Under the Tree: A Seminar on Freedom with Bill Ayers

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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/

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.

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.

Everything’s in motion, everything in flux, nothing and no one stays the same: the young become the old, stories get retold, and the blowtorch of history illuminates the path ahead. That’s the way of time—the center cannot hold, and everything that is solid melts into air. I pause and sit down with my friend and comrade Wayne Au to talk about dialectics, contradiction, and the meaning of freedom. Dr. Au is a professor in the School of Educational Studies at the University of Washington Bothell, a scholar/activist, and a deeply engaged social justice organizer. Wayne is an editor at my favorite teaching magazine, Rethinking Schools, and the author of A Marxist Education: Learning to Change the World, an essential text for understanding the mess we’re in, and the possibilities before us.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 One Man Book's song Native Ocean© Disclaimer and Blue Sky Moon's song Burnt Utopia.© Disclaimer License and Lobo Loco's song Country Dream Sequence© Disclaimer License

I remember when in 2003 Ruth Simmons, the first Black president of an Ivy League school, launched an investigation into Brown University’s toxic ties to slavery. That illuminating and inspiring effort began with questions: What do we know? Who is visible in history? What stories are missing or suppressed? What is owed? Harvard just released a report revealing its own links to America’s original sin—one illuminating contrast is the names of the wealthy and the powerful (Increase Mather, Governor John Winthrop) alongside the human beings they enslaved who bore a single name or no name at all:  Juba, Cesar, Venus, “The Moor.” What are their stories? What wisdom and richness is denied? Tara Betts, thinker and creator, mentor and teacher, author of  the poetry collections Arc & Hue, Break the Habit, and the forthcoming Refuse to Disappear, joins me Under the Tree for a conversation about poetry, teaching, and the need for radical repair in this urgent moment.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.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child requires governments to adopt laws, policies, and practices that protect the rights of children and enhance their healthy development. The Convention was adopted by the United Nations on November 20, 1989, signed by the ambassador to the UN on behalf of the United States in February, 1995, and has languished ever since—no US president has submitted the treaty to the Senate for its advice and consent. The US stands virtually alone in its failure to ratify the convention, objecting, among other things, to the prohibition against sentencing young people to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for crimes committed before the age of 18—the US is the only country in the world that still allows such sentencing. A tireless campaigner for children’s rights and the fair sentencing of youth, Xavier McElrath-Bey Co-Executive Director of the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth (CFSY) and co-founder of the Incarcerated Children’s Advocacy Network (ICAN), joins me in conversation Under the Tree.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 One Man Book's song Native Ocean© Disclaimer and Blue Sky Moon's song Burnt Utopia.© Disclaimer License.