Under the Tree: A Seminar on Freedom with Bill Ayers

Parenting Toward Abolition with Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson Oct 31, 2024

Abolition can perhaps best be understood as a collection of creative and complex acts of world-building—what kind of world would we need to build in order to have no slavery? our forebears asked. And what kind of world could we begin to create today that would render prisons and police and militarism obsolete, predation and exploitation relics of a cruel past? Abolition is not simply a policy, it’s an entire politics—the politics of realizing our freedom dreams by building the world we want and need. All of us—workers, teachers, nurses, midwives, parents—can reimagine and rebuild our worlds. Everything can change. And abolition work—changing everything—is the practice of freedom. We’re joined Under the TreebyMaya Schenwar and Kim Wilson, co-editors of We Grow Together: Parenting Toward Abolition, an anthology focussed on connecting liberatory parenting and movements for freedom.

Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle with Lawrence Grandpre Oct 16, 2024

We’re in conversation today with Lawrence Grandpre from the group Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle (LBS), a grassroots think-tank that advances the public policy interests of Black people in Baltimore through youth leadership development, political advocacy, and autonomous intellectual innovation. Founded by young freedom fighters, you can find them and follow their work at lbsbaltimore.com

Citizen Printer with Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. Oct 02, 2024

Amos Kennedy, self-described “humble negro printer” and author of Citizen Printer, is a visionary treasure, an imaginative freedom-fighter, and the creator of type-driven messages of justice, freedom, and Black Power. He understands that freedom comes to life in action, and that we are most truly (and paradoxically) free when we name the obstacles to our humanity, and then throw ourselves against the imposing wall of unfreedom. His weapon of choice, the sledgehammer with which he bangs away day by day, is letterpress printing, and every image he brings to life urges voyages—wobbly rambles away from the cold reality of the world we inhabit into worlds that could be or should be but are not yet. Join Bill Ayers and Amos Kennedy “under the tree”—in this case, amidst the unique randomness and studied messiness of his Detroitstudio, seated on folding chairs between presses and with stacks of paper and trays of type as far as the eye can see—as we dance the dialectic, discussing history and the future, politics and resistance, inspiration and aspiration, justice and freedom.

His book is available here: https://www.madejacksonhole.com/products/amos-paul-kennedy-jr-citizen-printer?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwu-63BhC9ARIsAMMTLXRHIz_eZ1HcQf5xLPBaPxLz2TfhEVDJa-44hPfEkEaWZvTFBuUquMsaAl7rEALw_wcB

“A” is for Abortion with Alicia Hurtado Sep 18, 2024

At a time when women’s bodily integrity is under sustained assault, and simultaneously huge numbers of women across a wide political spectrum have rallied, mobilized, ands refused to accept a medieval definition of their rights, we sit down with Alicia Hurtado, a Chicago-based grass-roots organizer, activist, and advocate to discuss the state of the movement and where we need to go from here.

When Freedom is the Question Abolition is the Answer: Reflections on Collective Liberation Sep 04, 2024

with Guest Hosts Lisa Lee and Adam Bush interviewing Bill Ayers, and with surprise interventions from Light Ayli, Barbara Ransby, and Tom Morello.

What is freedom? What are the "freedom dreams" that encourage us and move us forward? How do we get free? Join our brilliant guest hosts as they chop these questions up in dialogue with Bill Ayers.

The Whole World is Watching with Medea Benjamin, Code Pink, and Eleanor Stein Aug 15, 2024

The activists from the militant peace organization Code Pink—in conjunction with the Dissenters, Jewish Voice for Peace, Students for Justice in Palestine, and a host of others—are calling for mass mobilizations in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention, which will be held from August 19-22, 2024. Their goal is to issue a thundering response to the US-sponsored, Israeli-led and preannounced genocide in Gaza, and to shine an illuminating light on US complicity with Israel in destroying Palestinian lives and communities. This episode is a broadcast of a webinar with Eleanor Stein, Medea Benjamin, and Bill Ayers organized by Code Pink earlier this month. We urge everyone to come to Chicago if at all possible, and to contribute to building an irresistible peace and justice movement NOW!

Project 2025 with Kevin Kumashir Aug 07, 2024

Years of coordinated effort by the reactionary Heritage Foundation has culminated in a frighteningly dystopian document describing the future society they hope to build: Project 2025. At 900-plus pages, it’s been described as a blueprint for a second Trump presidential term, but it's so much more than that. It is in fact a sweeping manifesto, and a massive mapping of the key issues facing society. Project 2025 will outlive Trump by decades, providing a vision, guidance, and energy for organizing campaigns based on authoritarian themes and Christian Dominionist theology well into the future. Significantly, this effort has organized 110 disparate right-wing organizations and thousands of individuals into a united front. Attention peace activists, freedom fighters, and justice organizers: this is what we’re up against! Our comrade and dear friend Kevin Kumashiro, author of several books including a new edition of his classic Against Common Sense, joins Under the Tree for a record third time to help us unpack the significance of Project 2025.

Organizing Your Own: The White Fight for Black Power with Say Burgin Jul 24, 2024

The centuries-old struggle for Black Freedom is filled with victories and defeats, tragedy and triumph, forward motion and backlash. Today we sit down with historian and engaged scholar Say Burgin to uncover some of the myths that pass as history, focusing particularly on the historic turn toward Black Power and the resulting strategy of “racially parallel organizing” with white comrades. Say Burgin’s illuminating book is urgent and relevant for anti-racist organizers and activists today.

Ella Baker & The Black Freedom Movement with Barbara Ransby and Asha Ransby-Sporn Jul 10, 2024

The dynamic and engaging Socialism 2024 conference will meet in Chicago from August 30 through September 2, shortly after the sure-to-be chaotic Democratic National Convention, bringing together thousands of socialists, activists, abolitionists, and organizers from across the country and around the world to name this political moment, build community, and gather strength for the struggles ahead. We hope you will join us. In anticipation of the coming gathering we’re looking back to the spirited Socialism 2023 conference, and highlighting an inspiring and relevant intergenerational conversation between legendary scholar-activist Barbara Ransby and the peace and justice organizer/activist Asha Ransby Sporn.

Road Trip! This is My Life I’m Talking About with Danny Lyon Jun 26, 2024

Join me for a classic American road trip with the legendary photographer, photo-journalist, writer, and film-maker Danny Lyon. Danny left the University of Chicago in the 1960s and headed South to join the great Civil Rights Movement, where he became the official photographer of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. We will visit the Black Freedom Movement together, but we will also revisit his groundbreaking documentary photographs of prison life in Texas, the gripping story of a friend of his who was also one of America’s Ten Most Wanted fugitives, and his involvement with the Chicago Outlaws Motorcycle Club, which he documented in The Bikeriders (1968),a collection of black and white photographs with accompanying interviews that was released the year before the classic “Easy Rider.” That work of photojournalism is the inspiration for Jeff Nichols’ contemporary film of the same name. His memoir, This is My Life I’m Talking About, was just released. Danny Lyon’swebsite is bleakbeauty.com where you can read his blog, and view his films for free on Vimeo.

Tea and Reparations with Aaron Hughes and Amber Ginsburg Jun 12, 2024

Patriotism can never express a common human aspiration nor a universal moral code—if everyone on earth claimed to be a fierce and focused patriot today, 20 % of the world’s people would be Chinese patriots, and only 4.4 % patriotic Americans. Patriotism promises a steady anchor, but it is, in reality, entirely unstable. We note that every human being is indigenous to planet Earth, and that there is, therefore, no such thing as a foreigner. We might work, then, to replace national patriotism with human solidarity—sin fronteras—in the spirit of Chicago’s poet laureate Gwendolyn Brooks: “We are each other’s harvest: / we are each other’s / business: / we are each other’s / magnitude and bond.”

