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.
Featured Poems:
Billy Collins, Introduction to Poetry
Langston Hughes, Words Like Freedom
Free write:
‘Every human being is both free and fated, fated and free.’
Hannah Arendt
In what ways do you imagine yourself to be free, and in what ways are you fated or entangled or defined by larger, impersonal, and sometimes invisible or unacknowledged forces?
Under the Tree Podcast 