Under the Tree: A Seminar on Freedom with Bill Ayers

Colleges and universities—and all educational institutions—are natural sites of struggle over fundamental questions: what knowledge and experiences are of most value? Who should have access to that valuable knowledge? What is the truth about this or that, and what’s the evidence? Where do we come from and what we hope to be? These questions are messy, full of conflict, even dangerous, and universities are both venues to discuss ideas, and stages where we put those ideas into practice, arguing and contending over the meaning of history, class, race, religion, gender, sexuality, and every other aspect of what it means to be fully human. We’re joined by labor historian Tom Alter, a tenured professor at Texas State University who was summarily fired this year for his political beliefs, and who is engaged in a fight about the right to think at all---a struggle that has implications for all of us.

We know what the authoritarian vision of education and schooling is—it’s laid out in detail in Project 2025: an end to public education, taxpayer funding for religious and private schools, teachers reduced to clerks, and students as indistinguishable widgets moving along an assembly line as bits of information are poured into their upturned heads. For decades there’s been a relentless campaign to define education in instrumentalist, linear, and expedient terms, and high-stakes standardized tests have been a common cudgel in the hands of the powerful, a kind of modern and scientized eugenics device. Simultaneously, the marketeers have organized a fire-sale, relentlessly selling off our public assets to private interests. All of this activity undermines the nature of intellectual inquiry and cognitive growth, transforming education into a matter of consumption, competition, and a hierarchy of winners and losers; the result is the eclipse of the public, the demolition of the commons, and the destruction of authentic learning. Join Bill in conversation with Jared Rock and Mike Schuwerk as they discuss their own North Star: Educational Humanism in a Post-Managerial Age, a liberatory alternative to the devastating dystopia we’re living through.

We each share a human culture, a human experience, and a human fate with everyone who exists, or ever did exist—we are born, we suffer, we die. And yet, within that vast shared experience there are enormous disparities and variations—all of which can test our capacity for empathy and human solidarity. Imagine facing bombardment and continuous war, invasion and occupation, ethnic cleansing and genocide, the murders of your friends and your children and your family members, the loss of home and community, dislocation and exile—all the worst experiences human beings have suffered. Come close; don’t look away. Now, connect. We are joined in conversation by Tareq Baconi, a Palestinian writer and activist who has written a memoir—Fire in Every Direction—that is also an exquisite love letter to the people of Palestine—their land, their ancestors, a history that cannot be forgotten and a future that cannot be denied. Free Palestine!

Police agencies across the country have functioned from the start as a violent arm of the elite and a cat’s paw in resisting racial justice and economic fairness. Today’s ICE agents are in the long tradition of slave patrols, SWAT teams and Red Squads. During the high tide of the Civil Rights Movement the brutality of Southern sheriffs was on full display, but two critical phenomena are missed when the dominant narrative focuses exclusively on iconic photos from a few dramatic moments: first, state  repression—brutality, physical violence, infiltration and spying, reputational attacks, bogus prosecutions—against the Movement was not confined to a few redneck sheriffs, but was common practice in police departments at every level everywhere; and, second, Movement activists did not passively accept the abuse, but rather, fought back actively. In Police Against the Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activist Who Fought Back Joshua Clark Davis documents a monstrous pattern of police activity to crush the Movement, and also the brilliance of Movement folks who confronted police power openly, consistently, and courageously. 

These are tough times for teachers and students, for young people and their families, for immigrant communities, for people of color, for all of us. All times are tough, of course, but the consolidation of white supremacist power, the organized acts of everyday cruelty, the disdain for humanity, the consolidation of autocracy, the performance of savagery, the unchecked embrace of selfishness, selective humanization and the rendering of large sections of human beings as disposable—the vilest human qualities and the beating heart of capitalism—make our lives all the more precarious, and precious. We’re joined by Kathryn (Kat) Zamarron, a Chicago Public School teacher, in a wide-ranging conversation focussed on the complex  reality of supporting children and youth and their families in dark times. 

On Monday, September 29th the National Public Housing Museum in collaboration with the Goodman Theatre hosted a conversation between Lisa Lee, the founding director of the Museum, and the playwright Zayd Dohrn whose hip hop rock musical Revolution(s) opens the Goodman Theatre's centennial season in October. The gathering was part of an epic citywide and year-long event—100 Free Acts of Theater—which will activate all 50 wards in the city to celebrate the artistic fabric of Chicago, amplify existing arts programming, and collaborate on new efforts. (Learn more at GoodmanTheatre.org/100FreeActs). The conversation roamed widely and revolved around questions like: What does revolution mean? What is the future we deserve? What role do love and joy play in our visions of a better world? What is the role of the many arts at this moment on the clock of the universe?  Examining how art, activism, and imagination shape movements for change, Lisa and Zayd are joined by guest activists throughout the night.

The speed at which a fascist government can disrupt, dismantle, and destroy on its way to building a full-blown fascist society is breathtaking. Resistance is scattered, and anyone looking to the Democratic Party to offer guidance or leadership should remember that we came to this point on bipartisan rails, that is, the ruling class and the political establishment has agreed for decades on every major issue: unqualified support for Israel’s murderous and illegal actions; the militarization of domestic police forces and policing as the ready-answer to every social problems; mass incarceration as a defining feature of society; the frantic privatization of public goods and services. And underlying it all, the tenacious and deadly legacy of the culture and structures of white supremacy. We’re joined in conversation with the activist, organizer, and writer Emile Suotonye DeWeaver, author most recently of Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine: Reform, White Supremacy, and an Abolitionist Future.