We’re excited to be joined in discussion with two influential Chicago artist/activists Aaron Hughes and Amber Ginsburg, authors and co-editors of two extraordinary books, Remaking the Exceptional which highlights the connections between policing in Chicago and human rights violations abroad, and Invitation to Tea which compiles 48 tea recipes, stories, and traditions, one for each of the countries that have had citizens held at the US military prison in Guantánamo. Amber and Aaron will be at our home base, Pilsen Community Books, at 7:00 pm on June 26, which is International Day in Support of Torture Survivors, and we hope you’ll come out that night and build community with us.

The Real Dragon with Stanley Howard May 29, 2024

This centennial episode of Under the Tree features an enlightening conversation with Stanley Howard, the legendary jailhouse lawyer and founder of the Death Row 10, a group of African American men on Illinois' death row who organized a powerful campaign from their prison cells to save their lives and to spark a new abolitionist movement decades ago. The Death Row Ten and their mothers linked up with courageous activists, intrepid lawyers, relentless journalists, and a growing wave of social protest against police violence to demand justice in their cases, and an end to the barbaric practice of capital punishment. Stanley Howard is an organizer/activist, a fighter, and the author of Tortured by Blue: The Chicago Police Torture Story.

Breathe, Now Push with Jennifer Dohrn May 15, 2024

Every aspect of life in our society is lived on the hard-edge of racial hierarchy and class division—and the American way of birth is no exception. Black maternal mortality is 69.9 per 100,000 live births, nearly 3 times the rate of white women—and that’s only part of the story. We’re delighted to be meeting up at Pilsen Community Books with my magnificent sister-in-law, Jennifer Dohrn—a legendary midwife in New York, and a professor and Assistant Dean of the Office of Global Initiatives at Columbia University School of Nursing—for a discussion focused on her new book Mothers, Midwives and Reimagining Birthing in the Bronx. Jennifer initiatedthe first freestanding maternity center in an inner-city in the US, and she has been extensively involved in women’s health issues both here and internationally, notably in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Global South. Her book is an oral history of her ground-breaking center, as well as a deep dive into the racialized nature of maternal health care and a rousing cry for change.

American Precariat with Zeke Caligiuri May 01, 2024

Precarious times, phenomenal times. As protests for peace and freedom explode across the country and around the world, we’re searching for and finding democracy in the streets and in the campus encampments, in prison study groups and collectives of artists and writers. We’re honored tonight to be meeting up at our beloved Pilsen Community Books with Zeke Caligiuri, co-editor with a unique collective of incarcerated writers, for a discussion of their dazzling collection, American Precariat: Parables of Exclusion. While the class of people whose lives lack stability and security, and are increasingly dominated by uncertainty about our jobs and our incomes, our housing and our safety—about our futures—grows steadily and exponentially, it’s particularly illuminating to explore this political moment with the unseen and the unheard, the excluded and the marginalized, those deemed by power the leastwise of the land.

Again, Winter with Mark Nowak Apr 17, 2024

You may already know that 15 US governors recently rejected federal funds available for families who qualify for free school lunches that would provide $120 per child per month through the summer. If you forgot, I get it—your cruelty/stupidity quotient may have reached capacity, and your brain simply couldn’t accommodate one more item. We’re joined in conversation with Mark Nowak, an innovative and influential political poet, author of Social Poetics and Coal Mountain Elementary. His latest book, Again, takes its title from the last word in MAGA, and works its way through the four seasons, naming this political moment and urgently asking us to consider what the known demands of us now.

Rattling the Cages with Eric King and Josh Davidson Apr 03, 2024

Prison and police abolitionists, rebels and radicals, peace activists and environmental warriors, freedom fighters and dissidents, political prisoners of every type—the voices of dissent and defiance—are gathered together in a dazzling collection from AK Press called Rattling the Cages: Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners. Join us as we discuss the meaning of “political prisoners” with Eric King and Josh Davidson, and explore the challenges ahead for those of us fighting for a world without prisons.

Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy with Nathan Thrall Mar 21, 2024

As the savagery in Gaza continues unabated, we’re deeply honored to be joined from Jerusalem by the brilliant writer Nathan Thrall for a conversation about his latest book, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy. Here in one family facing one heartbreaking moment, we experience Israeli apartheid up-close and personal—its everyday humiliations and its banal cruelty, its dehumanizing impact on victims and perpetrators alike.

SPECIAL EDITION: Primary Election Voting with Girl, I Guess & InJustice Watch Mar 16, 2024

For voters in Chicago it’s been a strenuous non-stop election cycle for the last couple of years. We're all tired and burned out – but as always, we must carry on! So as we head into the last weekend before the election, we offer up this incentive to get those among us motivated and informed about why this election, while not changing the world - does still matter.

In conversation with us are our old friends Stephanie Skora of the "Girl, I Guess" progressive voter guide and Charles Preston of Injustice Watch. We discuss the drive to write-in Gaza at the top of the ballot, the Bring Chicago Home initiative and we're reminded of the outsized power of the judiciary on our daily lives and why we need to be an informed voter when filling out the ballot in those races. If you’ve already voted, be sure to share this episode with those in your lives who still need a little push to the polls! And we remember voting is just one tool at our disposal, after we leave the voting booth, we still head out to the protests, to our mutual aid programs, our reading groups, or whatever it is that helps us to continue building power in our communities.

Community as Resistance with Rashid Khalidi Mar 07, 2024

Chicagoland area is home to more Palestinians than anywhere else in the U.S., with over 18,000 living in Cook County alone. The Palestinian community has led powerful protests that have led to Chicago becoming the largest city in the country to endorse a ceasefire resolution. It is in the midst of this atmosphere that we gathered for an urgent exchange with Rashid Khalidi, the preeminent historian of the Palestinian national struggle, and the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University in conversation with activists Ricardo Gamboa of the Hoodoisie and Latinxs for Palestine, and Bill Ayers from Under the Tree.

The event served to not only raise awareness but to also raise funds for Palestine Legal. The energy was fierce, the mood determined, the spirit razor-sharp. We left that gathering a little wiser, more resolute, and fixed on turning our anger into action and our dreams of a world at peace into reality.

Guilty of Journalism with Kevin Gosztola Feb 19, 2024

Julian Assange whofounded WikiLeaks in 2006 went on to win multiple awards for his investigative journalism covering, among other stories, political killings in Kenya and social unrest in Tibet.Assange came to wide international attention in 2010 when WikiLeaks published a series of leaks from US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, including footage of US airstrikes in Baghdad, and US military logs from Iraq and Afghanistan. The US government—charging Julian Assange with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, and later for violating the Espionage Act of 1917—has pursued Assange relentlessly. Since April 2019, Assange has been confined in HM Prison, Belmarsh as the US extradition effort grinds forward and is contested in the British courts.We’re joined by Kevin Gosztola, author of Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange, for an urgent conversation about the imminent fate of someone who dared to tell the truth.

Care with Premilla Nadasen Feb 08, 2024

The brutality of capitalism is apparent in every direction: war, invasion, and occupation throughout the world; militarized police forces at home; super-exploitation at the point of production; the looming catastrophic climate collapse; the banality of evil in the increasingly pervasive carceral state. Capitalism willfully and skillfully nurtures our vilest qualities—selfishness, greed, murderous competition, corruption—and deliberately degrades other qualities: mutual care, human kindness, the beloved community. The rage to accumulate is the beating heart of capitalism; injustice and predation follow as surely as day follows night. We’re joined today in conversation with Premilla Nadasen, professor of history at Barnard College, Columbia University and author most recently of Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. Professor Nadasen interrogates the plundering, profit-driven care system in the US, and illuminates the transformative power of collective resistance.

