Voices for the Future: Demand the Impossible!--A Radical Manifesto
A Conversation with the social change activist Bill Ayres
Voices for the Future is a podcast series that I co-host with my collaborator Anodea Judith.
The next program is this Thursday, December 7th at 7pm Eastern/4pm Pacific with social change activist Bill Ayres, and is entitled Demand the Impossible!: A Radical Manifesto.
You can attend for free on Zoom at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84849679493
The name of the program, "Demand the Impossible: A Radical Manifesto," also happens to be the name of Bill Ayres' most recent book.
Bill Ayres happens to be one of the most famous activists of the 20th and 21st centuries. He is a Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago (retired), and has written extensively about social justice and democracy, education and the cultural contexts of schooling, and teaching as an essentially intellectual, ethical, and political enterprise.
He has written 15 books, including A Kind and Just Parent; Teaching toward Freedom; Fugitive Days: A Memoir; Public Enemy: Confessions of an American Dissident; On the Side of the Child; To Teach: The Journey, in Comics; and Demand the Impossible!
Bill has a podcast called Under the Tree, and his website is billayers.org/
Bill's notoriety began in the 1960s as a student activist against the Vietnam War. He was a member of Students for a Democratic Society, and then co-founded the radical activist group the Weather Underground. (The Weather Underground, and its predecessor organization, The Weathermen, got their name from the line in Bob Dylan's song Subterranean Homesick Blues: "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.")
During the 1960s and 1970s, the Weather Underground conducted a campaign of public bombings of government buildings, in opposition to the Vietnam War. No one was killed or injured in the bombings, but once the FBI declared the Weather Underground behind the attacks, Bill Ayers went on the lam as a fugitive for several years, until charges were dropped due to illegal actions by the FBI agents pursuing him and others.
Bill went on to become a professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, holding the titles of Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar.
Over the years, Bill has expressed regrets for his actions, and has publicly written about his remorse for what the Weather Underground did, saying "I condemn all forms of terrorism—individual, group and official."
His passion for activism, peace, social justice, and equality has stayed strong over the years, and with the wisdom of age, has allowed Bill to infuse his quest for creating a more compassionate world with a self-reflection that integrates asking the big questions:
***What does it mean to be human today?
***How can we act more ethically in our hurried and off-balanced world?
***What gives meaning to our lives?
***What kinds of people do we want to become?
***What role does the imagination play in the efforts to create a better world?
These are the questions of a person who has devoted his life to activism, and it is his dedication to just causes that has allowed him to have made an indelible mark in the lives of so many people.
Bestselling author Naomi Klein has said of Bill's work, "His courage is contagious," while another famed activist, Angela Davis, has said of Bill Ayres, "For Bill Ayres, it is the freedom of our collective imagination that links the contemporary world to the flourishing of the planet."
This is a program that will be very inspiring, as we delve deeply in conversation with a person who has lived a life of principled commitment to a just, humane, loving, and enlightened world. Again, it takes place this Thursday, December 7 at 7pm Eastern/4pm Pacific on Zoom at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84849679493