Under the Tree: A Seminar on Freedom with Bill Ayers

Artists ask no one’s permission to interrogate the world, and the art of teaching embraces that same ethic. Art can shock us into new awarenesses, challenge cliche, dogma, orthodoxy, and received wisdom from every corner. Good teaching can do the same. Art can allow fresh and startling winds to blow as it ignites our freedom dreams—classrooms as well. We’re witnessing now a sustained and relentless attack on freedom in real time, an attack manufactured by the powerful, but carried out by a range of people deploying a broad assortment of tactics. And make no mistake: the struggle is not about the freedom to read this or that book, to embrace this or that idea, to choose this or that way to live a life. The fundamental fight is for the right to think at all, which is at risk. Calling all artists, calling all teachers, as we dive into a conversation about art and teaching and possibility with the legendary (to me) comix artist Ryan Alexander-Tanner, and launch ourselves onto a journey of discovery and surprise. Check it out.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 vast US military machine is capable of demolishing governments and countries—as it has shown recently in Libya and Yemen and Iraq—but it is incapable of bringing peace or progress or prosperity to the conquered. Afghanistan is the latest US-built catastrophe, a classic imperial adventure—the architects will claim that this time was unique, that they came only to civilize and enlighten (to “save the women and the girls” in this case), that they merely wanted to install democracy, and that the death and destruction were an unintended and unhappy by-product. It’s all demonstrably false. Apologists of every stripe claim that the US has the right (even the duty) to invade other countries at will—“We are the exceptional nation.” The arrogance and the assumed superiority are breath-taking. We’re joined today by Timmy Chau, a Chicago-based organizer, lawyer, and facilitator whose work challenges all forms of militarism, policing, and imprisonment. He is Co-Director of the Prison / Neighborhood Arts and Education Project (PNAP) and Co-Founder of Dissenters, a new national youth-led anti-war organization.  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.  

Malik Alim, 28-years-old, an inspirational organizer and activist, a spark of energy and hope for me and countless others, died in a dreadful accident on August 20, 2021, and we’ve been grieving this tragedy ever since—an unfathomable loss to his family, to our community and to the world. With Malik’s death, we suspended Under the Tree, and now, after several months and with the encouragement of his partner, Kristiana Colon, and with the wise guidance and support of Damon Williams and Daniel Kisslinger from AirGo, we’re re-launching. Today’s Episode—# 42—is called TRANSITION, and it’s devoted entirely to remembering Malik. And FYI, you can hear Malik Alim on most Episodes of the pod, but Episode # 38 (“Haiti on my Mind”) is one that we co-authored, and the inspiration for a lot of planning, including future Episodes and a trip to Haiti, and Episode # 15 (“Revolution is a Curatorial Act”) features Kristiana Rae Colon.Stay tuned over the next few months for new episodes of Under the Tree!

Optimists and pessimists share a fundamental orientation: they are determinists, certain that thing will turn out well (or horribly). Because I have no idea how things will turn out (and neither does anyone else), or even what’s next, I choose hope as a politics, hope as a state of mind—I get up each morning with my mind set on freedom, pound away against injustice, and end the evening wishing I’d done more. Remember, the day before every revolution, it was deemed impossible, and the day after, it’s made to seem inevitable. We’re joined in conversation by Dima Khalidi, a brilliant lawyer, radical thinker, and founding director of Palestine Legal, who engages the struggle for Palestinian freedom against a hard, but not impenetrable, wall of racism and reaction.

When fascism gained power in Italy, two processes unfolded simultaneously: the generalized crisis and crumbling of authority, the loss of the ability to lead through consent, as well as a movement of people away from old ideologies, opening to new and unexpected horizons. It was a moment of  political “in-betweenness”—the communist leader Antonio Gramsci wrote from prison that, “The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.” We’re joined by Joel Westheimer an inspiring thinker and teacher whose parents escaped Nazi Germany, and who continually asks his students and all of us to consider how to educate our children for the common good, pointedly in his book What Kind of Citizen?

Each of us—and every human being—should expect and demand decent standards of action concerning freedom and justice from all institutions, including schools, and from all earthly powers. It’s our duty to testify against, to disrupt, to undermine, and, when possible, to overthrow cruel systems in the interest of creating something better.  We’re joined by Jay Gillen, a visionary, loving, and courageous teacher, author of Educating for Insurgency and The Power in the Room, to explore the many ways we might create the crawl spaces and insurrectionary infrastructure for the struggles ahead.In the interview, Jay references the work of Robert Moses and how it has influenced his own trajectory and pedagogy. Sadly, Bob Moses passed away just a couple days ago. We encourage our listeners to look into his life and story, and we dedicate this episode to his legacy.

The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804)— the largest slave revolt since Spartacus’ unsuccessful insurrection against the Romans in 72 BC—was one of the greatest revolutions in world history, and the only successful slave uprising leading to the establishment of a free state governed by non-whites and formerly captive workers. Led by Toussaint Louverture, formerly enslaved himself, the Haitian Revolution struck fear and rage among the slavers, white supremacists, and imperial masters, even as it heartened and inspired freedom-loving peoples everywhere. The counter revolution continues, and we are  honored to be joined in a wide-ranging conversation by Walter Riley, a civil rights attorney in Oakland California, winner of the National Lawyers Guild’s Champion of Justice Award, and a founder of  Haiti Emergency Relief.

Teachers live each day stretched in tension and suspended in contention: being and becoming, here and elsewhere; one foot planted firmly in the mud and muck of the world as it is, the other foot striding toward a world that could be or should be, but is not yet. Students arrive with questions: Who am I in the world? What are my choices and my chances? What does it mean to be human in the 21st Century? Good teachers dive into the contradictions, and make their classrooms generative sites of authentic engagement. Our guest today is the brilliant teaching artist and San Francisco’s Poet Laureate Tongo Eisen-Martin.

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.