Investigating Apartheid with Omar Shaktir Jan 24, 2024

As Israel’s crimes against humanity multiply and mass death and indiscriminate destruction escalates, as the world unites around a near-universal call to stop the genocide against the Palestinian people and militant resistance to US complicity deepens here at home, we are fortunate to be joined by Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine Director at Human Rights Watch. Omar Shakir has authored several major investigative reports, including a 2021 account that comprehensively documents Israel’s apartheid apparatus and its systematic persecution of millions of Palestinians. As a result of his advocacy, the Israeli government deported Omar in November 2019.

SPECIAL: All Eyes on Palestine Jan 10, 2024

As Israel continues to execute its pre-announced genocide of the Palestinian people, ethnically cleanses Gaza, and attempts to liquidate an enclosure that they themselves created, everyone of goodwill around the world is calling for a ceasefire. As of now 22,000 Palestinians have been murdered, close to 2,000,000 displaced in Gaza, countless hospitals, school, and clinics destroyed, and vital supplies of food and water stopped at checkpoints. The US media says that Gaza is starving, and it’s true that famine is imminent, but the passive voice is an obscenity. The truth is that Israel is starving Palestinians deliberately. The US stands alone in blocking a ceasefire. This Special Episode is curated from Episodes 23, 41, 77, and 81—episodes recorded over the past two years. We hope these conversations are enlightening and illuminating, and that they deepen your sense of the urgency to act against war in these terrible times.

Survival and Resistance with Janie Paul Dec 31, 2023

In this episode we’ll be heading over to the dazzling Pilsen Community Books, a regular stop on our freedom tour, for a conversation with Janie Paul, Professor Emerita at the School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan, and curator and co-founder with her late husband, Buzz Alexander, of the Exhibitions of Artists in Michigan Prisons, a project of the legendary Prison Creative Arts Project. Her beautiful new book, Making Art in Prison: Survival and Resistance, is filled with extraordinary images of the dazzling creations of people caged inside Michigan prisons—it’s a stunning achievement. But before we go to the bookstore, we pause for a moment for an update, because the genocide in Gaza is on-going, and Palestine is still front-of-mind for us, and we hope for you too.

Palestine on my Mind Dec 15, 2023

Images from Gaza crowd into the available space, disrupting sleep, shattering the calm, demanding to be taken into account.

Dead children and babies piled upon one another, body parts littering a hell-scape of demolished homes and apartment buildings, collapsed bridges and towers, refugee centers burned to the ground, hospitals in utter ruin.

This is not justice; this is the face of fury, of vengeance unleashed. This is the face of genocide.

Coming Together as Things Fall Apart with Astra Taylor Nov 29, 2023

Charles Dickens would recognize our predicament at once: the winter of despair and the spring of hope; an age of foolishness and an age of wisdom; Darkness in combat with Light. Life is never one thing isolated from every other thing; a lot of things can be—and are—happening at once. Contradiction—the dynamic, noisy, frenetic magnificence of life as it’s actually lived—is the universal experience of humanity.We’re fortunate to be joined by the smart and inspiring organizer/activist/artist Astra Taylor, someone willing to dive into rather than run away from contradiction as she illuminates both our problems and our possibilities in new ways. Taylor is a founding member of the Debt Collective and author, most recently, of The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart. Taylor’s work—and this conversation—is an antidote to despair and a call to action.

Stop the Genocide of the Palestinian People! Stop Cop City! Nov 15, 2023

A group of Chicago writers brought together by the worker/owners of Pilsen Community Books gathered to support and raise resources for our comrades in Atlanta fighting to Stop Cop City. But events ran ahead of us, as they often do, and by the time we gathered, the preannounced genocide against the Palestinian people was in full swing. The connections were clear: militarism and violence abroad, out-of-control militarized police forces at home; land seizures and occupation everywhere; repression and the violent suppression of dissent. We stood up and spoke out—for an immediate ceasefire, for an end to the genocide in Gaza and the murderous violence in the West Bank, for an end to Cop City in Atlanta, for self-determination for the Palestinian people and for an end to US aid to Israel.

Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years War Against Palestine

Nathan Thrall, One Day in the Life of Abed Salama

The One Democratic State Initiative

Ta-Nehisi Coates on Israeli Apartheid

On Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism and Dangerous Conflations from Jewish Voice for Peace, and antisemitismcurriculum.org/

Indigenous Language Politics and Resistance with Mneesha Gellman Nov 01, 2023

A favorite political poster hangs on a wall in my office: “Homeland Security” it proclaims in bold letters above a photo of a group of Indigenous elders holding rifles; below it reads, “Fighting Terrorism Since 1492.”

It’s a reminder of the centuries of settler colonial policy and genocidal terror carried out by the US government against Indigenous peoples and nations and lineages, as well as the natural environment, the trees, the bison, and more. And it’s a reminder that resistance goes back to the beginning and continues to this day.

This episode of Under the Tree—a conversation with Mneesha Gellman, author of Indigenous Language Politics in the Schoolroom: Cultural Survival in Mexico and the United States which explores the contemporary fight for Indigenous language in the classroom as a site of struggle and resistance against erasure and genocide—was recorded at the courageous, worker-owned bookstore, Pilsen Community Books, a familiar and friendly stop on our Chicago freedom tour.

Mass Supervision with Vincent Schiraldi and special guest Renaldo Hudson Oct 18, 2023

Listeners of Under the Tree are well aware of the fact that the US is a Prison Nation, with over 2,000,000 people locked inside cages every day, aware, as well, that we are abolitionists involved in the movement-making and world-building work that will one day make prisons obsolete. But the carceral state is a many-legged monster with dangerous tentacles stretching out in every direction—there are now over 4,000,000 people under state supervision, on parole or probation. It’s an enormously expensive enterprise that does nothing to reduce risk to society while creating enormous hazards for anyone coming home or caught in its web. One in four people caged today is locked up for a violation (curfew, association, failure to report, and more). This episode—a conversation with Vinnie Schiraldi, author of Mass Supervision: Probation, Parole, and the Illusion of Safety and Freedom, and friend-of the-pod Renaldo Hudson—was recorded at the intrepid, worker-owned bookstore, Pilsen Community Books, a familiar and favorite haunt of ours.

Voices of the Movement with Anthony Arnove & Haley Pessin Oct 04, 2023

These are terrible times—escalating wars, racialized police violence, environmental collapse on full display, democratic institutions on life support, bodily integrity under assault. On the other hand—26 million people poured into the streets in response to the police murder of George Floyd, women across a wide political spectrum have refused to accept a medieval definition of their rights, and broad forces are on the march world-wide to resist plunder and extraction, and to preserve life on earth. Charles Dickens would recognize the contradiction: the winter of despair and the spring of hope; an age of foolishness and an age of wisdom. Life is never one thing in isolation of every other thing. Yes, there is oppression, but there is also resistance. And, yes, the predatory heart of capitalism is incorrigibly avaricious, aching to transform everything within reach into a profit-generating commodity: teaching and learning are turned into the education business, human health morphs into the healthcare industry, art is transfigured into the art market. But our imaginations, nourished and unleashed, have the capacity to “light the slow fuse of possibility.” And our resistance fuels our imaginations.

I met up at the Socialism 2023 Conference with Anthony Arnove and Haley Pessin, the editors of Voices of a People’s History of the United States in the 21st Century. It’s the latest in the series initiated and inspired by Howard Zinn’s ground-breaking work. Their subtitle, “Documents of Hope and Resistance” perfectly captures the tone, the feel, and the content of this great book—hope is a discipline, resistance is a necessity.

BONUS: A short conversation with two of the Tampa Five, students arrested and on trial for fighting back against the reactionary attacks on schools, colleges, and universities in Florida.

