Tag: activists
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Episode # 72: Open Your Mouths for the Muted; Fight for the Rights of the Destitute with Randolph Stone
This political moment—complex, contradictory, 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…
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Episode # 68: From Dungeons to Revolutionary Focos with Destine Phillips, Denzel Burke, & Tommy Hagan from the R.E.A.L. Youth Initiative
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 somethings: seeds, surely, desire, yes, effort, of course, always effort, idealism and romance, maybe, necessity and desperation at times, and a vision…
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Episode 66: Waiting for Democracy with Stephanie Skora
Stephanie Skora is the force behind the Girl, 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…
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Episode 65: Chasing Justice – A Homecoming with Marshan Allen
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 Pritzker, 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.…
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Episode 64: Reimagining the Classroom with Theodore Richards
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…
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Episode 63: Dare to Struggle! Dare to Win! with Helen Shiller
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…
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Episode 62: “Freedom Has Always Been the Horizon” with the Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project
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…
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Episode 61: Education for Liberation with Brian Jones
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…
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BONUS Episode: Injustice Watch
Talking Judges and Elections with Injustice Watch We’re a few days away from election day across the country. But many of us here in Chicago are looking at our ballots and overwhelmed with the incredible number of offices, ballot measures, and judges about whom we are expected to make informed decisions. So who are all…
Under the Tree Podcast 