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On today’s show guest host Bert Zipperer speaks with scholar and activist Bill Ayers. WORT News Director Chali Pittman also joins the conversation, and they talk about the presidential election and the ascent of Trumpism. Ayers says that though we’re at a precarious time, this isn’t the first frightening time. He follows Barbara Smith, who says that this is “just another day in the struggle.” They also talk about abolition, dignity, the need for people to stay engaged and get busy with acts of repair.

From the perspective of being a long-time educator, Ayers says that he’s been embarrassed to watch colleges and universities capitulate and call the cops on students. We’ve been here before during McCarthyism, reminds Ayers. 

Ayers champions public goods, like city services, housing, hospitals, and especially public and independent media. Ayers says he’s noticed the word “public” being used in a derogatory way by the Right. We need movements built by people, not people who just act passively as consumers. 

Bill Ayers is a retired professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has been a decades-long peace and social justice activist who has written extensively about social justice and freedom, democracy and education, the cultural contexts of schooling, and teaching as an essentially intellectual, ethical, and political enterprise. He is the author of many books, the latest of which is When Freedom is the Question Abolition is the Answer: Reflections on Collective Liberation.

Featured image of When Freedom is the Question Abolition is the Answer: Reflections on Collective Liberation by Bill Ayers.

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