Monsters! with Claire Dederer Sep 21, 2023

These are terrible times—an escalating cold war with China, a proxy war in Europe, racialized police violence unchecked, environmental collapse on full display, fragile and often anemic democratic institutions on life support, religious authoritarianism on the rise, women’s bodily integrity under sustained assault. On the other hand—26 million people poured into the streets in response to the police murder of George Floyd, women across a wide political spectrum have refused to accept a medieval definition of their rights, and broad forces are on the march worldwide to resist plunder and extraction, and to preserve life on earth. Charles Dickens would recognize the contradiction: the winter of despair and the spring of hope; an age of foolishness and an age of wisdom; Darkness locked in combat with Light. Life is never one thing in isolation from every other thing. Yes, there is oppression, but there is also art—and our imaginations, nourished and unleashed—which has the capacity to “light the slow fuse of possibility.” With Lisa Yun Lee, my comrade and friend for many years and co-host for this episode, I’m in conversation with Claire Dederer about her smart and important new book, Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma.

From the River to the Sea- Journeys in Solidarity Sep 06, 2023

We’re bombarded with relentless and punishing propaganda that places the US at the epicenter of the whole wide world. We are the exceptional nation, it says, the indispensable nation, the most remarkable people who ever lived, a shining beacon on a hill to the lesser nations. The propaganda is so unremitting that it can take on the color of common sense—and there’s nothing more dogmatic and insistent than common sense. Breaking with that dogma requires a conscious effort to open your eyes, to see the world large, and to reach out in solidarity. We’re joined by Destine Phillips, Beth Awano, and Eliza Gonring, three comrades from Chicago who journeyed to Palestine to study, learn, and join hands in our common struggle against settler colonialism.

Help This Garden Grow with Damon Williams and Daniel Kisslinger of AirGo Aug 23, 2023

We were at the Winter Garden of the Harold Washington Library this month for the launch of “Help This Garden Grow,” a new docuseries that tells the story of Hazel Johnson, a visionary of the Environmental Justice movement and a resident of the Altgeld Gardens community on the far South Side of Chicago.

“Help This Garden Grow” is a project of Respair, a liberatory ecosystem hub brought to life by an entire community, and spearheaded by my mentors in media, the visionaries Damon Williams and Daniel Kisslinger. Respair Production and Media (RPM) creates and builds media projects in partnership with social justice movement-makers, visionaries, and creatives who are taking stock of the world as it is, and working relentlessly to create a world that could be or should be, but is not yet. Over the past few years AirGo has made its mark as a unique space of movement-building, opening critical conversations, deepening our understanding of fundamental questions, connecting people and linking issues. Respair represents a qualitative leap forward, spinning off new media projects in all directions. One example is the podcast “Guaranteed” with the incomparable Eve Ewing. Another is “Help This Garden Grow,” and I’m honored to have been asked to help launch this docuseries by broadcasting Episode One. Here it is.

Subscribe to listen to the entire docuseries by searching “Help This Garden Grow” wherever you get your podcasts, and you can find out much more about the project at respairmedia.com.

Fire and Freedom with Will Harling and Leif Carlson Aug 09, 2023

For millennia andall over the world fire was a powerful tool in the hands of Indigenous peoples. As they stewarded the land generation after generation, fire was understood to be a natural and necessary element for an abundant world—fire was regeneration and revitalization. But fire was taken away from Native people and handed over to agencies and bureaus who never grasped the positive power of fire. With typical arrogance and ignorance the powerful and the policy makers made fire an enemy to be destroyed—they developed the policy of 100% fire suppression which created the monster we live with today: a towering accumulation of fuels, and recurring catastrophic fires of earth-shaking proportions. In California, state and federal agencies are beginning to work with Tribes to shift how fires (and fuels) are managed, but public understanding of the fire paradox and pressure is needed to change long-standing failed policies.We’re joined today by Will Harling and Leif Carlson for a discussion of fire and freedom.

The Ghost Forest with Greg King Jul 26, 2023

The forest is disappearing—it’s becoming a ghost—and along with its entire ecosystems. This is not something distant from us; it is us—the power of a tree is the air we breathe. Two and a half billion years ago enough oxygen had built up on earth to support multicellular life, and the first trees evolved about 400,000,000 years ago. The first primates appeared fifty-five million years ago, living in trees in the rain forests. In the past 10,000 years, the earth lost one-third of its forest—almost all of it in the last few hundred years. And the recent loss is caused, not by ice and fire and ice or earthquakes and volcanoes, but by the deliberate acts of human beings. We’re talking in his Arcata home with an extraordinary writer/activist named Greg King, author most recently of The Ghost Forest: Racists, Radicals, and Real Estate in the California Redwoods.

Stranger in My Own Land with Fida Jiryis Jul 12, 2023

The Palestinian people’s ongoing struggle for self-determination and basic human rights has appropriately drawn the attention and support of freedom lovers the world around. Invasion and occupation, ethnic cleansing and segregation as both policy and law are all part of the continuing and everyday catastrophe. Rick Ayers co-hosts this episode, and we’re both grateful to be joined from her home in the Galilee by an inspiring writer, Fida Jiryis, as she tells the story of Palestine through a beautiful and haunting memoir of her family's journey—Stranger in my own Land.

The Long Haul with Rick Ayers Jun 28, 2023

Young people in many parts of the country are denied decent school facilities, honest and forward-looking curriculum, and fully qualified teachers, but the fundamental injury they face is the deliberate and systematic suppression of freedom. They have endured institutions—not only schools, but the cops and La Migra, the courts and the hospitals—that routinely disregard their humanity. These are First Nations students or the descendants of formerly enslaved and African-ancestored people or recent immigrants from poor countries; they’re from working-class families and they’ve attended schools of poverty; many have participated in a sort of general strike and run away from those schools. What could it mean and how would it look if these young folks were to mobilize themselves in order to articulate their own desires, their own demands and dreams, and pursue their own questions? We’re joined in conversation with Rick Ayers, a life-long freedom fighter and legendary teacher.

Welcome to Chicago with Juan Gonzalez Jun 16, 2023

“If we have to use force,” former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright famously said, “it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation.” A benign interpretation of that extravagant claim might visualize the country as a shining city on the hill, the very paragon of democracy and freedom; a more realistic assessment sees the US holding itself above international laws—including the use of lethal force, invasion, and occupation—that govern all others. We’ll consider the role of US imperialism both historically and in the contemporary world over at the incomparable Pilsen Community Books with the legendary activist/journalist Juan Gonzalez, co-host of Democracy Now! and author of the now classic Harvest of Empire. We are overjoyed that Juan and his partner Lilia Fernandez have recently moved to Chicago—we welcome them and celebrate them.

Fighting Times with Jon Melrod May 08, 2023

Unchecked, the US juggernaut is headed for catastrophe, either a new and friendly-looking American fascism, or some other form of extreme social disintegration. Another world is surely coming—greater equality, socialism, participatory democracy, and peace are all within our reach, but nuclear war, complete capitalist climate collapse, work camps and slavery are also looming possibilities. There are choices and options before us—where do we go from here, chaos or community? I’m joined by Jon Melrod at Pilsen Community Books in conversation about his life as a student and labor organizer, and his memoir Fighting Times.

Organizing to Change the World with Clément Petitjean May 08, 2023

One of Karl Marx’s most famous dictums is carved onto his gravestone: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” The first step is opening our eyes, making meaning, making sense, interpreting and constructing a world. Another step is allowing ourselves to feel the world throbbing inside of us, to hear its rhythmic heart-beat in sync with our own—to be astonished at all the beauty and splendor and magnificence available in all directions, as well as all the unnecessary suffering and undeserved pain. And then, acting in response to what the known demands of us—to do something. This takes us into the realm of strategy and tactics where we state our aims and objectives and values, make and implement a plan, and organize ourselves for action. I’m joined at Pilsen Community Books in conversation with the brilliant thinker and writer Clément Petitjean in a far-ranging conversation about his important new book, Occupation: Organizer, and the challenge of organizing to change the world.

