good old days” when every campaign was inspired and every action a success—all of it wrapped in the gauzy glow of nostalgia. What could be more depressing than longing for a ship that’s already left the shore. But there are occasions when a long and deep look backward can give us courage and vision to face forward, perhaps most productively when our guide is a talented artist. Zayd Ayers Dohrn is the creator and host of one of the most listened to podcasts of 2022, Mother Country Radicals, a 10-episode series from Crooked Media that won the award for Best Audio Storytelling at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival in New York. He is a playwright, professor, and director of the MFA in Writing for Screen and Stage in the Department of Radio/Television/Film at Northwestern University.
Jul 27, 2022 • 45min
The Threads of Abolition (part 2)
Picking up where we left off in our last episode, we visit with the incomparable Dorothy Burge, activist, story-teller, educator, art-maker, quilter extraordinaire—and a pillar of the abolitionist movement. Mama Dorothy sat down with us at the DePaul Art Museum in Chicago a few days before she gave the key-note address at the Stitch-by-Stitch Conference. Our conversation included a journey through the current exhibition, Remaking the Exceptional: Tea, Torture, and Reparations/ Chicago to Guantánamo, which features several pieces by Ms. Burge. Visit our our website: underthetreepod.com for Mama Dorothy's audio/video tour of some of the exhibit. Music by Tom Morello.
Jul 13, 2022 • 56min
Stitch by Stitch: The Threads of Abolition
Stitch by Stitch is a gathering of artists and activists, quilters and abolitionists to be held in Chicago on July 15, 16, and 17. We’re honored to sit down with two of the Stitch organizers—Dr. Sharbreon Plummer, author of Diasporic Threads: Black Women, Fiber, and Textiles, and Rachel Wallis, an instructor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago—for a wide-ranging conversation about craftivism, building communities of resistance, and creating spaces to release the radical imagination. Contact them at stitchingabolition.com or stitchingabolition@gmail.com.Transition music from Dr. Sparkles’ song Great Bus Journeys of the West Midlands Pt 2 from the album “The War on Drugs.” © License. Disclaimer. Additional music from Gus O'Connor. And check out our website https://underthetreepod.com/
Jun 29, 2022 • 1h 11min
Fight/Build! Maroon Spaces and Real Black Utopias
We take a turn toward worker cooperatives in this episode, and what is variously called the solidarity economy, community wealth-building, or economic democracy. We explore the power of learning participatory democracy through struggle and collective action with a brilliant scholar/activist/teacher and guide, Stacey Sutton, an Associate Professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Policy, and Director of Applied Research and Strategic Partnerships at UIC’s Social Justice Initiative.Transition music from Dr. Sparkles’ song Great Bus Journeys of the West Midlands Pt 2 from the album “The War on Drugs.” © License. Disclaimer. Additional music from Gus O'Connor.
Jun 15, 2022 • 40min
Searching for the Ghost of John Brown
For this special episode we change things up a bit and journey to the high peaks of the Adirondack Mountains, to the town of North Elba, and to the home and final resting place of the abolitionist John Brown. We come to celebrate one of the greatest freedom fighters in US history, to honor his legacy, and to pledge our allegiance to the cause of Black Freedom and human liberation. This year—the centennial celebration of John Brown Day—we meet up with our friend and comrade Tom Morello and his family, and Bernardine Dohrn presents him with the Spirit of John Brown Freedom Award from the activist group, John Brown Lives!Check out our social media for pictures and videos of the event. Transitional music by Gus O'Connor.
