Under the Tree: A Seminar on Freedom with Bill Ayers

In the late 1960s Detroit was ripe for revolution: a wave of urban insurrections had swept the country from coast to coast, and the 1967 Detroit rebellion was one of the largest and most consequential; Black auto workers who had experienced marginalization and discrimination in the industry as well as from their own union (UAW) were organizing grass roots resistance; and Detroit was a center of Black radical thought, notably fired by the presence of the Marxist leader CLR James, as well as James and Grace Lee Boggs. On May 2, 1968, 3000 workers at the massive Dodge Main plant participated in a wildcat strike, and soon the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) was born, and workers began organizing radical caucuses at other factories. There are several useful accounts—books, articles, films—about the life of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, its history and its impact, but with Motown and the Making of Working-Class Revolutionaries Walda Katz-Fischman and Jerome Scott add a necessary and illuminating element: Oral History. The focus is meaning as it’s constructed by human beings—meaning made by actors in their particular situations—and this leads to story, to narrative, to approaches that are person-centered, shamelessly interpretive, and unapologetically subjective. Far from a weakness, the voice of the person—the narrator’s own account—is the singular achievement of this work, a worthy antidote to propaganda, dogma, imposition, and stereotype.

We are living through difficult times, tough times, and we’re not alone. Genocide, catastrophic capitalist climate collapse, increasing inequality, unapologetic imperial dreams and white supremacist policies unleashed, fascism on the rise—people all over the world are suffering, they get hurt and they get hard. Our rage and our sadness for all the unnecessary suffering, while understandable, can easily lead to despair and worse. But despair is deactivating, distorting, and destructive—a weapon of the powerful. Activism is a necessary antidote to despair, and activism opens a practical space where hope can come alive. Join us in conversation with one of the most joyful freedom fighters we know: Vijay Prashad, director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research—a primer about everything that matters! Vijay is the author of forty books, including The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of Global South, and (with Grieve Chelwa) How the International Monetary Fund Suffocates Africa. He is an editor at LeftWord Books (New Delhi), Inkani Books (Johannesburg), and La Trocha (Santiago).

Once again the US is at war in the Middle East, and once again the “coalition of the willing” is Israel standing alone, hand-in-bloody-hand with the US. If history is a guide, when the US boot comes down, freedom and humanity are not the winners. The autocratic and sclerotic regime in Iran slaughtered tens of thousands of protestors in recent months, and the murderous medieval rulers of that land were widely reviled and resisted by their own people. During the protests, and now with the war, desperation, rage, sadness, fear, and uncertainty characterize the reaction of many Iranians of good will, both in-country and in the diaspora. We dive into the contradictions and begin the agonizing process of sifting through the wreckage with Sepehr Vakil, an associate professor of Learning Sciences in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University, and an engaged scholar/activist, author of Revolutionary Engineers: Learning, Politics, and Activism at Aryamehr University of Technology.

Power habitually lies in public to make a particularly egregious point: We can lie in public, and you can’t stop us. “We didn’t murder that protester, she was a domestic terrorist determined to kill police;” “I strangled that Black man to death because I feared for my life.” The debate over whether the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank is indeed a genocide is a fraudulent diversion—the genocide was pre-announced by government leaders in October, 2023: “We will starve them; we will deny them medicines and fuels; we will make Gaza uninhabitable.” The so-called ceasefire is also a ruse, a phony attempt to change the international narrative while continuing to murder, drive out, and erase the population. We’re joined in conversation with Nell and Leta Hirschmann-Levy, two brave and intrepid sisters from New York City whose opposition to the US/Israeli genocide in Palestine has led them to picket lines, boycotts, rallies, organizing campaigns, and to Palestine itself.

The attacks of September 11, 2001 were used by the powerful in the government and the bought media in the most manipulative and shameless way, whipping up Islamaphobia and xenophobia to justify and accelerate a rush to war. This would be a war without boundaries, justified battlefields, or any identifiable end-point—a “war on terror.” The war-makers never elaborated on the objectives of their war—where it would be fought, how it would be conducted, or how it could be won—simply that it would be a crusade against faceless and nameless evil-doers wherever they might be lurking. The message boomed forth: shut up, salute, and march in step with a revitalized imperialist project. Remarkably, amidst the manufactured frenzy and panic in every direction, an antiwar movement was brought to life that created a significant counter-narrative that stood up against the tide. We’re joined in conversation with co-host Jeff Jones and Jeremy Varon, an activist-scholar, Professor of History at the New School for Social Research in New York, and author of Our Grief is not a Cry for War, a social history of the movement against the “war on terror.”

Here is the proposed preamble to a new Constitution for Public Education, conceived by the visionary teacher and organizer Jay Gillen: “Every middle-schooler will have the expectation that when they are in high school they will have a good-paying job, sharing knowledge or skills with peers, younger children, or other people in their communities.” He offers this radical proposal in order to propel a conversation and an organizing focus toward building a broad national consensus about how children should be prepared to grow up with dignity and strength in all of our communities. When he recasts the language of the preamble slightly—“If we could pay teenagers to do things that benefit their communities, contribute to the education and culture of younger children, and incidentally advance their own educations, it would be a good thing”—Gillen argues that we already have enormous sympathy in principle. And so we move on to specific steps we might take and concrete principles we might adopt which are surprisingly practical—and within reach. We’re joined by Jay Gillen, author of Educating for Insurgency and The Power in the Room, and Jamarria Hall, a student advocate and lead plaintiff in Gary B. v. Whitmer, the Right to Literacy case that argued the Detroit public schools were “functionally incapable of delivering access to literacy,” and resulted in a $94.4 million settlement in 2023.

Here we go again—another invasion, another occupation, another aggression. The US government is a warmongering behemoth that is in a constant, continuing state of war, and it ceaslessly gas-lights the pubic, asking us to repudiate “your own lying eyes,” and to instead embrace euphemisms designed to make murder, theft, and brazen lawlessness sound inevitable and benevolent. A humane future makes a simple demand on each and all of us: RESIST! We’re joined in conversation with Michelle Nickerson, professor of history at Loyola University Chicago and author, most recently, of Spiritual Criminals: How the Camden 28 Put the Vietnam War on Trial, an illuminating account of the organized Catholic resistance to the US war against Vietnam, and an inspiration for the task ahead.

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!

International solidarity is at the heart of our hopes for fundamental, humane change in the US. There can be no revolution in values or in fact if progressive Americans wrap themselves in the myth of “exceptionalism” and stand aside from the global struggles leading the fight against imperialism and for peace and justice. We need to become comrades, standing together—shoulder-to-shoulder against a common enemy and toward a common goal. We join, then, a voluntary association characterized by enthusiasm and joy at being part of something larger than ourselves. We’re not allies, functioning in service to, but rather comrades, acting in solidarity with. The biggest obstacle to authentic comradeship in US history—the third rail of American radical politics—is and always has been white supremacy, and tepid work toward International Solidarity and Black freedom. Comradeship in America emerges only from an unconditional embrace of Internationalism and Black Liberation. We are joined in conversation with Martha Biondi, the Lorraine H. Morton Professor of African American Studies and Professor of History at Northwestern University, author of The Black Revolution on Campus;   To Stand and Fight: the Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City,  and most recently, We Are Internationalists: Prexy Nesbitt and the Fight for African Liberationand Prexy Nesbitt, a Chicago organizer, engaged scholar, and activist who built (over several decades) international solidarity with African liberation movements fighting against colonialism and apartheid in Mozambique, Angola, and South Africa.

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.