Open Your Mouths for the Muted; Fight for the Rights of the Destitute with Randolph Stone May 03, 2023

This political moment—complex, contradictory, and characterized by escalating crises—urges us to focus our attention on movement building. Beyond campaigns, projects, policies, or organizations, we need to find multiple ways to weave our work together into a sturdy quilt, or a mighty and irresistible social upheaval that advances the cause of peace and freedom, joy and justice in our time. I’m joined in conversation with Randolph Stone, a friend, inspiration, “lawyer-for-the-people,” and long-distance runner for justice.

With My Mind Stayed on Freedom with Dan Berger, Zoharah Simmons, and Michael Simmons Apr 20, 2023

The struggle for Black Freedom was intensifying in 1966, and when the term “Black Power!” leapt from the March Against Fear in Mississippi into the mainstream, the Freedom Movement was newly energized. White supremacist hearts were all aflutter, and Mister Backlash went into overdrive with the usual bullshit: Black Power is hate! Is racist! Is destructive! Is too extreme! We’re joined in conversation today with Zoharah Simmons, Michael Simmons, and Dan Berger to consider the long history of Black Power and the struggle for self-determination and pride through the story of one family.

There But for Fortune with Michael Fischer Apr 05, 2023

What’s the worst thing you ever did in your life? OK, stop blushing, and be honest. Are you sure you haven’t repressed, suppressed, and forgotten the most unkind or terrible or illegal or unjust things you’ve done? Think harder. What were the consequences of your actions for others, and for yourself? I’m joined in conversation with Michael Fischer, a brilliant writer and teacher who probes his own experiences with the carceral state to offer wisdom for all of us about the social construction of crime, and the deeper meaning of justice, repair, transformation, and grace.

Socialism…Seriously with Danny Katch Mar 22, 2023

We’re in a five-alarm shit-storm of trouble to be sure, and the overlapping crises can feel overwhelming— racial reckoning, catastrophic capitalist climate collapse, a financial system that parodies a massive, out-of-control Ponzi scheme, a legislature impersonating a medieval auction block, and more. We meet up with Danny Katch to help us name this political moment. Danny offers a delightful and accessible primer on socialism as a living alternative, and he shows us that Love and Imagination are still durable weapons to deploy in our fight for freedom—he reminds us that socialism is for lovers, not losers.

From Dungeons to Focos with Destine Phillips, Denzel Burke, and Tommy Hagan from the R.E.A.L. Youth Initiative Mar 08, 2023

It takes a lot to change the world, and because we live day-by-day immersed in what is—the world as such—imagining a landscape much different from what’s immediately before us requires a combination of some things: seeds, surely, desire, yes, effort, of course, always effort, idealism and romance, maybe, necessity and desperation at times, and a vision of dazzling possibilities at other times. Occasionally what’s required is the willful enthusiasm to dance out on a limb—and, of course, we all do better when we’re holding hands with others out on that limb. So I come back to our steady watchword: Organize!

I’m joined by three extraordinary organizers and activists, Denzel Burke, Destine Phillips, and Tommy Hagan, leaders of the R.E.A.L. Youth Initiative. R.E.A.L. was founded in 2018 at an Illinois juvenile prison where both Denzel and Destine were incarcerated. They had discussed the idea of launching a program that organizes and builds power with people like themselves who’ve been through the criminal/legal system. They envisioned an organization run and directed by those who have experienced and understand what it’s like to have been in the streets and faced periods of incarceration, but they also envisioned this organization working towards the dismantling of conditions like poverty and the lack of social support that lead to violence, and incarceration. You can find them on Instagram @realyouthinitiative or online at realyouthinitiative.com.

Of Borders and Dreams with Susan Mills Feb 23, 2023

A border can be “a story of identity” or “a wound…in the landscape.” It is sometimes a place to be feared, and other times a place to be honored. Borders can, of course, be metaphors: the boundary between boy and man, or girl and woman; the thin line between sanity and madness; the final frontier between life and death. In any case, a border, as the journalist James Crawford writes, “is never simply a line, a marker, a wall, an edge. First, it is an idea.” I’m joined in conversation with Susan Mills, an immigration attorney whose law practice for over two decades focused on preparing asylum cases for thousands of immigrants from Central America, with a particular focus on unaccompanied teenagers. We go from borders to dreams and back again: “Wherever there are borders,” James Crawford says, “that’s where you are going to find the most concentrated injustice.”

Waiting for Democracy with Stephanie Skora Feb 08, 2023

Stephanie Skora is the force behind theGirl, I Guess Progressive Voter Guide. She's a self-proclaimed 'Jewish, queer, trans, nerd' dedicated to helping members of the community navigate confusing ballot races and identify the most progressive candidates. A grouchy Jewish trans dyke, and an anarchist with a political science degree – Stephanie is as wise and witty a radical organizer as you’ll ever meet. But in her humility she urges us all to consult with other progressive/radical organizers in our communities, especially queer, trans, Black, and Brown folks because the guide is currently an individual effort, and, as she reminds us, “I might be a Virgo smartypants know-it-all with a lot of opinions, but I’m far from infallible!”

Chasing Justice: A Homecoming with Marshan Allen Jan 25, 2023

We travel to the Illinois Parole Board to stand in solidarity with a couple of my students seeking clemency or commutation or a pardon from Governor Pritzger, and to support our friend and colleague Marshan Allen as he asks to have his conviction erased so that he can practice law when he finishes law school. Since coming home after 24-years in prison, Marshan Allen earned his Bachelor's Degree from Northeastern Illinois University, got married, and launched a career as a national leader for criminal/legal reform. He’s currently the Vice President of Advocacy and External Partnerships at Represent Justice, a national advocacy organization, serves on the boards of Boards of Restore Justice and the Center for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, and is an active member of the Incarcerated Children’s Advocacy Network (ICAN). He’s a first year student at Chicago-Kent College of Law.

Reimagining the Classroom with Theodore Richards Jan 11, 2023

We’re joined in conversation with the philosopher, youth organizer, and innovative educator Theodore Richards at the legendary destination bookstore 57th Street Books in Hyde Park, Chicago. He and I have shared the mic at half a dozen book talks over the years, and today our focus is on his latest book, Reimagining the Classroom: Creating New Learning Spaces and Connecting with the World, an inspirational text as well as a practical guide with a wealth of down-to-earth ideas for teachers and parents. Theodore Richards provides a framework for youth to see themselves as valuable people as well as people of values, people who can be creators, not consumers, and makers rather than victims of history.

Episode #63: Dare to Struggle! Dare to Win! with Helen Shiller Dec 14, 2022

This is our last Episode for 2022—we look forward to being back in mid-January. For this Special Episode, we’re joined in conversation with the legendary activist and organizer Helen Shiller at the 57th Street Bookstore in Hyde Park, Chicago. In her new autobiography, Daring to Struggle, Daring to Win, Shiller captures a sense of what it means to engage in decades of justice work from anti-war and international solidarity to anti-racist organizing in Uptown, from the fight for affordable housing and against police violence to a 24-year career as an elected city councilor. With Justice and Freedom on our minds, Helen Shiller exemplifies the potential of an insider/outsider approach to social change. We wish you and your Beloveds a year of joy, justice, peace and love.

"Freedom Has Always Been the Horizon." Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project Nov 30, 2022

Authentic learning requires free thought—curiosity, inquiry, imagination, initiative, problem-posing, question-asking. Learning is undermined when students are inspected, spied upon, regulated, appraised, censured, measured, registered, counted, admonished, checked off, prevented, and sermonized. In this episode, we visit a unique college commencement ceremony—filled with joy and pain—and explore with the Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project and University Without Walls what it means to stay all the way human inside an institution built on dehumanization, and to face fully the contradiction of teaching for freedom in spaces that demand passivity and obedience.

