Bill Ayers

https://www.spreaker.com/user/radiosputnik/betsy-devos-interviews-expose-incompeten

SINGING in DARK TIMES

March 13, 2018/ 6PM/ 57th Street Bookstore

Motto

In the dark times, will there also be singing?

Yes, there will be singing.

About the dark times.

~~Bertolt Brecht

In December, 2017 we  held the inaugural gathering of a discussion group designed to open a public space for serious and challenging conversation in these troubling days: Singing in Dark Times.

Eve Ewing, Rachel DeWoskin, Kevin Coval, and Bill Ayers started us off, and over 40 people joined in to try to make sense and make meaning of our lives and our work—to shine a bright beacon of hope and possibility into the gloom.

It was an electrifying evening for those of us in attendance, but it was only a start.

On January 13, 2018 Singing in Dark Times convened again—this time Bill Ayers welcomed Lisa Lee and David Stovall in an opening dialogue, quickly broadening into a conversation embracing everyone who chose to join in.

It too proved to be a provocative and powerful evening pushing toward a question that drives so many of us: What is to be done?

The next Singing in Dark Times forum will gather on March 13, 2018, and will include Bill Ayers in conversation with the brilliant artist/activist/movement-makers Monica Trinidad and Ethan Viets-VanLear.

Please join this emerging public space, this intentional community-in-the-making.

As the public is being steadily eroded and eclipsed, and as neoliberalism persists and fascism lurks close by, the goal of those of us who believe in freedom is to take full responsibility to reimagine, revitalize, and create anew a public square, a public presence, and a wide range of participatory public spaces.

An impressive array of wildly diverse artists and grass-roots activists are  on the move and on the rise—resistance is breaking out all over, and a revitalized public square is in-the-making. In Chicago, a cinema guild is running a series of films on authoritarianism followed by wide ranging teach-ins on the political environment we find ourselves in; the Co-op hosted a series of conversation led by U Chicago professors investigating contemporary issues under the banner “Free University of Chicago;” and Women and Children First’s “The Conversation” brings writers, artists, and politicians together to talk about an issue of political, social, or cultural importance. Elsewhere, a chain of restaurants in Detroit calling themselves “Sanctuary Cafes” is offering weekly facilitated  conversations (as well as bail to neighbors caught up in the system); a collection of renowned playwrights has joined forces to dramatize the Bill of Rights; block clubs around the country are hosting monthly pot-luck dinners to allow folks to face one another authentically and figure out what is to be done. 

The legendary Seminary Co-op/57th St. Bookstores in Hyde Park, Chicago, has always been a destination bookstore and a vital public space. Please join us as we reimagine the public square—the essential conversation continues.

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/43770-hollywood-won-t-save-us-instead-let-s-build-a-revitalized-radical-feminism

http://www.vietnampeace.org/my-lai-public-appeal

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/03/americas-brutal-forgotten-history-of-illegal-deportations/517971/

On March 6, 1970—48 years ago today—three dear comrades died in an accidental bomb explosion in Greenwich Village, New York. Diana Oughton, Ted Gold, and Terry Robbins were former student radicals and faithful anti-war activists, by then revolutionaries dedicated to ending white supremacy and overthrowing US imperialism. They were also among the loveliest people I’d ever known—thoughtful and compassionate, engaged and beautiful. We pause today to remember their lives and to grieve their loss, to take responsibility for our shared shortcomings and mistakes, to honor their commitments, and to rededicate ourselves to creating a joyful and peaceful world powered by love.

Diana, Teddy, Terry—Presente!

though its beak is still home. As if that weren’t enough—it keeps fidgeting!

How leaky are the borders of man-made states!

How many clouds float over them scot-free,

how much desert sand sifts from  country to country,

how many mountain pebbles roll onto foreign turf

in provocative leaps!

Need I cite each and every bird as it flies,

or alights, as now, on the lowered gate?

Even if it be a sparrow—its tail is abroad,

thought its beak is still home. As if that weren’t enough—it keeps fidgeting!

Out of countless insects I will single out the ant,

who, between the guard’s left and right boots,

feels unobliged to answer questions of origin and destination.

If only this whole mess could be seen at once in detail

on ever continent!

Isn’t that a privet on the opposite bank

smuggling its hundred-thousandth leaf across the river?

Who else but the squid, brazenly long-armed,

would violate the sacred territorial waters.?

How can we speak of any semblance of order

when we can’t rearrange the stars

to know which one  shines for whom?

Not to mention the reprehensible spreading of fog!

Or the dusting of the steppe over its entire range

as though it weren’t split in two!

Or voices carried over accommodating air waves:

summoning squeals and suggestive gurgles!

Only what’s human can be truly alien.

The rest is mixed forest, undermining moles, and wind.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/get-rid-borders-completely/409501/