Education for Liberation with Brian Jones Nov 16, 2022

An authentic education rests on the twin pillars of enlightenment and liberation—it’s about opening doors, opening minds, and opening possibilities; the principal message to students is straight forward: you can explore, interrogate, and understand your world, and, working together, you can change it. Schooling is too often about judging and sorting students into a hierarchy of winners and losers. We explore this fundamental contradiction with the acclaimed activist and teacher Brian Jones, the Director of the New York Public Library’s Center for Educators and Schools, and author of The Tuskegee Student Uprising: A History.

BONUS Episode: Talking Judges and Elections with Injustice Watch Nov 04, 2022

We are a few days away from election day across the country and many of us here in Chicago are looking at our mail-in or early ballots, and are overwhelmed with the incredible number of offices, ballot measures, and judges about whom we are expected to make informed decisions.

So who are all these people on the ballot, and does it even matter who we vote for anymore? Let’s talk about it!

Peace Now! with Medea Benjamin and Code Pink Nov 02, 2022

Americans want to think of ourselves as peace-loving people, but the facts contradict the myth: US military bases stretch around the globe; nuclear weapons poised to strike from flying fortresses circle the earth; the US is the top global arms dealer as well as Number One in the world in terms of military spending; and we live in a permanent war economy with the largest corporate welfare program in world history—hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars flowing into private companies, almost half going to no-bid contracts with Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, and Northrup Grumman. The war in Ukraine has been a boon to war-mongers and war-profiteers everywhere, and it could have been avoided.

We’re joined in conversation with Medea Benjamin, a leading antiwar activist, and author of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict.

BONUS!

Stay tuned, because we will shortly drop a brief, bonus episode this week — a voting guide of sorts, and a conversation with Maya Dukmasova and Charles Preston of Injustice Watch, a different kind of newsroom with a focus on serious, sustained inquiry, and journalism as an educational project—you know, the Fourth (or Fifth) Estate.

Teach the Children Well: Ordinary Terrible Things with Anastasia Higginbotham Oct 19, 2022

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.

Playing Through Fire with Dave Zirin Oct 05, 2022

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.

Freedom Dreams Sep 21, 2022

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 groundbreakingFreedom 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 2022conference in Chicago where we released our radical imaginations in a generative and wide-ranging conversation.

Portraits of Freedom Sep 07, 2022

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.

With Love at the Center Aug 24, 2022

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. Shewas 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.”

Mother Country Radicals Aug 10, 2022

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.

The Threads of Abolition (part 2) Jul 27, 2022

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: The Threads of Abolition Jul 13, 2022

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/

Fight/Build! Maroon Spaces and Real Black Utopias Jun 29, 2022

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.

Searching for the Ghost of John Brown Jun 15, 2022

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.

The Dialectic of Freedom May 25, 2022

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 Have a Story to Tell May 04, 2022

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.

A Child is a Child is a Child Apr 21, 2022

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.

From Death Row to Life! Apr 06, 2022

The criminal punishment system is institutionalized dehumanization. It's organized violence congealed, concentrated, and out of control. The everyday disposal of living human beings is normalized in these spaces—in the name of humanity and solidarity we refuse to become accustomed, and we resist accommodation. We’re joined in conversation with two dazzling thinkers and brave activists, Renaldo Hudson, Education Director of the Illinois Prison Project and the inaugural Artist for the People at the Pozen Center Human Rights Lab, and Alice Kim, the Director of the Pozen Center Human Rights Lab at the University of Chicago.

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.

Joy and Justice: Collaborating toward Freedom Mar 23, 2022

We live in a time and a place where the cage has become naturalized, where punitive, punishing measures are the “normal,” “common sense” responses to any harm or despair. Crushing cruelty deletes care and support. We’re joined by two powerful thinkers and life-long freedom-fighters: Beth Richie is head of the Department of Criminology, Law, and Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago; Erica Meiners is a professor of education, and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Northeastern Illinois University. They have worked together for decades, most recently on a book they co-authored with Gina Dent and Angela Davis: Abolition. Feminism. Now.

Bonus: At the end of this Episode, Light Ayli discusses her insights into the underlying horrors of war based on a classic novel she recently read for school. Dazzling.

Transition music from Dr. Sparkles’ song Great Bus Journeys of the West Midlands Pt 2. © Disclaimer. Additional music from One Man Book's song Native Ocean© (Disclaimer) and Blue Sky Moon's song Burnt Utopia.© Disclaimer License.

Freedom and the Poetry of Comix Feb 10, 2022

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.

When the US Boot Comes Down, Death and Chaos Follow Jan 07, 2022

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.

Transition: Malik Alim Nov 14, 2021

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!

"Hope is a State of Mind" ft. Dima Khalidi Aug 11, 2021

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.

Now is the Time of Monsters ft. Joel Westheimer Aug 06, 2021

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?

Educating for Insurgency ft. Jay Gillen Jul 27, 2021

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.

Haiti On My Mind ft. Walter Riley Jul 16, 2021

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.

Poet, Teacher, Prophet: Rhythms of Revolution ft. Tongo Eisen-Martin Jul 04, 2021

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.

Resist Curation/Curate Resistance ft. Therese Quinn Jun 25, 2021

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.

Love Your Mother ft. Peggy Shepard Jun 22, 2021

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.

Under the Knife ft. Howard Waitzkin Jun 09, 2021

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.

What’s the Problem, the Vision, and the Next Step Forward? ft. Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson May 28, 2021

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.

"Exterminate All The Brutes!" ft. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz May 12, 2021

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.

Love the People, Defend the Earth ft. Eleanor Stein & Jeff Jones May 05, 2021

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.

Hearing the Voices of Witness ft. Cliff Mayotte & Claire Kiefer Apr 28, 2021

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.

A Jailbreak of the Imagination ft. adrienne maree brown Apr 20, 2021

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.

Make Your Life a Constellation ft. Mariame Kaba Apr 12, 2021

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.

Every Human is a Philosopher ft. Adam Bush Mar 30, 2021

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.

The Schools We Want, The Schools We Deserve ft. Raynard Sanders Mar 20, 2021

Education is a fundamental human right and a basic community responsibility. We want schools that prepare free people to participate fully in a free society—schools that young people don’t have to recover from, but rather that act as the hopeful launch pads for the dreams of youth. We’re honored to be joined by Raynard Sanders, an old friend and a legendary New Orleans educator and freedom fighter, author of The Coup D’etat of the New Orleans Public School District: Money, Power, and the Illegal of a Public School System. We talk about the centuries-long struggle of Black parents to secure an education of value for their children in the face of white supremacist structures and racist resistance, and focus our attention on a natural disaster (Katrina) that became an unnatural if predictable catastrophe: the white elite seizing control of the schools and their budgets, firing the mostly African American staff, and replacing them with young white Teach for America recruits.

To Be Truly Free! ft. Maya Schenwar & Victoria Law Mar 14, 2021

We dive once more into the wreckage, and swim as hard as we can toward a distant and hazy horizon—a place of hope and possibility. To begin, Malik Alim offers another installment in his growing Freedom Chronicle, and lifts up a remarkable Chicago moment when activist organizers built Freedom Square, a brave space brought to life in the spirit of love and abundance. We are then delighted to invite Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law to join us Under the Tree. Abolitionists and freedom fighters, co-authors of a remarkable and essential text, Prison By Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms, Maya and Vickie take us on a complex and jagged journey to the far edges of the carceral state, and offer abolitionist alternatives that are within our reach right now.

What Counts? ft. Rochelle Gutierrez Mar 06, 2021

What counts? And who’s counting? For what purpose, and toward what social end? Some years ago the Business Roundtable and their Education and Workforce Taskforce issued an influential challenge: “You can’t manage what you don’t measure,” it instructed. “No executive can run a business without accurate, granular data that explains what’s working and what’s not. Our school system should be no different.” And yet, any third grade teacher will tell you that each child is unique—the one of one. Mention that to the Business Roundtable and they’ll tell you that teachers can’t be trusted because they’re just spouting “anecdotal evidence” when what’s demanded is granular data. We’re joined today by Dr. Rochelle Gutiérrez, a professor of mathematics education and Latino and Latina studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, who will lead us on a journey into the contested question: What counts?

Free. Free Palestine! ft. Rashid Khalidi Feb 26, 2021

Fifty years ago, Americans who understood and acted upon their responsibility to rise up in solidarity with the oppressed people of the world, stood with the Vietnamese against the US invasion, occupation, and genocidal assault. Through the years internationalist consciousness and activism here has focused on defending the Cuban revolution against the US boot, and supporting anti-imperialist struggles around the globe from South Africa and Mozambique and Angola to Chile and Venezuela and Puerto Rico. Today anyone who stands in solidarity with the oppressed against imperialism recognizes the urgency of fighting for the liberation of Palestine. We’re joined today by a long-time friend and comrade, Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University and the author of seven books about the Middle East, including the acclaimed Palestinian Identity, and most recently, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine.

What history do you stand on? What future do you stand for? ft. Flint Taylor Feb 18, 2021

Life can only be lived leaning forward, of course, even as its shifting and dynamic meanings can only be sorted out looking backward. Jean-Jacques Rousseau said, in effect, that you may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you—and so it is with history. With no impulse toward nostalgia, we struggle to understand this moment more clearly by glancing back: First, Malik Alim brings us up-to-date on a victory for justice that we mentioned earlier, the unprecedented and many-sided struggle against money bail; we’re then joined by Flint Taylor, a human rights lawyer whose dogged pursuit of justice takes us from the 1969 state murders of Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton and Panther Mark Clark, through the widespread use of torture by the Chicago Police Department against young Black men over decades, on to the ultimately successful campaign to end the death penalty in Illinois and to obtain reparations for torture survivors. His book The Torture Machine Racism and Police Violence in Chicago was recently published by Haymarket Books in Chicago.

Insurrection for Whom, and Toward What Social Order? ft. Daphne Muse Jan 30, 2021

I’m no tactician, but I know that tactics are neutral in themselves—Nazi soldiers blowing up a bridge in occupied France to stop an Allied advance is despicable; partisans blowing up the bridge to prevent the Nazis from overwhelming a village and slaughtering its inhabitants is both defensible and righteous. So it is with insurrections: the goals and purposes matter. January 6, 2021 was a white supremacist insurrection against state power—part of a long American tradition that includes the secessionist insurrection of 1861, the uprising by the White League seeking to overthrow the biracial Reconstruction government of Louisiana in 1894, the violent toppling of the government in Wilmington North Carolina in 1898, and more. Each of these insurrections was in naked defense of white power. By contrast, the Haitian and Cuban revolutions, for example, were emancipatory insurrections designed to move human society forward. We’re joined today by legendary freedom fighter Daphne Muse whose life in struggle—from the Civil Rights, Black Power, and Pan-Africanist Movements to the fights for women’s liberation and disability rights— illuminates while it inspires.

Goodbye to All That! Jan 19, 2021

A new year provides a formal opportunity for a practice we ought to engage in every day: looking backward and leaping forward. Rather than make hollow resolutions that we will likely break soon enough, we encourage sustained reflection as we walk on two legs toward a new multi-racial and participatory democracy. We’re reminded of the words of the Italian revolutionary Antonio Gramsci: “The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.” Malik Alim and Bill Ayers begin the new year in dialogue about learning, growing, and dreaming big.

A Word on Statistics ft. Kari Kokka Jan 06, 2021

The idea of a “seminar” provides us a vast metaphor, offering infinite roads to travel and pathways to pursue: Poems and Free-writes, Language Arts and Current Events, History and Geography, and much much more. Today, we’ll get to something we’ve been missing up until now: the wide and wonderful world of Mathematics. Of course, everything we humans produce is created in context, and the stuttering cliche that math is just the objective truth neither explains nor justifies the manipulation, deception, damage, and fraud as well as the beauty and power that flies at us from every direction in the name of facts and figures—the mantle of math. Numbers don’t express the gospel—they can easily hide injustices and conceal reality. We’re joined in conversation today with Kari Kakko, an Assistant Professor of Mathematics Education at the University of Pittsburgh, and one of the most thoughtful people working today to rescue math from the many myths and misunderstandings that seem to cling to it like a tangle of ugly barnacles.

Violence is as American as Cherry Pie Dec 23, 2020

America’s hyper-violent history of generational slavery based on African ancestry, of genocide, ethnic cleansing and land theft rolls seamlessly into the ongoing crisis of white supremacy, militarism and militarized police forces, the massive prison-industrial complex, and more. Bullets and bombs aren't the only ways to kill people—bad hospitals and a predatory health care system kill people; government sponsored enclosures kill people; decomposing schools and brainwashing curriculums kill people. In this episode Bill meditates on the word “violence,” and pays attention, not only to the violence that’s visible and overt, but also to the violence that’s cloaked and hidden, and the accompanying feigned innocence—the hypocrisy—which can compound and intensify the original crimes.

Aligning our Practices with our Values ft. Eve Ewing Dec 10, 2020

Martin Luther King, Jr famously said that “There comes a time when silence is betrayal.” From the Birmingham jail he exhorted us to open our eyes, link arms, and get firmly on the freedom side: “We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.” We explore an expanding vision of justice and freedom—and responsibility—with Eve Ewing, poet, playwright, academic researcher and teacher, institution builder, and Marvel Comics creator.

The Work of the World ft. Bill Fletcher Jr. Dec 02, 2020

Joblessness is sky-rocketing, unnecessary suffering on the rise, even as we see plainly that there’s an endless amount of real work to be done: repairing the infrastructure, creating livable housing, improving the parks and public spaces, caring for the children and the elders, cleaning the environment, growing our food, and more. The “jobs economy” enthrones profit as it disconnects work from basic human needs—it’s called capitalism. Our guest today is the preeminent labor organizer, trade unionist, racial and economic justice activist Bill Fletcher, Jr., author of “They’re Bankrupting Us” and Twenty Other Myths about Unions.

Liberation is a Curatorial Act ft. Kristiana Rae Colón Nov 25, 2020

The road to deep structural change—to revolution—is built on seeing the world as it is, and then imagining a world that could be or should be, but is not yet. Organizing and mobilizing are essential, yes, igniting a far-reaching wildfire from below, but without deploying our vital imaginations, we remain stuck. We’re joined by the transcendent artist and activist, Kristiana Rae Colon, as we explore the central role of creatives as we join in the work of imagining, rehearsing, mapping, inventing, and embodying that possible world.

Back to Work ft. Aislinn Pulley Nov 18, 2020

The sparkly quadrennial carnival known as our “national election” is like a magnetic hole in space, sucking light and energy into its powerful jaws, energy and effort disappearing into a gloomy, starless void. Sensible folks can be found staring at the glittering sites of power we have no access to, taking our eyes off the sites of power we’re a natural part of—the workplace and the community, the classroom and the house of worship. Now that the carnival is packing up and leaving town—and not a moment too soon—we turn our attention to getting back to work. We’re joined in conversation by the consummate organizer and activist Aislinn Pulley, co-executive director of the Chicago Torture Justice Center and founder and a lead organizer with Black Lives Matter Chicago.

Know What Time It Is ft. Barbara Ransby Nov 11, 2020

Voter suppression may be the only strategy left for the reactionaries, but, truth-be-told, voter suppression is as American as cherry pie, baked deep in the national DNA. Founded on war and conquest, land theft and forced removal, ethnic cleansing and genocide, kidnapping and a complex system of generational slavery based on African ancestry, the US is hardly innocent in spite of the noisy protestations of the White Nationalists. It’s a settler-colonial, racial capitalist system, and the founding documents are crystal clear: power will be exercised by and for the few. A fundamental revolutionary duty—and really the responsibility of anyone whose eyes are open—is to struggle to know what time it is, and so we explore this treacherous, ominous, and oddly hopeful moment with a dear friend and comrade Barbara Ransby, historian, award-winning author, professor of history, Black studies, and gender and women’s studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

“A Vision of the Sea,” and of Freedom ft. Kathy Boudin Oct 22, 2020

We have taken up the question and the problem of freedom from various angles of regard, and today we move from an expansive metaphor—freedom as the wide, wide sea—to a material reality—freedom as the concrete act of unlocking the prison gate and walking out, free. We visit with Kathy Boudin, a social justice activist who spent 22 years in a New York State prison, and has, since her release in 2003, helped to organize a remarkable network and a wide range of projects to dismantle the system of mass incarceration.

Interlude Oct 14, 2020

We’re altering the framework for Episode Eleven because we’ve reached a milestone of sorts—a small milestone, to be sure, but a milestone nonetheless—and, therefore, this offering represents a kind of interlude, a time to reflect and recap, reimagine and rebuild. With ten episodes of Under the Tree live—a decathlon run—and a zillion episodes up ahead, let’s look back at where we’ve been, listen to a few excerpts, and then plunge ahead into a brief dialogue between Ayers, Alim, and Professor Stovall as we prepare for the road ahead.

History Matters ft. Aaron Dixon Sep 24, 2020

The conquerors and the occupiers—the victors—are always the ones who write the history, and so we’re left with stories of the glorious conquest of the American west against “savage Indians,” the “Lost Cause” of the “valiant” Confederacy, or the acclaimed creation of “a fragile democracy” in the backward Middle East—“a chosen land for a chosen people.” Each of these accounts is sharply contested, and in that narrative battle we see a protest and hear an appeal: look more deeply, uncover the silenced voices—flawed and partial, contingent and fragmentary—discover a larger and more honest understanding of events. We’re joined today by Aaron Dixon, a former Black Panther Party leader whose journey proceeds from the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s to the Black Lives Matter movement of today, and whose decades of experience and accumulated wisdom can help us answer that appeal.

"Artists Can Help to Make the Revolution Irresistible" ft. Lisa Yun Lee Sep 16, 2020

Life begins in wonder, and so does art—authentic education, too, begins in curiosity, and proceeds through discovery and surprise. Emily Dickinson wrote that “Art lights the slow fuse of possibility,” reminding us that every human being is endowed with the powerful and unique capacity to imagine, and that the arts can help us unleash our deepest human hopes and aspirations, our wildest dreams. We begin to explore the arts and the serious work of making justice with our friend and comrade Lisa Yun Lee, Director of the National Public Housing Museum, Associate Professor of Art History and Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a leading cultural activist who describes herself as “intellectually promiscuous.”

Reparations Now! ft. Katherine Franke Sep 11, 2020

Reparations for America’s “original sin”—generational slavery—as well as the long and abiding afterlife of chattel slavery, including Black Codes, poll taxes, Jim Crow, the regime of lynching and white terror, pogroms, red-lining, segregation, voter suppression, and mass incarceration, has moved urgently into the forefront of the national agenda. Malik Alim and Bill Ayers focus their conversation on reparations as both a moral imperative and a multi-dimensional practical necessity before turning to Katherine Franke, a leading scholar on law and racial justice and chair of the board of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Her most recent book, Repair: Redeeming the Promise of Abolition, takes a clear-eyed look at what might have saved us a century and a half ago, and what it will take to save us today.

An Education for Freedom ft. Kevin Kumashiro Sep 02, 2020

Societies organize and build schools which are, of course, set up to serve the goals and interests of their hosts. Schools are both mirror and window: authoritarian schools serve authoritarian societies, and authoritarian nations create autocratic schools. We start this episode with a conversation between Malik Alim and Bill Ayers about the schools we need and the schools we deserve. We then welcome Kevin Kumashiro, author of The Seduction of Common Sense, Against Common Sense, and the forthcoming Surrendered, to help us explore the essential dimensions of an education for free people.

Where in the World Are We? ft. Prexy Nesbitt Aug 26, 2020

Americans are known across the globe for a singular lack of knowledge about who we are and where we’re located; we collectively have a thin knowledge of both history and geography. Making up less than 5% of the world’s people, we tend toward an exaggerated and narcissistic sense of our place in the larger scheme of things. In this episode we take a closer look at the link between freedom and patriotism, and note the retarding quality of an anemic flag-waving nationalistic loyalty. We’re joined by Prexy Nesbitt, a spirited internationalist and freedom fighter whose efforts over many decades have focused on labor and human rights, Black Freedom and the liberation of Southern Africa.

Defund the Police ft. Alec Karakatsanis Aug 12, 2020

Malik Alim and Bill Ayers open with a spirited dialogue on the link between defunding the police, abolition, and a vision of a society free of prisons and armed agents of the state. We then turn to a conversation with Alec Karakatsanis, author of Usual Cruelty, a powerful unmasking and reframing of the myths of “the rule of law” and “law enforcement.”

Imagine the Angels of Bread ft. Bernardine Dohrn Aug 05, 2020

When Alice asks the Cheshire Cat which way she ought to go, the Cat responds, “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.” Alice says she doesn’t much care where she goes, to which the Cat says, “Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.” We spend this episode exploring our radical dreams, and imagining where we’d like to go, accompanied by the music words of the radical poet, Martin Espada, and a conversation with the legendary activist, Bernardine Dohrn.

In Your Dream of Dreams, What Would Schools for Free People Look Like? ft. David Stovall Jul 29, 2020

Schools are both window and mirror into any society: authoritarian schools serve repressive regimes; segregated schools mirror severed societies; a free society builds schools anchored in enlightenment and liberation.

David Omotoso Stovall lights up this episode with a conversation about the school to prison nexus, and the provocative possibility that the call for prison abolition link up with a demand to abolish the schools we have in favor of an education for freedom. Professor Stovall is an activist, a scholar, and the author or editor of several texts, including Born Out of Struggle: Critical Race Theory, School Creation, and the Politics of Interruption; From Education to Incarceration: Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline; Handbook of Social Justice in Education; Black, Brown, Bruised: How Racialized STEM Education Stifles Innovation; Teaching Toward Democracy; and Twenty-First-Century Jim Crow Schools: The Impact of Charters on Public Education.

A Pedagogy of Love, Justice and Joy ft. Crystal Laura Jul 23, 2020

Freedom is a layered, complex, and dynamic concept that defies a Webster’s Dictionary-type definition, and so we continue to explore the meaning of freedom, and we follow it as it makes its twisty way through our lives and our consciousness.

We’re joined by Crystal Laura, author of Being Bad: My Baby Brother and the School to Prison Pipeline, and we explore in detail how educators can disrupt the march toward mass incarceration by deploying a pedagogy joy, love, and justice.

Let's Talk About Freedom ft. Chesa Boudin Jul 23, 2020

This inaugural episode dives directly into the wreckage: What do we talk about when we talk about freedom? “Under the Tree” references the Freedom Schools created in Mississippi and throughout the South during the Black Freedom Movement of the 1950s and 1960’s—fugitive spaces where folks gathered to organize an insurgency against Jim Crow and white supremacy. We begin our ongoing reflection on the challenge, the demand, and the meaning of freedom, and then we’re joined by Chesa Boudin, long-time public defender and recently elected District Attorney of San Francisco.

Introducing Under the Tree: A Seminar on Freedom with Bill Ayers Jun 30, 2020

Introducing Under the Tree: A Seminar on Freedom with Bill Ayers by Bill Ayers